Friday, February 26, 2010

If you give a moose a muffin…

By the time we got to Lansing this evening, Aimee was barely able to contain herself.  Finally, she blurted out “If they offer you a Citi card, are you gonna take that too?” 

Citi is one of my least favorite companies.  Let me tell you, I can hold a grudge against a company for a long, long time.  For the past fourteen years I have gone out of my way to avoid Quality Dairy.  In fact, I bet that I have only visited a Quality Dairy store an average of once per year for the past fourteen years.

Anyway, the source of my wife’s mirth began a couple months ago when I was smitten with Bluetooth.  First it was Bluetooth headphones, then mice, then an adapter for our home stereo system, and of course I eventually bought a used Bluetooth keyboard on E-bay.  $25 shipped.  It’s really slick, but once I tried it, I wanted to push the envelope.

Couchtop computing.  Sure, it’s much hyped (ever heard of a media center PC?) but is anyone really into it?  I tried it out, but I couldn’t see my monitor well enough to actually do anything.  That got my wheels turning.  I needed a larger monitor.  Something large enough that I could sit on the couch and compose Word documents in comfort.

While I was simmering on this idea, the Olympic games began.  I’m not into the Olympics, but I am into hockey.  The game last Sunday was not to be missed: The USA versus Canada.  The two super powers of hockey duking it out.  In my ignorance I thought I could probably pay someone on the Internet to let me watch the game on my computer.

I was wrong.  NBC kept redirecting me to Comcast.  Finally, I realized that if I wanted to ever see hockey on TV again, I’d have to bite the bullet and upgrade our analog cable.  It was such a frustrating realization that I nearly threw my computer.  Instead, I called Comcast and sullenly ordered the entry level digital package.

If you give a moose a muffin, he’ll want some jam to go with it.

My logic went like this.  If I ordered the cable upgrade quickly, I could still watch the final game on TV without getting smoked out at a bar.  If I was going to swallow my pride and buy cable TV, I might as well watch the game on a reasonably good TV.  If I was going to buy a reasonably good TV, it better be one that I could compose Word documents on while lying down on my couch.

Citi is one of my least favorite companies.  It’s right up there with Dodge.  And, ironically, Comcast.  By the way, I don’t care for television (hockey games excepted) either.  But there we were, driving a borrowed Dodge to purchase a super-size me television in time for a Comcast installation.

In case you’re wondering, they did not offer a discount if I put the purchase on a Citi credit card.