Some friends of mine decided to go to Best Buy to get the fabled $200 laptop that they were selling. There were only 20 to a store, so they knew they had to get there early. Best Buy closed at 9pm on Thursday, so they figured if they got there at 9:30pm and camped out the night they'd be fine. When they arrived there were already 160 people in line, some with tents, some with barbeque grills. There were enterprising people selling snacks and drinks on the black market. What the fuck? Is it really worth 10 hours of your time to stand in line to save $200 on a laptop?

I'm doing all my shopping online this year. So let's talk about the good and the bad of e-commerce sites. My criteria for a good site are three: a product ratings system, free or discounted shipping, and order tracking.

Amazon is king, of course. No doubt about that. Their Amazon Prime program is amazingly awesome - $80 a year gets you free 2-day shipping on pretty much everything they sell, no matter how heavy. I'm also a pretty big fan of Circuit City - I like that they give you the option to pick the items up in the store (great for instant gratification), but they also have free shipping on orders over $24. My one big gripe is that you can't track orders sent with the free shipping option. Staples.com is good for some things (they often have pretty good deals on office furniture), and their shipping policies and mail in rebate program are both excellent. Their prices on non-furniture items can be a bit high, however. Newegg.com and Tigerdirect.com are pretty good for more hardcore-techy oriented gifts, although their shipping prices can sometimes be a little higher than I'd like (Newegg does offer free shipping on many items, however). In the past I've been less than impressed with the websites of most of the traditional department stores (i.e. J.C. Penny, Sears, Wal-Mart, etc.). Target's site is pretty good, though, especially compared to the rest.

So what sites do you like?

Ce n'est pas une pipe. C'est une signature.

    Although I can't say it was anything like what those poor bastards at a mall or other big store must have to deal with. When you're all used, the expectations go down a notch with all but a few customers, so the worst kind of "consumer gone crazed" stories aren't really an issue-- you know, selling the last game system or DVD player in front of somebody, or telling somebody they'll have to order what they want from a catalog.
    But it's still pretty goddamn busy. For one, we offer cash as well as store credit, so we get tons of folks bringing in old CDs and PS2s to get some spending money for the holidays. (See a lot of this around the 1st of every month as well, when bills come due, something the silly season only exaggerates.) Still amusing, after all these years, to have to explain supply and demand to people on a regular basis: "No, you weren't the only one who bought that Planet of the Apes remake and thought it sucked", that kind of thing.
   To keep this short, I guess the biggest thing those of us on the other side of the register would ask for is a little compassion, and the biggest way to show this is to leave your problems at the door if you can. It's not my fault you just fought with you SO (or got dumped), or that your parents are visiting and driving you crazy. Really, I can't help you with that, so don't bitch at me as a result, m'kay?
    Oh yeah, and not acting surprised because it's busy on a holiday weekend- and commenting on it- would be appreciated as well, but as Douglas Adams noted, humans seem compelled to state the obvious, so that's just wishful thinking . . .

Ex ignorantia ad sapientiam; e luce ad tenebras

Black Friday shopping has never been a feature of my life.  Two reasons for that:

1. After a full day of gorging myself with the bird and all that good stuff which goes along with it, the last thing I want to do is roust myself at an ungodly early hour to go rub elbows (and other body parts) with hundreds of other extremely irritated and extremely wired (everyone seems to bring a never-ending supply of coffee to the queue) people anxious for the doors to open so that mayhem can break out.

2. I am a procrastinator and none of my holiday shopping gets done until the week leading up to Xmas (indeed a lot of it gets done on Xmas Eve day).  I rarely shop for Xmas gifts which would qualify as the "10 hottest gifts this year" and I find the stores to be remarkably well stocked the day before Xmas.  I'm usually looking for more prosaic stuff by then.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

Was on vacation...watched seals, went to a wine tasting then went out to dinner before returning to the room for another bottle of wine. Done with wine until about march now...

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.