While poking around online looking for Christmas gift ideas, under the category “Wife”, this was suggested on buy.com.
Uhm, I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid… Aint no way I’m giving my wife a book about dieting.
Black Friday Shopping SCORE!
A number of years ago C and I started knocking out the bulk of our Christmas shopping the day after Thanksgiving.
Since I used to work in retail I loathed that day. I think the first time we went it was because I lost a bet or something.
But what we learned was it really wasn’t that bad. The first year we started about 8am and all day long we wondered where all the people were. The parking lots weren’t full and we always seemed to get a front row spot no matter where we went. It was a long but successful day.
For the past 7 years or so we’ve continued this tradition and we’re usually pretty successful. What we haven’t done is camp out or get up early to try and get any of the super early bird specials. In fact in the past when we’ve asked about them, a lot of stores would have substitutes which in a lot of cases have been better than the original item.
I don’t understand the fascination with a one or two generation old laptop for $299. When it comes to this stuff you usually get what you pay for. I’ve never seen a laptop ‘deal’ that was all that great of a deal. Especially when it involved staying up all night in line somewhere, usually outside in the cold to save what amounts to $200.
Of course every year there are people camping out to try and get the latest game system too. This I don’t understand either. It’s a lot of work for something that will be readily available after Christmas.
This year was no different, people were camping out late to get PS3s and Wii’s, or at least attempting too. Why these manufacturers can’t seem to put more than 5 or 6 units to each store just blows me away.
This year we decided we were getting a new TV. With some help from a buddy we located the one wanted that was in our budget. Unfortunately it too was an early bird special at Best Buy. A 42??? plasma for $999 was the goal.
The store opened at 5am, so our plan was simple, get up at 3:30am and head to the closest Best Buy. It’s a relatively new store so foolishly I figured it wouldn’t be that busy.
The alarm clock went off and we jumped out of bed. Hopped in the Excursion and headed to BB. We stopped to get coffee and someone there asked if we were headed out shopping. He was there to get coffee for his wife who was camped out at Best Buy, he said she’d been there since 11pm and others had been there since yesterday afternoon. The line was bad, real bad, it wrapped around the store by now.
Claudine and I looked at each other and thought, uh, maybe we made a mistake.
We decided we already had coffee, so we might as well get started, we drove by the BestBuy just to check, and the man was right. I bet there were 300 or more people already in line. The guy at Speedway said they were going to let people in 50 at a time. It was pretty clear to us that even if we got in line now we wouldn’t score the TV we were after so we bailed on that idea.
We decided to get started on our shopping over at Wally World. After all they were 24 hours and we could get stared now.
We headed over, got their ad, and C noticed they too had a 42inch plasma TV. Now when I was looking online, I looked at what Wally World had. It wasn’t that exciting because it was a monitor not a TV, as in no tuner included. But what they had in the store was different. The specs were as good (actually better in some ways) to the Panasonic we were originally after.
They didn’t have one on display though. We asked and these TV’s were in the layaway area, they had 5 51??? Rear projection TV’s and 8 of the Plasmas. So we went over there to stand in line. We were about 9th in line, but it appeared we were only the 2nd in line that wanted the Plasma display.
Amazingly enough we scored a TV for $988
Yeah yeah, plasma burns out and/or fades over time, but as a buddy pointed out, the life span of most are 60,000 hours. That a hell of a lot of TV if you ask me. In fact the rear projection we have now, a vintage 40 had faded long ago and it’s about 10 years old.
I think we long passed its useful life, it was no longer sharp and also had audio issues.
At 60,000 hours if you used it 12 hours a day that’s 5000 days or 13 years worth of TV. I’m pretty sure we’ll replace this baby in the next 13 years with something better.
Until then we are very happy with our purchase, and we didn’t have to deal with 300+ yahoo’s trying to get a deal at Best Buy.
The Prestige
http://theprestige.movies.go.com/
A Magic Trick has 3 parts or acts:
The Pledge; the magician shows you something ordinary, but of course it probably isn’t.
The Turn; the magician makes is ordinary something do something extraordinary.
(Now you’re looking for the secret but you won’t find it, which brings us to the third act)
The Prestige; the part with the twists and turns, and you see something shocking that you’ve never seen before.
Last night C and I went out with another couple to dinner and to see The Prestige.
An excellent movie, I won’t spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it. It’s not quite as fast paced and ‘thrilling’ as the trailer would have you believe, but it’s still quite good.
It seems to be getting average ratings of 8 or so on a scale of 1-10 and that’s pretty accurate. The acting is quite good, Michael Cane is always good and even David Bowie as Professor Tesla wasn’t too bad.
