{"id":354,"date":"2007-11-24T19:06:05","date_gmt":"2007-11-25T00:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/?p=354"},"modified":"2014-04-07T09:24:14","modified_gmt":"2014-04-07T14:24:14","slug":"bf2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/?p=354","title":{"rendered":"BF2007"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(&#8216;BF&#8217; stands for either Black Friday or BattleField.)<\/p>\n<p>This is my first holiday shopping experience. I expected tears. I expected blood. I expected lots and lots of coffee. <\/p>\n<p>My shopping actually began online Thursday morning when I ordered an ultra II 2GB SD card for better action photos and a cheap ($10.00) plastic tripod for better group photos. Unfortunately, both these things have &#8220;Made in China&#8221; stickers on them. So please, for your own safety! Don&#8217;t gnaw on my tripod or memory card! <\/p>\n<p>All Thursday I was conflicted. Sales papers in Thursday&#8217;s paper indicated cheap flash media at Staples and Circuit City. (Oddly enough, Fry&#8217;s circular was absent.) Staples had a cheap SATA drive that I really had my eye on. Problems: my current motherboard doesn&#8217;t support SATA; I live in a neighborhood that is exactly 4 miles from all three local Staples. My house sits in the center of a circle of Staples. In the end, I decided to go with Circuit City for their cheap blank DVDs.<\/p>\n<p>My sojourn began at 0430 Friday morning. My objectives?<\/p>\n<table>\n<tr>\n<td>50-pack of blank DVD-Rs<\/td>\n<td>$3.99<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>2GB Cruzer Micro flash drive  &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;<\/td>\n<td>$7.99<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>2GB Sandisk SD card<\/td>\n<td>$6.99<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>The target Circuit City was at Northpoint. I arrived at 0450 to a mass of people that extended for 200 feet. I was three minutes into waiting before I realized I was waiting in the line for Shoe Carnival. I should have known better. The Circuit City line is the one that&#8217;s <u>not<\/u> completely female. <\/p>\n<p>After getting in the right line and waiting until 0500, the crowd began a slow shuffle towards the   doors. On the way, I passed dozens of discarded coffee cups and vacant lawn chairs. I saluted the fallen heroes.<\/p>\n<p>Once inside, I immediately hurried toward the back of the store for the blank media. I detoured through phones, stereos, PC games, vaulted over a wall of Canon printers, and landed in the HDTV accessories aisle. I forged my way through two crowded aisles to make my way to the blank media section (which was bottlenecked at the entrance by two large bins of flash media. I grabbed a drive and an SD card, holding them in my teeth as I filled my arms with 250 cheap 8&#162; DVDs and fought my way out.<\/p>\n<p>After standing in a checkout line that snaked around half the store, I finally got home at 0610. Just in time to read the morning paper. Imagine my anguish when a Fry&#8217;s sales paper fell out that touted free (after rebate) video cards and flash drives under big letters that exclaimed &#8220;Today Only! 5AM!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong><u>Never again<\/u><\/strong>. Next year, this won&#8217;t happen. It can&#8217;t. It looks like I&#8217;m camping out at 0300 at Fry&#8217;s in a year. Anyone want to come with? Think: (free flash drives, video cards, UPSs, card readers and keyboards. 5&#162; blank DVDs.) I got a tent and a car. Who&#8217;s in?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(&#8216;BF&#8217; stands for either Black Friday or BattleField.) This is my first holiday shopping experience. I expected tears. I expected blood. I expected lots and lots of coffee. My shopping actually began online Thursday morning when I ordered an ultra II 2GB SD card for better action photos and a cheap ($10.00) plastic tripod for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=354"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3737,"href":"https:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions\/3737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}