With single-minded determination for several weeks now, I have decided that a new laptop shall be mine before this is all over. I’d like a laptop that doesn’t slow down when I enable javascript. My requirements are a Core 2 Duo processor at least and a >15 inch screen.
The plan for a week now has been to take advantage of a Best Buy doorbuster. A $399 Toshiba L505-5S984. (Yes, I memorized the model number.) Sales start thanksgiving day on bestbuy.com and I was there at 3AM Wednesday night. Miserly, I waited while some pencil pusher somewhere was rapidly updating pricing and availability information for bestbuy.com’s listings. I finally fell asleep around 3:30 to be woken up at 9:00AM by a “SOLD OUT ONLINE” placard where the “Add to cart” should have been. I cursed the tubes, the best buy executives and the internet gods before I started frantically looking for a deal that was in stock. (SPLURGE!)
Enter a $549 Toshiba L505-5S990. I immediately ordered before I even left my room. I go downstairs to read the paper and open up a two-page spread in the Fry’s ad for a $479 MSI A6000-030US. Basically, the same specs, but it has a Blu-ray drive. I don’t really need one, but my inner materialist is drooling on himself.
It is worth mentioning how fortuitous it is, that a camp-out at Fry’s has been planned for a week now. I had just been planning to grab rebated minor items as I was unaware of the laptop doorbuster, but oh, what blessed happenstance!
The cold, I expected; a cold, not so much. I was still Capt Phlegmbucket by the time we set up the tent. And my headache returned whenever I punched myself in the head, which is unusual and slightly distressing.
The cast this year, included Kurt, Junyong and myself. Same old tent, same spot in line. Difference being that Junyong is here to buy a new laptop hard drive so we can’t watch another Judd Apatow comedy. So we played Risk. I ended up with Oceania, the Southeast US, and East and South Asia; making sure all were places whose accents I could do. Because trash-talking in an Indian accent is fun. Try it. I couldn’t stop once I started.
Junyong meanwhile continues to show a incorrigible need to defeat me at whatever we do and tried to hustle us into believing he wasn’t good at Risk. He would not rest while I controlled Australia, even after losing 5 men to my one who kept quipping things in an Australian accent like “Thanks for standing still, wanker!” and “I’m not a crazed gunman, I’m a sniper!”
After I was pincered, Kurt and Junyong rolled it out until the reluctant Korean was the only one left on the board. By then it was closer to 4AM and we rolled up the tent after a brief session of Apples to Apples.
And so it begins. The line compresses toward the door. The dead hoboes and motionless blanket heaps come alive as the employees handed out entry tickets. Junyong’s prepared his shurikens for any line-jumpers and the interminable last half-hour began. I tried to Pai Mei my way through what I thought was a particularly weak spot of brick but was unsuccessful.
The doors open at 4:54AM. I head in and immediately head for the far right corner of the store, where I know the laptops are. Lo and behold: another line. Fifteen minutes later, I emerge with a print out form with my name on it. I rush to pick up whatever else I can get, which turns out to just a wireless keyboard/mouse, and a power strip. The free-after-rebate 2GB flash drive turned out to be impossible to find. And so I come away with it, one laptop richer and a half-grand poorer. And with a newly-worsened cold that is just raping me.
If the economy is not kick-started, I’ll be seriously pissed off.
