This weekend, I went to Best Buy to do some holiday-related shopping (for those of you in Chicago, this is the North Avenue Best Buy). The chief item to purchase (I thought) was a portable CD player with a car adapter so that my girlfriend and I and her dog would not have to listen to just the radio on our way to her folks’ place in New Jersey. When I got there, I decided, for giggles and yuks, to check out the car audio section to see how in-dash CD players priced out compared to a portable CD player. They were surprisingly competitive, and there was an offer for free installation with purchase of a $99 or higher system, so I decided to go for it.
I decided to have it installed that day. For reference, this was a Sunday afternoon, probably around 2 PM. They had the installation done inside of 45 minutes. Which is actually not the surprising bit. No, what really took the biscuit for me was that they actually saved my radio pre-sets when they installed the new system. 
A little thing, but it increased my respect for them tremendously.
Just thought I’d share for those of you shopping this holiday season, especially in the Chicago area.
It’s a Christmas Miracle!
We went to the Best Buy just north of Orange Park yesterday - we were seeking info about CD burners for an old, slow computer as well as what we’d need to network 2 computers together in our house. We got helpful suggestions from two different sales guys, we were left to muddle over our options, no one tried to sell us service plans, and no one tried to check our bags on the way out. I was amazed and impressed.
And we’ve got TWO computers at home on line now. I was IMing with my Perfect Child[sup]TM[/sup] yesterday afternoon - I was in the “office” and she was in her room. oooooooooooo
Good plan…those CD car adapters suck anyway, which I found out by purchasing one for the 850 mile Road Trip from Hell, one year ago today, to NJ for my grandfather’s funeral (at that very same Best Buy, BTW). They have to be adjusted to a radio frequency with nothing on it, and they’re very finicky and keep slipping off the station, resulting in static, which is always fun to try to fix on the Pennsylvania Turnpike when it’s pitch-black at 2 am and you’re surrounded by fog and tanker trucks.
The in-dash thing is the way to go. It’ll keep all of you, well, if not sane, then at least saner than you would have been otherwise.
(And gee, getting domestic, aren’t we?)