Small Bitch Session

tommyj27

Not really Banned
Gonz said:
True. It's also stupid to pay $80. for copper.
so true. i've also found that people who buy monster cables can't be talked into buying anything less, marketing genius.

i've got several friends who have worked at best buy in the past that can commiserate with altron. cables are where the electronics giants make their phat lewt. i've heard of them selling computers at a loss, knowing they'll make it up in accessory margins. best buy also owns dynex, the company that makes a lot of their accessories, blank media, cables, PSUs, batteries. they've gotten $30 printer cables for like $2.50 with their discount. a 30pk of AA batts for $1.85, the list goes on.
 

catocom

Well-Known Member
I got a monster cable kit in my van for the stereo. It was only $50,
but they are heavy duty.
 

HomeLAN

New Member
HomeLAN said:
Yeah. I'm trying to salvage the files off a dead drive for my bro right now. Ghost has taken 16 hours to get 52% of the way through a 4 gig partition, so I don;t hold out much hope of it working. I'll let 'er run through to the end, however.

It finished in 36 hours. Should've taken 20 minutes. When I get home, we'll see how bad the file corruption is, and if it'll even boot.
 

catocom

Well-Known Member
I was only able to save about 3/4 on the recovery job I did.
I just got back from a 3hr de-virusing job. My brain is numb at what some people d/l, and install. :retard5:
 

Altron

Well-Known Member
I'm not saying that good cables are useless. If I owned one of those $5000 huge projection TVs we have, I would sure as hell have good cables. But there's no sense in buying a $50 component video cable to hook up the $80 DVDP to the TV.

The other thing is monster speaker cables. 12-14ga cable, $40 for like 50ft, when you can go to Home Depot and buy some nice thick copper for under half the price. I mean, my speaker cables were 25 feet for $10, twisted pair 16ga OFC copper in a black PVC jacket.
 

Winky

Well-Known Member
I got 90 bucks to de-virus
enable wep onna one client lan
share a printer
install a two port 2.0 PCI USB card...
 

catocom

Well-Known Member
Altron said:
I'm not saying that good cables are useless. If I owned one of those $5000 huge projection TVs we have, I would sure as hell have good cables. But there's no sense in buying a $50 component video cable to hook up the $80 DVDP to the TV.
I've got a really nice Kenwood in there, and pushing a hellva lotta watts. ;)
I wanted to make sure it wasn't going to fry a wire while going down the road.
I've had that happen before, and it ain't fun. :eek13:
 

HomeLAN

New Member
HomeLAN said:
It finished in 36 hours. Should've taken 20 minutes. When I get home, we'll see how bad the file corruption is, and if it'll even boot.

Well, blow me down. Booted fine, right off the bat, looks to me like everything came over. He's one lucky bastard.
 

Gonz

molṑn labé
Staff member
JESUS H JUMPED UP HOLY SHIT CHRIST ALL MIGHTY FUCKING DAMN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

radio shack said:
Six-Foot HDMI Cable $12.49

overpriced but bearable. Now for the Best Buy online search
Best Buy said:
Our Price: $54.99

That's the cheap one. :eek:
 

Winky

Well-Known Member
HomeLAN said:
Well, blow me down. Booted fine, right off the bat, looks to me like everything came over. He's one lucky bastard.


Ain't it a beautiful thang?
 

Inkara1

Well-Known Member
Gonz said:
JESUS H JUMPED UP HOLY SHIT CHRIST ALL MIGHTY FUCKING DAMN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



overpriced but bearable.
Only $12.49? Is that one of the Black Friday sales? Normally the decimal point would need to move a digit over to the right.
 

Inkara1

Well-Known Member
Found it on the site... it's discontinued, that's why it's that price. It used to be around $100. It's $12.49 now if you can find it in a store.
 

Altron

Well-Known Member
The cheapest HDMI cable I see in the store is the 6ft Belkin for $90.

This guy comes in, "Where are your HDMI cables?"
"We've got the six foot Belkin over here, it's our cheapest"
Guy "WTF?" *walks out*

The people that annoy me most, though, are the ones who ask about HD programming. I sell HDTVs. It's up to the customer to find a way to get their HD shows. I get all sorts of specific questions about digital cable boxes and whether you need special satellite dishes for HDTV, and I just don't know. These people should ask their service provider about it, not the guy selling them the TV. I mean, it's one thing if they ask me a simple question like "Will you need a separate HD tuner for this?", but when they ask me "Which satellite dish and reciever do I need to get the CBS in HD?". What the fuck? I'm wearing a shirt that says Circuit City, not DirecTV. I know that the service provider gives you a HD box and you plug it into the component video ports, and sometimes the TV will have a built in HD tuner.

