costume, wiring

I went to a few stores looking for an item for my costume and finally ended up at a Halloween USA. This is one of those seasonal places and while the selection wasn't as good as I expected, I still found something that will work.

Paying for my purchase, though, was a little tricky. The cashier rang it up as $2.37 instead of the correct price of $24.37 - ummmm, oops? So, the manager needed to come over and void it out, then re-run it. Took a long time.

The next day I was in Wal-mart and bought some speaker wire and a case of water. I picked the "10 items or less" lane - thinking it would be faster. Especially since there was only one person in front of me.

Mistake. Her purchases came to $5.64 - she tossed a $5 on the counter and spent the next 5 minutes rooting through her duffel-bag sized purse for the exact change. Meanwhile, I'm standing behind her holding a case of water and wondering if she'll ever be done. At one point, I started to shift my weight to see if I could get to my wallet and throw a dollar into the mix - since it would have been worth it to get moving.

She finally counted out the last penny and moved on. I paid with a debit card.

Also over the weekend, my room-mate (who's working on a case of bronchitis) decided to get a new receiver and dvd player/recorder. He spent several hours on the set-up with a lot of swearing and finally got it working - except that the video from the dvd player wouldn't get to the tv.

I tried a few combinations, then unplugged everything and started over. Took a little bit until I gave up on the instructions and just winged it. The DVD player has a weird sleep mode, but once we got past that, we were good to go. I'm going to try and tackle the speakers this afternoon.

Also had a request to fix an antique fan that some friends of mine own. Not really my area of expertise, but I do know how to take things apart and poke at them - and then usually put them back together. I stopped by their place, but they weren't home. I'll try again today, perhaps.

I guess that's it for now, time to get to work...