Oh, What to do; and TV Woes

I am very bored. See, in all of my classes I don't have all that much work. I was just figuring today that I only have 3 papers left to write in all of my classes. This means that I have a lot of time on my hands. I get all of the work that is current done, and then I have nothing to do. So then I sit around and am bored. Of course you ask why don't I just do something with my friends? Well, the problem is that everyone else seems to have a lot of work to do. Thus everyone is busy, and I am not. So I end up sitting around wasting time on the computer or what not. I suppose that I could get more involved on campus, but there isn't much to do with that either. I'm not sure what the solution may be. Also, right now I do not have a TV, so I can't even watch movies or the Comedy Central that I so crave. I got my TV for Christmas, but rather than checking out different models and investigating what problems they may have (as I usually would with anything else), I looked in a Circuity City ad a little before Christmas and saw what looked like a good deal. We then bought the TV, and everything seemed fine. My first mistake was to not test it while I was at home. I watched a few minutes of some DVDs on it, but I didn't actually hook it up to get a signal. If I would've done that then, I wouldn't have had all of these problems. When I did get to Evansville, I noticed that the TV would make loud popping noises when bright flashes of light were on the screen, especially during commercials. I didn't think much of it, perhaps it was a faulty cable or something. However I tried a different cable and still the same thing. I got on Circuit City's website and looked at the customer reviews on the product, and it seems that I wasn't the only one that was having these problems. I got a crappy TV. I waited for longer than I should've, and finally took it in to see about fixing the problem. They told me that the TV was now discontinued (go figure) and that they only had the display model. But they looked around and found that a store in Indy had a boxed one that they could get shipped down to Evansville. So we did that, and a few days later when I got this other TV, I brought it home with the help of my friend Nathan (who graciously helped me get the first TV to Circuit City), and when I tried this TV the same thing happened again: more pops. So just a few days ago I took this second TV back (again, thanks to Nathan), and they said that they would have to send it to "the technicians" (they make make it sound so ominous), and that if the technicians couldn't fix it, that I could put the money I paid for towards another TV. So really what this long drawn-out story amounts to is this: research a product before you buy it if it is a piece of technology! You can find reviews on countless websites (lots of reputable ones even), and then you can also see what other people are saying, average consumers like you and me. Only you can prevent crappy technology purchases; don't be the victim. And knowing is half the battle. GI Joe!