You get what you pay for

One of my watches broke.

The expensive one.

It happened at my salon of choice. After all the things that have nothing to do with cutting or styling hair (including a hand wax, which forces me to take off my watch), I accidentally dropped my watch on the floor.

The back of the case came off.

Somehow not panicking, when a stylist asked me if my watch was broken, I calmly answered, "It doesn't matter. I have a good warranty."

Later in the day, I walked to the local Movado Boutique and showed an employee my now multi-piece watch and its warranty card.

She took the watch to a room in the back where she took a few minutes to test the watch to see if it still worked and re-pressurize the case.

When this employee came out of the back room with my back-to-one-piece watch and told me that it still worked, I thanked her and was about to leave the store when I noticed a speck of dust inside the front of the case.

Movado Boutiques do not open the fronts of watch cases. I was told that if I wanted the speck of dust removed, my watch would have to be sent out to be repaired, and that it would be about a month before it would get back to me.

I like to think that my watch is on its way to Switzerland as I type this. (I don't know where Movado sends out watches for repairs, but I would like to think Switzerland, because that makes this incident feel oh-so-classy.)

Cost to me: nothing.

This is why I purchased this watch at an authorized retailer. I could have saved hundreds of dollars if I had bought it at an unauthorized retailer, but then I would not have gotten a manufacturer's warranty and I would have paid (probably a lot of) money to get it repaired.

Or perhaps I still would have paid nothing but would be stuck with a broken watch that Movado refused to repair at any price. There is always the fear when you are buying from an unauthorized retailer that what you are getting is counterfeit; stolen or that original, expensive parts have been removed and replaced with cheap knockoffs.

I will be wearing the Nooka watch that I don't like wearing anymore a lot for the next month. I would complain about how this makes it look like I am trying to be unique by dressing just like the people who all dress the same way to be "unique," but that would be hypocritical; the Movado Classic Museum has been the definitive object for showing that you are "unique" by being the same for more than 60 years.

Bold and “edgy”

Am I the only person bold enough to wear orange shoes?

Because I get a lot of curious stares directed at my feet when I wear mine.

This is my fault. Other than the shoes, I intentionally wear all black—I never do that anymore—to place emphasis on my footwear.

Still, all the stares initially caught me by surprise. I do not get stares when I wear a purple dress shirt.

This must be why my brother-in-law describes the way I dress as "edgy."

I am not trying to project anything with the way that I dress, certainly not “edgy.” The concept of “edgy" brings up thoughts of people with manufactured personalities who go out of their ways to be controversial and to get attention.

I do not want others to perceive me that way.

Indeed, I was caught off guard the first time that my brother-in law (then my sister’s fiancé) made the “edgy” comment.

I just wear what I like, which is apparently more interesting than what others like, or are bold enough to wear. I am not doing this for attention, and I do not want it.

I am myself: an individual. I want others to think of me that way.

Feel free to stare. Everyone else does.

C’mon God

It has been a hundred years.

Understand that while that is not much time for you, most humans do not live that long.

There are millions of people who have lived and died waiting for this to happen, and now we must wait at least one more year.

We have shown you that we remember and appreciate the moral of the Book of Job. No matter how good or terrible, we have kept the faith, even after the two times that you let them get so close before you had everything fall apart. We have never shown interest in another, including the nearby alternative that you let have it all three years ago.

And you forgave that alternative for its sin. After only 88 years. We have been waiting for 100 years, and ours has committed no sin.

Once. That is all we ask for.

Payback for 1906?

With the Chicago White Sox' first place tiebreaker game victory over the Minnesota Twins today, this is the second time in history that both Chicago Major League Baseball teams have made it to the postseason in the same year.

The other time this happened was in 1906, when the underdog White Sox defeated the Cubs in the World Series four games to two. (There were no Major League Baseball playoffs back then.)

The Cubs have their best team in literally a hundred years. The White Sox have momentum on their side. The possibility of a re-match of the 1906 World Series is great.

Finally, the Cubs will have their revenge on the White Sox.

I am a diehard Chicago Cubs fan. I have to be. I was that cute kid eating a hot dog on the steps of Wrigley Field in a 1984 Cubs promotion for WBBM-TV (CBS Chicago). (That's my dad's arm you see holding a Pepsi.)

