The company that I work for has a program wherein managers can give special awards for truly exceptional performance once in a while throughout the year. These special awards are "points" that you can redeem for things like gift cards to your favorite stores. Today, I got my third such award of this year. Each of my awards has been for the maximum amount of 200 points each. This means that I have $600 worth of points that I need to redeem. This program comes with two caveats: 1. The awards do not carry over from one year to the next. If, by the end of this fiscal year (November 1st at 5:00 PM) I have not selected an appropriate store or stores to get gift cards from, then the $600 is added to one of my paychecks and taxed to the full extent of my state and federal tax bracket rates. 2. I can choose to redeem the points in the form of a cash award at any time, but once again, by law, that means that the points would be taxed. So...not wanting to waste part of this award by paying somewhere between a third and a half of the value to Uncle Sam in the form of income tax, I need some help deciding what to spend my award points on. The three stores that I am considering getting gift cards to that this program lets me use are: Best Buy Circuit City CompUSA There are plenty of other stores and restaurants that I can redeem my points at, but I'm thinking that since these points are awards for exceptional performance on my part I should buy toys with them. So...here is the challenge to my faithful readers. You must find a combination of items from these three stores that come to, or near, $600 in total value. I have the following toys already and therefore am not interested in getting duplicates. 1. Xbox360 2. PS3 3. 37" Westinghouse 1080P HDTV 4. 61" Samsung 1080P HDTV 5. HD-DVD add-on for the 360 6. Guitar Hero 2 and DDR 7. PS2 Slim, Original Xbox, Gamecube 8. Surround Sound system for the Samsung TV 9. Computer parts currently in use are: Intel Pentium 4 2.6 GHZ Processor (Currently overclocked to 2.8ghz) NVidia GeForce 7800GS BFG Tech Overclocked Video Card (AGP 8x/4x based) Asus P4C800-E Deluxe Motherboard 2 GHZ DDR1 Kingston HyperX Memory (Don't remember the specs off the top of my head...doesn't matter. This memory would need to be upgraded if I got a new motherboard.) iOmega 250 Gig 7200rpm External Hard Drive (Brand new.) 10. Canon PowerShot SD750 Digital Camera One rule that must be observed: If you make a suggestion, it must be something specific. In other words, you can't just say "Dude, get a surround sound system to go with your Westinghouse TV dude!" You need to suggest a specific system. You may mix and match toys from the three stores listed above or, if you have a different suggestion for something that is not at one of those stores, you may feel free to suggest that. However, those are the only electronics stores that qualify for this points redemption. So, by all means, feel free to suggest computer stuff, but it has to be sold by one of those three stores. The winning suggestion will earn a prize of some sort. I haven't really figured out WHAT yet, but I'll think of something. It may be something as simple as an "attaboy/attagirl" call-out in a future blog post, or it might be something a bit better than that if I can think of something good. Have fun all!