citizen of the planet

Earlier today I met up with a friend to check out the local Costco.  My big intention for heading there was to pick up a duvet.  In my condo, overnight I turn down the thermostat to about 62°F (16-17°C) in order to conserve energy.  Despite being under a heavy blanket, I usually find myself chilly, especially during nights when the winds are out of control.  So, I decided that I should graduate to having a duvet.  I’d never had one in the past, so it never really crossed my mind.  It wasn’t until I had read up on them that I thought, why the heck don’t I have one of those?  Scandanavians seem to use them all the time.  Why not us here?

So, over in Costco we just started out by wandering around the aisles, looking around and pawing at the merchandise.  It’s such a mad house in there.  So many shoppers!  Through the food aisles we had good laughs at the container sizes of each thing.  Is there really a need for a 3.78L (1 gallon) container of Miracle Whip?  How about like…2.5 kilos of tuna in one can?  I suppose there is a need if you have a big family.  Where does that leave single people like us though?  There’s absolutely no need for us to be in there, right?  At least, that’s what I thought until I saw some decent prices for the non-food stuff.  I had to control my urges to buy things that I didn’t really mind.  For example, I saw a great price for the Garmin Forerunner 305.  I have a 205 and I use that in conjunction with a Polar F6 heart rate monitor.  When I run, I wear both watches.  I might look like a fool but they get the job done.  A 305 would combine both, and provide the ability to graph all of the info together.  I told myself that I was perfectly fine with the two watches, so I just moved on.  Walking through Costco is truly an exercise in restraint.  I constantly have to ask: do I really need it?

I did make it out with my Queen-sized duvet, however I also bought some clothes and a Wii game, so…yeah…I didn’t do I great job staying on task.  Pity.  Tomorrow I’ll go hunting for a duvet cover.  I’ll be able to stay warm tonight, but at the expense of a lighter wallet.

*sigh*

I’ve been sitting on the couch just relaxing on the chaise part of the sectional, napping, listening to music, and catching up on reading.  It’s been that kind of day.  I’ve skipped out on battling against the crowds on the hunt for Boxing Day goodies, mostly because I don’t have the stomach for that kind of thing.  Instead, I’ve been living vicariously through people on my Twitter feed who’ve been sending short missives to the universe about being catty to people trying on ill-fitting clothing.  Yeah, just think, I missing all that!  Right.  Though, that’s not to say that I’m missing out on the deals entirely.  A lot of places have been posting some good deals on their online stores.  I’m sure there would probably be deeper cuts in person, but I’m all right with it.  I mean, if it means I can shop from home where it’s warm and I don’t have to bring out my inner Mars aggression just to get a parking spot, then great.  Actually, Best Buy posted their Boxing Day deals on Christmas Eve.  So, while I was over at my parents’ place I was perusing the goods from this laptop.  I ended up ordering an HDMI cable, a Bluetooth headset, and an iPod dock/clock radio all at decent discounts.  If I’m in the mood to brave the stores in person, the 26th isn’t the only day to do so.  These discounts tend to last for a few days anyway, right?

Anyway, to all of you that went out to get something, what did you get?  Were the crowds out of control?  Was it worth the effort?

Yesterday, I was watching that UPS tracking page like a hawk.  I mean, when I made my order for the laptop the online store provided me with a tracking number and every day I clicked on the link looking for some good news.  While I was at work, I’m sure I was getting a little neurotic about hitting the refresh button every hour or so.  See, I made the mistake of having the order delivered to my home address instead of work.  So, I was hoping to keep an eye on the status to see when the package was on the truck.  That way I could hustle over back home and be ready to receive it.  At the end of the work day there was no update to the page except for the bit saying that it was at the last station before going out.  I thought there would be no worries, and that I could just work from home and receive it.  Well, when I got home I saw a notice on the door indicating that the UPS people came by but no one was available to receive it.  Curses!  What the hell was that?  Of course, it really didn’t change anything in terms of receiving the package on the next available day.  However, I was frustrated knowing that I could have had it a day earlier.  It’s not my fault though: they didn’t update that damn status page.

Anyway, the UPS site says that for residential locations deliveries can happy any time between the period of 9 a.m. and 7 p.m.  Hold up…step back for a moment.  Look at that time range.  That’s a 10 hour window!  What the hell is that?  I’m lucky in that I’m able to work from home, but what about other people?  Seems somewhat unreasonable to me, you know?  So, I was up and plugging away at work from my couch from 9 a.m.  It’s wasn’t a bad thing.  I reckon I got a large amount of work done.  Still, by 4 p.m., without any news of an imminent delivery I was starting to get antsy.  I had a scheduled run this evening and I was questioning whether I was going to make it or not.  Well, finally at 5:30 I got a call from the front door to my cell.  The UPS guy finally made it in.  Yeah, I’ll be honest, it was all I could do to just remain calm and under control.  Upon opening the box I felt like I was a kid at Christmas.  I was disciplined enough though to know that it needed a good charge before usage.  So, I plugged it in and went for my run.  And since my return I’ve been playing around with it and setting things up.  This blog entry is actually my first from the MBP.  Hopefully there will be at least a thousand more from here.

