Crazy Shopping

I decided not to go to bed last night and instead stay up late for the stores to open for the after Thanksgiving sales. Fry's was supposed to open at 6 this morning, so we got there a few minutes beforehand. There were probably 200 people in a line to still get into the store, which had decided in to open early. There was aleady a constant flow of people leaving the store will carts full of sale items. I wanted to buy a portable DVD player, an mp3 player, a new pen drive, and a new pair of ear phones. To make a short story even shorter, everything that was on sale that I wanted was already gone by the time I made it to the back of the store to pick them up. I did manage to buy a portable CD player for $7.
Just for kicks I decided to go over to Walmart just to see if they still had anything. They had a portable DVD player for $99, but they were sold out. I did see a really nice one on sale for $14o, but I decided that it was not worth the time to stand in line for it. So I ended my shopping day with only a single item bought. Walmart scares me with the amount of people who try to cram themselves into it. Also the aisles are half the width of Fry's so its impossible to get anywhere. I mainly wanted to go to laugh at all of the frantic people there. What they realize is that Walmart's prices really aren't that much better than any of the other stores in the area, usually only a few cents cheaper. I'd rather give my business to some other store that actually likes its customers and has aisles large enough to navagate with people in them too.

Well, I didn't have a chance to pickup any DS systems today, so I'm probably gonna scrap that whole idea. I spent most of my afternoon waiting at the Lasik center for my dad to get his eye readjusted again. So I basically got nothing done this afternoon. Nothing new to report so I'll just add a random quote reported but not confirmed to be from Benjamin Franklin:

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

This hits a little too close to home with all of the stuff going on like the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, the S.A.F.E. Act, and all of the unreasonable search and seizure that I go through everytime I go to the airport.

Nintendo DS

Tonight the Nintendo DS comes out. I thought that it was going to be the new gameboy, but it is not. It is not compatible with the original gameboy, super gameboy, or color gameboy games. It will play gameboy advanced games though. I’m guessing that this will become one of those proof of concept systems kind of like the VirtualBoy. If the system flops, oh well. If it is successful it will probably merge with the gameboy line in the next year or so and become fully compatible with the old games in a slightly different model or a firmware update. They are currently selling between $170 and $200 on ebay right now. I might try to pick up one or two in the morning for resale. If they are in as high of demand as most people think, they might be able to sell for a profit a week before Christmas. We’ll see.
On another note, Slashdot had an article about a guy who built his own PlayStation2 portable system. Unlike the real PSP system being released soon, this portable playstation is fully compatible with all of the playstation discs. If there was such a system commercially available I’d probably buy it. But with the PSP being cartridge based and not compatible with the other systems which bear the playtstation name. I’m also still waiting for a handheld version of the GameCube which would use the same 80mm discs that the cube uses today.
I did have a Gameboy Color that I installed a backlight into the screen, but that isn’t all that impressive now that all of the GBA SPs have backlights in them.

Picking up dates

Here's a little something that I've learned from observation. Personal hygiene is not recommended for trying to pick up a date, it’s a requirement. To you guys who spend every waking moment playing video games and somehow manage to pick up a date; Febreze and Lysol spray are not acceptable substitutes for a shower and clean shirt. Actually, I’ll say the same thing to you girls out there too because I’ve actually met a few of you. Flossing is also recommended in this whole concept of hygiene; nasty things in your teeth don’t need to be seen by anyone. To those of you of either gender who haven’t shaved in a few days, your date would be much more impressed with you if you chose to do so before the date. All of this is moot if you are taking your date to a LAN party or other such venue, but please remember to use deodorant at least once in a while for everyone’s benefit.

Post-Thanksgiving Sales

I'm constantly searching the web for news and ads for new electronic toys. Today I found the site http://www.bf2004.net/ to keep track of many day after Thanksgiving day sales prices. I'd recommend checking with this site several times next week. If you find something that you like, buy it before the sale, knowing that it will be on sale, so you can return it to get the difference; skipping out on the long lines for the registers.

And so it begins...

Time for me to actually start my own blog. I'm probably gonna check it and post every day for a week or so and then forget about it, but we'll see. This will definately be a very random page as I shift focus quite rapidly. I could go on about a single thing for days, and then never have anything similar for weeks on end. Oh well. Enjoy.