Gift Cards...
Last Christmas I made sure that people knew I wanted Apple gift cards instead of traditional wrapped under the tree gifts. This was of course right after Apple's Intel chip-switch announcement. Part of this was on speculation on cheaper Mac Minis, and part of it was my foolish expectations that Apple would want to give me a credit line. Gift cards would take a big chuck out of the amount of credit I was going to have to use and in my eyes that was a good thing. Well, I recieved $225 in apple cards from friends and Rachael's family, but Apple never kept up their part of the deal. No cheaper minis and no credit line. Dell was happy to step in where Apple would not.
Now I've had $225 worth of Apple cards sitting in the pocket of my trustly Moleskine and since I was finishing off the noteboook today I decided it was time to use the cards before Apple started taking off their 10% per month after a year of no use (since I didn't know how early some of them had been bought). Well, a quick browse through SA's "Coupons..." forum let me know that Apple had thrown their 30 GB iPod Video up on thier refurbished site for $199 ($299 new) along with free shipping. Tax would be taken care of by the extra $25 card and it even allowed for 2 day shipping. So, I jumped on it. For those of you who gave me the cards, thanks for the iPod! I plan on getting some custom engraving done at a place I know. Let me know if you have any ideas for what I should put...