The Thanksgiving and Black Friday 2024 Blog

Hey everyone, my how time flies, it's already Thanksgiving. I got an email from dogechain saying they were going to shut down completely and I had to back up my wallet or else I'll lose about $100 worth of doge I got back in college. I set-up my old college laptop, installed dogecoin core, and loaded my wallet information into it to import there. This required updating the blockchain, and it's been going for about a week now and isn't even 70% done. Whatever, time for the holiday. This year was kind of different due to my grandpa passing and aunt going to her brother's out of state instead of staying home, and my grandma no longer living independent and having even more mobility problems than normal, but even then a lot of things stayed the same. Wednesday was a normal work day, and then we went to the in-laws for the evening so we would be ready for the fun of the weekend. Pretty basic day, just spent a lot of the evening going through online black friday ads and watching some tv. Got a pretty good list ready. Something that caught my attention was Target selling an XBOX 360 for $75. I called IRA to see it since it was so weird, and he got excited since his 360 red ringed and he wanted a new one. OK add Xbox 360 to the list.

Thursday Thanksgiving day. I bought a news paper to get the black friday ads because I like to have the physical paper, but I think this will be the last time I do this because it didn't have any of the big players like walmart, target, meijer (I'm mid-west), BJs, gamestop, or others and that was kind of the same as last year. Oh well. About 1PM we went to my parents house for the party. Because of nursing home preferences and rules, we had dinner and celebrating a little early. Normally dinner is around 4PM and accordion sing along is around 6PM, but this year we shifted everything forward by about 1.5 hours. The moving is where things got kind of complicated. My grandma had broken her hip earlier this year and it just made it harder to move, and the dementia makes it all the harder to have her move herself properly (don't grab the walker handle, grab the arm rest, I said don't grab the walker handle, OK I guess we're using the walker but don't fight too much when we have to lift your arms). God bless her but it does complicate things by a lot. Dinner was great, ham and green beans for me, everyone else enjoyed that and turkey and stuffing and such. Great meal. Getting grandma back to her chair for the sing along was hard too, but this time we remembered that we had a wheel chair from my grandpa after he passed.

The sing along was fun like always, over the river, apple peaches pumpkin pie, and some other fun songs. After the sing along it was time for desert. Time for some comical problems. The accordion friend likes to bake and always makes a cake and a pie, and she forgot the pie at home; there was some confusion or something and the pie was left on the table in the garage. Whoops, oh well. There was some more visiting and after a while it was time for everyone to leave. Getting my grandma back in the car was a major production. We got her into the wheel chair and just walked her to the back door where it's easier to move, and then we just picked her up in the chair and carried her down the steps, just like what we'd do with my uncle who was always in a wheel chair. Brought back a lot of memories for us. Once we got her in the car we brought up my parent's Christmas decorations and assembled the tree. After that it was a calm early night at the in-laws because IRA and I had black friday shopping to do early in the morning.

OK, now it's the heavy time, early morning shopping. IRA woke me up at 4:30 so we could get to stores when they opened. Basically everything opened at 6AM except for gamestop opening at 5AM, so first stop on our loop was gamestop. We went to one that was somewhat close that had a target really close (same shopping district) at about 5:15, but when we got there they didn't have any of the games I was looking for, and directed us to go to a store that was further away on the rout but not exactly close. Change of plans, went to that store and found 2/3 of the games I was looking for (Hogwarts Legacy and Tomb Raider Anniversary). Score. Afterwards we went to the target that was fairly close and only had to wait in the cold for about 15 minutes. Because there was some big Taylor Swift promotion they had to have an employee come out and give us directions on what the limits are. Wild thing is the employee was someone I went to highschool with, He was one of vikingpolak's friends and I didn't really recognize him (and he didn't remember my first name, just my last), but it was pretty funny. I had no need for the Taylor Swift stuff, but the CD was under $20 and she's really popular right now, so I picked up a copy to try to resell later. I also picked up Kirby Forgotten Land, a pop socket for mom in law, and a bullseye squishmellow for mskate. We couldn't find the squishmellow and so we asked the highschool friend where it was, so that was pretty cool. As for the XBOX, when I asked the employee in electronics he said "we haven't sold xbox 360 in years, we're stopping XBOX ONE even, you'll have to go to a retro store for that." I then said "the ad lied to me, it said you had XBOX 360s for $75." It wasn't a console, it was a megablocks building set. Why the confusion? It shipped in a box that was a replica of the xbox 360 box, looks extremely close to an xbox 360 in a low resolution scan, and comes with a replica copy of halo 3. The employee said "yeah if we had them I'd get one just for nostalgia." Oh well. After Target we went to Walmart, I was looking for the basically half off gaming laptop since I need a new laptop (my current laptop is about 8 years old and is starting to fail, and I want a computer that can actually play all the games I get for free with prime), a cheap dresser unit, and a wire rack. All of them were online deals, dang, that was a waste.

