William Reardon’s Blog

Showing particularly poor taste in naming, today is what the retail industry calls “Black Friday.” Unlike Black Thursday (which marked the start of the Great Depression) and Black Monday (the stock market crash in ‘87), this Black Friday is a good day. (However, not to be confused with Good Friday — something altogether different.)

The reason for the black adjective this go round, has nothing to do with the stock market at all. Rather, for most retailers, it marks the start of the Christmas shopping season which helps push most retailers to the point where they are making a profit for the year — where they finally go into black. Growing up this day was simply referred to “The day after Thanksgiving” or “The start of the Christmas shopping season”, but apparently that was too simple to understand, so Black Friday it is.

While the long, long lines & huge shopping crowds are probably familiar to everyone, probably less familiar is the early morning ritual a select few perform on this day of bargain hunting. It involves waking up anywhere between 3-4 am, putting on the warmest clothes you can, and standing in sub-freezing weather for several hours waiting for the store of your choice to open. If you’ve ever wondered why that long-sought-after-finally-on-sale item was no longer available by the time you got your lazy ass up and off to the store, these people are why.

This year, based largely on impulse, I joined my brothers, my brother-in-law, and some family friends in waiting in the Best Buy from roughly 4:15am until they opened at 6am. And it was cold. And not just because I live in California, but really, it’s was Midwest cold, hovering around the low 30s when we left & certainly dropping in the following hour. Throw in a steady, strong breeze, and you have enough to test any man’s commitment to getting a bargain.

Was it worth it? In a very strange way, yes. It’s a fun time & freezing in-line with everyone is a good shared experience. The deals are pretty damn good. I have plenty of unused disk space, so I passed up on the chance to get a 140 gig drive for $50. Likewise, I didn’t need a DVD-R drive, a scanner, a graphics cards, or a new desktop, but had I, each one was better than anything you’d find on- or off-line any other time of the year.

My bigger ticket item this year was a Samsung 17″ flat-panel LCD monitor. Like almost all purchases this year, this one was an impulse, but probably the best justified as my current CRT is well over six years old. Best of it, while it normally goes for $480, I got it for only $280. Less defendable was getting the Mintek 5” portable DVD players for $150 (normally $200). I still may return it, but then I wouldn’t be able to watch Anger Management or Chicago DVDs ($11.99 each). Ah heck, even if I do I can still listen to Madonna’s Immaculate Collection or the Beatles 1 CDs ($9.99 each), possibly as streaming mp3s that I could store on my 64 meg thumb drive or on some DVD-R discs (both free).

Of course, the big catch with all of this, is that the discounts come in the form of rebates, something I’m traditionally not strong at following through on. I suppose I could fill them out now, but it’s late. Maybe I’ll do them tomorrow.

Well, I’m home in Shorewood for the holiday. Despite what Jimmy told me, it’s not all cold here. In fact, according to Yahoo it’s 46 degress back in Sunnyvale, and 59 degrees here. I may be rusty at math, but that’s not colder.

If at night you are cold enough that wear you coat to bed, there’s a good chance you need to turn the heat on.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

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Wheaton College it holding it’s first college dance in 143 years.

Wheaton is a weird place. And not like Christian-weird. Just weird. It being a fellow Chicago suburb, I have some family there, so naturally, I visit there almost every time I’m back home in Joliet.

My first introduction to their weirdness traveling there for a U of C v. Wheaton soccer match, one that Ann was to play in. (To give some context, NOBODY travels to go watch a U of C sports team play an away game. NOBODY.)

Anyway, it was summer, so Sang, Brian, Kingsley and I traveled the 40 minutes or so to go watch the game.

Driving thru the city, it was Sang who first noticed the flags. “What are with these flags!?!”, he asked. At first, I thought it was just Sang encountering the frequent display of patriotism and flag-waving common in the midwest.

“Oh, people display the flag a lot more outside the city. People in the suburbs and rural areas are pretty passionate about their love of America.”, I reply.

“No! Not the American flags! Those flags!” he says, pointing to a flag that really was just a random patch-work of colors, being held from a porch staff, much like an American flag often is.

“Oh, I don’t kn…”

“AND THOSE! LOOK! THEY’RE EVER WHERE! WHAT ARE THEY!?!?!”

True enough, they were every where. In kinda a creep way. Each one different. Different colors, different panels, some with images, but most without. Being lost, we saw a lot of them, and frankly, we were a little too freaked out by it to stop and ask anyone for directions.

The mystery unsolved, and Sang yelling “WHAT IS THAT ONE SUPPOSED TO BE?!?” the whole way, we finally found our way to the stadium, the game already in full swing. Being the only U of C fans there, and down by a few points already, we start to cheer “Go Chicago!” Of course, the other fans there, being Wheaton fans, have to cheer in response to us, and being a particularly creative lot, shout back “Go Wheaton!”

Now think about how you would expect cheer to sound. Say it out-loud yourself. “Go Wheaton!” What did it sound like? Probably like “Go WHEAT-in!”, right?

Now imagine how a Louisiana native saying it: “Go we-TON!” Imagine a crowd of 30-40 people, each one thinking they are Adam Sandler’s Canjon Man, yelling it, screaming “GO We-TON!” And this was before Kingsley opened her cooler of concealed beverages, so I know we weren’t drunk yet.

Anyway, don’t go to Wheaton. It’s weird.

The sad thing is, I own some of the ones he’s selling.

http://www.drinkyoo-hoo.com/

Awesome.

An interesting article revisiting the various theories on how the Matrix triology may end, revisted now that third installment is out.

I have to say, I liked Revolutions. Certainly not as great as the first, but that would be a difficult feat for any movie. Certainly a solid sequel, and much better than the second. In fact, my first thought after leaving the third movie was “See! Now was that so hard!?”

I think a lot of the bad reviews for three is folks haven’t fully worked out their from the second. (Admitedly, somewhat understandable.)

It has now gotten to the point where there are 3 stacks of unread or partially unread books next to my bed. Not that it’s all my fault. I did get several for my birthday, which contributed nicely to the stack.

Several of my friends have a policy whereby they won’t buy new books until they finish the ones they own already and haven’t read. I had a policy that I would never enforce such a rule against myself, but at this point it’s gotten pretty ridiculous.

I clearly have some catch up reading to do.