Thank you, Best Buy, for sending me a free $40 battery for my new camera. It was the least you could do.
I bought a new camera a month ago. I took it home, opened the box, the camera wasn’t in a bag, the battery wasn’t in a bag, the manuals were scattered throughout the bag, the sliding lense cover was broke, and there was a scratch on the body of the camera. It was definitely not new. I took it back that same day, and they didn’t have any more in stock. They were able to get one shipped from the Midland store (3 hour round trip), and after waiting 8 days, they finally got me a new one. I exchanged it, opened the box there in the store, everything was in order — everything was bagged, unopened, and obviously new.
I took it out to the bar for Keri’s birthday, and took pictures for 4 hours and then it wouldn’t turn on. I figured it was the battery (which would suck if that were the case). The next day, I took it to Best Buy. The “Geek Squad” guy tested my battery, and determined it was a bad battery. I had to call an 800 number to get a new one shipped. I was going on vacation that weekend (last weekend) and wanted to get it expidited so I would have a camera for the trip — no can do. So I went around to the local Best Buys, CompUSA’s, etc., and finally found a battery at Circuit City. I charged it, put it in, camera still wouldn’t turn on.
I took it back to Best Buy, and told them what I did, and they said I could exchange it for a new one. Just like last time, there were none in stock, so they gladly refunded all of my money, including the service plan. I went home, ordered the camera on Amazon, and it was shipped next day for the same price I would’ve got it at Best Buy. It works great. I took it to Toronto (see previous entry) and took about 150 pictures.
I got home from vacation, and found an e-mail in my inbox. Great news! We have just shipped the part(s) for your Best Buy Partsearch order number xxxxxxx. UPS Tracking tells me it’s out on the truck for delivery. Sure enough, when I got home it was there shortly thereafter.
Thank You Best Buy. You made me run around in circles, come up to the store 4-5 times, go to different stores, hold onto a broken camera for a week, and deal with customer service countless times. It’s the least you could do. Now I have 3 batteries and an awesome new camera.
I got a Canon PowerShot S70, by the way. It’s a 7.1 MegaPixel camera with tons of features. Check out the pictures of Toronto or Keri’s birthday party for samples.
(two non-music entries? in a row? whhaaaat?)
Jackie and I took a vacation this weekend. We went to Toronto, with no real plans other than to bum around and go to the Blue Jays game. We ended up going to the game, going up the CN Tower, walking around downtown Toronto, and hitting the African Lion Safari on the way home.
Some pictures:
Jackie got us really good seats for the game. We were in the upper deck, right above home plate. You could see everything, and I got some really cool shots with my new camera.
I got to conquer more of my fear of heights by going up the CN Tower. I wouldn’t walk on the glass floor, but I went up there and that’s a huge accomplishment for me. When I was there back in Junior High or High School I refused to go up, and waited at the bottom while my family went up to look around. Jackie tried to get me to go on the glass, and I did .. two steps, holding my breath, eyes closed. I’m a wimp. Whatever.
The Lion Safari was awesome; basically they let you drive through and there are separate areas for different animals. The monkey area was the funniest .. they climb all over the cars and hang on while you drive through. There was a guy in a Lexus SUV who had one sitting on his mirror, and all of a sudden it just started urinating all over. It wasn’t a small stream either, it was like someone tossed a bucket of urine all over the guys Lexus. He started yelling, beating his window, honking his horn. I couldn’t help but laugh — they warned you when you came in that the monkeys climb all over. One monkey climbed up into my truck, and he had the dirtiest rear end ever .. I had to wash my truck when I got home, just so I didn’t forget and accidentally touch some monkey poo.
I had so much fun .. too bad what little time we had flew by so fast.
This entry has two main points.
- Alexisonfire is super-awesome.
- the band needs to happen.
I’m sure this is all gonna sound really ridiculous and uh… I don’t exactly expect anyone to believe all this. Uh… for the last little while I’ve been kinda keeping correspondance with my sanity, and uhh… I really get the feeling that I’m starting to lose interest in the letter writing process. The pieces of the letters, they just get progressively shorter and shorter until it’s not even a reply. I uhh… the whole thing makes me really nervous. I just wish I could show you what a huge problem this is.