We decided to give one more gamestop a try since I still was looking for roller coaster tycoon adventures delux, and so IRA looked up where the next closest gamestop was. He gave me the directions and when I got close I'm like "wait a minute, I know which gamestop we're going to, it's the gamestop right by where my grandma used to live, we'd go here back when it was funcoland." They had Roller Coaster Tycoon for PS4. I was hoping for switch, but PS4 works for me since I have a PS4. Since we were in a neighborhood I knew, we went to the dollar general that used to be the family video we'd rent movies from on Friday nights. I got us dawn soap, command hooks, pedialyte (mskate needs it for her electrolyte deficiency), and garbage bags. Since it was now like 9AM and were close to where the accordion friend lives, we called to see if they were up and able to give us the pie (they wanted us to have it to share with everyone). They were and we got the pie. After that we went to my grandma's condo just to look around since my mom had the house completely redone (new paint, no carpet, no furniture), and go to the bathroom. It was pretty surreal; it was familiar but completely foreign. Walked the house probably 1 last time. There was one more place, we went to the shopping center about a mile down the road from my grandma's house to go to 5 below to see if we could do the squishmellow $20 bag. They were completely out, it was just something for the first 100 people, but that's OK because we still have a big bag of stuffed animals from other big sales. That was OK though because there was a new retro store in the shopping center and they had some black friday deals. For me it was the buy 2 get 1 free on games, so I picked up 6 PS2 games and IRA got some movies on buy 2 get 2 free. On the way back we stopped at BJs where I got a new TV for the bedroom (our TV was the TV I bought for my dorm room years ago, and it's not very good) and some gift cards on discount (I think it was subway, disney, and uber). Once we got back I unloaded the car and took a nap.

Later in the day mskate wanted to do some shopping with us, and so we went out again in the afternoon. We went to bath and bodyworks, CVS, bjs, and the retro store again (because IRA decided he wanted to get an $80 used xbox 360 from them). At CVS we got a peanuts cookie tin for my dad since he likes Charlie Brown and Snoopy. BJs was just a couple more gift cards and filling gas. When we went to the mall with bath and bodyworks we found a store that was just gochapon. I looked for a machine with figures I would be interested in, but didn't find anything too interesting. IRA decided to though and got a digimon figure. At bath and bodyworks we got soaps and lotions for the moms on buy 3 get 3, and then got hand sanitizers for the workers at grandma's assisted living center. This is when we discovered that IRA didn't have his debit card, meaning he lost it. That was pretty bad, but we retraced our steps and went to the retro store where he last used it. That's where it was, and apparently he wasn't the first to do it. He got his xbox and some more movies, so crisis averted. Rest of the day was pretty low key.

Saturday was a simple day. We went to my grandma's assisted living to get her apartment all decorated and just visit. We already had a little tree set up, but it didn't have a lot of ornaments and we bought some garland to hang on the wall and put some ornaments on it. I'm glad I bought the command hooks because we needed them for the garland. We got it all set up while she was still at lunch, and once it was decorated we brought her to her apartment and just visited. We didn't have a lot to do with her, so I put on the wedding video I made for my cousin (the one we saw in Hawaii earlier this year). She doesn't know him, he's on my dad's side and she's my mom's mom, but she really likes little kids and half the video is just my 2 year old niece-cousin being cute, so it was a great little thing and she especially liked watching the part where we went to Disney Aulani for the character breakfast. After that we just walked her around her floor until it was time for their activity. It was a good little visit. The rest of the day was pretty calm, just unpacking the stuff and trying to find places for it. Later in the evening we went to a drive in theater to watch The Polar Express and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. We saw Red One and Elf the week prior, and figured out how to keep warm without turning the car on better than we did that time. It was a good fun time.

