Mostly about my amusement

Tag: Costco (page 1 of 1)

We are your typical American consumers

Sometimes you plan on buying one thing and end up getting something slightly different.

As part of my job responsibility, I provide support after hours. It’s not something that happens frequently because the first and second level support is really good. If a problem is escalated to me during my personal time, I don’t question it because I am treated as a last resort.

Last month I had a problem that started at Sunday 5 PM-ish and lasted till just after midnight. My home office line is a pair of cordless phones with old batteries and they kept dying on me. The rotten phones only had speakerphone on the handsets and not on the base station!

That was last month. This past week Lily had all day meetings and was working from home. The same thing happened to her so today we got a replacement at Costco.

Her: That model has a base speakerphone and a total of 4 cordless phones.

Me: Yes, that’s true, but we’re looking for just one cordless phone and speakerphone base station.

Her: It’s $65.

Me: Yes, but it’s got three more phones. What are we going to do with the other three?

Her: It’s $65. On sale. Best Buy’s would probably be more expensive and this one is normally $80.

So we got this unit. it’s a discontinued AT&T phone but it works well. I’ve put the three spares in the kids bed rooms and the guest room. I haven’t said a word to the kids, I wonder how long it will be before they notice?

It’s a neat phone. I kept getting “Messages available” even though there was none on the base station. It was from Vonage; the phone got the message notification that I had messages and was letting me know. Cool! The old ones never did that.

I don’t get home 3D

One of the nice things about shopping at Costco (aside from the discounted prices) is that they sometimes have product demos. Sony had set up a pair of LCD shutter glasses for a 3D demo with a good big screen and a supported Sony Blu-ray player. You can read about a similar setup at one of Sony’s blogs.

I just don’t get the appeal.

The image was sharp and there were some “ooh, aaah” moments. But the glasses were unwieldy and that ruined the whole experience. They have to be that way; one size has to fit all. My 9-year-old son lost interest in less than a minute (maybe that’s a family thing…?) and if the PlayStaion 3 demos didn’t excite him then what’s the attraction?

Now I am assuming that the demo video shows off the best that they have. That has to be the case since they want people to buy the product. I did admire the sharpness of the display but disliked the 3D’ness.

The product demo was flawless and I am a fan Sony products. But I must be old because when I watch a movie I either want the action or the plot (both would be nice) to keep me in my seat. 3D just doesn’t do anything for me.