Someone keeps moving my chair.

This weekend went by way too fast. Tomorrow is President's Day, and as usual, I don't have the day off on a national holiday. My only hope is that the jackals at PMS decide to not let the delinquents come in for school because of the holiday. Hey, it's happened before (and they forgot to tell me nobody would be there, no less, making me drive all the way down to St. Pete Beach to discover the empty parking lot).

I have had a series of adventures dealing with my jukebox this weekend. First off, let me give props to Sarah for bringing in her book o'cds for me on Friday morning. Thank God for that, because if she hadn't, the fact that I hadn't ripped the soundtrack for The Full Monty would've kept me awake at night (she knows I'm kidding!). I come away from the experience of ripping her various cds about 2 gigabytes richer.

Then, after having my jukebox, which I love dearly, for three weeks, I realized that the battery life on this particular unit was not up to the expected standards, so I decided to go back to Circuit City to exchange it for a new one. The folks there said that would be no problem, since I was still within my first thirty days; the only problem was that they didn't have any more of that particular model in stock. So, they gladly refunded my money, and I high-tailed it across the street to CompUSA, where they had the same model on a "Manager's Special" for $40 less than the price I originally paid for it.

The guy at CompUSA said that yes, they did have that model in stock, and went to go get me the last one. When I went up to the cashier, it rung up at a different price: one that was actually more than the original price I paid. The employee called a manager up, because he didn't understand why it was ringing up differently, and said that maybe "manager's special" meant that was the price for the display unit.

Then he argued (to himself, really, even though I agreed with him) that that wouldn't make any sense, because "Look at this display unit. Nobody would pay that much for something this damaged!" He went on to repeat this to his manager, who was a bit of a schlub. Schlub said that they were different items because one was a "newer" model of the same thing, and that's why there was the price difference. He was also kind of curt about it, and I wanted to punch him. I also got the sense that since his employees were being so cool to me, and admitted that trying to sell a damaged display unit was "stupid," they'd probably get ripped a new one after I left the store. I thanked the two employees who helped me, then high-tailed it out of there.

I then proceeded next door, to Staples. They had the juke for the same price I originally paid for it, and I was going to buy it right then and there. However, one of the employees pulled me aside and suggested that I wait until the next morning to come in to buy it. I took his advice and walked up to a small crowd gathered outside of Staples right before the doors opened. He was also there this morning when it opened, and I thanked him after getting a hold of the juke: it was $50 less than the price I originally paid for it!

I get it back home, and proceed to try to transfer the 20-plus gigs of songs I had on the old one. Apparently, somewhere around the 2000th song, the juke proclaimed a "firmware problem" and stopped transferring halfway through. So, I have some minor adjustments to make in the managing software before continuing with the next 2000-something songs and calling it a night.

Morals of the story:

• Back everything up.
• If someone's a schlub, don't take it out on his cute underlings, because they need the support, and every schlub gets his due.
• If something doesn't work out, that just means something else will.
• I have a whole lot of fucking music.
• If you see a 2004 Stanley Cup Commemorative Tampa Bay Lightning hockey puck on sale at Publix, by all means, get it! Then, use the other Lightning pucks you own as wrist rests for your laptop.

Okay, I've stopped making sense.