iCannot Stand the iPenetration into the iMarketplace

Ashlie wanted a new mp3 player. First stop, Best Buy. They carry Sansa and crapple. No Creative Zen. Sansas are not too bad but I see them on woot about 2x a week selling refurbs so I assume they have a high rate of defective units. Best Buy has a deal with Sansa and their eMusic site hence the reason they carry them.

We wanted a Creative because we have had several previous Creative models and have liked them alot! Plus, the Zen has an SD slot to expand the size of the storage. This way - we can buy a 4 GB and add an 8 GB SD card for $20 more. She can use that for the thousands of pictures she wants to put on her mp3 player without eating up all of the music space.

Our second stop was Ultimate Electronics. For those of you that are familiar with the Twin Cities, Ultimate Electronics is the new name (for the last 3-4 years) of the old local Audio King stores. They changed the name so people would assume they did not carry just audio products. UE is a nice store - and carries both low and high end. Their high end is better priced and better displayed than Best Buys Magnolia store within the Best Buy stores. All they carry is crapple!! I could not believe it!

This shopping happened on 12/22. Best Buy had an overflowing parking lot. UE had 5 cars. When the salesgeek said they only had crapple, I asked if he was aware that there is a large contingent of people out there that hate crapple. He said yes but they still decided to go with the single brand. Unable to hold back, I said, "And clearly the store is thriving!". His answer was that they had $40K in sales that day. OK....40K a few days before x-mas....in electronics? Best Buy did 40K in the Oakdale store between 5 PM and 7 PM and it was probably the 4th 40K of the day.

As we walked out, Jess reprimanded me for being an asshole to the salesgeek. "Why do you have to do that?"

The answer is....I don't know. I love to harasss salesgeeks. In Best Buy, I purposely go over to the cables area to listen to their pitches on why you need an $80, 6 foot HDMI cable and then tell their customers that the same cable is available online for $10. I get such personal enjoyment from this side of myself....but it is bad, I know. I have always been this way. In college, I'd go to Sam Goody just to ask why their CD prices were $4-6 higher.

In the end, we found the Creative 4 GB unit at Target. We bought two....one for Ashlie and I went back to get one for Jessa. They earned my business by carrying more than just crapple.

Wrong Place, Wrong Time...

I think this is the story of my life. Now, this is not a situation where I am just whining ... ok, maybe a little - because I am pretty happy with my life. Just when I sit back and look at what bugs me, it is because the place I live, the job I do, etc etc etc are impacting what I have.

I'll say it again, I am very fortunate - but look at a few of these things.

• If gas goes up, it goes up in my neighborhood when others don't.
• If gas is cheap somewhere like now in the north metro ($3.28), my area is still $3.49 or more
• When the hailstorm hit New Richmond in May - everyone got a free roof in my neighborhood. Mine only has "marginal" damage which means it will not need replacing until after this winter's snow and ice when it is not covered by the hail event (and my roof is roughly 48 square a.k.a. big and expensive)
• At the casino, the guy next to me wins the Royal Flush
• At the liquor store in MPLS (years ago) - my truck was the one sprayed with bullets in the drive by shooting.
• When other people's friends get married, it is across town or maybe Jamaica. When my friends get married, it is in Regina or Saskatoon.

Yeah, its all minor. After enough of these things you start to feel like John Candy in Summer Rental - where you'd like to win just once.

Oh well, life is good anyway.