This week's e-mail is going out a night early because I'm going to be busy all day tomorrow. More on that a little later.
For now, though, let me tell you another little story about the joys of shopping in New Jersey.
Last week I needed a new mouse and a cable to hook my iPod up to my laptop. I got myself over to the Ocean County Mall, where there is conveniently a B. Dalton - a subsidiary of Barnes and Noble, if you didn't know - right next to the Radio Shack.
Shopping at Radio Shack is always an excruciating experience - no, I don't want any batteries, just the mouse and the cable; no, I don't want the cable that lights up when it passes near a magnetic field, just the regular one; no, I don't want a replacement plan for a 12-dollar mouse; no, I'm not interested in new cell phone service; no, FOR CHRISSAKES I DO NOT WANT ANY FUCKING BATTERIES - but a bookstore (for me, at least) is a calming breath of fresh air after that kind of retail assault.
On a quick side note, in case you are wondering, they push them so hard because the retail markup on batteries is so high that it transcends into the realm of the obscene and the profane. Few people can even comprehend the high-level mathematics necessary to calculate said markup. Back in the 17th Century the Vatican tried to ban the teaching of that kind of math, calling it the work of the Devil. To give an actual, real-world example, back when I worked at the Death Star and employee pricing was store cost plus ten percent, the Jumbo Super Pack of 96 AA batteries retailed for about $75. The employee price was LESS THAN TWO DOLLARS. I am not making this up. This is why they want so badly for you to buy batteries. It is the retail equivalent of punching you in the kidneys and taking your wallet. It is as close as you can get to stealing in a legitimate economic setting.
Anyway, after escaping from the Radio Shack with my mouse and cable I headed into the B. Dalton and proceeded to browse for a solid 45 minutes. I already knew what I wanted - the Star Wars book which had come out back in August but I hadn't managed to find time to read yet, because I am both incredibly busy (up until recently, at least) and I am a gigantic nerd - but I basically checked out every shelf in the store anyway. You never know when you might find something else that looked interesting that you wanted to read. In point of fact I found about 14 things I wanted to read, but in the interest of occasionally sleeping and not spending 200 bucks at B. Dalton (that's WITH my discount) I just grabbed my Star Wars book and headed for the register.
When I got there the young lady working was very nice, polite, efficient without being annoying or prying - basically the perfect retail employee and the antithesis of the Cro-Magnon scum at Radio Shack. Also fairly attractive in a cute, bookish sort of way. Chicks with glasses...
Anyway.
When I handed her the book she said, "oh, this is great! You're going to love it. There's this great part where Jacen... oh, well, I'm not going to ruin it for you."
And she reads trashy Star Wars books!
Love at first sight? Could be, could be...
"Do you have a discount card?" she asks.
I tell her I do but I don't have it on me. I am well-versed in this drill, as even though I have had a Barnes and Noble discount card since roughly the time of the Crusades, since I lost in in a move years ago they have never bothered to replace it. I give her my phone number as per the standard lookup procedure, and congratulate myself for thinking of such a cunning way to give women my number, i.e. losing a bookstore discount card years ago.
"Okay..." she taps on the register a few times, then frowns at it. She gives me what can only be described as an odd look. "Is your..." she says. "Is your name... Goku?"
"I... what? No, it isn't. Goku?" I say.
Now, bear in mind, in case you aren't aware, "Goku" is a character from the anime Dragonball Z. He is a guy who walks around in an orange bathrobe fighting aliens, or something. I hate DBZ. I hate it. It is like the Criminal Minds of anime, giving the rest of the genre a bad name. How a character from Dragonball Z's name got on my account at Barnes and Noble is a mystery.
"Yeah, it says your name is 'Goku.' Is..." she reads my old address. "your address?"
"That's my address, yeah, but I can't figure how that name could get on there..."
My voice drifted off as I finally realized how it happened.
Greg.
A couple months back I was at the Barnes and Noble where Greg, late of the team Gym Shorts No Underwear works. I was buying a DVD - a new copy of Gettysburg, as I recall. He was working in the video section at the time, we chatted a bit, and when he rung me up he mentioned that my discount card was about to expire and do I want to renew it? I knew that getting people to obtain or renew discount cards was a fairly big deal for folks who work at such places (having been one myself once upon a time), and he's a pal, might as well give him the sale rather than the bitchy old lady who works the front register at that particular store. So I toss him my licence so he can put all the information back in the system.
And, lo and behold, here I am at another B&N store and my name on their system comes up as "Goku."
I think, there will be blood for this.
"Oooohhhhhh, I know how it happened," I say, realizing too late that the whole "blood" thing may have seeped into my voice more than was probably smart.
"Do you want me to update it?" the cute bookstore girl who now obviously thinks I'm some sort of psychopath says.
"No," I say. "I'll take care of this personally."
So, Greg, as a great man once said, I will have my vengeance in this life or the next. We're talking the full monty here. Assassins. Ninjas. Boxes of plagued rats. Killer exploding androids. Orbital death lasers. THE WORKS. I am coming for you and yours and nothing can stop me. My beautiful moment with a chick I talked to for 19 seconds at a bookstore was ruined and I WILL HAVE VENGEANCE! VENGEANCE SHALL BE MINE, GREG, THUS SAYETH THE QUIZO GUY!
Unless Greg didn't actually do it, in which case, well... it's probably too late for that sentiment. Those orbital death lasers don't re-task themselves, you know.
In closing, note that one of the things keeping me busy tomorrow is the showing of the Battlestar Galactica movie at the Riverview before the game - gigantic nerd, remember - which MAY cause me to be SLIGHTLY late for Quizo tomorrow night. We're talking five, ten minutes tops, nothing of, say, Johnny Goodtimes proportions.
(Just kidding, Johnny is the best.)
See you tomorrow night, then, when I'll be on my post-Galactica high.
JLK
Showing posts with label ordeals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ordeals. Show all posts
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Monday, November 05, 2007
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
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
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