Well that was Thanksgiving weekend. Glad I can finally get this out at a reasonable time this year. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

My First College Spring Break

Hey everyone, I just got back from spring break and man was it awesome. The hotel, the partying, the girls. I got photos.

Now that you clicked on the page from the google search and the first couple of lines of text, time to get into what really happened over spring break. If I did fool you into clicking, joke's on you.

OK so I pack up and get ready for the train ride back home. Taking the train works really well because I get on a city bus, get on the train, and then my brother comes and picks me up 4 1/2 hours later. Here's a "just my luck" incident; I get to the station, I'm sitting and waiting, reading my newspaper comics. 5 minutes before the train gets here, and I realize I forgot my laptop charger. I had the feeling that I was forgetting something but couldn't place my finger on it until it was to late. I read my newspaper comics on the train as well as played my DS until the battery died. I didn't want to use my laptop because my battery only lasts 4 hours on a single charge. I watched some TV shows I got off Zune for the last hour of the ride home. Yeah I use Zune. Zune doesn't ask me to update every week and I can get free Microsoft credits by searching with Bing. Never seen apple or google do that. Anyway back to the train.

Most of the time I'm lucky and can get a set of seats to myself. This wasn't the case this time. I sat next to a gentleman and there was no issues. I didn't get to spread out like I like to but oh well. Still more room than on an air plane, plus I didn't have the same amount of crap that I brought home last time. Last time I had 2 weeks worth of laundry, my SNES games, and other things I'm forgetting. This time it was only a couple days of laundry, my suggie, and toiletries. Still brought all my electronics but that all fits in this shoulder sack my grandpa got from Sports Illustrated and gave it to me. I was wearing my safety yellow hoodie like normal and this time around my brother was out waiting for me at the station and not in the car. He was able to pick me out easy. Then again not many people wear safety yellow, at least not yet.

I get home and say hi to my parents and such. I try to see f maybe, by chance, my dad's laptop charger would fit mine. Maybe if he had HP as well or if I had Toshiba as well, but no. Crap. That meant I was going to need to use the family computers, and I've really come to like mine. I don't have to share mine, and it's more portable. I haven't destroyed my laptop battery like my dad intentionally did his. And while I can make mine just as connected as a desk top, it's not like the one upstairs. Plus I was going to move my videos off my hard drive and put them on the data hard drive with all my other videos. I keep the masters in case something goes wrong. I managed, like a wizard with someone else's wand, or a teen with someone else's phone.

When I got home, I enjoyed the comforts of home; dark quiet sleeping space, Disney XD, Nicktoons, our leather couch, SOFT toilet paper, a shower I don't need to wear shower shoes into, everything except home cooked meal, because it was a lent Friday. Home cooked meal, and Costco muffins came the next day. Saturday wasn't much. Just relax and work out plans for the coming week.

Sunday was a nice day. It was the 2 year anniversary of my uncles death. We had a mass for him and then went out to the cemetery. I won't forget you Mike, I miss you. Afterwards we went to the Golden Corral, where I had about 3 servings of steak, a cup of chicken noodle soup, and some chocolate fountain desert. It is funny, they have Golden Coral commercials playing on these big screen TVs while we wait in line, and it's the same 2 commercials over and over. Last time I told my grandpa to bring his TV remote because it's the same brand as his home TV so we could see what else is on. I asked him where the remote was, but he didn't remember. Oh well, they would have frowned upon it and might have banned us.

Monday was fun. My grandpa and I went to see The Artist, which you can read my review here. I'm just gonna say, great movie. My grandpa liked it. It wasn't really a blast from the past for him since he grew up with talkies, but he liked it either way. I also brought over my new to me copy of Robot Gyromite for the NES. They have a NES and I don't. I tried to play it, and it worked fine to my surprise. No Nintendo blow, wiggle around, or blinking red light. Maybe I just need to clean the games that don't like working all the time. I wish I had a R.O.B. because it's really awkward trying to hold 2 controllers at the same time, using the player 1 controller for moving Dr. Gyro, at least I think that's his name, and then the second controller to move the pillars. Oh well I bought it for fun.

