Closed Circuit (City)

November 8, 6:36 PMSeattle Geek ExaminerDJ Taylor

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You may have heard the news; Circuit City (CC) is closing 155 of their stores, including the outlet store right here in Federal Way.

If you're anything like me, this news comes as no shock at all.

However, I'm not going to delve into any analysis as to why CC is circling the drain, for that has been done elsewhere, by far better writers than I am.

Instead, I'm going to offer an anecdotal story illustrating why I think their closing is a boon to Geeks everywhere.

A few weeks ago (Labor Day weekend, to be exact), my organization experienced a severe hardware failure; one of our file servers had one of its hard drives crash, in a spectacular flameout that was mitigated only by the fact that we run that machine in a mirrored dual-RAID-1 configuration, so no data was lost. However, the HDD itself was toast (I'm talkin the arm-contacted-the-platter toast).

Now, as the SysAdmin for our small non-profit, I have two goals always at the forefront of my mind:

1. Keep our network, computers, and peripherals up and running better than 95% of the time, and

2. Keep our budget tighter than Joe Lieberman's sphincter when Obama was announced the winner.

So, given that this (*cough* Seagate *cough*) was still under warranty, and had been purchased at a local Circuit City, I decided to mosey on over and get it replaced.

About right here is where the ominous music in a horror movie would start.

I enter the store, and am immediately greeted by Fake Geek Type 1; the guy thinks he's a computer technician, but whose only real computer experience involves upgrading his RAM, and maybe his video card. He thinks that just by opening his computer case, he's lightyears more advanced all those computer n00bs.

To me, he's just a poser.

In any case, FGT1 asks me what I'm looking for, and I let him know that the HDD I'm carrying in it's original packaging crashed, it's still under warranty, and I need a replacement. "No problem", he says to me, and guides me over to the customer service desk, along the way asking me what happened to the HDD and if I lost all my data.

"Yeah, on this drive I did, because the arm came in contact with the platter", I informed him.

"Oh, that shouldn't have deleted all of your data," he replied casually, "you shouldn't have any problem recovering your stuff."

Um...right. We're talking about a hard disk drive here. The minute that arm comes in contact with the magnetically reactive platter, the drive is gone, toast. True, using a very special (and exceptionally expensive) data recovery process, you might, mightbe able to recover a sector or two. But as a general rule of thumb, if the arm contacts the platter, you'd better hope your backups are good, cause that drive is gone.

Of course, I didn't't bother saying this to FGT1. I just nodded, smiled, and prayed the people manning the customer service desk were smarter.

Enter FGT2: the guy who thinks he's a programmer because he knows how to use a WYSIWYG editor to create incredibly crappy web pages.

"...so all I had to do was edit the lookup table, and the search query was fixed. Piece of cake," he was saying as we arrived at the desk.

"Oh, were you having problems with a query," I asked, as I do database development for our organization, "what's powering your database's backend?"

"Oh, Microsoft Frontpage," he responded.

I died a little inside.

A search query is a relatively simple method of pulling data from a backend database, to a frontend user interface. You can create a database using a number of different applications/languages. Such as, SQL, MS Access, or OpenOffice Base (there are hundreds of others, but these days, SQL and Access tend to be the most common)..

MS Frontpage on the other hand, is an HTML editor. It gives you a visual representation of what the HTML code you're creating looks like. It's a useful tool (as are Adobe Dreamweaver, and my personal favorite, Kompozer), but it is NOT a database application.

Nevertheless, I was determined to get my new HDD and get out, so I ignored this idiotic statement from the customer service rep, and instead repeated my problem and purpose for being there.

"Oh yeah, we'll get this taken care of no problem," said FGT2, as he began typing something into his POS terminal.

"Hmm," he said after a moment of typing, "it seems we don't carry this same model in stock anymore. And we're out of the other Seagate drives that we do carry. I'm afraid we won't be able to help you."

I died a little more inside. I thanked both FGs and hastily made for the exit.

I ended up getting the new HDD at Fry's.

Now, I will grant you, it wasn't either employee's fault that their store didn't have the item in stock that I required. Nor was it their fault that CC didn't't carry the original HDD anymore.

But, the fact that CC could have two people so woefully ignorant of the very technology that CC is hawking to the general public, speaks, I think, volumes about the quality of service the public has been receiving.

So when I hear about CC bleeding cash out of every orifice, and circling the drain like the Lusitania in German waters, I'm not at all surprised.

In fact, I daresay it makes me feel a little more alive, inside.