I don't understand why other people are Cubs fans, with the team's inability to make it to the World Series since 1945 and inability to win it since 1908 (not to mention coming within five outs of making it to the World Series in 1984 and 2003 before everything fell apart), but it is nice not being the only Cubs fan, and knowing the my fellow Cubs fans are not "fans" who root for whatever team wins a lot.

Not that everything about the Cubs defeating the White Sox in the World Series will be a good thing.

The economy of Chicago and the surrounding suburbs will grind to a halt if the Cubs play the White Sox in the World Series. People will be watching television instead of going out and spending money. The economy is already in terrible shape. The added economic damage caused by a Cubs-White Sox World Series could be too much for some businesses.

But the economy collapsing is a small price to pay to witness the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series for the first time in a century, especially if it is against the other Chicago baseball team.

Spun out

Explaining why something negative about your candidate is a positive. Explaining why something positive about your opponent is a negative. Using facts out of context or outright lies to attack your opponent. Complaining that your opponent runs negative ads while insisting that your negative ads are positive (and not responding to your opponent's accusations). Especially nasty attacks coming out "anonymously" or from people "not" involved in the election campaign.

I cannot handle any more of this partisan political spin.

It is worse here in the United States than in almost any other country. This is not a parliamentary system of government. No one, not even the candidates, reads the party platforms. Americans truly vote for the candidate, not the party. The individual-driven nature of the American political system means that the attacks are aimed at the candidates and politicians themselves, often about whom they are, not their views on the issues.

As much as I prefer having my representatives in government representing me and not their parties, I wish that this could be done without everyone being mean-spirited.

The controversy and spin over Alaska governor and Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin's unwed, pregnant teenage daughter is some of the most ridiculous that I have ever heard. Palin and the McCain Campaign claim that this is a positive, and that it shows Palin's commitment to her pro-life stance, but I am sure that if it were Barack Obama or Joe Biden's teenage daughter that were pregnant, the McCain campaign and Republican National Committee would spin it as showing that Obama and Biden are immoral and bad parents.

These would not be direct attacks from the candidates or their party. Going after the children of politicians and political candidates is considered off limits, and doing that overtly would backfire, but anything viewed as a negative for your opponent can be a positive for you. The Campaign and party's national committee would have the story come out, either anonymously or via supporters not officially connected to the campaign, with the candidates and their party claiming no involvement, and therefore not hurting the candidate or party's image (much).

(And I have no doubt that the Obama Campaign and Democratic National Committee are doing everything that they can to keep this story in the minds of people likely to vote for McCain, all while officially claiming that it is a non-issue and denying any involvement in the materials and stories and that show up reminding everyone about it.)

Politics in the United States is nasty and personal.

From now until Election Day, I will try my best to avoid getting my news from American media outlets and international news outlets that have strong focuses on the United States, such as CNN International, BBC World and the International Herald Tribune. I will get most of my news from international outlets that treat the United States as a small part of a big world so that I miss most of the increasingly nasty, personal, partisan political spin and outright lies. Russia Today's pro-Russia bias is obnoxious—and people complain about Fox News' pro-Republican bias—but it is better than hearing the spin and lies coming from the American political candidates and their supporters. (Not that Russia Today is my only alternative source for news on television; I have become a fan of France 24 since discovering it early this year, and other international news outlets offer interesting perspectives on the world.)

You like it, so I don’t

I do not want to wear my Nooka watch anymore.

I still like the way that it looks. The problem is, so does everyone else.

When I bought this watch, it was like nothing that I had ever seen before. Digital watches were supposed to be boring and ugly. This one was unique and classy.

Nooka helped set me apart from the crowd.

But with the increasing popularity of Nooka watches, particularly among celebrities, wearing a Nooka watch now has me feeling like I am following the crowd.

It looks like I am following fashion trends for the sake of following fashion trends, dressing "uniquely" by dressing the same as everyone else who dresses "uniquely."

This used to make me cool.

I do not want to look like everyone else, especially not like the people who all dress the same way to look "unique." I want to be myself.

(Go ahead and call me a hypocrite for buying a Movado Classic Museum: the ultimate watch for people who dress "uniquely" by dressing the same as everyone else who dresses "uniquely.")

It's odd. I have the ability to predict fashion trends months in advance, but as soon as something is popular, I turn against it, even if I still like it.

This goes beyond fashion. When all the "cool" people were using BlackBerry phones, I chose an HTC phone. I told people that it was because of the HTC's superior battery life, and while that was true, it was also because it was not a BlackBerry. (It drove me crazy when people would mistakenly refer to this phone as a BlackBerry, Sidekick or iPhone.)

