*side note
I couldn’t remember what I bough on last year’s Black Friday, or where we lined up, so I looked it up on here, knowing that I probably wrote about it. Well, it turns out there was nothing to remember. We didn’t do Black Friday last year because apparently the deals were kinda weak and there weren’t any deals on anything we were looking for. I hella don’t remember skipping it, because it had been a tradition the previous years.

Anywho....

This year, I did my homework & research prior to Black Friday. Ever since moving to Sac, I had been looking for a tv. The tv that I had been waiting for at Frys, the Sony 46” 3D tv for $699, had never gotten back in stock (now I know why and I’ll explain in a bit). So I was determined to get a new tv this year. After looking at all the deals at all the other stores, Fry’s basically had the only good deals for tvs. They had a 55” LED 3D for $997 and a 46” LED 3D for $799. They didn’t list the brand names, but I fixed they’d be something decent like LG, Sony, or Samsung. Chris was looking for a 3D tv too, so Fry’s was a no-brainer.

Since everything opened at midnight this year, we lined up at around 10pm. At that time, the line had already snaked around to the side and we ended up near the car installation bay. And since it was relatively early (instead of being 2-3am like in previous years), it wasn’t that cold.

So they open and we finally get inside, and we have to wait in another line in the tv section. Amazingly enough, the first tv to sell out was the Sharp 70”, the most expensive tv in the ad. Patiently enough, we were able to get our tvs. Me, Chris, and Chrissy all got the 55”, which happened to be the Sony. I couldn’t get the 46” yet because they were offering that deal at 6am, so I had to go back.

After a little snaffu with the Chris and Chrissy’s paperwork, we all eventually got our tvs. We ended up leaving Fry’s around maybe around 2am. Next, we went to Best Buy in Walnut Creek. They had a bunch of games on sale for $30. I wanted to pick up Uncharted 3, Battlefield 3, and the Sucker Punch blu-ray ($7), but the line was beyond ridiculous. There two giant lines and snakes around the entire store. Soo not worth it.

Then we went to Target, cause Chris wanted to pick up the PS3 holiday bundle pack. It was only $200 and he has the Target Card, so he gets 5% off all purchases. We chill there for a bit at the Starbucks/Pizza Hut food court, to kill some time before Sears opened at 4am.

We get to Sears a lil before 4am, and there’s a long line outside. I picked up some cheap tools, a magnetic pick up tool w/led light, and 2 led flashlights, but we were really there for the Sony 3D glasses bundle. Normally, they sell for $130, but for some reason, Sears sells them for $40. And it’s not an advertised price, you have to ask someone to look up a specific item number to find it. Their system said they had 12, so I picked up 4 and Chris got the remaining 8. But it turns out they only 4 in-stock. They had to order the rest for Chris, so he’ll eventually get them, but I gave him one of my pairs. I really only need 2 pairs (one for Vallejo, one for Sac), and I was going to sell the other 2 on eBay (they’re going for $100-120).

So now it’s around 5am, so we head back to Fry’s to get in line for the 6am deals. At least this time the line is inside, in the tv department, so we can sit and watch whatever they’re showing on their tvs inside of standing & waiting outside in the cold. There was maybe 20 people in line already, not too bad. One of the managers was going down the line asking what everyone was hoping to buy. Most of the people in front of me wanted the 40” tv for $277. When I told him I wanted the 46”, he said they had plenty and I should be able to get out. Sweet!

So 6am comes around, and I swear maybe 2 minutes later, they say they’re out of the 40” AND the 46” tvs. Needless to say, everyone in line was pissed off. But the management was very cool and decided to offer alternatives. The 40” was a Coby (aka super crap), and they offerred a Sony instead (major upgrade). The 46” was a Sony, the same Sony that I had been waiting for that never came back in stock, because they had to hoard them to sell on Black Friday (but the deal in late August was $100 cheaper). The replacement they offered for the 46” was a Samsung, a definite upgrade over the Sony, so I jumped on it immediately. I was actually kind of giddy. The normal price was $1599, and Amazon’s best price was $1100, so I was saving a lot. And Samsung is basically the high end of the tv spectrum. So yeah, I was hella juiced.

