Well Sunday has been a lot of fun, in a masochistic sort of way. I wanted to get my hands on a cheap value-priced top quality desk to set up the old pc on. I did a quick check at Walmart.com to see what was available in what price range, as the selection at our nearest Walmart is always vastly different than the Walmart anywhere else in the world. I then went to the nearest walmart and got undercharged on both a desk and a chair for said machine. Unfortunately they didn’t have the fifty dollar one that I saw on the internet, no they had one for $38.92 that was way bigger/better than the fifty dollar one on the website, and no shipping charge as a bonus. With the money that I had saved on that item, I decided I would go ahead and buy a new chair also. The chair is also not available at their website, but I got both the desk and the chair for fifty-seven dollars and change. I think that is pretty damn good for a usable desk and a chair that has wheels and lumbar support. Of course I did pay damn near the same price for my last chair alone, which I think I got at an Office Depot or a Staples, greedy sons of bitches…
The particular Wal Mart that we visited is not exactly the most ritzy one, and that is saying a lot, being that it is a Wal mart. The majority of the furniture that they had available didn’t even have sample pieces that were already constructed for you to admire. No, we just looked at the little 3X5 inch photos on the sides of the boxes to see which one seemed to be the most appropriate for the space we had, as well as the best value for the money. The one that we both thought was the best value, as well as being most appropriate for the space, was the one that I picked up…literally…
I read somewhere that once every two hours someone, somewhere files a lawsuit against WalMart. Those suits are for damn good reason, if the entire company runs the way the one I frequent does. We had made the decision to buy that particular desk, so I did the conscious shopper thing and went to the ‘layaway center’ where they generally have the large, flat carts to carryout such large, heavy items. There was a call made over the intercom for customer service to bring one of the carts to the furniture area, so I went back confident that the cart would soon arrive. It never did. After about ten minutes of waiting I was thinking, and said, something very similar to, “Fuck it, how much could this thing possibly weigh?” At that point I drug out one of the boxes, asked the wife to carry the little chair (in a box also) and headed for the register. The question of how much it could weigh is not rhetorical, I found out exactly how much it weighed. It breaks down like this; it weighed about 60 pounds for the first ten seconds, 70 pounds for the next five, and after that it just gained 10 pounds for every five seconds I was carrying it, which thankfully only took a minute and a half or so.
The evil, caniving part of me really wishes that I would have somehow injured my back in the process so that I could have sued them, while the real me is just happy that I didn’t wait for whatever teenager would have shown up with the cart. Invariably the people that they send to move large items are teens. Teens that look like it might kill them if they were to have lift anything as heavy as a bowling ball. After ten minutes of waiting for the second coming of Christ cart, I just dragged the thing to the register my damn self.
The only saving grace for Wal Mart is that they undercharged me by two cents on the chair, and by three dollars and ninety-two cents on the desk. I am an honest person and will usually point out when they undercharge me, today I SO didn’t. To further that, if I am riding a bull next Friday and I somehow get injured, I am going to attribute that directly to the terrible pain that I felt while I was having to carry that very heavy desk up to the register at Wal Mart. They could have provided me with a cart, but chose not to…
Unfortunately it only got worse from there. But, totally unrelated to Wal Mart.
You know how you have that drawer in your kitchen where you throw all the miscellaneous junk that you don’t know if you will ever need, we have expaned that drawer to occupy almost three full rooms in our house. Unfortunately, the room where we keep the computer is the one that I am pretty much solely responsible for. You would not believe how much dust can accumulate on vertical surfaces had you not been in the room that I was trying to clean out today. Sure it was all based on the ash of my cigarettes but come on. I had to take one of the shelves outside and hose it down to get it back to its normal state, and I may have to do that with the other shelf also if I ever get the inclination to spend the better part of my only day off making this room look clean.
I did, however, achieve the goal of having two working computers in the same room. I am not sure how that will ever work into my evil little plan, but it must play a role.
The immediate upside for me is that I can copy some of my web stuff over here, as opposed to having to write it all again. Also, I found a paper copy of an old Witles story that I thought was gone forever.
I think the wife also likes the idea that she will have her own computer to play with. She can play some online games while I type this out, and vice-versa. Yet I still don’t have any intention of installing the imaging software for the new camera on this machine, as I have no clue about windows XP and how to disable the software when it is not in use (which is most of the time at this camp).
The new desk lead to a chain-reaction that required me to clean the room up a bit, so maybe it was for the best. Time will tell.