So I bought my Uniden Bearcat 95XLT from Dick’s Sporting Goods.  It works well.  I skimmed the manual and am able to work the thing pretty well based on my experience with other Uniden scanners.  I have been using it at lunch all week.  However, there was quite an ordeal in getting the thing.  Dick’s shipped it via UPS.  The delivery was to be made at my office.  I followed the tracking online and thought it odd that my box was heading north from the warehouse in MD to upstate NY instead of going west to Chicago.  I figured UPS had their reasons.  Then a few days later I saw it was out for delivery in some little town in the Finger Lakes.  I called Dick’s right away and told them my box is being delivered in the wrong place.  They put in a refund request for me and I let them place a new order for my scanner.  This all took only 10 minutes.  Little hold time and the operator was helpful.  I hung up the phone and two minutes later I got a phone call from a secretary saying a box came for me.  I thought “Oh s**t.  I bet Dick’s gave me the wrong tracking number and that’s my scanner.”  Sure enough, my scanner had arrived the same day as the New Yorker’s package.  I looked at the tracking number on the box and indeed Dick’s gave me the wrong tracking info.  I went online to cancel the replacement order then I called Dick’s back.  After going through one phone menu, I was immediately connected with an operator.  Definitely American-based help as the operator had a charming Southern accent.  I had to explain this whole mess about my orders.  Fortunately the operator understood and was able straighten everything out.  Canceled the refund, verified my second order was canceled, and marked that I received my first order.  So I was disappointed that Dick’s gave me bad tracking info, but impressed by their American-based support and ability to fix the situation quickly.

I started weighing the idea of adding a hard drive and RAM to my desktop rig last weekend.  I opened my case to look at the power and data connections.  I found I can just disconnect my ZIP drive and connect the cables to my new hard drive.  There was a ton of dust in the case.  Dust even filled in the grooves on the heatsink of the CPU.  I made sure to blow out all the dust in the case.  Now I will clean out my PC on a yearly basis.  The CPU went from idling at 89F to 81F.  As part of the process of deciding whether to do the upgrade, I asked a question on Yahoo Answers.   The answers weren’t super helpful, but did nudge me toward going for the upgrade.  I did comparison shopping between TigerDirect, which I could drive to and pick up my parts but pay sales tax, or NewEgg, which would charge shipping but no tax.  The difference in price went in NewEgg’s favor.  The Kingston RAM was $20 cheaper at NewEgg.  The 160GB Seagate HDD was $8 cheaper and at the time TigerDirect said it was unavailable for 7-21 days.  Interesting story.  I used GOOG411 to call TigerDirect in Hoffman Estates to see if they had a drive even though Naperville had questionable supply levels.  However, Hoffman Estates’ phone number as listed on Tiger’s website only went through to the mail order dept.  I wanted someone at the store to check stock.  GOOG411 found the right phone number and patched me through for free.  It’s a good resource, use it.  I was on hold for 15 mins during my first call and I hung up.  I then called back later and was helped right away.  The long hold left a bad taste in my mouth, but it didn’t matter as HE didn’t have my HDD.  I placed my order with NewEgg right away.  I also decided to pick up an OEM copy of Windows XP Pro.  I thought about using it for my Eee (I dislike Linux now) but now realise that the OEM license wouldn’t allow me to later take XP off the Eee and put it on a new desktop I plan on building in a couple years.  You can transfer retail licenses but not OEM.  So I will keep using yucky Linux on the Eee and save the XP Pro for the new desktop.  Vista sucks and I won’t put it on my future PC.  Maybe Windows 7 will be out by the time I get a new desktop and it will be decent enough for me to install instead of XP.  As for why I picked up XP now, supposedly sales of XP end in June.

There was an adventure with my NewEgg order as well.  I had to update my credit card info and I accidentally put in the wrong card number.  Off by one digit.  I got a notice that my payment authorization failed.  I found my card number error and fixed that in my account, but the order still had the bad number.  I called NewEgg and went through one phone menu.  My call was answered right away by an African-American fellow.  Awesome that NewEgg uses American operators.  I explained that I put the wrong card number in and the operator went through verifying I was who I said I was.  Makes sense - CC company says the info I gave was BS, so why wouldn’t NewEgg be more careful?  Got this all straightened out in less than 10 minutes and the operator pushed my order through to the next stage.  I should get my stuff on Monday.  I was hoping for tomorrow so I could do the install over the weekend, but the box is only in Des Moines right now.  It’ll have to grow wings to get here in time to be delivered tomorrow.

So in summary, I am buying plenty-o-stuff and am contributing to consumer spending.  Also, I am pleased to find online retailers using American support.  I cannot imagine what kind of problems I would have had if I had to explain my convoluted problems to an Indian whose native tongue is not English.

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