Then there's the wireless speakers people. They act all disappointed when I tell them that we don't carry wireless speakers. They expect some simple solution to exist where they open the box, install the reciever, and place the speakers anywhere they want. Wireless speakers exist, but you either burn through D batteries like no tomarrow, or you plug it into the wall. They are all two channels, so you need preouts on your reciever if you want to get wireless surround. As soon as I leave, I know that they're heading across the street to bestbuy, then when they don't have them either, they wallow in self-pity because they didn't do their research and they have their hearts set on a product that doesn't exist. The engineers need to overcome the hurdle of amplification before wireless speakers will work. Class-D is a step in the right direction, with the near 100% efficency, but they still take either serious batteries or a wall wart, which defeats the purpose of not having wires.

Then there's the complete lack of anything to be interested in. The only fun toy is the Polk XM reciever in the back. Most of the TVs are stuck playing this dumb 30 minute sequence of advertisements. There's the preview for motorcucle people making a motorcycle for lance armstrong. There's the preview for the Dakota Fanning horse movie. There's the short clip of monster trucks driving through mud. There's the circuit city commercial with the chick trying to get shit off her camera into the photo album. There's the other circuit city commercial with the guy who calls his friend for TV information. There's a short clip of some rock band having a reunion and men in their late 40s jammin. There's the tennis player PowerShot video. There's the movie with the chick bonding with her parents. The only exceptions are when some guys put on the kung fu movie with the crazy surround effects (I think it's the Jet Li Hero one that I saw in the theater, not sure. They have all sorts of crazy scenes with arrows that make good use of the surround systems.) and when they pop in a DVD, during which it loops for the entire day. I was talking to the girl over in the MP3 department, which is right across the aisle from HT-in-a-box. She saw Spider Man 4 times in a row. I only saw it two, and it was boring. At least I can wander around the store, the MP3 department is like one row of shelves and on the other side of the aisle are the TVs playing the movies.

I was surprised at how fast ipods sell. The girl in the MP3 department got a big shipment in yesterday, 2GB, 4GB, 30GB, 60GB. By the time I was talking with her this afternoon, they only had black 2GBs left. We go through shit fast in HT, but not that fast.

Today also marked the first time that I didn't sell any Panasonic DVD recorders. Usually I sell one or two a day, but nothing today. Everyone was all over this $700 Sony DVD recorder with a 160GB HDD. We have none in stock, there are none in the warehouse, and no stores in New Jersey have them. I got asked like three times.

But all in all, I sold about $3500. My boss told me that 12% of my sales are extended warranties, which is apparantly pretty high.

Kickin' ass and taking names, as is my style.

I love this thread.
 

Gonz

molṑn labé
Staff member
Altron said:
It's up to the customer to find a way to get their HD shows...

Nope. It's up to you, as a salesman, to assist the customers in any manner necessary (and reasonable) to acheive a mutually satisfactory goal (they want a TV, you want you job). Most people don't have time, energy or the initial gumption to figure this crap out. Hell, why do you think the blinking clock on the VCR joke is still funny?

You learn it, you pass it on in the shortest, most precise manner possible, get 'em the TV & get 'em out the door. They're happy, you're happy & your boss is happy.

Just do someting about the prices of cable.
 

Nixy

Elimi-nistrator
Staff member
Hey Altron...do you guys have the Sony Bean mp3 player??

No stores except the sony store have it in stock here yet...and the Sony store is always more expensive than other retailers.
 

Altron

Well-Known Member
Gonz said:
Nope. It's up to you, as a salesman, to assist the customers in any manner necessary (and reasonable) to acheive a mutually satisfactory goal (they want a TV, you want you job). Most people don't have time, energy or the initial gumption to figure this crap out. Hell, why do you think the blinking clock on the VCR joke is still funny?

You learn it, you pass it on in the shortest, most precise manner possible, get 'em the TV & get 'em out the door. They're happy, you're happy & your boss is happy.

Just do someting about the prices of cable.

Any manner reasonable.

Reasonable is asking if a TV is HD, how many component video inputs it has, whether or not the HD tuner is built in. What I don't like are specific questions completely unreleated to the actual television.

"Will I need a new DirecTV dish to get HDTV signals?"
"Will the HD digital cable signals be in widescreen?"

It's my job to answer questions pertaining to the products we sell. It's not my job to know the specifics of HD broadcast. As far as I know or am concerned, everything before the component video outputs on the reciever/cable box is magic. Only the Comcast and DirecTV people know that stuff.

I don't think we have any Sony MP3 players, and even if we did, even the Sony store is probably cheaper than international shipping.
 

Gato_Solo

Out-freaking-standing OTC member
Monster cables are great, and I used to use them exclusively. You don't buy a $2,000 component system (1993 dollars) and then use stripped extension cords for your speakers. I did, however, use the cheaper RCA cables...yes, they were gold plated...to connect the Cassette deck and the CD player to the receiver.
 
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