The View From Wisconsin

What, exactly, is it about the day after Thanksgiving?

I had to make a return to the local CompUSA store - which is another issue entirely - and saw that the store would be open at 6:00 AM promptly today. Since I am, as a third shift worker, a "night owl" by trade, I decided to go to the store right around that time.

I figured (correctly, I might add) that there wouldn't be too many people in the Returns line, and I'd be able to slip in and out rather easily. However, that wasn't the case for getting into the parking lot.

First of all, the sun didn't rise in Wisconsin until about 6:20 this morning - so the parking lot is dark. Secondly, every single spot in the lot is taken.

Let me say that again: every single parking spot in the strip mall lot of CompUSA was TAKEN. I had to drive around a couple of times to finally find someone pulling out. (This is not as bad as I have heard it to be at Best Buy in Racine; the lot there was so full, people were parking two strip malls over.)

Then, there's the mass of humanity that's waiting in line over at the parts department. Yeesh. Fortunately, I wasn't going to try to find the replacement part to what I returned - I knew they didn't have it anyways - so I got the refund and left.

An aside, here: I am now officially convinced that the floor staff of CompUSA is, essentially, clueless. The store is a pretty-much-exclusive Apple and Macintosh dealer, and should therefore be aware of the pitfalls of a computer "for the rest of us" (as they used to say). Well, the part that I returned - a RAM chip that was for my iBook - was a case of "close but no banana." Yes, it was the right type. Yes, it was the right speed. Yes, it should have fit my iBook, and it did. But no, it didn't work.

Why, you ask? Because it doesn't meet the specifications for memory that Apple set in their most recent Firmware Update (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60839 ). I should have suspected something when I saw that there were two or three "opened" packages of the same memory chips.

You'd think they'd keep the right chips in stock. Of course, that's logical - so of course they don't.

But you can buy DVD-RW's for cheap. Or the latest edition of Halo 2 - in bulk. Even if the line goes across the store and halfway to the back.