While I was out and about today I decided to stop by Best Buy then Circuit City to compare hard drive prices. Best Buy has a 1TB (that’s about 1,000, if you didn’t know that) for $119. At Circuit City they had the exact some one for I think it was about $50 or $60 more, and that’s on clearance. Whatever company is doing their closeout deals really needs to work on that. Of course, they’re just trying cash in on the closeout buzz.
Ahh, those prices. I often recall having bought a 400MB hard drive for I think just under $1/MB. For those keeping track of all the conversions, there are about 1,000MB in 1GB. And if you don’t know the abbreviations, in order of appearance here they are terrabytes, gigabytes and megabytes.
Remember yesterday how I got Time Warner Cable to give me a discount? Well today I had to bargain a little with AT&T. You see, a while back Amanda and I decided we were paying too much for her cell phone plan given how few minutes she uses and the price of the lowest plan, so her parents were kind enough to put her on their family plan. Now we just help them pay that and save a bit of money in the meantime. The reason we had decided to go ahead and make the switch was because Amanda had gotten text messages and mail saying she was due for a phone upgrade, which we thought generally happens when your contract is up (so they can lock you into another one).
Well, what I found out today in the form of a $170 bill was that the upgrades and the contracts are on slightly different schedules, so we actually had a month left before her contract was up. I called up AT&T to find this out, and I told them that had we known that, obviously we’d have waited the extra month. I told the guy I was talking to that we had no complaints about the service and told him the reason we switched, then said that I’d be glad to pay the extra month, but not the $150 (plus taxes and such) cancelation fee.
The AT&T customer service rep was already working that out for me before I even suggested it, and it turned out to be an easy, no hassle process. He said he hated to lose a customer for a reason like that, but understood. I was very happy with my interaction with AT&T and the company’s understanding and willingness to accommodate an issue like this.
After work I went to help my brother, Adam Dotsey, move a few of the larger things out of his apartment and into his new one. Renee Sikes’ parents were there to help pack up her stuff and were nice enough to cart Adam’s larger things to his place for him. Adam and Renee seemed to be getting along just fine, so I don’t think their split was a particularly bad one. I’m glad I won’t be there for the final good bye though. I saw them say their farewells when she was heading off to France and he was moving out to San Diego. I’ll admit, I was almost as teary as he was. After four years though, even if this is for the best, I know it will be hard once the apartment door is shut for the final time and she’s driving off to Gastonia.
Well anyway.
On the way home from their apartment I picked up some hot dogs from Jeter’s Hotdogs for me and Nick Warkentien, who was going to be coming over to the house (Amy was working). Amanda told me she’d had some cereal and didn’t care to have me pick anything up for her. We all sat around and watched The Dog Whisperer for a bit, Amanda cut my hair, then we watched The Constant Gardener, which was pretty good. When it was over I told Amanda not to go get herself killed on some hippie crusade.
I have a dilemma concerning tomorrow. So a couple days ago, my Blue Devils played their worst game in twenty years and follow it up with a game against a Miami team that just beat Wake Forest by 25 points. The game is at 1:30. We’ll be in Raleigh, hanging out with my family away from TVs. The way this game goes, most Duke fans feel, is going to say a lot about the rest of the season. If they bounce back and win with a decent margin, things should be okay. If they’re still shaken from the loss to Clemson and let that affect the game (ie. lose) then they’re probably not going to look too good when they host the Heels on Wednesday night either, which will result in a three-game losing streak and really affect the team’s confidence.
All that said, and knowing I won’t be able to watch the game, do I try to keep up with it online or do I just DVR it (which I’m going to do anyway) and watch it all without any idea of what has already happened? I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to resist the temptation to follow along on the game thread on the message board.
That game will be the first one ever attended by my good friend and lifelong Duke fan, Jason Revill. It’s hard to believe, considering that his mom works there and his brother has been given numerous tickets to go in the past.
Zach Dotsey