Now that my contract with my mobile phone carrier is over, I am on the lookout for a new phone. HTC's Touch Pro, at least on paper, appears to be the best for my wants and needs, but because (and only because) HTC has become "cool" in the two years since I got my HTC phone, I hope to find a phone that is not from HTC.

This also partially explains why I chose a Dell (and then a Creative) portable music player over an iPod, switched from Apple to Sony to Dell computers over the last decade and decorated my condominium with traditional furniture rather than modern furniture. (And if Dell's recent advertising campaign is successful in convincing people that Dell computers are "cool" again and that the people who use them are "unique", my next computer may not be from Dell, only because all the "cool," "unique" people will be using them.)

One of my longest-running complaints has been about people who are different for the sake of being different. I must not have realized it because I almost always wear a dress shirt (albeit often one in an interesting color), but it seems that I am one of them.

“Scrambled channel or Weak signal”

The good news is, I discovered how to pick up local high definition television channels without any antenna nonsense.

My local cable operator refuses to let me subscribe to high definition cable or give me a high definition cable box until my building decides that it wants high definition cable, but it turns out that connecting the cable directly to my television set (instead of through the digital cable box and then to my television set) gives me access to local high definition television channels via cable.

I tried this months ago, shortly after I purchased my high definition television set, but the only high definition television station that I was able to pick up then was WPWR-DT (myNetworkTV Chicago). Now I get all but one of the local, available over the air channels that are available in high definition in high definition this way.

No more spending several minutes adjusting the antenna, often ending in me holding it in my hands, standing in a specific spot to get a picture, losing the reception when moving ever so slightly.

The bad news is, this creates new frustrations.

A direct-to-TV set cable connection gives me over-the-air-accessible television channels, but little else that is worth watching. Beyond the channels that I should be able to receive with an antenna, I get standard definition versions of MSNBC; CLTV, a local cable news channel; NBA TV; The Weather Channel; C-SPAN 1 and 2; TV Guide Network; FX (in analog) and a whole lot of shopping, religious, public access and preview channels.

Most cable channels are scrambled and require a cable box or CableCard. If, for example, I want to watch a Chicago Cubs game airing on ESPN or Comcast SportsNet Chicago, I must disconnect the direct-to-TV set cable connection and connect the digital cable box to the cable and my television set. The picture is grainy and has vertical black bars on the sides of the screen, because that is what happens when you view standard definition television on a high definition television set, but until I am allowed to subscribe to high definition cable, it is this or nothing.

And when the following Cubs game airs on WGN-DT (The CW Chicago) or WCIU-DT (an independent Chicago television station), and therefore is available to me in high definition, I have to disconnect the digital cable box and re-connect the direct-to-TV set cable connection to watch the game in high definition. These two channels are the most difficult to pick up with an antenna, so I no longer try to get them that way. The frustration of finding just the right angle to pick up said channels is greater than the annoyance of regularly disconnecting and re-connecting cables in the back of my television set.

The frustrations do not end there.

From time to time, the cable tuner built in to my television set will "lose" a channel, displaying a "Scrambled channel or Weak signal" message when I try to view that channel or disappearing from the channel list altogether. The only way to get a lost channel back is to use my television set's auto-program function, to scan the channel spectrum for signals. This takes several minutes, does not allow the set to be used for anything else while this is occurring and does not always "find" every available channel—I assume that this is why WPWR-DT was the only high definition channel that I was able to pick up months ago. It is not possible to manually add a channel that the auto-program function misses, so it usually takes several auto-programs before every channel that should be available is available.

And finally, there is the carriage issue. My cable operator does not carry every local, available over the air channel. WYCC-DT (the lesser of Chicago's two public television stations) gets its main, standard definition channel on cable, but not its high definition channel, nor its other digital subchannel (which runs MHz WorldView). WYIN-DT (PBS Gary, Indiana) has its main channel carried, but not its digital subchannel (which runs Create). And WCPX-DT (ION Chicago), like WYCC and WYIN, has its main channel on cable but not any of its three subchannels (which run qubo, ION Life and Worship, respectively). If I want to watch anything on any of these channels, I have to switch from cable to my antenna and pray that fate and luck allow me to pick up the signal that day.

When I bought my high definition television set, I never thought that I would ever use either of its two RF inputs. Here I am, using both.