oh yapple.
Last week I built a beautiful Jeopardy game for my “Perspectives in Health and Medicine” class, and I needed some way to connect my MacBook to the projector in the class room. Amazon wouldn’t be quick enough since I needed it in T minus 3 hours, so naturally - I scrambled down to the local apple store to grab myself a mini-DVI to VGA converter.
I literally ran into the store and cruised to the back, well aware of where said converters might be. I saw micro-DVI to VGA, DVI to VGA, mini-DVI to DVI, but no mini-DVI to VGA! So on I hunted down an Apple store employee to see if he could grab me one from the back. After explaining what I needed, he insisted on checking the wall out for himself. The following conversation ensued:
Apple Guy: So what did you want?
Me: a mini-DVI to VGA converter
Apple Guy: (Staring blankly at the wall, hands at his side) Here it is right here…
Me: (with a rather sarcastic ring) Yep, there it is.
45 seconds go by…
Apple Guy: (Pulls a DVI to VGA off the wall) Here ya go
Me: No, I’m looking for mini-DVI to VGA, this clearly says _____
30 seconds (while i’m trying to figure out what’s going on his head)
Apple Guy: (points at the micro-DVI to VGA) Oh, here it is…
Me: Thinking perhaps he’s illiterate - I pulled a few off the wall and pointed to the combination I needed.
Apple Guy: Just stared at the wall baffled he couldn’t find the product.
This wasn’t making me very confident in the $128 value of my AAPL shares. Where did they find this cracker jack? I finally convinced him, after an even more thorough review of the converter wall, and me explaining to him what converters are used for different computers in the Apple arsenal, that he ought to check in the back. After all, I had called ahead and was assured some were in stock.
This whole experience made me a little sad, I was almost certain despite the declining dollar and excellent fiscal policy (read: sarcasm, again) in Washington that my shares would soon go back up to $200. But, between Ben Bernanke, the Apple moron, and numerous other American snafus (health care, social security, Iraq), not only is my stock shot - I think the US has finally run out of cards. Emigration anyone?