The Prestige at IMdb
I think an 8 out 10 is just about right.
Andy Furman, 700WLW Good Riddance
Andy Furman, to know him is to either love him or hate him, there is no in-between.
He’s been on 700WLW for a long time. The Enquirer says 18 years. I don’t think he’s been ‘the’ personality for 18 years but he’s been around for a long time.
(pull)I know he’s been aggravating me and making Sports-Talk hard to listen too for a very, very long time(/pull). Sports fans listen to sports shows to talk about sports, not racial conspiracy theories.
Andy wasn’t always a bigot and a racist but he’s always been at or over the top obnoxious. That was just his style. Over the last few years however he’s really turned it up a notch or 10.
I completely understand there are sport figures and teams (the lowly Bengals who hadn’t won in 10 years would be in that group) who deserve to be dug into from time to time.
Talk radio is about stirring the pot. But Andy’s style was far too aggressive, far too obnoxious, and far too vile.
I don’t know if it was simply jealousy, or what. But it was always clear; Andy had no respect for anyone, except those who kissed his butt. No matter what the issue, Andy it seemed would turn it into a racial issue. I mean it really didn’t matter. Certainly there was a time and place, during the Cincinnati riots, where race was an issue and a top ‘button’ to push. But I never really understood how that affected our sports teams? Once in a while, there might actually be a race related story out there. But with Andy, playing the race card was a weekly occurrence.
People like to try and compare Andy to Bill Cunningham. Bill Cunningham is an entertainer, he’s also borderline obnoxious. But that’s his style. A style that was in place long before Andy came around. When Willey was on during the night time, he too was often controversial, the difference was, Willy made sense most of the time. Rarely did he reach beyond common logic.
Andy it appeared to me, tried to steal from Cunningham’s play book, only in a more vile and hate spreading way. Andy simply went way too far, too often, and I for one am surprised it took this long to get rid of him.
Nope, Andy you won’t be missed by many. Only those whose butts you’ve kissed along the way and somehow avoided offending. After all these years, I don’t know how many people that could be, maybe 5 or 6?
Good luck to you in your future endeavors.
Moes Southwest Grill vs Chipotle
VS. 
It’s no secret that we love Chipotle, heck who doesn’t.
We’re certainly open to new and exciting options, heck Chipotle is always busy. A co-worker told me about Moe’s. His descriptions went something like this: “It’s like Chipotle, only better. Everything is milder, and there are more options. They have a salsa bar and give you free chips too.???
Well I’m in the camp that Chipotle is as spicy as you let them make it. Their mild salsa is tasty but isn’t spicy at all. I love spicy, I love their HOT stuff, I just can’t eat it anymore. I can’t handle what it does to me. But that’s beside the point.
I know my mother in law thinks Chipotle is spicy too, don’t know how or why but she does. So when we had the opportunity to go out today I thought we’d try Moe’s
I heard it was milder, and figured what they hey.
Let me tell you, it’s milder all right, so mild it’s almost tasteless. At Chipotle, one of the beautiful things is you see them cooking the chicken, and steak behind the assembly line as well as sautéing the peppers and opinions, etc. At Chipotle, the chicken is seasoned, and flavorful, and it’s clearly chicken, the steak, is steak.
At Moe’s, the chicken, well, its mush, it’s barely distinguishable from chicken of the sea out of a can. When was this cooked? Is it really chicken? At Chipotle, its pieces of chicken and you can watch them slice it up. The Chicken at Moe’s kind of looks like it’s been through a blender so you can’t tell what it is.
I had a burrito bowl; I looked at the chicken, couldn’t recognize it as chicken and opted for the steak. That too was a mistake. I think they get the parts that Chipotle tosses aside. Rice, black beans, sour-cream, cheese, salsa, all the fixings I’d get at Chipotle. It looked comparable.
I got chips too. In the back you can see big plastic containers full of chips. The same plastic containers we keep clothes in under the bed. I don’t know if they make their chips like Chipotle does. But they don’t put lime on them, nor does it appear salt. I figured, they have a salsa bar, so that might make up for it. I do know Chipotle has been getting a little cheap on the salsa with chips lately at least the last couple times I’ve been there.
I gathered a couple cups of salsa from the salsa bar, their gold standard, and the green salsa. Both were weak. Mild is even too strong a word. I could have just smooshed a tomato on the chips and that would have added more salsa flavor if you ask me.
Thier medium and hot sauces… No… Not good either.
The Burrito bowl? No good.
Moe does not know burritos. My wife ordered hers fajita style, yet got no peppers or onions. What?
Moe’s Blows, Moe’s does not know burritos. Moe’s does not know flavor nor value, Chipotle forever, Moe’s Never.