My glorious employers, in what’s supposed to pass for Christmas spirit, gave me again what they’ve given me every year for just about every year since I took on a full time position: $50 of Fred Meyer gift certificates.

Since Santa won’t be putting on a command performance in our house this year due to the money troubles I mentioned a few weeks ago, I decided to use my bounty to get something the kids could appreciate. That’s right, my hard-won bonus went into a pair of USB gamepads.

The kids play a lot of console-style games on the computers, okay?

It took almost three hours to visit enough Fred Meyer stores in the area to accumulate two gamepads that didn’t completely suck. (Microsoft’s Sidewinder ‘pads are awful, both models. Four buttons, only one D-pad and no triggers? Bite me.) I really, really wish Freddy’s carried Logitech hardware, but such is life. (The Wingman RumblePad we’ve had for a while? It’s the standard by which all other gamepads I buy will be judged for a long, long time.) We ended up with a pair of mismatched Saiteks, cheesy and cheaply-made ‘pads that fulfilled the requirements of having at least one analog stick, triggers, a D-pad and a relatively low price tag. We’ll see how the P750 and P880 stand the test of time.

Oh yeah, I also picked up the Might And Magic Platinum Collection. Four games for the price of one. No, really. Might and Magic IX was stickered at $29.99 at one end of the shelf, while the Collection was also stickered at that price but sat at the other end of the shelf. Whatever. Mind you, now that I have game IX I’m reading all kinds of bad reviews of it online. That’s okay. I have VI and VII, both of which are well worth playing.

The moral of this story? There isn’t one, except that shopping sucks. And possibly that buying computer games and accessories is a stupid waste of my Christmas bonus. The kids sure love the gamepads, though, and dammit (!) that’s gotta count for something.