The Art of Black Friday Impulse Buying
Posted by Nam-o | Filed under Electronics, Rambling
What’s impulse buying? It’s buying objects (sometimes garbage) that makes your senses tingle when you shouldn’t be buying anything.
The art is to make sure you’re getting the best deal though. Easier said than done because once you have your mind set on impulse buying on a particular item, you fail to look around and do the complete walk-around of the store which I will demonstrate for you here.
Office Depot is spitting distance from my daily grind so it’s a prime location for the “Impulse Buying” act.
Tip number 1: Go with a cohort. Someone that have a good eye and knows how to read labels well.
Why? You never know when you get that tunnel “impulse buying” vision. You see that sexy Sony laptop out in the corner of your eyeball for a price of $499. Then you run to the line to cash out with this huge smile on your face and the screen screams $699. Yeah, if you read the price tag properly, somewhere in there probably mentioned about a mail-in rebate. Don’t make yourself feel any less by not reading the tags properly. So make sure you take a friend with you to make sure you’re not doing anything foolish.
Tip number 2: As mentioned before, walk the store completely up and down!
After doing my walk around, I’ve stumbled on this killer deal on this 4gig SanDisk Cruzer Micro USB Flash for $10 bills!
Deep down inside, I have a some unexplainable knack for USB flash drives and my inner voice said,
Oh man! Awesome deal. I’ll take one!
Tip number 3: Walk up and down the store!
As I’m heading out to the line to cash out and having a satisfied feeling that I’ve achieved something no impulse buyer have ever done before, I ran into another flash memory display..
Yeah man, believe what you’re seeing! An 8gig SanDisk Cruzer Micro USB flash drive for $15 bucks! Think about it; for $5 extra bucks, you can double the capacity?
So what do you do? You extend your right arm and clinch on the 8 gig and leave the 4 gig behind.
What did we learn today about the Art of Impulse Buying? Walk up and down the store and definitely take your time to weed out the instant rebates from the mail-in rebates.
Tags: buying, flash, impulse, rebates, sandisk, usb, woot
Nam-o’s 2008 Top 5 Black Friday Draft Picks
Posted by Nam-o | Filed under Electronics, Rambling
You and I know, the best thing about black friday is the crazy electronic deals. As mentioned before, the 2008 electronic draft choices are a bit slimmer than the past couple of years, but there still a few great choices out there.
So, here’s my 2008 Top 5 Black Friday Draft Picks.
- Panasonic Viera 42″ 1080p Plasma HDTV @ newegg.com for $799.99 with free shipping.
- Sony Walkman Mp3 & Video player @ Staples for $59.99.
- Garmin nuvi 260w GPS @ Best Buy for $189.99.
- Hauppauge WinTV HVR-850 HD USB Tv Tuner @ Circuit City for $19.99.
- Dell Vostro A860 Laptop @ Dell.com starting at $349.99.
Honorable Mentions: All of those super low price blu-ray movies (**Cough cough** Iron Man for $15) and various capacity usb thumb drives which can be found at your local electronic house including Wal-mart and Target.
Now go out there and fight the crowds for these draft picks!
*Some of these links won’t show the ‘black friday’ prices until black friday!
Tags: black friday, draft picks, top 5
Gobble Gobble.. Happy Thanksgiving!
Posted by Nam-o | Filed under Rambling
Tags: thanksgiving, turkey day
Newegg Finally Dishes Out Intel’s Latest Offering: Core i7 and x58
Posted by Nam-o | Filed under Electronics
If you have been keeping up with the tech gossip, you probably have heard and/or seen some smashing i7 cpu’s combined with an x58 mobo benchmarks.
For some of those that haven’t seen any of these benchmarks, head over to these links:
Yeah, pretty impressive huh?! Supposedly, newegg was not suppose to open the purchasing flood gates until tomorrow. So, if you have the loot and have the need to upgrade your 486dx box, now is the time to do it if you really want to be the coolest nerd on the block!
As of right now, the Intel i7 920 will eat up $319 and the top of line Extreme Edition will burn you at a price of $1069. Oh, it’s free shipping on these items if that makes it easier to swallow. Core i7 Cpu’s
And currently for an x58 equipped motherboard, prices will range from $220 and right under the $400 mark. X58 equipped mobo’s
Happy gaming!
Tags: core, cpu, edition, extreme, gaming, i7, intel, mobo, x58
2008 Black Friday… eh?!
Posted by Nam-o | Filed under Rambling
After combing through the holy grail of the alleged Black Friday ads for Circuit City and Best Buy, I’ve been let down pretty hard. Where are the deals that would want me to head out to my local big box electronic store and have Central Command air lift some thanksgiving turkey to me while I linger outside until the magical doors open?
And I really don’t think Wal-mart counts in my book because I do value my life enough not to get stampeded on just for some $300 laptop or whatever they may have in their ads.
Does this means everything is lost? Well, no. USB thumb drives and Blu-ray movies, just to name a few, is on the cheap all over the place which would make great stocking stuffers or could be bundled together.
Hopefully newegg.com will pull out the stops with their higher end products to create some juicy online sales this year.
