Black Friday Cautions

Hi everybody,

I awoke early, as usual, thinking I'd be going to some of the black friday sales this morning, fighting throngs of people for the best deals on things.  And then I didn't.  I spent a few minutes online looking at the sales, and discovered that most of the doorbusters were things that I didn't need.  They also tend to be super cheap for a reason.  It's tricky, but effective.  It's also one of the reasons we as consumers, and then as people, become wary.  Exhibit a) a tablet from bestbuy that has android and costs $60, but doesn't allow access to the play store, has terrible reviews and really wouldn't be as functional as my Droid Razr Maxx.

As always, cheap things need to be taken with a grain of salt.  It's sad, but true.  The people marketing the products find the thing made of cheese and bad glue, put it out front for a ridiculously low price, and hope that people will create a feeding frenzy over it, and then feel so good that they won that they'll buy it before they realize what a honking load of crap it is (I.E. read the review).  Then other people will feel badly that they didn't get the super cheap one and buy the next most expensive one so as to not leave empty handed.

There's an excellent chapter on consumer trust in one of Dan Ariely's books:
http://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/
He basically gives away free money, and people are so jaded that they walk away from $50 bills, thinking that there must be a catch.  I wish that we, as a country, could stop this consumerism.  My neighbors already have their xmas lights up, the night of thanksgiving.  I feel like the "holiday season" keeps creeping up, earlier and earlier, much as the black friday sales have.  Black Friday has become Black Thursday night, so that before we've even finished being thankful for things and stuffing ourselves silly, we're already inundated with sales flyers and crappy products being sold cheaply.

Here's to being truly thankful and waiting until we need something to go buy it.  Oh, and to reading the reviews:)

~Mark

SMF 11/3/12 Kindle Fire

Hi everybody,

I just won a Kindle Fire from the Hartford Courant (http://www.courant.com/).  It's a snazzy size, works in color and does a bunch of cool e-readery things.  For instance, it can read websites, newspapers, blogs, books, and some other stuff, as well as play videos and music.  I'm still learning the tricks of it, but I'm a bit nonplussed . . . . I think my phone can still do more.  I wonder if there's a way to root the thing so I can put some sort of android OS on it.  Well . . . . a better android.

http://liliputing.com/2012/05/how-to-root-a-kindle-fire-with-software-version-6-3-1.html

Oh Hey!  It turns out you can.  I'm still filled with some trepidation though; as soon as you do that, you void the warranty, and it might be worse at what it's purpose-built to do (i.e. read books).  I like the bigger display, and with my bluetooth keyboard attached I could basically have a mini-laptop on my hands.  However, I'm less than pleased with the fact that to install an app I have to first find it in the amazon store (not google play).

If I didn't already own a droid which does more, I think I'd be really impressed with this thing, but I think they may have limited it a bit too much.

Anybody care to weigh in?

~Mark

p.s. - this time change thing stinks.  My body hasn't realized that it's a bad idea to wake up at what I call super-grandpa-o'clock (this morning I woke up at 4, which is really 3).  What to do with all this extra time . . . .