Black Friday 2005
I must be crazy.
So, in a post I made a year ago, I expressed how I'll never again join the crowds and lines on the day known as Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year. But, what can I say, I love the excitement of it all. The passion to get shopping done and the wonder of being a part of an angry mob. It's like waiting for something really special and the challenge of getting it before everyone else. The thrill of the hunt and the agony of defeat! Yea, it's just shopping, but when you get something no one else can get and save money doing it, you feel powerful and accomplished.
This year, I spent yesterday, Thanksgiving, looking at the zillion newspaper ads of countless morning Portland-area sales for today. Since I pretty much did all my Christmas shopping while on the road trip, bringing back special trinkets from around the country that can't simply be bought where I live, I was only after a couple things. Gadgets, mostly. My folks have recently been talking about getting a large-screen LCD or Plasma television set to replace our aging and dying 60" rear-projection TV (Big, heavy thing) but the prices are still upwards of $2,000-$10,000. So I began looking at alternatives and decided that I'd surprise them with a DLP Projector. We could mount the thing on the wall and project an image on the adjacent wall that can be twenty-some feet across, the equivalent of a 300" TV. Screw ya'll with your $10,000 40" LCD TV! I win!!
So I had my mission. Must find inexpensive DLP Projector. I also found an ad for a 200 GB hard drive for $30! Had to pick that up. So I was only really out on Black Friday for those two things. Begin the madness. With me for the ride was Franko, my sister's boyfriend, and Bryan.
The drive was first up. It was at Tigard's Comp USA, which opened at 11:59 PM Thursday night, one minute before midnight. We got there at around 11:40 and the line just to get in was already a quarter mile long with around 750 people in it. When I got in, I made a break for the hard drives, but obviously everyone else was there for the $30 drive deal too because by the time I got close to the display (Within ten feet) there was only one stack of about seven left. It got crazy when someone climbed up the racks and pulled the stack down and it fell into the rabble of people. Crazies behind me forced the crowd and started jumping for the remaining drives. Just as quickly as it happened, the drives were gone and everyone vanished. I had failed. I was so close but the people who wanted it badly enough to injure others got the prize. As I walked away, Franko appeared and he had three of the drives!! He had done it by getting in and out much faster that I could have. We spent two hours in the checkout line but had great conversations with others around us. It was fun.
Next up was Office Depot in Hillsboro for a specific projector. They opened at 6 AM and Bryan and I were there at around 5:30 when a line began forming. It wasn't nearly as bad as I had expected, and Office Depot really handled Black Friday incredibly by having practically a 2:1 ratio of employees to shoppers when they opened. I had like three people help me find the projector. The store only had two, and I was lucky enough to snag the first one.
Mission accomplished!! I got the hard drive and I got the projector, all by 6:15 AM. I was outta there and finally could sleep. Late in the day, only a few hours ago, Franko came over and showed me the Fry's Electronics ad for today. Fry's, for those of you who don't know, is the huge, gigantic electronics store in Wilsonville. It's enormous and it's full of deals on everything a geek wants. Well, the ad showed the exact same projector I bought for $50 less than what I paid for it. We immediately got in the car and went to Fry's to see if we could get it at that price. Of course, the guy was like, "We had a bunch of them, and they all sold out practically right when the store opened at 5 this morning." CRAP. The only other option was to run to an Office Depot and see if they would price match, but we cut it close. The place closed at 9 PM and we got there at 8:59. We were able to price match and I got $50 back. Add to that the $100 mail-in rebate (Yuck) and I got me a kick-ass high definition video projector for $450. I am the master.
Now all I have to do is get my siblings to pitch in and help pay for the projector...
So, in a post I made a year ago, I expressed how I'll never again join the crowds and lines on the day known as Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year. But, what can I say, I love the excitement of it all. The passion to get shopping done and the wonder of being a part of an angry mob. It's like waiting for something really special and the challenge of getting it before everyone else. The thrill of the hunt and the agony of defeat! Yea, it's just shopping, but when you get something no one else can get and save money doing it, you feel powerful and accomplished.
This year, I spent yesterday, Thanksgiving, looking at the zillion newspaper ads of countless morning Portland-area sales for today. Since I pretty much did all my Christmas shopping while on the road trip, bringing back special trinkets from around the country that can't simply be bought where I live, I was only after a couple things. Gadgets, mostly. My folks have recently been talking about getting a large-screen LCD or Plasma television set to replace our aging and dying 60" rear-projection TV (Big, heavy thing) but the prices are still upwards of $2,000-$10,000. So I began looking at alternatives and decided that I'd surprise them with a DLP Projector. We could mount the thing on the wall and project an image on the adjacent wall that can be twenty-some feet across, the equivalent of a 300" TV. Screw ya'll with your $10,000 40" LCD TV! I win!!
So I had my mission. Must find inexpensive DLP Projector. I also found an ad for a 200 GB hard drive for $30! Had to pick that up. So I was only really out on Black Friday for those two things. Begin the madness. With me for the ride was Franko, my sister's boyfriend, and Bryan.
The drive was first up. It was at Tigard's Comp USA, which opened at 11:59 PM Thursday night, one minute before midnight. We got there at around 11:40 and the line just to get in was already a quarter mile long with around 750 people in it. When I got in, I made a break for the hard drives, but obviously everyone else was there for the $30 drive deal too because by the time I got close to the display (Within ten feet) there was only one stack of about seven left. It got crazy when someone climbed up the racks and pulled the stack down and it fell into the rabble of people. Crazies behind me forced the crowd and started jumping for the remaining drives. Just as quickly as it happened, the drives were gone and everyone vanished. I had failed. I was so close but the people who wanted it badly enough to injure others got the prize. As I walked away, Franko appeared and he had three of the drives!! He had done it by getting in and out much faster that I could have. We spent two hours in the checkout line but had great conversations with others around us. It was fun.
Next up was Office Depot in Hillsboro for a specific projector. They opened at 6 AM and Bryan and I were there at around 5:30 when a line began forming. It wasn't nearly as bad as I had expected, and Office Depot really handled Black Friday incredibly by having practically a 2:1 ratio of employees to shoppers when they opened. I had like three people help me find the projector. The store only had two, and I was lucky enough to snag the first one.
Mission accomplished!! I got the hard drive and I got the projector, all by 6:15 AM. I was outta there and finally could sleep. Late in the day, only a few hours ago, Franko came over and showed me the Fry's Electronics ad for today. Fry's, for those of you who don't know, is the huge, gigantic electronics store in Wilsonville. It's enormous and it's full of deals on everything a geek wants. Well, the ad showed the exact same projector I bought for $50 less than what I paid for it. We immediately got in the car and went to Fry's to see if we could get it at that price. Of course, the guy was like, "We had a bunch of them, and they all sold out practically right when the store opened at 5 this morning." CRAP. The only other option was to run to an Office Depot and see if they would price match, but we cut it close. The place closed at 9 PM and we got there at 8:59. We were able to price match and I got $50 back. Add to that the $100 mail-in rebate (Yuck) and I got me a kick-ass high definition video projector for $450. I am the master.
Now all I have to do is get my siblings to pitch in and help pay for the projector...