Tags: best buy, black friday, circuit city, laptop, letdown, sales, stampede, wal-mart
Score: Best Buy +1 | Circuit City -1
Posted by Nam-o | Filed under Rambling
Oh man, what happened Circuit City?! It’s so sad to see Circuit City to go down the tubes as I grew up with Circuit City before the Best Buy clan came in the picture. Back in the days, I even had a choice to work for Best Buy or Circuit City and I chose to stick up for my long time Circuit City friend. Hopefully, me leaving the City didn’t have any negative effects.
I never really understood why the store I worked at decided to rip up the hard wood floors for cheap looking carpet tile. Did the head boss in Richmond, VA thought pawning in the wooden floors out of desperation?
Another thing that kinda got me wondering was the home theatre display. I mean, some of the stores used to have this really nice lounge like area with a really nice t.v. and some stellar speakers engulfing your senses. For some odd reason, Circuit City decided to rip that out too!
I never understood the setup of the cell phone department. Actually, the Verizon department. By making it exclusive, you just killed off everybody who wanted to jump the Verizon ship for whatever reason to the At&t, Sprint, etc. ship. The sad fact is that, Verizon had their own stores outside of Circuit City. In essence, the Circuit City stores were picking up the straglers that totally missed the whole Verizon store in the mall, strip mall, standalone stores and just don’t care about purchasing cell phones and plans from Verizon’s website.
And those mail-in rebates.. uggh!
If you asked me what went wrong, I felt Circuit City wasn’t competative enough; seems like the goods inside was always shrinking unlike their competitors. The store was so huge but the store was lacking the vast inventory and the wow factor to have the tech kids coming back drooling for more. Most of the stores just felt like a huge garage with a couple pieces of respectable electronics spread out to fill up the large void we all call space.
Well Circuit City, you will always be remembered with the once maroon colored floors and the short lived DIVX video players.
Tags: bankruptcy, best buy, circuit city, computer, Electronics, lacking, mail-in rebates, memories, televisions, wal-mart
Web Design Service :: FAQ
Posted by Nam-o | Filed under F(requently).A(sked).Q(uestions).
I would like to have a brand new web site for my personal/small business needs but what is involved on both parties to get a web site up and running?
From the client’s side, you don’t necessarily have to do anything; but to save some time, the client can do some simple small task such as:
- Searching and purchasing an available domain name
- Acquiring a web hosting service
As a client, you can visit some of these providers to purchase an available domain name and sign up for web hosting: godaddy.com, business.yahoo.com*, bluehost.com, hostmonster.com.
*If you want to utilize forms to give visitors an opportunity to forward their feedback and questions, I would stay away from yahoo web hosting services. The problem is that yahoo apply certain design restrictions which makes it nearly impossible to produce forms.*
From the designer’s end, I would initiate one of serveral face-to-face meetings and/or phone conferences to discuss and review your needs, what I am able to produce for you, time restraints, cost, disect the contract, and go over any other questions and concerns the client may have.
Typically, the production of a web site consumes 4 to 6 weeks but that all depends on the client’s requirements, how elaborate the design of the web site, and if a domain name and web hosting needs to be setup.
If you have any questions, comments, and/or concerns, please feel free contact me by: emailing me (info@digitalfabstudios.com), giving me a ring at 813.425.5700, or expressing your question on one of my blog post.
Tags: concerns, contract, faq, questions, services, web hosting
Nam Builds a Robot
Posted by Nam-o | Filed under DIY
During my hourly blog visit routine, I ran across this cool looking picture of robots at the gizmodo site and I was like, “Thist would be a cool and fun project to do!”
The sad thing is that I decided to commit to this project on the 30th of October. Yeah, I’m not giving myself a whole lot of time for any type of creativity. So, I had to start collecting boxes pronto!
So, without further adieu, here is the project breakdown..
Basic Materials:
- Card Board Boxes
- Duct Tape
- Box Cutter
- Robot Spray Paint (Silver)Dryer Duct or something similar for arms and legs
Unless you’re making robots for an 8 year old child, tracking down cardboard boxes to fit an adult sized frame is a lot harder than you may think. The easiest place to hunt down adult-sized boxes would be your local 24 hour Super Wal-Mart. Make sure you visit the “domestic” department (where the appliances and pillows live) between the stocking hours of 1am to 6am. Sure, you could visit the food isles for your cardboard needs but the boxes tend to a bit thin and you could potentially end up smelling like lunch meat.
Once you gather all of your components and materials, utilize the box cutter to cut your robot’s eyes, mouth, and any other openings. Then head over to a well ventilated area and grab that spray can of Robot Spray Paint to dress up your robot. Don’t worry if the outside of boxes have any shipping labels or stickers as these elements will give off a DIY, homemade look. Since you’re painting cardboard, the paint’s baking time should only take approximately 30 to 45 minutes.
After the baking period, test fit your new creation, make any minor adjustments, and then go out to do some interplanetary domination; Ironman style!! RAWR!!
Tags: DIY, halloween, homemade, ironman, rawr, robot, tony stark, walmart
