window to the world
04/09/2008
After years of sitting on it (not literally), not being bothered, procrastinating and sometimes being downright cheap, we finally got ourselves a TV.
It’s not that we never had one, but the places we’ve lived in always had one. So we lived with them cathode ray tubes for a little longer than most others. At one time, we were watching TV on a 20″ PC monitor – that worked too.
Well a couple of weeks ago KF started itching for a new TV. I don’t know what brought it on specifically, it could be the old CRT in our room and the pictures slanting downwards to the right of the screen, or something like that. But anyway, something set him off on a whirlwind flat panel display frenzy, and what ensued was a roller coaster of emotions. On his part. (I leave most of the technology/electronic purchases* to him and I’ll not let it be said I’m a micro-manager. * except for cleaning appliances).
He started doing his research and like all other Sensors dived neck deep in research on the various kinds of flat panel displays – their advantages and disadvantages. Then once he made up his mind – LCD with LED backlighting – he started hunting around for deals and finally found one he was happy with. It was a Samsung 40″ display and it was available on Amazon.com through Crutchfield. I put it in my shopping cart for fun.
The next day, he decided to check it on Crutchfield directly, and found that for the same price as what was offered on Amazon, Crutchfield was bundling a Samsung motorised wallmount to go with the TV. Beautiful! He was giddy as a schoolgirl! Stoked, he bookmarked the page, and vowed to get it.
Of course, we procrastinated.
And a few days later, the offer disappeared, and he went into “damn-I-should-have-got-it” mode. All I heard for the next week and a half was how we lost out on a great offer. He went to crazy lengths to check other sites to see if he could mix-and-match a similar deal for the price. No luck. He checked back at Crutchfield repeatedly.
And then, the offer snuck back onto the Crutchfield site, because all I remember was a guilty confession the next morning. KF sat me down at breakfast, and said, “You ready?”. And I thought he’d bought me a car. Turns out he got the TV. He started giggling again till the next day when Crutchfield called to say, they’d made a mistake, they had the wallmount and shipped it, but it seems they can’t find the TV! Disappointed, he cancelled the order.
Anyway. There was a little more to-ing and fro-ing between him and Crutchfield, while they played “Do We Really Have This in Stock?”. Eventually, we established after a couple days that, they didn’t, but they were getting a new batch of the TVs and we were first on the list. We’ll get the wallmount first, and the TV should turn up in a few weeks.
Great!
Fast forward a week later, the wallmount arrives, we get a call from Crutchfield telling us the TVs have arrived.
Fast forward to today. The TV finally arrived at about 1.30pm.
We had lunch and went to work. Finally, at 5.30pm, we did it. Wallmount up. TV up. DVD player, hooked into it. Perfect.
KF doesn’t spend a whole lot, but when he does, I guess he enjoys it. He gleefully proclaimed that he had to sit through weeks of me ordering stuff online and signing for my packages, but all he had to do was make one order to blow all my other purchases out of the water.
Lucky for him I can’t buy a car online.
