This is The World According to Buchs - Keepin’ it moving since 2003!

In what will most likely be my final semi-major purchase before home buying season opens, I picked up a new monitor on eBay last week. Err… that is I ordered it last week, and it finally got here today - more on that in a bit. It’s a Sony 17″ Widescreen - all kinds of real estate. Maximum resolution is 1280×768. I’ve still got to fidget with the color balance a little, but my initial impressions are good. It’s got a number of inputs available in the back - I’m using a standard VGA for the PC, but I could also opt for S-video or HiDef component video. Getting it running in XP was no problem - it really is plug and play! - but I’ve got some work to do to get it running under Linux. I’m able to switch from widescreen to standard, but I’m not sure how to set the resolution to what I need it to be.

Now, on to the story…

I decided on the purchase early last week, and took a swing on eBay at two identical items. One of them was closing before the other, so I was hoping to get the first one, and then let the other slide. Probably a bad idea, in retrospect. I had to pop a higher bid in during the last 2 minutes to get it. So, I submit my PayPal payment, and wait patiently. The next afternoon, the second monitor is about to close, and I’m still the high bidder. With about 2 minutes left in the auction, someone outbid me by $5, and it was for less than the one I got.

So, like I said, I paid the guy immediately, and asked to have it delivered to my office. Come Monday, I’m checking UPS tracking every so often, and around 2:00 in the afternoon, I see that a delivery was tried, but the doofus who sent it forgot to put my business name or suite number on the package - UPS didn’t know what to do with it, so they moved it back to the warehouse. I called when I saw that, and gave them a corrected address.

The *next* day (Tuesday), I’m checking the tracking again, and around noon, I see that they tried to deliver it to my home address. When I finally got a hold of someone, they said that I could come down and pick it up at the warehouse - after 9:00pm. Those who know me well know that I’m in bed by 10:00, so I wasn’t going to drag myself down to Oak Creek for that.

Long story short, it was finally delivered at around 4:30 this afternoon.