Tuesday I hung out with my boys, Zeldamaster93 and Max. ZM93 recorded Bad Teacher on Starzsummer here. Afterwards we watched South Park Cartoon wars parts 1and 2. ZM93's parents got us all pizza. Max had to leave soon after that, but I was able to stay. We watched an episode of Super Mario's Super Show just for some fun and to make fun of it. It used a lot of the sound effects and music from the games so I was impressed some. Then at the credits, because we're nerds, we were "doing the Mario" with the instructions. It's this dance thing that the Mario guy does during the credits and they say "do the Mario do do the Mario," and tell us how to do it. We're nerds. When I got home I watched the movies my brother and I rented Saturday. It was Iron Man 2 and Thor. Good movies.

On Wednesday, I ate 3 plumbs, but I was still hungry. Hungry Hungry Caterpillar joke, sorry if that's a bit to obscure. I returned the movies to Family video, and asked for an application for work. They said it was online, so I did it. I forgot how much work goes into filling in an application. Spent the better part of Wednesday working on that. I did get to see my best teacher from high school, whom I'll refer to as Mr. G. I had hi for American History, Web Design, and the Web Design class I helped in. He's a great man. He wrote some recommendation letters for me for eagle, scholarships, and college. We went out to lunch at a local, not gourmet but high quality, burger place. We talked and ate, Mr. G's treat. Great seeing him again.

Thursday I got applications to other places around my home town. I got them from our local toy store, local bowling ally, local grocery store, and local hardware store. They seemed promising enough, except for the bowling ally who said that I probably wouldn't get hired. So when I was about to fill that one out, I decided against it and put it in the shredder, because I already put some important info in. I got the hardware application only after I got the proper nut and bolt for the pair of scissors I was fixing. The plastic hut thing holding the 2 pieces together broke but that was all, an easy fix. Mom said just throw it out, but for 64 cents, I saved a perfectly good pair of scissors, with just a minor ghetto factor. While I was there, I thought "hey, I'll get an app here too." Filled out the applications for the rest of the day. This was also the day my grandparents took me to Logan's Road House. Had the steak and ribs combo, and because it was that, they didn't bug me about "you don't want that get this instead." It was a nice sampling of steak and ribs, and fries, and chips. I also went over to the high school because my brother needed his Saxophone. While I was over there, I thought "hey I'll go visit." There were a few minutes of class left, so I thought, "who can I interrupt to say hi?" I chose my old AP Calc teacher, A, because he was closest, B, because he knew and liked me well, and C, it was individual work time. He showed me off to his class and it was fun. I saw other teachers and some friends I know that are still there. The Jazz Band guys wanted me to stay and play with them, but I told them "when I'm home in May." Fun Fun.

Friday was great. I finished up the applications, took them back to toe stores, and hung out with my friend Mskate. She's great, but we are just friends, regardless of what anyone may tell you. We just sat and caught up for an hour and 40 minutes. Talked about life. She then gave me a ride to the high school so I could pick up the car. That's when I dropped off the applications. Once my brother got home we went to the salvation Army. I think now would be a good time to mention that we got a new HD TV earlier in the week and I connected the Xbox 360 via HDMI midway through. I didn't say earlier because I don't remember which days those were. We're also going to set up the old TV, and my old school video games in the basement. At the salvation army, I was looking to see if they had a TV stand, because sometimes they have what you need, but most of the time they don't, at least in my cases. I did find Xbox 360 component cables, and since we got the lower model or something, our 360 only came with standard def AV cables. Even though I got the 360 connected with HDMI, giving us the best picture available, I still got the component cables, because they were $3, much cheaper than retail, and because I want a complete set. Call me weird, but I couldn't pass it up. No stand unfortunately, but we wouldn't have had time to set up anyways. We moved the old TV down to the basement, and while we were doing that, I kept having visions of "smash! Noooooooooooooooo!" Thank god that didn't happen, because quality tube TVs are kind of hard to find for sale. We also went out for dinner because it was the last time we'll all be together for a while and it's close to my brother's birthday. Even though it was Friday and lent, I had meat and we all agreed that because it was the last celebration, I can give up meat for dinner tomorrow.

