Obafemi

I needed to get my Alpha XP900 system booted up last week to check out some Apache scripting issues. The monitor on that system had been "repurposed", uh, I mean, given out to some daughter or another for their PC. So, I was off to the local Fry's electronics, late on a Monday night to see what I could get.

For those of you living in the dark ages, let me just say that Fry's is the place to get electronics, or appliances, or video games, or Diet Coke, or, well, it boggles the mind. I knew what I was looking for so felt pretty confident. In the back, on the left wall, there are the monitors.

It all goes back to the Fry's grocery chain founded by the old man. The sons, the one I knew was John Fry, were determined to start an electronics superstore. The myth is that the father allowed them to do that but only if they also sold food. The remnents of that legacy are the plentiful selections of canned soda and bags of candy. Still to this day, small convenience store owners come in to buy cases of pop for prices that are less than the wholesale distributors. Kind of weird to be standing in line with a disk drive behind a guy with a cart piled full of cases of Coke.

In the back, on the left wall, I was looking at monitors. I had already recabled a demo PC to check out how the monitor on sale would work with the resolution that I needed. That's how it's done there, few clerks around, best to know what you want when you can capture one.

I managed to grab one! Very helpful and knowledgable, got me the monitor and paperwork right away. Then I noticed his name tag, Obafemi. I had thought he was a bit out of place amongst the Afganis, Pakis, Indians, and Iranian clerks. So I asked him, sure enough he's Nigerian, been in the U.S. for a couple years and doing well.

Once we had connected and I told him where I had been living, he graced me with a handshake. Thanks Oba, for the help.