Watch Manufacturer’s Boutiques

Yesterday, I stopped by the Chopard Boutique on Madison Ave. in Manhattan to pick up my LUC Sport 2000 which was in for an overhaul. As I walked through that neighborhood, I passed the Girard-Perregeaux boutique, the Omega boutique, the soon to be open Breguet boutique, a Mont Blanc boutique, the Franck Muller Watchland boutique, and the Audemars Piguet boutique. All these manufacturer boutiques were within walking distance from renowned dealers like Wempe, Tourneau and Cellini.

I don’t think I would ever buy a watch from a boutique. There’s something more traditional and familiar buying from a local dealer who you can develop a relationship with over time. Since I live in the New York metropolitan area, there’s certainly no shortage of fine dealers in the immediate area which isn’t the case in most parts of the country (and world). Perhaps someone coming to New York wanting to buy a Breguet or other fine watch not immediately available where they live and work would feel more comfortable going right to the boutique. Maybe with all the commerce done over the internet, going to a ‘brick and mortar’ shop to buy is a fading business model anyway.

While having a boutique probably expands the brand visibility, it also excesses the manufacturer’s traditional partner, the independent authorized dealer. Options are always better for the consumer but the boutique option isn’t a desireable option for me.

Chopard Service

No first time buyer thinks about after-sales service when you get that dream watch. Within five or so years, if you haven’t sold it for another dream watch (or something else), the spectre of getting it serviced appears. If you chose a fine watch made by Chopard, rest easy.

My LUC Sport 2000 has been in to Chopard’s service facility twice in the five years since I’ve owned it. The first time was under warranty when the crown fell off. Last month, I brought it in for it’s first overhaul. The automatic winding system apparently failed which while disappointing, wasn’t unexpected since it’s a true sport watch that patrols the soccer field as well as going swimming with me. The repair was covered as part of a standard overhaul service which was done within 30 days.

Since I’m in New York City everyday, I have easy access to the Chopard Service facility, located on 63rd Street in Manhattan. Before the relatively new Boutique was built on Madison Ave., you went directly to the service facility to drop off and pick up the watch. Now, you go to the Boutique for that procedure and get the opportunity to be tempted to get a new Chopard. Fun but not great for the wallet.

NewEgg Awesomeness

I’ve been a NewEgg.com customer for a long time. Back in December, I got a great deal from them on a Samsung widescreen 23″ monitor. NewEgg usually has a very restrictive monitor return policy. Generally the monitor has to be dead for you to get an RMA. In my case, for some unknown reason, the Sammy did not play well with my first generation Intel Mac Mini. Constant ‘blue screen of death’ issues on boot. The one time I did get it to fire up without a safe boot, the monitor was perfect. I couldn’t live with all the safe booting and monitor tweaking so I was going to send it back to NewEgg. Then I read their return policy and said, “Uh oh, my situation doesn’t apply…time to eBay it.”

After two unsuccessful listings on eBay, I decided to contact NewEgg and tell them my tale of woe. I fully expected the ‘caveat emptor’ treatment but instead, they gave me an RMA, waived the restocking fee and gave me full store credit for the monitor. Thanks NewEgg!!

Quicken Essentials for Mac; Worse than Advertised

I bought Quicken Essentials with my 50% off discount that came with Turbo Tax and finally downloaded it tonight. I had read all about the limited feature set but I figured for $30 or so, give it a whirl. I had over 5000 checking transactions going back to 1998. No less than 58 duplicates after importing my old Quicken 07 file. Took about an hour to get my checking balance to reconcile working through all the duplicates. I knew Essentials didn’t track individual Buy and Sells like Quicken 07 but I figured I could live with that considering my brokerage statement is pretty complete. I also knew I wouldn’t be able to import into Turbo Tax but I always double and triple check the imports anyway so maybe that’s not a big deal. However, the deal breaker for me was you can’t set up a loan amortization schedule in Essentials. Seriously?

I wanted to like Essentials but it took about an hour before I realized the lack of basic features can’t be worked around.

Using jQuery and Javascript in WordPress Templates

There are a ton of tutorials out there about how to include javascript and jQuery in WordPress. I probably read most of them as I was adapting my WordPress based CMS to use my newly gained jQuery skills. The theme writer’s approach to including javascript is to modify your theme’s functions.php file and call the wp_enqueue_script function to trigger when wp_print_scripts action fires. However, for the tweak happy folks like me, there’s actually an easier way that I stumbled upon reading the excellent wpengineer blog.

I was reading about contact forms at wpengineer and the code included the wp_enqueue_script call right in the template before the get_header() call. Brilliant! I had never read that about that technique. You don’t have to write conditional statements nor hook in within the functions.php file. This is especially handy if you use a premium theme. Premium themes usually have a functions.php file that includes a huge caveat not to modify it (for a lot of good reasons). An even better benefit to modifying the template is as your theme is updated, you don’t have to worry about carrying over custom edits.

No Fox Soccer Plus for Cablevision Subscribers

I’m too lazy to find the email I got from Cablevision customer service but it said that Cablevision did not currently have a contract to carry Fox Soccer Plus. Great.

Fox Soccer Plus

I’m guessing ‘premium’ means it’ll go on the pay sports tier. Which would be fine by me since I already have it. Of course, whether Cablevision carries it is another valid question.

Unprofessional Foul.