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So, what did you kids get for Black Friday 2008? I picked up mostly older games I missed the first time around because I either didn’t have the system to play it on, or my desktop wasn’t up to snuff. The list is as follows:

Around 8am, I started online.I got a DLink Wireless router for$19.99 from newegg.com. Free shipping. Score.

I got a Western Digital 640GB MyBook external hard drive for 55 bucks shipped ftom staples.com after a black friday deal and a$15.00 coupon I had. I needed something larger to store my …AHEM… growing movie and tv show collection that is living on my desktop.

For my finale online before braving the roads and stores today, I had to get something for Krista’s brother’s kids out in Kansas. so a quick visit to amazon.com yielded an adequate Christmas present for all 5 of them. They will be recieving 2 Wii games plus WiiPlay that come with an extra Wiimote. Now, It may have not been a black friday deal, but I was able to get them all of this, plus shipping to Kansas for about 20 bucks less than I would have just by buying them at retail here. Warms the cockels of my heart it does. Too bad they will be getting all this stuff around 3 weeks BEFORE they unwrap their new Wii on Christmas.

Around 11am the 3 of us headed out on the road. I had a very short list of stuff I wanted, but alsowanted to see if I could get lucky with anything else. Last year I lucked out and snuck into Best Buy at noon and snagged the last 22″ Samsung monitor for $150.

We stopped at Gamestop first. Now I know, I know. People hate on Gamestop all the time, but I wasnt about to let them sucker me into lame refurbished Xboxes or replacement plans on stuff. I wanted and got Samba De Amigo and Rayman Raving Rabbids for $19.99 each. not that big of a deal on Rayman, but half off Samba De Amigo isn’t bad.

Went to Target to return some stuff, they didnt really have anything I would consider a deal anyways, so we left there and headed to the Black Friday Mecca… Best Buy.

There I just wanted 2 things. Assassin’s Creed for PC for $10 cause I never got to play it last year, and a Wii game for my parents for $10. Brit and I walked in, went right to the racks and found both. No drama. Here it is, 12:30pm on Black Friday and all is quasi-calm.  I got what I wanted and got out. a quick stop at Michael’ss and Dick’s Sporting Goods and we called it a day.

All in all, a pretty productive day. Now, I wasnt killing myself over $200 laptops, or$15 DVD players. I didnt even need any 50″ HDTV’s. So maybe im a little jaded in my after thanksgiving buy-a-thon. But either way, I feel I made out decently.

Then again, there is always next year for the crazy flat screens…

    Well, after almost 3 years of using my faithful ol’ Motorola E815 from Verizon, I finally got a new phone. And it even has an actual marketing name too! The Venus from LG (VX8800 for all you technical kids) is a pretty hot little number. It is a sliding face phone, which is a bit of a departure for me. I’m used to clamshell/flip phones. Something about that satisfying closing of the phone when you are hanging up on someone I guess. But, seeings how you can still close this phone, its not just a candybar phone and thats it, so I still have a bit happyness in that.

The phone actually has 2 screens on it. The top screen is 320X240 pixels and the bottom is a 176 x 240 pixel colour TFT touchscreen. While any touchscreen phone is going to draw comparisons to the ubiquitous iPhone, I really don’t care about all of that. I just like that the display contextually changes depending on whatever mode you happen to be in. Using the camera? Hold the phone sideways and the screen changes to landscape orientation. MP3 player? The buttons become play, pause, and seek. Shoot, even the calculator gets classy by having the lower screen change to the plus, minus, and equals symbols.

While this post wont turn into a review of the phone, (I’ll let people who get paid to do that sort of thing handle that) I will tell you that I’ll be using it’s 2 megapixle camera to be moblogging a lot more lately. You wont see too many night pic’s from me (it doesn’t have a flash) but ill be sure to use it often.

With that, I’m off to go tell strangers in public that they should touch my Venus.