I like this band. A lot.
I kind of have this… Really terrible habit of asking myself all these stupid questions, right? Like what if uhh… what if there’s a spot on my body that I can touch to keep my heart from beating? or like what if, what if theres this uhh… stray bullet out there that’s gonna come through my window and take me out? like what if uhh… what if theres this huge unstoppable comet that’s just gonna like, destroy the earth and all of us? Like what… what if that’s happening right now? How can I avoid all these questions if I don’t have that? Like, who is gonna be here? Why… who is gonna be there… in the hospital? Who is gonna tell me that all this is bullshit… its a dream? Just a dream. This is not a joke. And uhh… i’ll never sleep.
Who will be …
there to tell …
me how stupid …
I am?!
Who will keep me from lashing out?
(lashing out)
Anxiety chokes me like razor wire
(razor wire)
I am talking about “Watch Out!” by Alxisonfire. I think I listen to this CD once a day now (during the week, at work, on the way to work, etc.) I don’t know what it is about the album, but I can’t stop listening. I suck at explaining why I like things lately, other than “it’s awesome, listen”. It’s more of my problem writing, but I suppose “hey look” is better than nothing at all. I suppose in this case, “watch out” would be more appropriate, though. I remember hearing about Alexisonfire a while back, but never really listened. Then their newer album came out last year, and I listened, and liked, but it fell off the radar. The other day, I was feeding my CD buying addiction and saw it on my Amazon wishlist, so I picked it up used. Now I can’t stop listening. It’s so good.
Which brings me to my second point of this post. While listening to Alexisonfire, and playing with the ‘advanced relationship’ tools on MusicBrainz (which are awesome), I found out that 3 of the members of Alexisonfire are 22. One is 24. I am 24. Why can’t I have fun and play in a band and make awesome music that people ramble about on webpages that barely anybody reads? Joel keeps e-mailing. We keep talking. We need to start playing. We will. We will.
I’m a huge Pinback fan. Why? I really don’t know. Well, I guess I do, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing much. I bought their CD a long time ago and don’t remember why I did. I think it was random. Someone may have told me about it, too, but I don’t remember. Either way, I love it. They fell off the radar for a while, but then I downloaded a bootleg (which is excellent) and they jumped back into my regular rotation.
I love their repetitive guitar riffs (similar to something a DJ would spin .. keep that in mind). I equally love the chorus effect on Rob Crow’s vocals. The songs would sound empty without it, to me. I think another thing that got me excited about them was the bootleg. They were near-perfect live, and I like that. They also have a song about a fish named Penelope; you can’t go wrong there.
I have a few Pinback albums. You want to buy one? You don’t know which one is the best? You want to trust yourself to believe me, a random guy? Ok, then. I like them, in this order, from most favorite to least favorite:
*I’ve never really heard this one, so it gets last place. It’s on my list to buy, though.
On a semi-completely related note, I was talking to Darren about Team Sleep and how Chino got fat again, and it reminded me to listen to the downloaded CD before going to buy it tomorrow. I like to listen a few times before buying stuff I am hesitant about. I wasn’t sure if I’d like Team Sleep .. but I do. I pulled the CD into Windows Media Player (I don’t add stuff I don’t own to my iTunes library, to make it inconvenent to listen to, to make me buy it.) and WMP did its stupid random loading and loaded the whole album out of order. The first song it loaded up was #11, which happened to have a different vocalist: Rob Crow. Yes, Rob Crow: lead singer of Pinback. So that gave them extra bonus points right off the get-go. As I listen to this Team Sleep, I keep getting confused and wonder if I am listening to Pinback? or Team Sleep? I thought the other day that I would love to see Pinback live, or to have a new Pinback album. I guess this was just what I needed. Perfection. It’s like Pinback .. remixed. Or it’s like Deftones .. unplugged. Awesome.