Wal-Mart and more
Stupid Wal-Mart. I went back up there this morning after work, intending to buy a TV that had just dropped in price. Parents came with me, so they could use their new Wal-Mart credit card for it, since I didn’t have enough money on me today to get it, or even put it on layaway. But things didn’t quite go according to plan. Something odd came up on the register, saying it needed to be authorized. The CSM had to come to the department, and ended up phoning the credit card people. They didn’t give a reason, just that they couldn’t authorize the purchase. Annoyed, we went home. Parents phoned up the credit card place, to figure out what was going on. The card is new, and wasn’t even used yet. Apparently, their side of the system saw it as the transaction going through twice, with the first being approved, and the second not. On the store side, it didn’t go through at all. Really weird. So my mother phoned the store to figure out what happened, and they will be holding one of the TVs until Friday, since the transaction should be voided on their side by then, and hopefully working. I’ll check at work tonight to make sure that one was actually put aside. I’ll be pissed if they didn’t, and ends up being sold. I don’t know if any more of those will be coming in.
Anyway, hopefully I’ll have a shiny new TV this week. I planned to get one in a couple of months, but I wasn’t expecting a big price drop on it.
In other news, I attempted to install Linux on my laptop this week. It worked, kinda. For some reason, the onboard network port hasn’t worked properly for a while now, but I’ve been too lazy to phone up Dell Canada’s Tech Support. Their email support was of no use at all, ending with them telling me to phone Dell Canada’s number after numerous detailed emails back and forth. One of these days I’ll get around to that. And, my wireless network card seems to have problems in Linux. I managed to get the interface up and running just fine, but with any kind of traffic, it locked up the whole system, making it unusable. Which sucks. So, right now I have Windows XP installed on it again. I’m going to give it another try, for the ClearType. I hope the bugs I hate either don’t appear, or that I can deal with them this time.
Oh, and apparently it’s Grey Tuesday. From the press release: DOWNHILL BATTLE (February 18, 2004) — A coalition of websites will join in an online protest to offer free downloads of a critically acclaimed album that is being censored by a lawsuit threat from EMI Records. The action is an act of civil disobedience against a copyright regime that routinely suppresses musical innovation. The Grey Album, which remixes Jay-Z’s Black Album and the Beatles’ White Album, has been hailed as a innovative hip-hop triumph, but EMI sent cease-and-desist letters to any record store that stocked it. This Tuesday (”Grey Tuesday”) the coalition of sites will offer free downloads of the Grey Album, and turn their pages grey, to take a stand against a copyright regime that serves neither musicians nor the public interest. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of that kind of music (Jay-Z that is, I like The Beatles), but I’m on the side of the protesters with this. Stupid record labels and the RIAA.