Taking the plunge

Late yesterday I talked to Ali to see if she had any opinion yet on the tv thing.  She gave me the green light to move ahead with it.  So I immediately hop on bestbuy.com and get to work.  I complete the process, go to check out and enter my Best Buy credit card to get the same as cash 36 month financing.  It rejects my card.  I try again, thinking I mistyped, no dice it won’t take it. Ok, well I guess I will be stopping at Best Buy after work.

Before I left work I did a quick scan for any online coupons.  I was excited to find one that could save me an additional 12% if they took it.  I wasn’t sure if they would since the TV was already “outlet priced”.  I wasn’t exactly looking forward to going to the store.  To me, Best Buy is like Sam’s Club in that it is great fun to walk around and look at the endless amounts of “stuff”.  However whenever you are required to interact with one of their employees, the experience instantly sours.   So off to Best Buy I went.

Luckily, Tuesdays around 5:10 pm are not very busy at the store.  They had the model I picked out online.  Seeing it in person was impressive, it is just MASSIVE.  I was a bit distressed when I saw the price on it was about $100 higher than what I saw online.  I tracked down someone in the department to help me.  I told him I knew exactly what I wanted as I pointed it out to him.  I immediately mentioned how I saw this on their web site for 100 less.  He said that was no problem, they match the web site price, sweet.  He had to go check if they had any in stock.

He was gone for awhile.  I spent the time looking around, mostly at Wii stuff.  I saw the component video cable for the Wii, something I will need to pick up for it work at it’s full potential with the tv.  I also checked out a bunch of Wii games.  I saw many that looked pretty sweet, but I am thoroughly still enjoying what I already have so I don’t feel a pressing need for more right now.  The kid was gone for a pretty long time which I knew was not a good thing.  My fears were confirmed when he came out and said they didn’t have any in stock, just the display but they can order it and it would be here Friday, not bad.

So we go back to the register and start the process.  I pull out my online coupon and ask the clerk if I would be able to use this as well.  Yep, I can use it, sweet, another 12% off the top!  We get to the point where I swipe my card and it gets denied.  The kid says the card is dead.  He asked how long it had been since I used it last.  I told him at least a couple years.  He said that they deactivate them if they aren’t used in 6 months or so.  So we had to put the transaction on hold while I walked over to the customer service desk and quickly reapplied for a new card which didn’t take long at all.

I head back to the original register where Daniel was waiting for me.  I told him I was getting the extended warranty on the set, something I typically never do but on big ticket items that can have big ticket repair bills, it’s worth the piece of mind to me.  Although I purchased one for my Sony big screen as well and never had to use it.  So the transaction was completed.  The experience wasn’t nearly as unpleasant as I feared it would be.  I will call the store Friday to confirm if the unit is there and pick it up then.  It’s big but not brutally heavy, only 100 pounds so Ali and I will be able to maneuver it pretty easily.

Buying the tv set the wheels in motion for some other things.  I had been floating the idea to mom about us giving her our Sony if we got the new tv.  Now to me, most people would be doing cartwheels over the concept of getting a 61 inch tv for free with free delivery and set up.  However mom in her typical mom way was apprehensive about it, worried it would be TOO big for the space it would go.  I went back and forth with her a few times about it.  I was confident it would work out just fine in her new place and in fact be a major perk.  I even went as far as to look up the recommended viewing distance for a tv of that size and sent it to mom.  The advice was a distance of 10-12 feet.  Mom said she would be around 11 feet.  So I called her back last night to tell her we definitely were buying the new tv and I wanted to make the offer one more time.  To my surprise she agreed to try out the Sony.  It really is a no lose situation.  I told her if for some reason if after we set it up there and she decides she doesn’t like/want it, I will simply sell it to someone else.  It’s no big deal.  So Sunday before we take mom to a Mother’s Day lunch we will be loading up, delivering and setting up my trusty Sony big screen for mom.  It will be a bit tricky getting it in and out of the bed of the truck but I’ll manage somehow.

I continued laying the groundwork for the arrival of the new tv by ordering a refurbished HD Tivo last night.  I could continue to use the old Tivo but it would not be able to record HD broadcasts which would suck.  Once I get a shipping arrival estimate I can try to coordinate it with Comcast.  They need to come out and slap a special card into the Tivo that will allow me to view and tape two HD or non-HD broadcasts at a time.

Even though I was busy making HDTV arrangements after work I still found the time to go out after work with the post bar and rip up the one side section of old landscape timbers by the pool.  Instead of struggling with pulling out the old sections of rebar I simply drove them deeper into the ground, below the surface of the timbers, f it.  Tonight after work I am going to stop at Home Depot to grab 5 or 6 more timbers and then hopefully at least rip out the other side and if I am lucky, start constructing the new sections.  I am considering redoing some of the other landscaped areas with decorative stone borders like we have around the palm trees in the front.  Yes the up front costs are a lot more but it lasts forever and requires no maintenance.

If for some reason you are interested in the all the tech goodness of the TV we are buying, look here.