Your "Everything Has Its Price" Quizo Update

I spend an inordinate amount of time in New Jersey, probably because I currently live there. The entire state gets a bad rap from a very small part of it - which that part admittedly deserves - but most of it that I've seen is actually quite nice. The spot I'm in especially.

This is not to say, however, that everything is always smiles and sunshine.

I managed to get myself a kick-ass laptop at a ridiculous price last week, which is how our story begins. I was at the Best Buy in Moorestown attempting to buy the Twin Peaks Gold Box, which despite the tag on the shelf reading "Twin Peaks Gold Box DVD" the salesman had apparently never heard of, and after failing to do so I wandered over to Computers. I browsed a bit until I came across a laptop that was a floor model listed as an "open box" sale. I perused the specs and came to the conclusion that the price on offer was several hundred dollars below what such a computer would normally retail for and jumped at the chance to finally get back into the mobile computing world after the implosion of the company I once worked for required me to return their laptop (they needed gas money, I guess).

The salesman in computers came over and pulled out the unit and said, "you're getting a hell of a deal on this thing, man."

"Oh, I know," I said.

"Let me just check it out, make sure everything works," he said. He plugged it in and powered it up. "Huh, that's weird."

I looked at the laptop and the screen said "Operating System Not Found."

The salesman said, "sorry about that, man."

Now I knew from my days at the Death Star I knew three things:

1) When a floor model computer was going to go out for actual sale the techs would reformat the hard drive and reinstall Windows, and in this case had probably just neglected to do the latter.

2) The odds of the store still having the install disks that came with the computer were so miniscule as to be laughable.

3) Best Buy is not supposed to sell computers without an operating system.

Finally, a situation where I could game the system to my advantage. Not only was I about to get myself a laptop at a TRULY ridiculous price, but I would be able to put XP on it and not have to use the horror (and computer-resource-sucking-vampire) that is Vista.

"Tell you what," I said. "You whack another 75 bucks off the price and I'll take it anyway."

The salesman agreed in about 1/10th of a second; he was happy to unload a unit he would otherwise be completely unable to sell. So I ended up getting my kick-ass laptop for about half the retail price. However, once I got it home and working I realized I needed some other things for it - most pressing, I needed blank CDs so as to install my perfectly-legal copy of Windows XP on it. And I still wanted the Twin Peaks Gold Box. This necessitated a trip to another Best Buy the next morning, this time in Brick.

Getting into and out of Brick, NJ is a bit of an adventure under the best circumstances. There are two exits off the Parkway that essentially go to the same place, one on the northbound side and one on the southbound side, with different numbers. Similarly, getting back on the Parkway from Brick is confusing to the extent that I've never entirely figured out exactly how to do it, basically just relying on the knowledge that from whatever point I'm at if I keep heading west I will get to the Parkway eventually.

That said, never underestimate the state of New Jersey's ability to make your driving experience a screaming nightmare.

Because of a stretch of roadwork - which is something of a recreational sport in New Jersey - the four lanes that normally comprise Route 70 had been compressed to roughly one and a half, and the sign that actually reads "Parkway South ------>" had been taken down at the appropriate turnoff, which led to a situation where heading towards the Parkway were tons of signs that said "Parkway South [arrow pointing ahead]" which then are mysteriously replaced with signs reading "Lakehurst 8 [miles]" and drivers shouting "WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK" to their otherwise empty cars over excessively-loud Kylie Minogue music.

When I finally got home about an hour later - about three times longer than it should have taken - I realized I STILL didn't have the goddamn Twin Peaks DVDs.

Welcome to New Jersey.

JLK