Afterwards, we went to the Best Buy in Vallejo, thinking that the lines would be gone by now, which they were, but they didn’t have Uncharted 3 in stock. They only had Battlefield 3, so I picked that up.

I finally got back home around 830am. I was still hella juiced over the Samsung, and the fact that I more or less got everything that I set out to get (the exception being Uncharted 3, but I eventually got that the next day). I really didn’t want to sleep, but I knew I had to or else my who sleep cycle would’ve been completely screwed. I only got less than 4 hours of sleep. I woke up around 12 because it was getting bright in my room, even with the blinds fully closed, and there were hella birds chirping and dogs barking outside. But surprisingly enough, I was still good, still juiced from earlier.

My haul this year. Guess I had to make up for not getting anything last year

update:
There is one major downside to the getting the Samsung. I knew that Sony and Samsung were the only 2 tv companies to use active shutter 3D glasses, and for some reason I foolishly thought that they used the same standard to implement those glasses. It turns out they don’t, so Sony glasses don’t work on Samsung tvs and vice versa, so I can’t use the Sony glasses that I got for hella cheap from Sears. But I guess it’ll work out in the end, cause the profit I make from selling the Sony glasses on eBay will pay for the Samsung glasses.

There’s a company that makes a set of universal glasses that’s supposed to work on all 3D tvs regardless of active or passive glasses, but for 2011 Samsung changed their proprietary glasses from RF to Bluetooth, like a jackass. So those universal glasses don’t work with the newer 2011 models, like the one I have (but it’ll work on my dad’s Sony). They’re working on a new pair that’ll use bluetooth, but it won’t be out for a while, so I guess I’m stuck with using different pairs of glasses for the 2 tvs.

Had Thanksgiving at Chris' house this year. You know, the yoosh. I brought my slr to take some pics, cause I hadn't taken any pics in a really long time (last time was the Ragnar Relay in September) and I wanted to develop the roll. Since it was indoors, I used Jaymi's flash to take pics. I didn't really know how to work it, and figured "it's a flash, how hard could it be?"

Well, just take a look at my pics. I swear, they were taken this year. The flash has the ability to telescope a lil bit (3 settings), and I guess I shouldn't have had it telescoped as much.And I was also using my 24mm wide angle lens. The result is what you see below, making the pics look like the room was pitch dark and I was shining a flashlight at the people in the pictures.

Yeah, I don't know what's going on this pic.

My mom carving the traditional Thanksgiving lechon.

Me & Tati.

I took more pics, but they're on the roll still in the camera. Hopefully I'll take more pics before or during Christmas, and this time I'll try to use the flash better.

It might as well be, right? The day after Thanksgiving is (well, I get it off), why can’t they make the day before too? I want to say about 90% of the office was empty (that’s lowballing, it’s probably higher). There were literally only a handful of us at work, it was like a ghost town. I have a bunch of vacation days saved up, and I could’ve taken the day off, but I had agreed to do some database maintenance because doing it today would be affecting the least amount of users.

Since I was doing database maintenance, the server admin wanted to do some performance tweaks, as well as the monthly Windows Updates, to the servers. So I said “why not?”, since the database would be down anyways. Well, that jackass prevented me from leaving early, that’s “why not”.

I finished my maintenance in the morning, maybe around 10am, and I immediately told the server admin that he could start his crap, in hopes that he’d finish early so that I could go home early. I had to wait for him to finish his stuff because I had to make sure his changes didn’t negatively effect the database operations. I sent an email reminding him that he should provide me with enough time to test the database after his changes, so that just in case if anything went wrong, there was still time to fix them or revert. So I was stuck playing the waiting game.

After lunch, maybe around 130pm, my boss swings by my cube and says “What are you still doing here? There’s no one here today, just take off early”. I told my boss I was waiting on the server admin, and that I’d leave as soon as I’m done testing. I soo wanted to punch the server admin in the face. Lucky he’s in the HQ building 6 blocks over. So, as politely as I could, I sent another email to the server admin to basically hurry the fuck up cause I want to go home early. For some reason, he misinterprets my email thinking that I was working from home and states that “he’s still working on it”. OMFG!! I was ready to kill him.

