Please Let That Be The 9A
I crumbled on Monday and ordered an HD-DVD drive for my XBOX 360. A week earlier, I borrowed a friend’s drive to check it out and see how big a difference it made compared to DVDs. There’s nothing like it. This totally reminded me of the time when DVD players came out. Probably around 8 years ago when they were $1000, I bought one from Futureshop, with one purpose, to test it out and return it. My biggest fear was that they wouldn’t let me return it, but that wasn’t gonna stop me. So that’s exactly what I did. I bought one for $1000 and rented a couple DVDs. It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen at the time. I returned it a week later and from that point on, I pretty much stopped buying VHS. HD-DVD is just as revolutionary as the DVD. So on August 1st, bestbuy.com had a price drop AND a sale. None of the nearby stores had any in stock so I had them send me one from their warehouse. Four days later, it showed up at the office. I still love getting packages there. AJ, one of the Facilities guys, says that it’s my own little mail room because I get a tonne of mail there. Later that night, I brought it home and hooked it up, and boy was I disappointed. It was broken! The stupid tray wouldn’t open unless you titled it forward and then when you closed, it wouldn’t close properly. If you shook it around you could hear pieces rattling around inside. What a pisser that was.
So the next plan was to exchange it at a store or return it through mail and wait for them to send me another one. To avoid the wait time and the possibility of them sending me another damaged drive, I decided to hunt one down at a local store. Like before, there weren’t any available in the closest 6-7 stores. I did find a couple stores in Virginia that had stock and neither were near a Metro train station. I didn’t have anything else better to do so I dragged Anand out on Saturday to Potomac Yards Center (PYC) to exchange my drive. I did some research on how to get there and it seemed rather straight forward. Ride the train to Pentagon City and catch the 9A bus to PYC. Well, this all looked and sounded fine in my head, but I am a public transit moron because it was all wrong. First of all, Pentagon City station is not the same as Pentagon station. So not only did we get off at the wrong station, we compounded the problem by standing at a bus stop, that wasn’t really a bus stop. It looked like a bus stop and there were plenty of people waiting for buses, but not transit buses, shuttle buses. After 35 minutes in the sun, we figured out that we were in the wrong place. I am an idiot. We got back on the train and got off the right train station and found the proper bus station. We were looking for the 9A and it was supposed to show up every 30 min on the hour. However, the station had an LED sign scrolling an RSS feed of the upcoming buses. It said that there weren’t any 9A buses for 50 min. Wow, this was really turning into a gong show. I was a little bit in disbelief because it didn’t seem right, even for a weekend. We saw about a dozen buses come up the hill and every time one approached us, we would say ‘Please let this be the 9A. PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE!’ A 9A showed up 15 minutes later, but the douche bag was going on break or switching to another route. I was ready to give up and snag a cab, but we were in such a remote location, there weren’t any cabs near by either. Well, after an additional 10 minutes, one showed up. Woohoo!! To make things a little better, the bus ride was free. It turns out that in Virginia, when the weather gets to hot, they try to encourage people to leave their cars at home and take a bus, so they offer free bus rides. Pretty cool. So after 2 hours from the time I left home, I finally walked into Best Buy at PYC.
The roller coaster ride continued. They said I couldn’t exchange purchases made from their website. I could only return it. WTF?!? So it wasn’t that big a deal because they would sell me another one for the same price that I purchased it online. I would just return the broken one and my funds would show up on my credit card later this week. The problem now, was that their computer system to the bestbuy.com site was down and they couldn’t process the return. Fuck!!! How much shit can go wrong in one afternoon? To ease the pain, it was tax free weekend, so when I re-bought the drive, I saved $8+. It worked out in the end because Anand and I killed some time by eating and visiting Target. I bought a door mirror for $6. I don’t know how I was able to survive without a mirror for 7 months. Anyway, by the time we were done, Best Buy had their system back up and I was able to process a refund. So the ordeal was over and six hours later, I was home watching movies in HD. Oh yeah, plus I kept the UPC from the broken drive. They have a promo running now in the US; if you buy an HD-DVD drive you can mail away for 5 free movies out of a selection of 15. I intend on sending it out
for an additional 5 free HD movies. So that’s 10 free movies coming my way. Anyway, I suggest that everyone get one or even a PS3 for Blue-Ray. It’s awesome!
On Friday night, we went out to watch The Simpsons Movie. I must be getting old because I have a hell of a time watching movies on work days. I think getting up early really takes a lot out of me. I can feel perfectly fine throughout the day, but as soon as those lights turn out, my eyelids feel like dead weights. I only missed about 1/3 of the movie I think. The chick next to me and in front of me were laughing hysterically throughout the movie. I wanted to lean over and tell her that ‘it wasn’t that funny’. By coincidence, the Simpsons Movie screener was made available for download. I burned it onto disc and tried to watch it again this morning, and I got 30 minutes into it when I fell asleep AGAIN! I guess it’s not that entertaining after all. I suppose I’m not that old either. Now that I think about it, I managed to sit through all of Harry Potter and that was on a Monday, not to mention a way longer movie too.
To wrap things up, I managed to eat Chinese food for dinner this week. We went to some place in Chinatown called Full Kee. It wasn’t too bad and I’m looking forward to trying some other dishes there in the future. Alex Ku wanted to order weird shit that not everyone would enjoy. I saved Anand and Nakisa from eating sea cucumber, frogs, and some other weird shit that he wanted. Anyway, til next time. I’m out!