A couple of days ago I got a notice in my inbox telling me about a Best Buy Reward Zone event taking place at a handful of stores.  The email said that there would be a sale at these locations lasting for two hours.  I wasn’t terribly interested up until they sent another email giving a preview of the various price cuts.  See, the particular deal that got my attention was the part that said that all laptops priced between $1000 and $1500 would have be cut by $200.  I figured that it would be the perfect time to get my hands on the new 13″ MacBook Pro.

My current Toshiba Satellite is about 4.5 years old; it’s showing signs of wear.  The right side USB ports are a bit loose.  If I plug my mouse in there it wouldn’t be uncommon for the power to be intermittent, making me bang the mouse a couple of times in an attempt to get it going again.  The battery is pretty bad now.  It can only hold a charge for about half an hour before giving up.  The sensor in the taskbar tends to lie to me about how much power it has left when unplugged.  When it says 45 minutes, I know that that’s a lie.  As a result, this thing is always plugged in now.  I can’t imagine taking this thing anywhere anymore without the plug.  I didn’t think the unit as a whole was too heavy, especially in comparison to the bricks that my classmates had, but after lugging it around and dragging it through Japan every pound seems to make a difference.  At about 6 lbs. this laptop is kind of heavy.  Lastly, everything seems to take so long to run now.  It should not take 2 minutes to start up Firefox or iTunes.  Perhaps all the system needs is a good defragmentation.  I don’t know.  Ultimately, given the age of the system I figured that it was time to look for something new.  This computer has served me really well over the years.  It’s just time.

So, why in the world did I start considering getting a Mac?  Well, I think it was spurred on via a lot of discussion from colleagues.  A couple of them have been drooling over the new MacBook Pro redesign that happened this summer.  My former team lead put together a Hackintosh and has been raving over Snow Leopard and how everything seems to be so much easier than it ever was with Windows XP.  I mentioned Apple to my project manager and she basically told me how she was happy with her MacBook Pro.  So yeah, many people have been nudging me in that direction.  As well, I’ve got a couple of friends that are experienced Mac users, and without hesitation they always seem to talk about how great they are.  As much as the difference is a few hundred dollars for a Mac, I’m willing to give it a shot.  I want to judge for myself whether the difference is huge.

So, back to the Best Buy thing.  I was over at my parents’ place setting up my old Desktop system for them to use.  I told them about my planned purchase, and they urged me to head out early.  They told me that there might be a line.  I didn’t believe there would be one.  I mean, how many people would pay attention to an email campaign?  I figured that I could arrive there at the start of the sale, line up for a few minutes, get in, and get out with what I wanted.  Besides, who wanted to wait out there for an hour, right?  Well, I drove up to Markham, and as I got closer to the mall I saw a long line up of cars waiting to turn into the complex.  That was my first hint that I might have been dead wrong.  I parked a long distance away from the store and started walking to the entrance.  As I did, I began to notice the length of the line up.  I started heading to the back of the line, and it was only then that I saw just how far it went.  The queue went around the corner with a couple more bends to accommodate everyone.  I think there were a couple of hundred people there–probably closer to a thousand.  I don’t know, I’m a bad judge of number at this type of thing.

Being so far back in the line, it was easy to joke about how there would be nothing left by the time we’d get in.  Actually, a couple of people in front of me left the line after deeming the wait to not be worth it.  A couple behind me were talking about how they didn’t want to leave and then wonder if they’d get a deal or not.  I turned around and offered a summary: “No regrets, right?”  They agreed.  I really wasn’t sure if I’d get anything, but hey, I didn’t want to wonder.  The line moved in chunks.  The people at the door only let in small batches of people at a time.  Around the corner, we could only see a handful of people walking out with things in hand.  It kind of gave me hope that I might have a bit of luck.  After about an hour, I finally rounded the last corner before the entrance.  Form there, I saw many many more people walking out with prizes in hand.  Some of them had wide smiles on their face.  I suppose I don’t blame them.  I know I counted 3 or 4 smiling people with small boxes of MacBook Pros in hand.  With each one my hopes faded more and more.  At the door a staff member was clapping and cheering at us for having made it in.  I laughed at the cheesiness of it all.  As soon as I got in, I rushed over to the back to where the Macs were displayed.  The one that I wanted no longer had a price tag displayed beside it.  I had a feeling I knew what it meant, but I asked a staff member anyway.  He confirmed that they were sold out.

Fuck.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I wandered around the store for a few minutes, trying to see if there was anything that I wanted.  I think I was just in no mood, so after having waited outside for an hour I just left the store empty handed, and probably looking defeated.  I figured that this is kind of what it’s like to do the whole Boxing Day thing.  It only strengthened my resolve to not give in to the madness on December 26.  It’s silly!  I gave my parents a call afterwards and told them that I’d been foiled.  After a deserved “told you so,” mom asked how much the laptop would have been and what the discount was.  After telling her, she giggled: “$200?  Chicken feed!”  That made me feel better.  As I drove home I knew that I’d have something to write about.

So that’s what happened.  Where do I go from here?  Well, I still plan on getting the MBP at some point.  It’s now just a matter when I want to go for it.  This week, before the end of November, perhaps?  Maybe I can consider this to be a late birthday gift.  Soon enough, soon enough.