this'll do for the present

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 23 May 2007 10:57:28

Today I bought a birthday present for my father. Only a day late - not too bad. AND I bought my mother a birthday present too, and her birthday isn't til Friday. AND the younger brother and I have now cleared the Christmas present debt to the older brother, and possibly the birthday present debt too (May 4), depending on whether the younger brother gave the older brother Walker Texas Ranger Season II or kept it for himself.

Anyway, I bought the father a book called Where's My Jetpack?. It looks at all the things promised to us in the future by movies and comics etc in the past. Looks like an interesting read. And it has shiny metallic blue stuff on the edges of the pages (erm like where some bibles have gold...) and is black and silver and blue and shiny.

The Christmas present for the older brother has actually been in the pipeline since before Christmas however we have had trouble locating the product. He wanted a five button, non-cordless, non-ergonomic (ie. symmetrical...) mouse. Once in March I thought I saw one, but then have never found it again, and I wondered if it existed. THEN! Last week the younger brother and I were in a computer stuff shop and found the mouse on the display shelf (like not in the box). It had five buttons, it was the same general design as the classic Microsoft optical mouse, it had a cord (although this had been severed for display purposes). But there were none for sale! I hunted down an employee, and handed him the display mouse and asked if they had any. He looked at it, looked at the shelf, and said "no" then went to walk away. Because sometimes I like to engage people in conversation when they don't want to be in conversation, I pursued the issue further and he looked at the shelf again (I would have preferred "I'll take a look out the back" - I do this move myself at work sometimes when I tell someone we don't have something and I KNOW we don't have it and they just stare at me and keep repeating what they want, despite me telling them where they CAN get it and why we CAN'T get it - we don't stock mops for example. The supermarket 2 minutes up the road does).

"There's this one."
"Erm yes, but it has 3 buttons and is cordless. We want five buttons with cord."
"Uhhhh... what about this one?"
"Well that one costs $400"
"Um... this one is cheap"
"Yes but it has 2 buttons and no cord... see this one that you have on display has all the attributes that we want, yet you don't appear to sell them"
"No."

Finally the helpful assistant gave up in his quest, replaces the mouse on the display shelf to taunt others on mouse quests, and walks away

I recommend Myer for buying symmetrical mice with cords and five buttons - they had exactly what we wanted, at a good price.