Monday, March 30, 2009

Television

Upon my return home from San Francisco, the television continued to decline. As the television is a great sense of livelihood for my son - ESPN in the morning, Disney channel after school, reality t.v. in the evening, Wii and movies, it was inevitable that it would need to be replaced...NOW.

Monday night was consumed with the gym and baseball practice, so television shopping happened on Tuesday. We started off at Sam's Club then ABC and then finally Best Buy. I was in one of my moods by the time I got to Best Buy that as long as the sales person was decent, I would have bought the store just to be done and home. Unfortunately, service was terrible and it took a while to get someone to help me, at which time I already had the Ex-Bf on the phone looking up ratings and details on the t.v.'s and I had my mind almost determined. The kid, I mean sales person wasn't very helpful, but since I have no intention of becoming a blue ray owner, he said that the Samsung 40" t.v. that I was interested in was a good choice. I LOVE the fact that it comes on a rotating stand!

Picking out the t.v. seemed to be the easy part. I finally succumbed to getting a Best Buy card for 18 months same as cash. After filling out the insanely small boxes on the application I was asked for my i.d. which I joked I didn't have, and didn't have. Despite two picture id's, four credit cards, business cards and insurance cards, they would not give me a credit card. So, I charged it to my credit card and off I went to pull up my car. When getting in the car, there was my other purse with my i.d.! So I went back in to credit it back and then get the credit card. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I asked to keep my application. The sales girl said that they could shred it, so I said that was fine. But when she dropped it into the desk, I didn't hear it shred. She informed me that an outside shredding company picked it up to shred later. NO. I made management unlock it and give me back my application - which proved beneficial since I needed it for the credit card afterall. I'm really not always that difficult!

The guy that brought the t.v. out to my car was afraid it wouldn't fit, but with a good sturdy hand on the car door, I made it fit! It took longer than I anticipated to assemble and get the t.v. to work. I couldn't find the screws at first for the base and then I couldn't get the dish to work. After many phone calls to the Ex and no success, I gave up on the t.v. for the evening and hoped that a call to the Geek Squad could remedy the situation. In cleaning up, I happened to come across the satellite brochure and realized I had the settings set to "cable" instead of "antennae"! Success!


The Ex-Bf had told me that he had a coupon for a gift card at Best Buy for $50 for spending over $500 and $100 for over $1000. He dropped it in the mail, which arrived on Thursday. I went back to Best Buy to see if they would honor it like they said that they would. In fact they did although they had to return and charge the t.v. yet again and gave me $100 gift card! The t.v. was less than that, but with the warranty, I guess they felt I was entitled. Just in case they changed their mind, I purchased a digital camera - the Nikon CoolPix S560 and a 4Gb memory card.

Have I mentioned how I know absolutely nothing about electronics? The following day at Sam's Club I saw a Nikon CoolPix S610 for $20 less than Best Buy so I purchased it thinking that higher numbers must mean better. I realized once I compared the two that the 610 only offers 4x zoom instead of 5x but has a 3.0 LCD screen compared to the 2.7. Seeing that my last camera was 5.0 megapixels, 4X zoom - but not widescreen, and an LCD of 1.5 - either way, I figured I couldn't go wrong! So back to Best Buy I went to return the camera - which I needed to do anyway since I failed to realize that putting it on the Best Buy card would affect my interest free credit card and I ended up with the memory card, a camera case and a $65 gift card.

I have to say that T and I are both happy with the television. After Spring Break I actually plan on upgrading to HD satellite as well!

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