Black Friday Came Early

This past Friday was a "secret" sale at Wal-mart. Secret is the operative word. Can you really have a secret sale if you are promoting it on television and in adverts? I found about this sale on engadgethd.com and with the offer of an Toshiba HD DVD Player for $98.87, I knew I had to get one. Well the truth is that I got one 3 weeks prior from Amazon.com and it cost about $220, so I got this one so I can return the other back to Amazon.

The sale was suppose to start at 8 a.m. today so I decided it was best to get there 30 to 45 minutes beforehand. Luckily there is a Wal-mart two blocks from where I work so I wouldn't be too late arriving to working. On my way to the store I called my sister because she wanted to get a laptop for my nephew. I wasn't sure if people would be camped out for these deals, so I told her I would do my best to try and get one.

I finally arrive and the parking lot seemed a bit busy, so I rushed in the store to lay claim to my bounty. As I walk into the store, I saw a woman walking out with the HD DVD player I wanted. I asked if there any more in stock, to which she said "a few." I ran to the electronics department only to find no one there. There were two DVD players and 15 laptops left, so I grabbed one of each and made my way to the register. I also saw the new Sony Playstation 3 on sale, but I had no interest in that. The cashier rang up my sale while text messaging on his phone. Success. I called my sister to let her know that I got the laptop. I contemplated whether I should hit up another Wal-mart nearby for stock up on HD DVD players, but I decided against it because I didn't want to be late for work.

When I arrived to work, I stashed my bounty in the trunk of my car. I made sure no one was around so they wouldn't get any ideas before I made my way to my office.

7:50 a.m.

I managed to get to work ten minutes earlier on this busy morning when I am normally fifteen minutes late. To kill some time I began to skim the pages of Tennis magazine.

Socks. I forgot to get a pack of socks while at Wal-mart.

I knew I would forget something.

Crashing

Before I went to Houston last week -- I can't believe a week has already passed -- I shutdown my computer. I usually never shutdown my computer but since I was going to be away for an extended period of time, I thought it would be best to turn it off. When I got back home I tried to boot up my computer but it wouldn't start.

I repeatedly turned it on and off ... nothing. I finally took the components out and reseated them in their proper place and the computer began working. Everything was fine until yesterday when high winds caused a power outage. I have 2 80 gigabyte SATA hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration. One hard drive is working fine and the other is beginning to fail. This worries me because I have a lot of data stored on these drives. First thing I will do is to use Norton Ghost to backup all my drives so I will not lose my data. Then I will need to leave the computer off until I get replacement hard drives.

CompUSA is have a Thanksgiving sale next week on Seagate 160GB SATA drives for $19.99. I think they are opening early so I will have to get there at least 1 hour before they open so I can get at least 3. Hopefully, I will be able to get these so I can get my computer back up and running.

Update to follow.