Fry's drives me crazy

A couple nights ago, I went with my wife and son to Fry's to look at a Yamaha PSR-275 electric keyboard. Their online store had them at a reasonable price, and it had good reviews as a beginners keyboard so we'd decided to buy one if we liked what we saw. We did. It's a great instrument. Trouble was they only had one left and that had been opened (large amounts of tape down the side of the box). I didn't want that. I wanted a new one.

So I then had to go looking for a Fry sales person to ask them if they had any more in store in the back. No one around. Now if I'd been trying to buy a laptop or a HDTV they would be swarming all over me like flies. I eventually tracked one down in a nearby aisle and told him what I wanted. Now either he was too senior and this kind of request was beneath him or he was adopting the "not my aisle" approach, so he called over another sales person. This one had so little English that he didn't understand what I wanted, so he called over another one who finally headed off towards the back of the store.

After five minutes he came back and said they didn't have any more but their Sunnyvale store did. Yeah, like I'm going to drive ten miles down the freeway to your other store in rush hour, after that display of salesmanship.

So we went home, and order one online from Walmart. They shipped it the next day and it should arrive on Friday.

[Technorati Tag: Frys]

( Jun 23 2004, 02:20:25 PM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [1]

Educated "SPAM"

This has to be a first. I got some "SPAM" today I didn't understand. I have a Sun mailing list for calctool, a desktop calculator, and today the calctool-request alias got some "SPAM" from BingXin Gong entitled: "The Uncertainty Principle Is Untenable". I did a quick google, and found that it has it's own web page as well. I hate to think how far this unsolicited mail has got. What's the author hoping for? That some famous/influential J. Random Scientist out there is going to take note of it and give it the publicity it rightly deserves? Good luck!

[Technorati Tag: SPAM]

( Jun 23 2004, 12:45:38 PM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink

Today, I became a US citizen

Today, with 1453 of my fellow US citizens, I was sworn in as an official citizen of the United States. This has taken me over three years (I got lost in the system for quite a while as I'd underpaid my initial application by $25.00 and they hadn't bothered to tell me), but finally I've made it.

Highlights today.

• The national anthem. They had a lady singing it that bought a tear to my eye. I even choked on the words. Really. It was quite a moment.
• Their way of doing role call. They call out the names of other countries and if you were born there you stand up. Eventually everybody is standing. There was a loud rumble of moving chairs as people stood, when China, India and Vietnam was announced.
• The thunderous clapping and cheering when the swearing in was completed.

This means I'm now a citizen of three countries (the United Kingdom and Australia being the others). I have the right to vote in the US, and the right to serve on a jury. Plus all the other rights that the Constitution gives me.

I will have to start writing American instead of English. Removing all those extra "u"'s that are no longer needed in words like colour and favour. It's now a truck not a lorry. Candy instead of sweets (or lollies in Oz). Diapers instead of nappies. Pacifiers not binkys. And I'll need to attempt to bastardise (sorry, bastardize) the English language every chance I get.

[Technorati Tag: USA]

[Technorati Tag: Citizen]

( Jun 23 2004, 11:27:10 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [4]