Thursday, December 08, 2005

Major purchases

I made two major purchases last Wednesday. First, I bought a new pair of sneakers. It may not seem like that big a deal, but I hate buying shoes. My usual strategy is to pick out four generic-looking pairs on display and ask if any of them come in size 7. The salesperson usually comes back and says "No, of course not. We only have two pairs of size 7 in the entire store. Pick one." But this time it went surprisingly smoothly, and I ended up with shoes I liked. Maybe now my feet will stop hurting.

Fresh off that success, I took the subway down to Prince St and visited the Apple Store. I had a list of exactly what I wanted in my new PowerMac printed off of the web site, but I wanted to buy it in person for various reasons. I went in expecting to pick it up in 3-5 days, since that's when the web order would have been shipped. But it turned out that 1) they don't stock the 500GB internal disks in the stores, 2) it's not at all clear whether you're specifying the total memory or just the amount you want to add, and 3) they were out of wifi/bluetooth cards, so the machine I ended up getting had none of the additions I'd originally asked for. On the other hand, it was cheaper and available instantaneously, assuming I didn't mind installing the extra memory myself.

So I said sure, I can do that, and went to pay. After much negotiating (I now know why everyone pays by credit card instead of check nowadays), they agreed to take my money and give me my computer. I lifted it. It was heavy. Looking back, I probably bought one of the two or three heaviest things they sell there. But I was down some side street, so I decided to walk the two blocks to Broadway where I might be able to catch a cab. I made it with only a couple rest breaks. But then the subway entrance was right there. "Why take a cab from here," I thought to myself, "when I can take the subway to Brooklyn and take a shorter cab ride from there?"

That was the first stupid thing I did. I did several more just like it when I had to change trains twice, and when I got out the other end and started walking home instead of waiting for a cab to stop. I had a couple peopple help me for a couple blocks each (one of the nice things about my neighborhood is I felt comfortable with that), but still, by the time I got home, I could only make it about 15 steps without stopping. I rolled it up the stairs end over end (luckily, it was packed quite nicely), slid it into the living room, and left it while I collapsed on the couch to recover. I think my arms have finally healed from their trauma as of today.

So that's the story of how I got a really heavy box home. I did eventually discover that there was, in fact, a computer on the inside of the box, instead of the pile of bricks and lead that it felt like. And now that I haven't had to move it in a week, I'm getting to like it.

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