Well, he didn’t finish till around 3pm, and my testing took another 30 minutes. So I left around 330, which is still earlier than my usual time of 445, but it could’ve been waaaay earlier. What a jackass. I should’ve just taken the day off.

Since last year’s event was so awesome, I told more people about it. So along with Kev, I got Haile, Mark, Albert, Jay, and Owen to volunteer too. And it was fun, though not quite as awesome as last year.

I ended up at the Irondale table, a San Jose brewery. Their logo sorta looks like the back of dollar bill, and their slogan is “So rich, it’s like money in a bottle.” My table only had one beer, a barley wine.

When people came up and asked what I was pouring, those that were familiar with barley wine immediately responded with “oh, just a little bit” or just straight passed stating they did not like barley wine. The only other barley* wine I’ve had is at Moylan’s, and theirs is super hoppy, super bitter, and super strong (10%). I can’t drink that. But Irondale’s, I’d consider drinkable, and as the night went on, it grew on me. Like, when the bottle was almost empty, I’d pour the remains into my cup and pop open a new bottle.

*I keep typing barely instead of barley, and auto-correct doesn’t catch it since barely’s a valid word.

But my beer was not popular. We started with 3 cases (12 bottles a case), and at the end of the night, I repacked 2 full cases. Jay, Owen, & Kev had the popular beers. Jay had Shipyard’s Smashed Pumpkin, which was like drinking a pumpkin pie. It was really good, and it didn’t even taste like it was 9%.

Owen was serving my favorite beer of the night. First off, the name of the brewery is Ass Kisser. Totally. Awesome. Their logo is a donkey with lipsticks marks on it’s back end. They had 3 different beers, but the hands down favorite by all was the Vanilla Pale Ale. It tasted like an A&W root beer float. So sweet, it didn’t even taste like a beer. This one was the 1st to run out.

I said it wasn’t quite as awesome as last year, because last year, Kev and I walked out with 2 full cases of beer, and it could’ve been more if I had parked closer. This year, there were more of us, so naturally I thought we’d come out with way more beer. But no, this year they were more strict and only let us take 2 6-packs each. Still better than nothing, but not as much as last year. But Mark & Albert grabbed a whole bunch of beer from the booth they working at, Maui Brewing Co., and snuck them out the side exits when the event ended and there was a big crowd at the front entrance/exit. Maybe we’ll try that next year.

But what mattered the most was that we all had a good time. In my opinion, I think I had more fun volunteering & pouring beer than I would’ve had if I had paid to get in and drink hella. If I was drinking the whole time, I would’ve been done 2 hours in (event was 4-5 hours). At least with volunteering, you’re active the whole time pouring beer & talking to hella different people, as well as drinking every now & then. We’re definitely going to make this a yearly event, as long as OneBrick keeps on doing it.

Pics!
Albert & Mark at the Maui Brewing table

Haile at the Mike's Hard Lemonade table

Kev & Owen at the Ass Kisser table

Me at the Irondale table. Soo kawawa.....no one liked my beer, had soo many left at the end.

Me & Jay. Say what?!

My haul this year. Not nearly as much as last year, but it was still cool. And I got a 49ers Coors Light pint glass.

My co-worker who sits in the cube across mine has various levels of volume. She can go from 10 to 0, sometimes in mid-conversation, kind of like a human volume knob, which is kind of crazy. This is how I would classify her levels of loud:

Lately, she's been hovering over the 9-10 level, cause she's been using her stupid headset more often. She could totally speak softer and/or turn up the sensitivity on her headset up if she wanted, but it seems like she wants everyone to hear her conversations, to prove that she's actually working. That may or may not be true, but that's how I, the person who sits closest to her, feels about it. I really hope, one day, her headset gets "misplaced". Really, you can't pick up the regular handset?!?! It's not like you're on the phone constantly, or for long periods of time, like someone at a customer service help desk or a receptionist or anything that actually warrants the use of a headset. That's just being lazy. And I've actually heard you use the regular handset and use a normal, "not-annoyingly-loud" voice, so I know you're capable of doing that. So, to get to my point........WTF?!?!

