A "2" on My Tech (and Pain in My Wallet)

So, anybody who knows me also knows that I have very little willpower when it comes to turning down shiny new toys... especially if said toys are designed in Cupertino, and/or manufactured at Foxconn in China, and/or have an "i" at the beginning of the name, and/or are presented at a media gathering by a guy in a black turtleneck, and/or are thin, and light, and fast, and glossy, and expensive, and/or are comprised of equal parts Gorilla Glass and aluminum and AWESOME, and/or are hard to get, which only makes me want them more.

Didn't hurt that I just got a bonus check from my job.

Didn't help, either; cuz once it burns that hole in my pocket, that money's gotta go somewhere. May as well help fund Apple's plans for World Domination and Technological Enhancement, so part of that bonus went for an iPad 2.

But, dang, Apple sure didn't make it easy.

I waited in line for two hours early morning on the first Saturday it was available, as did a few hundred other people. Even made it up to third from the front of the line before they told me they were completely sold out for the day, and to try again.

Got up early the week after, and was too late again for the Apple Store at Valley Fair. I had the sad technogeeky urge for a road trip, but the Apple Store in Palo Alto was also sold out, as was the Apple Store at the Stanford Shopping Center, as was the Apple Store in Los Gatos, as was the Apple Store at Oakridge Mall, where in desperation I bought a black leather iPad cover in anticipation for when I finally did get my hands on one (because I'd gone to five different Apple Stores, dagnabbit; I was gonna buy SOMETHING.)

At some point, I developed the habit of whipping out my iPhone and checking the availability of iPads at stores nearby, or at work on my lunch break, or really pretty much any time I wasn't driving; however, the results were always the same. Target? Sold out at the ten closest stores. Fry's Electronics? Sold out. Best Buy? Sold out, and there was a three week waiting list. Walmart? Uh, no.

Both Lucie and I got up early once again the Saturday after that, since as part of my birthday present she wanted to make sure I could get the iPad that had me so enthralled... and so she could get the old iPad for her own, but mostly for me, to feed my inner -- and whiny and insistent and more than slightly pathetic -- geek. However, even though we got to the Apple Store before 7:00 AM, the large line of people who had gotten into line as early as 2:00 AM was long enough that they were sold out AGAIN.

At that point, I just gave up and did what I probably should gave done from the very beginning, and just ordered the dang thing online. So, of course...

This last Saturday, Lucie and I decided to take a small road trip up to the Cache Creek Indian casino, since I wasn't able to find an iPad and I just had to spend our hard earned money somehow (remember the part about my pocket and a hole having been burned?). Just for the heck of it and to humor me because she knew I'd been looking, Lucie decided to use her iPhone to check for Target store availability in the cities we drove through.

In San Ramon, she hit paydirt. Two iPads left, in the exact configuration I wanted!

Seriously, I hadn't geeked out so much since I recognized Cake's Short Skirt, Long Jacket as the theme song for the TV show Chuck. Squealing like a teenage girl crossed with a dialing and connecting modem (remember those?), I got off the freeway, maybe potentially just possibly broke a few traffic laws trying to follow the directions on Google Maps, and after a brief panicked moment where I thought we were lost, found the driveway and pulled into the Target store parking lot.

They had two left and no line of people waiting, we didn't have our Target Card with us but were able to open a new credit line to save 5%, we bought both with my brilliant idea of flipping the second one on eBay for a quick profit, headed home and on the way remembered how lazy I am so decided to return the second iPad to a more local Target the next day (with the entertaining mental image of announcing out loud that we were returning an iPad to see if we could start a riot of people trying to get it like we'd heard about from the great Teddy Ruxpin Riots of the mid-1980s [or the Tickle Me Elmo Riots of the mid-1990s if you don't want to feel as old as I am]), got home and unwrapped the box and hooked it up and OMG OMG OMG I HAVE AN IPAD I HAVE AN IPAD IPAD IPAD IPAD IPADIPADIPAD

...sorry. Got kind of carried away for a second there. Better now.

IPADIPADIPADIPADokay, so maybe not.

I have an iPad 2.

And we still have one on order from Apple; probably should cancel that order. Or...

OMG OMG OMG

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