A Challenge and A Complaint

First, a challenge.

Debbie said she'd start a blog if I edited my manuscript from last year's nanowrimo. So I'm going to polish up a couple pages, end at a really pivotal moment and send them off to Debbie in Singapore. When she posts to her blog, she gets more of the manuscript.

And just so she knows and anyone else who cares, I picture this process to be a bit like that of polishing stones in a rock tumbler: About 5 times as long as you first thought and requiring a lot of grit.

So watch my side bar for a link to Debbie's blog from Singapore. (I bet she will post lots of pictures of fancy food and teddy bear shaped hunks of rice.)

Now for a complaint.

Have you ever purchased a fancy piece of expensive electronic equipment. You research and talk to friends and get opinions from magazines and finally you commit to the fancy, electronic thing.

Now you are excited about your thing. You picture it in your home and envision all the ways it will change your life. And what does the sales person then tell you?

"You know, we get a lot of these units returned because the (fill in the blank) has a tendency to short out and fail to calibrate."

Of course the sales person wants you to buy the extended warranty so that when your precious, expensive, electronic thing breaks, you can just walk into the store and get a new one. No problem.

I find the tricky dance between "this is the best electronic thing ever and you should totally buy it" and "this thing kind of sucks and you should also buy the extended warranty" to be rather disingenuous. Either the product is great and I should buy it, or it breaks down and is not worth my money.

The next time I see one of these fancy electronic things in the store, I'm going to spend no less than 15 minutes letting the sales person sell me on the product. I'll commit to buy it.

Then, when he pulls out the warranty flim flam, I'm going get all pensive and say, "Hmm, I'm really glad you pointed that out. I don't think I'll buy it after all."

Then I will walk away.