Black Friday Deals

So it's black Friday. I look at my in box and I am missing out on so many bargains. Maybe I should avoid this bright, sunny, relatively warm day; maybe I should vacate this quiet restful place. Maybe I should jump into the stress and clamor of the day, go into the poorly lighted stores with the annoying music (that isn't Sammy Davis, Jr.). I don't think so.

Blsck Fiday is the day the retail stores go from red ink losses to black ink profits. Sales increase immensely over the previous months' sales and profits begin to show, big time. The time between now and the 25th of December, over a month of shopping this year, is important to the bottom line.

But there are deals out there if you have the muscle and the stamina to go after them: a nexus tablet at Staples for $250 with 32 G; wait a minute there are 26 7" tablets online at Walmart for under $100 (sorry about the Gs though, only 4G in some and 8G in others). There is one with a 9" screen.  The first computer I ever owned was a Commodore with 4 k of Ram and I had to hook it up to a TV set so Dan could play pac man. So even these cheap things are way  better than that, and these cheap things cost about the same as that Commodore.

As I think about it, the second computer I ever owned was a Kaypro, and that had no internal memory. Everything was loaded via floppy disk and saved to a floppy disk. And then I graduated to a Radio Shack that actually had 30M of internal memory. It was miraculous. I think this served the family well until we retired from school teaching. For some reason, in retirement, we needed even more memory, so now I have a laptop with 750G, enough for thousands of albums, just as my picutre taking ambitions are fading. Where was this technology when I needed it. There are like 35 albums out there on the shelf. How many years will it take to scan those photos (even just the good ones to a computer) and why?

Sorry about the digression... back to blcak Friday. Some of the "deals" are available only online, and some have the latest software called "Ice Cream Sandwich". Perhaps they are edible. Actually, it is the latest version of Android operating system that just makes things more complicated, unless you are born with one of these implanted in your brain.

There is a 51" plasma TV at Walmart for $478. Wow! Wait, don't run out the door. Turn on 95.5, the "official" radio station for Christmas music, real loud. You have to have cacophony. And belly up to the computer. Load up your shopping cart there, and Santa will deliver.

I hope you read this before you went out. No stores this year. No crowds. Just music and the glow of the screen, and nimble fingers (no stamina, no muscles), oh, and a credit card with lots of credit available. Eventualy, though, you will have to pay for all this, either by mail or by jail.