After work, I went to the nearest Hallmark to shop for cards. After looking carefully at the word selection and giving much thought about the design, I finally headed to the counter with my final choice in hand. The total with Canadian taxes: 4.01$. Obviously, I was asked for a penny and obviously, I did not have one - had I had one, I would have already given it. Duh. Because I did not have change and the cashier did not have change, I had to wait for change to arrive. Change can wait for me, but I won't wait for change and decided to pay with plastic, the American way.

I then walked out of the store - which could have been spelled stour but someone somewhere decided to spell it otherwise - made a left and continued walking. I was now on the hunt for a new alarm clock. Of course, before heading to the mall I've been shopping around on the net to find interesting models and unfortunately, haven't found something that really caught my attention. Instead of shopping in the virtual world, I was hoping that physically moving around a few models would help me identify my new worst enemy.

After doing a handful of shops, I realized how crappy alarms clocks really are for less than 40$. Is it that expensive to manufacture a digital FM tuner with the alarm? I personally hate the old resistor-potentiometer; it's still way too popular in this era of plasma TV screens. In-store choices were the same from shop to shop, so shopping did not last long and soon enough, I was on my way.

I'm now back in my bedroom in Hamilton, without any alarm except for the one that comes on my cellphone. It's actually a pretty cool one. Thanks to Samsung, I can program it to ring every weekday at 6h08 and let me sleep as long as I want on weekends. This feature seems incredibly difficult to implement in standard alarm clocks that only operate on day to day, not weekly basis. Yet, it makes me wonder: how big is the team responsible for the alarm clock market at Sony? Do they at least try to improve their product each year? If Samsung was to market alarm clocks (with integrated cellphones!), would they takeover the industry?

Let's think about it for a moment. We all need food. We all need clothing. We all need shelter. We all need to wake-up. Does that mean that the alarm clock market is as big as the Earth's population? Seriously, with the designs out on the market right now, there's a huge potential to get in it and make the Sony Dream machine take a plunge. I'll think about that. And before you do, by reading this sentence, yes the one you are currently reading at this instant, you agree to equally split any profits you make from my market tips. Cool. Time to go to bed now.