celebrate valentine's at château blanc

If you're tired of fighting the restaurant crowds on February 14th, there may be a solution.

thank you Tivo referring person!!

Whomever signed up for Tivo service yesterday and put down my redbeardtn(at)yahoo.com email address, THANKS!!!

goodbye, CompUSA

A geek rite of passage is about to be eliminated. CompUSA is closing its doors for good.

CompUSA is the first store that I and my brother ever camped out at for an early-morning sale. Now I forget even what we were trying to buy... probably something like a 120MB hard drive and SimCity 2000.

Ever since Tandy's ill-fated Computer City failed, there was only one source for last-minute computer parts around. CompUSA filled a niche that WalMart does for non-tech items - if you needed an IDE cable or replacement modem in a pinch, they probably had it in stock. But even WalMart is muscling in on that game.

In recent years, CompUSA has been for me, and probably a lot of other people, the "try before you buy" store. You go in and play with all the mice, then go online and order what you want for 30% less from someone else. Unfortunately, that's a pretty bad business model.

Now, Nashville will be without a "big box" computer source. Sure, we've got the Best Buy and Circuit City mafiosos around, and Mac Authority does a great job for the Apple-centric crowd. However, now would be a GREAT time for a Fry's expansion plan to include Music City (hint hint hint.)

in the [power] line of duty

Our Uninterruptable Power Supply was interrupted. In the course of the storms this week, we must have had a power surge, and the UPS did its job. We have a new one coming from Circuit City (hat tip to fatwallet.com of course.)

Irony of ironies though, our UPS is coming via FedEx.

I keep forgetting I signed up for this, so I'm posting it here so that I can remember

AT&T Broadband TV online

If you'd like to give it a shot, sign up with this link to get a 90 day trial.

just a minute

Last week, I caught my usual Christmas cold that went to the usual sinus infection, but instead of trying to deal through the maze of folks at my doctor's office, I visited our local Minute Clinic. This was my first time to try Minute Clinic, so I didn't really know what to expect. It went like this:

7:50:00 a.m.	Arrive at Minute Clinic
8:00:00 a.m.	Minute Clinic opens
8:00:20	forms filled out
8:01:00 a.m.	the Physician's assistant sees me
8:03:00 a.m.	completed temperature, blood pressure (127/78, thank you), ears and throat examination
8:03:30 a.m.	exchange upcoming Christmas stories
8:04:00 a.m.	prescription printed, BCBST billed

The longest part of the whole visit followed, waiting for the prescription to be filled.

Minute Clinic really does live up to its name, and it fills a great gap between a primary care physician and an emergency room - when you need care quick, but not emergently. The PA was efficient and professional, and didn't challenge any of my self-diagnosis. When I get a sinus infection, I know what I have, and I know what I need. When she handed my prescription to me, she said "you can have this filled at any pharmacy that you like." Of course, there's one 10 feet away.

I highly recommend the Minute Clinic concept... and I hope some other folks get on the bandwagon soon to up the competition and drive down prices!

a moment of wii-kness

I signed up to be in Amazon's random draw to get the opportunity to purchase game consoles... and I got picked. A Wii is now on the Waa to our house. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it just yet...

total non-access

First, our local Blockbuster stores didn't participate in the End of Late Fees program. Now, they're not doing the Total Access promotion. There's not a participating store as far as their site will let me search. How does this make sense for their customers?

The only upside is that Blockbuster has seen the problem and chosen to upgrade us for free from 3-out to 4-out on our NetFlix-style subscription. The email we got would lead you to believe that this would start on 12/15... but it actually starts on our first billing cycle after 12/15... which is unfortunately enough, 1/15.

Ah well, customers can't be choosers. Oh wait...

finding the deal

Lots of folks know that I have a penchant for locating good deals on everything... finding coupons, sales, closeouts... all sorts of cheap stuff. I'm not entirely sure why that is. Part of it is that I'm wired that way: to be observant and to exhaust resources before making a purchase. The other part... I know how to use the intarweb.

A new site that may soon become a favorite is wireddeals.com. This site aggregates the postings in the "hot deals" forums of my top favorite site fatwallet.com and slickdeals.net. It's free to register, and registering allows you to sort the deals from both sites to see which ones are getting the most approval votes... usually the ones with the best discount or rarest availability.

Speaking of rare availability, one of my co-workers is looking to procure a certain new game console for his family for Christmas at its retail price. Any leads would be appreciated!