Big Brother is Watching

So I got a free TV and let me tell you it's worth every penny. It actually works fine I just didn't know that companies were still making 720p sets in this, the year of our lord Two Thousand and Nineteen.

I'm basically planning to use it for running a live display from my security camera once I get things a bit more set up, and finally put my ChromeBit back to use.

I was originally planning to buy a large touchscreen panel and get a little fancier with the UI so I could review previous events and so on, but it just so happens that I refinanced my house and got this TV as a "free mortgage gift" as part of the process. Story time:

When I originally bought my house and got the mortgage I was given a code to plug into a website to select one "free" gift from a variety of merchandise that you might expect to find on offer from such a program. Most of it was crap but there were a few half-decent tools to pick from, and eventually I narrowed it down to either a portable bandsaw or a 10 inch miter saw. A bit of contemplation later and I put the porta-band in my cart and went on living my life.

Fast forward to my refi and I get the email with a code again, and I get excited at the prospect of being able to pick up the 10 inch miter saw, only to find that this time the selection is much more limited, with maybe only 8 products in total being offered and most of them of lower value. So I'm like "oh, I guess they don't offer the fancier catalog when you refi, only when you purchase" and I figure I might as well grab the incredibly low-end TV set to use for my security cam display because why not.

Then a day or two later I get another email with a different code and a slightly different "congratulations" pitch mentioning that because of some corp perk with Google I'm entitled to a fancier gift, and punching in the code leads me to the full catalog I recognized from the first time around. So I dig in, find the 10 inch miter saw and hit the order button.

I guess I'm getting two "free" gifts!