Now for today, Saturday. I had my last Costco muffin for a while. I did my last minute packing and got on the train. I read my volume 1 of Pokemon Adventures Diamond and Pearl Platinum. Based on the characters on the cover, and the title, I thought it might be a continuation of DP Adventures, the series I read for an English project. Unfortunately it's not, but still good in it's own right. After reading that, I watched some promos and extras I got off PSN on my PSP. That lasted me an hour or so. After that I watched Rocco's Modern Life that I got off Zune. After 1 episode, next stop my stop. Packed up and got ready to get back to my dorm. We made sure I got back on Saturday this time because no buses on Sunday and don't like taking the cab. Got back, unloaded my stuff, got my back week of Wall Street Journals, watched some TV, and went to eat dinner. I got down the steps and realized I didn't have my vest. No one was really there, but I couldn't help but feel that some people didn't recognize me without my safety yellow. I did have the sacrifice of no meat because tonight was good burger with bacon. It was a sacrifice because all I had was a slice of cheese pizza and toast. It was food for survival, like dorm food is. Well this has been Pokematic signing off and bu-bye.

Home Alone

Hey everyone, something happened that hasn't happened before. My parents left for the weekend and my brother is at camp. I have the house all to myself! Before you start jumping to conclusions, I didn't have the stereotypical no parents party. I couldn't, none of my friends were available. 2 of my friends and I have been compiling a list of movies we need to all watch together. This would have been the perfect time to do that. I was even given expressed permission that they could stay over and watch the movies. Only problem, they were both unavailable. I invited others over, and they were busy too. I couldn't have a party if I tried, and I did.

Well one thing I have been enjoying was having the family room and TV set up all to myself. Typically my brother and I have to fight over the TV, typically ending in even share over time. Well not having to fight over it is great. I don't have to watch call of duty or other stupid xbox 360 games. I like using the hulu plus option. I have a free trial because I connected my facebook and hulu accounts. I don't have gold, but my brother does. He doesn't have hulu, but I do. We share the plus account because we each have one half to the puzzle.  I've also taken a computer monitor that has a larger screen than my laptop and have been using that to stream crackle videos on. If you don't know crackle, go to www.crackle.com right now. It's a video site similar to hulu but owned by Sony so it's all Sony owned movies and TV shows. Quite good, they got Seinfeld. Would do an amazon link, but it's free on Crackle.

And here's a kind of funy thing. I went to the surveys page of swagbucks and this is what happened. There was a survey that said I had a 100% chance of acceptance, and it rejected me after the first qualifying question. What the hell? Well this is what happened next. I tried for a survey that said I had a 5% chance of acceptance and I was accepted. I'm glad I was able to take a survey and get 50 swagbucks, but realy, 100% chance and rejected after first question but accepted on 5%. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't 100% typically mean certain and 5% means a step above impossible? Oh well, still love swagbucks.

I'm going to watch more hulu plus and spin some vinyl. I love records. Later.

Buy a PC for college, and you will basically pay for the xbox

Hey everyone, another story from the wonderful world of Pokematic. Well today was shop for a laptop for college day. I got an hp notebook with 6 gigs of ram, 750 gig hard drive, 14 inch screen, i5 processor. Well when considering what lap top to get, I figured I should look into what is part of the promotion. Well to see what laptops were like, dad and I went to costco, best buy, and microcenter. I found a modle I liked and got all the specks so we can customize the one on the internet for the free xbox promotion. Well when we got it all said and done, it was $200 cheaper at costco, and the promotional xbox online was about $200. So I could get the online one with the free xbox or get the one at costco and save enough money to buy an xbox. Well since I wanted it now, and since I don't play a lot of xbox as is, it works out.

Well now for some good stuff. It runs 7 and I'm loving it. I'm not a big fan of explorer 9 yet, but I'm sure I'll warm up to it. I love stickey note. Soon I'll get more programs. But here's the great news; it has a web cam. That means videos again. I may still make text reviews because those don't require me to need to ensure that I have it quiet on the location. Movie maker for 7 looks like it will be good, but I don't know yet because I haven't played around with it yet. But I'll do that soon. Be on the look out for new videos.

Well I need to get back to playing around to better understand it. Bye.