I just returned from watching Hotel Rwanda. It was a different world, one with trauma and sacrifice. But, in the end, it really wasn't anything special to me. The main character, played by Don Cheadle, was admirable but not terribly inspiring. As the movie progressed, I began wondering, why should anybody save these people at all? Why should I care? It was not immersive enough to draw the viewer in, it merely played on cultural notions of nobility and self sacrifice that I have not fully bought into, and I did not feel that I had a responsibility to these people.
I likened the situation to a forest. If the forest gets too dense, fires break out, restoring the balance of resources and preserving the strong. You can do what you can to prevent the fires by preserving the trees, but eventually things get dense enough that fire is inevitable despite all the best precautions. Sometimes all you can do is watch as nature runs its course.
Perhaps that was cold. Perhaps my view will evolve and be refined. Do I want to help? If so, who do I want to help, and how? I'm still a bit aimless.
So, there really haven't been many occurrences in my life lately that I felt have been blog-worthy. But I came across one tonight while shopping for a video adapter amidst the ineptitude of "The Shack".
The route to this adapter necessity was certainly indirect. It stemmed from the recent announcement of the Mac Mini, a device which I immediately found twenty uses for. I could hook it up to my television and stereo to play DVDs and music, and maintain a regular chat interface. It was magnificent, and its a good thing I exercised self-restraint in pulling out the credit card, because I simply *had* to have one.
Once I realized that I wasn't quite rich enough to buy an expensive esoteric digital device on a moment's notice, I settled down, but the thought of having my new digital entertainment hub lingered on until that night. That's when I realized that my laptop could perform all of those functions with the additons of an s-video to RCA adapter and a bluetooth wireless keyboard and mouse. And it would be much less expensive and much less wasteful.
Which led me to a search for an adapter for my laptop's video. I knew Radio Shack was open later in the evenings, so I decided to check them out. Mind you, I had already looked on the web to find the pinouts for such an adapter, so I had a backup plan of buying the necessary plugs and constructing the cable myself.
When I got to Radio Shack and asked the sales associate if he had anything of this nature. He pointed me to a $22 widget which, indeed, seemed that it would convert s-video to RCA. The widget, however, had the wrong plug on one end, and would require a $13 cable to plug into my laptop.
So, this was a $35 adapter. I knew I could make one from parts for under $10, so I decided to try that route. I picked through the parts drawers and found some loose, unpackaged parts, and hoped that I could get a discount.
That's when my fun began.
When I walked to the counter with my parts and told the sales associate what I inteded to do, he was stunned. "Good luck" he said, implying that the mere thought of connecting pins together was a black art best left to highly trained technicians in secret government facilities in the desert. Furthermore, it was "impossible" for him to sell me a part without a box, and a discount was certainly out of the question. It simply could not be sold, and had to go back in the bin it came from, for the manager to decide what to do with it.
This is what we need to strive to overcome. The best of us are able to deal with new situations and be flexible and creative to keep our customers (and ourselves) happy. It seems that, as a society, we are learning to defer judgement to someone else. We cannot make decisions for ourselves or use common sense, because its "not our decision". Heck, people, every decision is our decision, you just have to be willing to take it.
Had I been a bit quicker on my feet, I would have tried other angles for acquiring the plug. I was tempted to say that because it could not be sold, perhaps he should give it to me for free. Or I could have argued a bit about the ludicrousness of his decision, how selling a part without a box could not possibly be harmful to anyone, and was more likely helpful. Instead, however, I told him I would find other sources for my parts (JB Saunders), and calmly walked out.
I could rant all night about so many parts of this episode. Which is why it has been my first blog-worthy experience in a while.
