DHL says my copy of Adobe CS3 Web Premium Suite is in the truck & on its way.  I wish the delivery man would understand that I really want it now & hurry up.

I am thrilled to get to announce this.  Theresa was just notified that she won a $5,000 scholarship for her Landscape Architecture studies at UCLA Extensions.

Congratulations are most definitely in order.

Rewind time to Dec 28, 2006…

My co-workers & I decided to take go to Best Buy for lunch. Chris & I were buying external hard drives for our computers. I needed one for my impending independent venture to back up work & transfer files for onsite client visits. Chris, I suspect, needed his because of the overwhelming amount of Brady Bunch & Swiss Family Robinson images, videos and audio clips which were eating up all of his hard drive space - that’s just speculation though. I had in my hand a $25 gift certificate, a 20% off coupon, and a pile of old DVD’s which I had not opened to return for credit.

It is the week after Christmas. So imagine my shock as I watch 2 Best Buy employees cart not 2 or 3, but a little more than a dozen Nintendo Wii’s behind the Help Center. The guy in front (we will call him Jim because he reminded me of my buddy Jim from college) of me saw it too & he perked up like I did, obviously aware of the techno-geek rarity we were witnessing. Jim finally got his chance to return his Flash card for a camera. I didn’t hear why he was returning nor does it matter for this story. The employee started ringing up the credit & Jim asked “Can I get one of the Wii’s too?”

I expected to hear “They are reserved for people who stood in line over night.” or “They have to be held until Sunday”. Instead, the guy grabbed one, rang it up & Jim walked out of Best Buy with a brand new Nintendo Wii. I told my coworkers about what I had just witnessed. Their response was a little shy of what I would have expected had I said “Bigfoot is working the Help Desk!” Rick, who had said if he saw one casually would buy one, held true to his word & bought one of them.

Again - taking the date into perspective - I was a little over a week away from walking out on a very solid fulltime position to chance it on my own as a freelancer. Theresa and I were saving every penny we could as back up money to accomodate for the first month before checks started rolling in. I mulled getting a Wii myself for about 10 seconds & then decided errantly, “I can just pick one up in 3 or 4 months when the shortages are over & they will abound like rabbits in springtime.”

How wrong I was.

How VERY wrong I was.

Fast forward to last Friday.

My buddy Ben & his wife Maria find out that a Circuit City about 5 minutes away from us have Nintendo Wii’s in stock - 7 to be precise. Maria calls them & they give her the same old story, “We have to save them for Sunday. If you line up outside the store at 7am, you can get a voucher for one.”

About 2pm, I get an IM from Ben saying, “Go to the Circuit City, ask for [name withheld so that on the off chance the guy's boss reads this and finds out who slyly sold 2 Wii's when he should not have, said guy will not be fired], tell him you are Andy, Ben’s friend and that you would like your Wii.”

Thinking Ben was pulling some cruel heartless joke on me, I probed him with assorted detail oriented questions all of which translated to “Are you fucking with me?” in one way or the other. After the whole ordeal was over, Ben explained how he had sweet talked the employee into giving up 2 Nintendo Wii’s by explaining that he was not a typical nerd who sat on his ass playing World of Warcraft, but was actually a nerd dad who did not have time to play World of Warcraft because he was too busy changing diapers all the time. When it became clear he was telling me to go in earnest, I bolted out the door.

Not ten minutes later, I was at the Circuit City. Alas! [Mystery unnamed employee] was on a ten minute break! Oh cursed gods, what cruel tricks you play! I decided to spend the time walking through the various sections of the store browsing tv’s, monitors, Nintendo Wii games, software & such trying not to look like I was scoping the place out to rob it.

Ben showed up about 5 minutes into my poorly timed delay tactics (I had gone through each section twice already). He brought me to the front desk where the cashier happily rang me up for a Nintendo Wii & then commented, “I’m probably going to get fired for this.”

Fast forward to today.

I am thoroughly pleased with my purchase. The Wii has innovated gaming & even interested Theresa who thinks games are about a big a waste of time as can possibly be. We’ve made Wii’s of our family, shared them with our friends who have shared them back & even made some fictional characters just for the heck of it.

Had I known how difficult it would have been to find a Wii after that strange day at Best Buy last year, I probably would have bitten & purchased one then. But all’s well that ends well & I have one now.

NBA Playoffs and my Mavs are in it.

NHL Playoffs and my Stars are in it.

I predict lots of tv watching in my very near future.

In cleaning up my archived files, I cam across the files for my first website, www.ajs9.com. While I no longer own the site, I was pleased to find some of the old comics, lists & miscellaneous things I shared on that site. Among my favorite were my Star Wars captions: