I got a call at 3:30 AM from a friend who I had asked to go directly to the outdoors strip mall where a Staples, Circuity City, and Target are located. He said “Yo, there’s already 20 people on line (at staples), and theres over 100 at Circuit City”. We had been doing this for the past 3 years at the same outdoor mall, so we knew exactly what to expect. We had already made our shopping lists with the help of bfads.net. We had our eyes set on the external 400 Gig Western Digital hard drive for $99 after rebates. And the 200 Gig internal for only $19.99 after rebates. My sister had asked me to get her the 32 inch Mag LCD HDTV which was on sale for about $499 after rebates. This was the first time that Staples was going to be selling dirt cheap TVs and they also had laptops.

In the previous years the line at Staples would be quite civilized and would only attract the geeky types. This year it was hooded out. While there were 20-30 people in front of us to start, when time came for the door to open about 30 more people tried to jump the line and come right in. The last half hour there were alot of disputes taking place. One hood lady was like… “Get up out of my space.. this ain’t no Internet Sh*t, this ain’t no myspace.com!”. Another Jamaican woman yelled “Open Dee Damn Doors”. One person who was cutting was called out by this lady who wasn’t having it. She was pointing at him, saying “you wasnt here in the beginning!”. So then he proclaimed.. “I Just want my TV and I’m out”. Everytime people would act up others would either laugh, egg on a fight, or start complaining and fighting themselves.

The crowd was getting unruly even though there was a police car right there. As one of my friends yelled out.. “Theyre too busy eating donuts!”. When the doors opened it seemed as if people were going to get crushed. Especially this Desi Aunti in the front, and this small chinese woman in front of me. The cops all of a sudden decide to jump in. As my cousin is entering the door, one of the cops grabs him from the back and pulls him mad hard in order to gain position in front. They let in about 30 people. Just as I’m about to get in this cop starts pushing me. Everyone is pushing me from behind. And this cop is shoving me like anything from the front. One of my friends got pushed so hard that he ended up behind the entire crowd. Then they make us wait outside while everyone who got in is fighting over vouchers to the most exclusive items. Everyone outside is getting angrier and angrier because they know their chances to get what they want are diminishing quickly. Then the hood in them starts to come out. One person swears he will rob the first person who comes out with a TV. Another points at someone who bought a laptop inside saying “That’s my laptop!, That’s my Sh*t”. I felt like I was back in high school.

The next time they let people in, Im the first one in. And aparently I was the first of all of my friends to get in. I think the trick was to try to stay against the wall and slide right in while everyone is pushing each other. The first thing I do is go up to a rep and ask him if there are any TV vouchers left. He stares into outer space like a retard, so I move on to the next one. I ask really nicely, and this dude hands it right to me!!! I was like wow! I got it. I think since everyone who first got in was acting so crazy they decided not to give it to those who were acting up. I got the last one. Then I went to the front where they had most of the items right behind the counter and I was able to snag everything on my list. I got the pricier items first, payed for them.. then I went to get the cheaper stuff that wasn’t going anywhere.

Then we went to Circuit City where the lines were riddiculous. The average wait time on lines were 45 mins to an hour. One of my friends was working there. He was asked to work from 4:00 AM till 12:00 AM. Isn’t that illegal?

This is everything I got:

Staples
Western Digital 400GB MyBook External Hard Drive $99.98
Maxtor 200GB 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive $19.98
MAG 32″ Wide-Screen LCD HDTV $499.98
SanDisk Cruzer 1GB USB Flash Drive $7.98
Staples 6-Outlet Strip Surge Protector FREE
Staples Photo Plus Glossy Paper, 4″ x 6″, 60/pack $2.98
Staples Photo Supreme 8.5″ x 11″ Paper, Matte, 50/pack $5.98

Circuit City
Netgear WGT624 Super-G 108Mbps Wireless Broadband Router $9.99

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{youtube}dVjWfU5i2s4{/youtube}

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Technorati Profile

How to get a FREE PS3
Click here to start

1. GO TO THIS
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2. Sign up for an offer which gives you a trial for cheap. For
instance if you do the Shoppers Advantage thing its only $1.00 for
the first month. A dollar investment is crazy for a PS3! Plus I got a $10 Barnes and Nobles Gift Certificate! Another
good one is the Great Fun. They also charge you about a
dollar. As soon as your credit card is charged you usually get the credit. The Max time it will take for them to give you credit is 15 days

3. All you have to do is complete a trial offer
4. The Catch.. you have to get 12 people to do the same thing, but
the people you refer may not be able to do the same exact offer you
chose.
THIS THING WORKS!!!!! the FREE PS3 thing is started by the same people
who did FREE PSPS.

PROOF THAT IT WORKS: (This is a pic of my FREE PSP):

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I recently got OptimumOnline's triple play package and speed booster. OOL has built in HDTV channels, over 22 free HDTV channels for free with its service. To get these channels you have to make sure you have the HDTV cable box and not the regular one. I don't have a HD compatible TV, but I figured why not get a TV Tuner card for my PC which can handle HDTV. Being a ATI fan I started researching the ATI HDTV card. It turned out that this card only supports OTA HDTV, in other words over the air transmissions. It comes with this ugly Antenna which picks up HD signals. These signals are stronger in larger cities. HDTV technology is quickly being adopted in the US and in the future the old TV transmissions will become obsolete and will be replaced by HDTV. So someone can get this TV Tuner and get HDTV for free without ever buying a HDTV. In my case this didn't help me much because I am already paying for OOL and want to take advantage of my built in HDTV service. So then I start looking at other HDTV cards. It turned out that the signal which will be provided by OOL will be a digital signal and most of these HDTV cards can only handle either OTA or Analog Cable.There are two major types of HDTV signals either ATSC or QAM. I asked OOL what type their signal is and they told me that its QAM (the dude was pronouncing it as quam).

After reading a whole lot of product reviews I found that there are only two TV Tuner cards on the market that can handle a digital HD signal. One card is Called Fusion III QAM HD TV Tuner, and the other is called MyHD PCI HDTV Tuner. The Fusion III is scarcely available while MyHD can be bought on buy.com for about $150. The product description states: "With MyHD you can watch both Digital and Analog TV broadcasts on your PC at an affordable price". In a review of the Fusion III it states that this card can only handle "unencypted QAM signals". When I asked the OOL rep if their HDTV is encrypted or not… he had no clue. I am willing to take the risk and see if this thing works. I will get the MyHD card and give it a shot. If it doesn't work Ill get the ATI HDTV card and settle having to use that ugly antenna for HDTV and analog cable. Someone who reviewed the MyHD card said "Some of the local HDTV channels came in through the QAM tuner, but not much else. The channel numbering system was very confusing, but this could all be due to Time Warner Cable". I wonder if I will have the same results with OOL. Support is also horrendous for these cards.. so its going to be hit or miss. If it doesnt work its being sent back immediately.

In the process of searching for HDTV cards I learned about some cool services/softwares such as WatchHDTV (free download), BeyondTV,and TitanTV Guide. These softwares can be used to watch and schedule recordings of HDTV.  It should also be noted that many of these cards don't have great compatability with the Windows Media Center Edition. If you have MCE make sure the card you get supports it and that when you install the card you dont use the CD that comes with it, but rather download the latest drivers from the Manufacturers site (this is advice I read again and again on newegg customer reviews).

In other geeky news PLUSDECK2C is a Cassette Deck to mp3 recorder that fits in a 5.25 inch drive bay! Anyone who has a crap load of cassettes they dont want to throw out has to get this thing! It only costs $80. Definitely seems worth it.

If you know anything about anything please leave a comment!!

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