So we decided to camp outside Best Buy this "Black Friday", the day after Thanksgiving...because of the "super deals". My bro wanted a new computer, so did one of his friends...and I wanted to score a $800 Toshiba DLP projector for $400 bucks.
We rolled out there at about midnight, since the stores open at 5AM, to find that aobut 70-100 of people were already there camped out. Some since 2PM the same day. Just to show you how crazy some of these deals were...my brother got a new computer w/ a Celeron D processor, 512MB RAM, 100GB HD, 15" LCD monitor, color printer...for $189 (normal price of $580). How insane is that?
At about 4AM things started to get crazy as the Best Buy people handed out "tickets" for the 20-30 such computers to line of ~1000 people. Things seemed like they would devolve into a riot as a large mob of ~50 people was waiting across the parking lot, like they were going to "bum rush" at the last minute cutting the people who have been waiting for HOURS.
Yea...that was an interesting experience to say the least...my brother bought a "ticket" for the computer he wanted from this guy who was scalping them. I guess he paid the guy $80 dollars, which considering the sale price of the computer was a steal.
Once we finally got into the store at 5AM, things further devolved into "cluster-fuck" status, it was nearly impossible to navigate the store...I did manage (after being told 2-3 times that they were sold out of the projector I wanted) to find a half-intelligent "Best-Buy Dude" who went over and pulled me the projector I wanted....they only had 1-2 left. A wave of relief rushed over me [grin].
Things are getting bad, every year it gets worse and worse at these kinds of events.
Anyways...it was totally worth it...since I now have a ~9 foot diaganal projected image on my wall, with both of my work computers hooked up to it. I also just picked up a NVIDIA Geforce 7600GS to compliment the ATI X1600 in one of my other computers...the DVI output from the 7600 is powering the projector, and the S-Video Out from the X1600 is also an input into the projector.
It's great to watch movies on it, loud music + visualizations, and obviously play games :-)
Life sized gangsta'...
Main menu...
Hey look it's Fat Tony [grin]
In the RTS view....
OMG PROJECTAR GAEMDEV!!!11
The source of the madness...
Gah...that's a huge...thing...
I'll have a more substantive "Gang War" related update soon enough, I'm going to get some sleep after last night...and an all-nighter the day before preparing for a test session w/my publisher. Actually who needs sleep...I'm gonna play Battlefield 2142 on this baby.
- Dan
