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Shopped in person, buying online

July 9th, 2008 | 2 Comments | Posted in Internet, Rants by Bill Blevins

Yesterday, Tracy and I bought a new house in Fairport, NY. Over the past two years while we have been living up here, we’ve been saving money in case we needed to do upgrades to the house before we moved, rather than after we got settled in to the new place.

After the closing we drove over to Henrietta, NY with our checkbook in-hand and visited Lowes, Home Depot, Sears and Best Buy to buy a refrigerator, double oven and microwave.  (We could have been talked into a cook-top stove too).

We spent at least four hours shopping.

Tracy had a folder with fliers, brochures and printouts from the computer of all of the items she had picked out. We walked the aisles and rows of appliances comparing items and cross-checking with all of Tracy’s paperwork, finding the things she wanted to buy.

We moved from store to store comparing sales offers and prices throughout the late afternoon and into the evening.

We ended up not making a purchase but not really because we didn’t find everything…

Not one store associate or salesperson offered any help. None of them said, “Hello”, and believe me, after that long in several stores, we saw at least ten employees in those sections doing “something”, though I’m not sure it was “work”. We weren’t the only shoppers in the sections either and only at Best Buy did I see one of them getting assistance.

At Sears, where I believe the sales associates are on commission, three of them were sitting on the washing machines across from where we were browsing!

When we got home, we went online to do more comparison with the data we picked up during our trip and we’re now ordering online and having everything shipped directly to the house.

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Olympic sailors comment on Quindao Algae

July 4th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Sailing by Bill Blevins

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Algae blooms at Olympic sailing venue

July 3rd, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Sailing by Bill Blevins

Algae Bloom for Olympic sailors

Quindao, China Algae Bloom at sailing site, originally uploaded to Flickr by beijingente.

China’s latest Olympics nightmare is a vast algae bloom that covers one third of the sea where the world’s best sailors are supposed to be competing in just over a month. Athletes call it “the blob”, “the carpet”, “the fairway”, and “the serious problem”.

Click here to read the full story on the Fox News site.

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2008 Flying Dutchman Cannonball Regatta

June 30th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Photography, Sailing by Bill Blevins

2008 Flying Dutchman Cannonball Regatta

Flying Dutchmans sailing, with crew hiked out and approaching the windward mark on Saturday, June 28, the first day of the 2008 Cannonball Regatta held at the Canandaigua Yacht Club in New York.

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“GO” Fleet Sunset Start

June 26th, 2008 | 1 Comment | Posted in Photography, Sailing by Bill Blevins

Canandaigua Yacht Club GO Fleet start

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Beautiful evening for sailing

June 25th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Sailing by Bill Blevins

Evening Sail

Tracy sailing her 2.4 Meter, (Photo by Bill Blevins)

Tuesday night after work, Tracy and I headed down for an evening on the water.

I plopped in the fishing boat while Tracy got her 2.4 Meter rigged.

We met at the lift and got her pointed towards the middle of Canandaigua Lake at about 6 p.m.

The winds were light and other than me, there weren’t many other powerboats out creating chop. We chased each other around for about two hours.

The wind dropped off as she approached the docks and she got to try out the “Praddle” for the last 200 yards. We met again at the dock and put the boats away.

It was a great evening for sailing and putting around in the powerboat.

There were 10 or so cruisers out reaching up and down the lake. You could see each crew straining as we (or they) passed by to get a look at the little sailboat being chased by a bright red powerboat.

The sun was setting as we packed up and headed out.

As we were leaving, vehicles pulling trailers full of Force 5 sailboats were pulling in to the camping area to prepare for the Force 5 US National Championships being held at Canandaigua Yacht Club later this week.

The restaurant and bar are apparently closed on Tuesday nights so we picked up carry-out pizza on the way home and pulled into the driveway at 9:30.

Perfect.

Tonight is the “GO Fleet” race series. “GO” stands for “Geneoa Only” (whisker poles aren’t even allowed) and I’ll be out there with the cruisers tooling around a triangle course a couple of times.

Tomorrow night we are meeting friends after work and taking out several of the club’s Sunfish sailboats and participating in the Thursday night Sunfish races. That should be a trip! I haven’t been on a Sunfish since I was in eighth grade sailing on Brandermill Lake in Chesterfield, VA.

Stay tuned, that should be a real story!

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