On Saturday, we (me, Shann, Jay, & Owen) went to the Tokyo Fish Market. I was looking to buy ramen for lunch at work and some onigiri. While we were there, Jay decided to do Japanese for dinner. And we made hella food: chicken donburi, chicken katsu, tempura shrimp & vegetables, gyoza, tuna & mango roll, okonomiyaki, and tempura banana w/ ice cream for dessert. (I thought we were just making okonomiyak, gyoza, and the sushi roll. I had no idea he wanted to make all the other stuff). Jay also wanted to make chicken & beef teriyaki, but he didn’t have any teriyaki sauce. Even without that, it was hella food, and it was all hella good, especially the okonomiyaki.

Last time we tried to make okonomiyaki, we didn’t have any japanese ingredients. We just found a recipe online and used the ingredients we had lying around, and of course it tasted nothing like the real thing. I suppose if you use bisquick as your flour, it’s bound to taste like an actually pancake, right? Well, this time, since we were already at the Tokyo Fish Market, we bought just about everything we needed to make it right this time. We got the special okonomiyaki flour, okonomiyaki sauce (soooo good!!), japanese mayo, dried seaweed flakes, and katsuobushi, or bonito flakes, the topping that looks like it’s dancing. Combine all that together, and it damn near tasted exactly like how they make it at Mifune Don in Japantown. And seriously, it was f’ing legit! It’s soo awesome that we can actually make this at home now.

The other day at work, I had 2 conversations with 2 different people that last over an hour where I was basically smiling & nodding 95% of the time. Technically, it was 3 if you count a meeting I attended where I really didn’t need to be there. It’s like there’s a requirement of being able to talk your ass off, most of the time about nothing at all, to be employed by the state. I’m really glad that’s not really a rule because then I would’ve never gotten hired. I need to learn to say “shut the fuck up already”, but as nicely, and politically correct, as humanly possible. I hate it when someone else wastes my time.

Last weekend, I went on an overnight trip to Reno with my 4 of my co-workers. Despite the 25+ years difference, I still had a great time, though I spent most of my time on the casino floor, playing pai gow, craps, and roulette. Even though I didn't come up, I enjoyed the ride. And if I wasn't playing at a table, or driving behind the wheel, we were someplace eating. It seems like every time I'm around this group, we end up eating a lot. Definitely not good for my "diet" (I'm not really on a diet).

We stayed at the Peppermill. I had never been there before. It's pretty nice. The room we got was hella ballin. The birthday girl sprung for the suites (boys & girls had their own suite). Kinda felt bad that the she paid for the rooms (her request, not ours), but I wasn't about to complain. I'd definitely stay there again. The tables were pretty cheap, too, but too bad it's so far away from the main group of casinos.

Oh, and I met up with Chris. He happened to be in town for work. It had been a while since I last saw him, so we caught up & stuff. Justin also happened to be in Reno that same night (small world, right?), but I didn't get the chance to meet up with him for a number of reasons:

1. I was still playing pai gow, and doing alright and wanted to let it ride. I played till around midnight.
2. They don't allow phones at the tables, so I had to step away from the table in-between hands to check my phone, plus my reception was cutting in & out, so I was getting his texts hella late.
3. He couldn't stay out late cause he had leave early the next morning to drive to Vegas. (craziness!)
4. I was playing for maybe 5 hours, and I definitely was getting my money's worth in drinks, jack & coke and bailey's on the rocks all night, so I couldn't go drive to him (Justin was staying across town at the Sands)

So yeah, sucks we couldn't hang. It'll happen one of these days.

Anywho, one of the reasons I agreed to go on this trip was two-fold: I didn't have to plan anything, and I didn't have to drive. Birthday girl did all the planning, and the other guy volunteered to use his suv and drive. Basically, all I had to do was show up. And that was the plan, up until the day before the trip. Dood's car broke down, so that plan was out the window. Of the other 3 people, 1 didn't have a driver's license and the other 2 had compact cars that weren't very comfortable for 3 passengers in the back. So I was basically forced to volunteer to drive and borrow the parental's X5.

Oh well. It still worked out, I guess. Still had a good time. But now they want to plan more trips, like to Tahoe, and big trips like to Vegas, or a cruise. I don't know about all that. The age gap may be too big for big trips. I don't know about them, but for me it was kinda awkward at some points, especially when they were referred to their "bucket lists" and referring to younger groups of people (to me) as "your people". So I guess we'll see.