Yes, this is a detour from technology oriented content. I’m about to give up brick and mortar stores permanently, as the aggravation factor has gotten permanently out of control. I’m stuck getting groceries at physical stores, but I’m definitely going to buy everything else anyplace but locally.

I’m really getting aggravated at the number of ways merchants have of intruding on your privacy and trying to squeeze extra hard earned cash out of unsuspecting consumers.

Once upon a time, it was drilled into me that spending cash is far better than using credit cards. These days, many stores seem to be at the point of refusing legal tender in the hopes of getting you to go into debt and pay dept. store interest.

Macy’s Sucks

Macy’s is one of the worst. Their uninformed, underpaid, constantly churning sales clerks have a spiel where they are required (apparently upon penalty of losing their jobs) to ask “Will this be on your Macy’s card?” and if you say no, “Do you have a Macy’s card?”. If you just hold out cash, some of the clerks literally don’t know what to do. Apparently they can’t ring up the sale without obtaining an answer. And you can’t get most sale prices without using their credit card.

Since their merger with Filenes, the brand offering has gone steadily downhill. The emphasis and features brands are now cheap store brands. The selection has decreased and the quality has plummeted. Oh how I wish Nordstroms would open here. They are such a class act.

Rewards Cards/Loyalty Cards/Frequent Shopper Cards

Even LIDS has a Loyalty Card. They almost wouldn’t let me buy a baseball cap without one. The clerk refused to sell me what I wanted until I listened to his pitch for a loyalty card. Stop & Shop will give you discounts if you tell them to use the “customer card” but some clerks will argue about it.

I won’t be tracked. End of discussion. Take you loyalty card and shove it.

Service Plans

Circuit City tells me “this ____ qualifies for our service plan”. I doubt there is anything in the store that doesn’t. Best Buy is worse. Not only does the clerk spend more time trying to sell you a service plan for _____ than answering questions about the features of _____, but if you actually get to the register, you almost can’t make a purchase without listening to a pitch to buy/get a rewards card.

Even Brookstone, already outrageously over priced has stopped offering a “life time guarantee” and have replaced that policy with, yup, you guessed it – a service plan offering.

Rebates

Don’t get me started on this one. I have yet to receive a rebate from anything I’ve ever purchased at Best Buy or CompUSA. It’s a waste of postage. It’s worthy of a class action suit, but I doubt it will every happen. The stores throw up their hands and say it has nothing to do with them.

The number goes up. Consumer choices go down. The consumerist has revised the story originally published. Stores were supposedly told yesterday.

Now this is REALLY cool. I’ve registered the Momento 70 and have a trial account set up. I can invite friends to be a part of this, and once they accept, they can send pix directly to the frame via email or SMS via phone or upload using the Momento website. When someone sends me a photo in this manner, the frame displays and alert so that I can accept or not.

Check it out.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that I’ve been slowly solving all the puzzles from round one/box 1 of the vanishingpoint game. I have to admit that I couldn’t think clearly while I was traveling and got behind. The ice and sleet here gave me a few hours to concentrate, so I finally got through the first 12 puzzles. There’s a LOT of money being spent on this one. Both on PR and on prizes. I’ve received a puzzle box and various notes from Loki (like so many others). There was even one in the bottom of the box that the Velocity Micro Vista computer was packed in.

What does it all mean? Some lucky person will have the thrill of a lifetime flying to the edge of space. That’s the grand prize. Yes, I’d love to win. But the chances are, well, less than striking it rich in Las Vegas. The big difference is that I don’t gamble and didn’t throw money away while in CES, but I am playing the “game”. The water fountain spectacle is now online at www.vanishingpointgame.com so if you have somehow missed it, go take a look.

Pretty impressive.

All the geeks are playing the game. Somehow I hope that a normal non nerd wins this one. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to play the game and hope for the best.

First off, as others have been reporting, the onboard IR receiver that is the enabler for the MCE remote and keyboard was not functioning when I set up the machine. As a work-around, I borrowed an external eHome USB IR receiver from one of my other machines and plugged it into one of the rear USB ports (and I also contacted Velocity Micro). After an interchange of emails where I learned that VM was not pre-advised that MS would be installing the 64 bit version of Vista, and pointers from VM to “beta drivers”, I checked and investigated further and found that MS did install the drivers for this device, but that device manager reported them unsigned. You can press F8 on each boot as a work around for unsigned drivers, except in this case the included keyboard was an MCE keyboard that requires the IRtrans device to be operational (and as I recall it does not work until the GUI is booted anyway). Chris Morley tells me that he is chasing signed 64 bit IR drivers with a vengeance and will provide them ASAP.

The other problem that I have is that the two front USB ports are not working. I found that strange since the X in 1 Media Reader is working fine. I have not cracked open the case yet to investigate (and won’t until I return from CES), but this is not a showstopper.

I spoke with Chris Morley this morning. Great guy. And this is still a great machine.

(Homage to Technology)

As I sit here watching High Definition TV, I reflect on how quickly we’ve moved from CRT based black and white TV’s to today’s LCD and Plasma based flat screens. It wasn’t that long ago that I purchased my very first color TV. I was one of the last people I know to get one. A 13 inch RCA. The year was 1983. It was beautiful. And I was living in a one room studio nearly without any technology at all save a small transistor radio and wind up alarm clock. It was shortly after that when I bought my first computer, a Tandy 1000 SL. Circa early 1984. And yes, Radio Shack still keeps docs for these relics online. Look at the features of this beauty! And look at all the setup options. I remember buying the SmartWatch add-on to avoid having to type in the time and date at every bootup. In 1989, I purchased my second computer and it was mobile love at first sight. This state of the art portable was a 13.5 lb. luggable Tandy 1400 FD convertible pc. Equipped with a whopping 768K of RAM, it had a switchable clock speed of 4.77/8.16 MHz and an 8026/7 Intel 8 MHz processor..

I realized that I’d discovered technology. And nothing has been the same since.

Fast forward to 2007. Windows Vista 64 bit computing and all the multi media is state of the art. We’ve gone from DOS to Windows and skyrocketed beyond what I could even imagine back in the “olden days”. And as I sit here typing this blog entry on Ferrari 5000 Vista x64 computer watching TV using MCE on a Velocity Micro 64 bit Vista home theater desktop computer I reflect on how far I’ve come. And how lucky I am to have the opportunities that have come my way.