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I bought a 57″ HDTV from Best Buy back in August of 2003. Against every feeling in my body, I decided to go ahead and get the performance plan for it.

Now my story with Best Buy begins around August 10th, when I first called in to report flickering on my television. I figured with my problem, it’d be a simple replacement of my TV - surely Best Buy doesn’t spend money coming out and fixing these things. Well, its time for a lesson in futility and a whole lot of frustration.

So after I successfully navigated the 1-888-BESTBUY call routing system, I finally get ahold of a human on the other end. I explained my situation (57″ Toshiba rear-projection HD set, flickering, come fix it). The earliest appointment they could give me was August 25th. Thats right — two weeks out. They can’t come any earlier and they won’t give me a time of day. I am told that I need to wait for the morning of the 25th, when the tech will give me a phone call between 7am and 9am telling me when he’ll be at my house. I had never heard of such stupidity, but arguing wouldn’t do any good.

August 25th arrives. I wait for the phone call. It is now 7:45 and I decide to head to work. I get about halfway to work when I get a call on my cell phone. He’ll be at my house at 9. Shit. Time to turn around and go home and wait for him.

He’s here. He actually has a toolbox. I turn on the TV, it appears to be working fine. He describes a common problem while taking the back off of my TV. I agree, that sounds like my problem. He wiggles some circuit board in my TV and I tell him that’s what it is doing wrong. He puts the panel back on the TV and starts packing up. Something called a “hyper board” needs replacing. Best Buy will call me in the next couple days as they ship the new one to me so they can schedule an appointment to get him out here to swap it out. I’m happy, I thank him, and send him on his way. He’s at my house for under 5 minutes. I’m impressed.

Nearly two weeks pass, it is now September 5th and still no phone call. I call 1-888-BESTBUY and fight with the menu system again. I get ahold of a human and quickly explain my problem. After “looking it up in her system”, she doesn’t immediately know what I’m talking about. I get frustrated. She gets an idea. She’ll go look it up in their alternate(?!) scheduling system. On hold for 5 minutes. She comes back and I’m talking with not only her, but also a man named Mitchel (I only remember his name because he sounds an awful lot like the commedian Mitch Fatel). He says that the part has not yet been shipped, and that it is actually back-ordered. Lucky me! New ETA: September 27th. Urge to kill rises. I’m told that I will be getting weekly calls to update me on the progress.

The next day I get home from work. Message on the answering machine. It’s Best Buy and I’m told: “Good news, it looks like your shipment has been moved up to October 4th.” At this point I wonder who I pissed off at Best Buy. The message said after recieving the part, I should call in and schedule an appointment. I add Best Buy to my short list.

Two weeks ago, oh let’s say Thursday, September 15th, I get home from work and see a box on my door step. I hadn’t ordered anything and am surprised to see a Best Buy logo on the box. After opening it, the packing list says that it is a “scan converter”. I get excited at the thought of a working TV and quickly call up 1-888-BESTBUY, get through to a human, and then not even carethat I was on hold for 20 minutes. She is able to find my file quickly this time, and says that I should have recieved two parts, and that the other isn’t going to be shipped until October 4th — but not to worry, because those dates are always off. She takes note that I did recieve the “scan converter”, but not the “hyper board”. She can’t do anything for me at all.

Tuesday of the following week (just last week for those of you who are actually still reading this), I come home to another message on my answering machine from Best Buy. It says “This is Jennifer with BestBuy calling to schedule the part install on your TV. My soonest appointment is Wednesday, the 5th. If that does not work give us a call back at 888-BESTBUY to schedule for a later date. Otherwise the technician will call Wednesday morning between 7 and 9 and give you a two hour window for the day. Thank you.” So, I’m being given a date, which one would hope is their next earliest appointment. Optimistically, that date is two weeks away, again. I say that is the optimistic date because it was just “Wednesday, the 5th” which could mean November 5, 2005 or more probably April 5, 2006.

Well, that’s the story up to this point.

I’m still patiently waiting for them to come out and try to fix the TV again.

Well, the guy actually shows up and swaps out the part in my TV. Apparently he only ordered one part and doesn’t know why they would have told me that I needed two. At any rate, he takes apart the TV, switches parts and checks out his work. There is now a new problem with my TV. The vertical sync is off, so that when watching cable TV or switching S-Video inputs, there is a bar somewhere in the middle of the screen. The tech apparently needs to replace an EEPROM also to fix this problem, so now I’m waiting for him call me back to set up another appointment. Urgh.

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I recently picked up Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06, being a huge fan of the 2005 version of the same. I’ve played the game since the 2003 version (which until recently I actually played weekly at my brother’s house) and I think the 2005 to 2006 jump is probably the biggest jump in gameplay.

First off, the new putting system is unreasonably difficult. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but you definately need to develop a touch for the putter. You can no longer just aim to a specific spot on the green and let it rip with a full swing. You need to adjust your backswing length to fit how far you’d like to putt the ball. The elevation guide and grid on the green seem pretty worthless for this. I’ve left it short as often as I’ve blasted it 6ft past the hole. Not once did I have a 3-putt in prior versions of the game, but I didn’t care for the caddy tips style of putting either.

The money amounts have been tamed down in this game as well. It used to be amounts under $50k were like nothing in the game. To buy a new driver, it might have cost $100k, which is just silly. Now the amount of money you get from sponsors and you win with trophy balls is much, much less and more in-line with reality.

Fade and draw shots are easier to hit. You just hold the right analog stick to adjust where your club will hit the ball. I never used to play a fade/draw in prior versions but I have quite a bit in this version. I’m more likely to play shots like you would when you’re really on the golf course instead of playing a shot firing directly at the pin because you know its going to land exactly where you’ve aimed.

The ballstriking in this game seems much more realistic too. Last night, a friend I was playing with tried to go for a long par 5 in 2, using his driver on the second shot. He ended up topping the ball, as I’d expect would happen often hitting oversized drivers off of tight lies. In 2005, every single time you’d connect with the ball on the fairway, it would be a crisp hit. I’m glad to see this bit of realism was added - maybe some par 5’s will really only be reachable in 3 (with lightning fast greens I actually rolled it over and OB with my second shot with a 2-iron).

While some parts of the game are still a little annoying, I think this version is a net improvement and a welcome upgrade for me.

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A mentally handicapped friend of mine has created a couple sites, which you should add to your company’s website filter immediately.

They are:

• Insane Civic Posse
  A site dedicated to both Insane Clown Posse and a Honda Civic Si that he no longer owns. Warning: heavy abuses of Microsoft FrontPage are here.
• dot dada dot dot . com
  He still lets us know how genius he was for thinking up this domain that it took me 10 minutes to remember how to spell. Be sure to check out his bowling team page.

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