clanMcGraw.com

So today, after Brandon’s football game and breakfast with my Parents, Amanda and I went to the AT&T store. Amanda’s phone has needed replacing for about 1 year now. It is held together with scotch tape. Seriously.

We looked around for awhile, and found a Droid that fits her hand well. I’m just glad she’s entering the world of Internet and texting. The price was $129, with the 2 year service commitment. I don’t really like the contract stuff, but there was no way I was going to pay $250 for the phone straight up.

We had talked with a salesman earlier, and he had left us to look around. When she knew which phone she wanted to try, I found Frank. He was with another customer. I told him we were ready, and he said he’d be over in a minute.

So while we were waiting, I whipped out the old Evo to look for cheaper cell phone accessories. While there, on a whim, I googled Amazon to see if they had a better price on the phone.

They did.

1 cent.

I stood there, kinda stunned. I showed Amanda, and she was incredulous as well. We quietly made our way out of the AT&T store so I could get online and do a little research. It turns out that the agreement with AT&T is the same. It’s a 24 month contract. However, there’s a rider that states if you cancel within 181 days, you owe Amazon $250.

Let’s see… 24 months > 181 days… Same AT&T Plan… $120+ savings…

The HTC Aria will be here on Wednesday. I’m fearful that the activation will be a painful process, and that’s where they’ll get their $120 back. But we’ll see!

During today’s woot-off… Lightning struck again.

Stay tuned.

I got a message from Woot today, telling me that my BOC has shipped.

It will be at my house on November 7th. Let the anticipation begin!!

Well, government and horseshoes close, anyways.

Woot‘s been bragging about it’s meteoric rise in popularity lately, and rightfully so. As a sort of thank you to it’s earliest customers, they went and declared the first 5000 distinct purchasers as Charter Members. I ordered from w00t early on, and was hoping that I’d make that glorious cut.

Alas, it was not to be. As Woot divulged today, the 5000th customer made their purchase as order number 10017253. I did some back-tracking today, and my first order from Woot was 10098083.

80830 orders after the cut-off.

Soooo close. I wish there I’d at least get a Monkey Prize or something.

I received a newsletter from Woot today. 5 of the last 6 times that I received a newsletter, Woot held a Woot-Off on the following Thursday and Friday.

It might be worthwhile to stay up until midnight CST tonight.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the term, Black Friday refers to the day after Thanksgiving when retail stores typically have their biggest sales. Over the past few years, certain websites like BFads.net have been able to obtain the sale items before hand and publish them for people to see. Consumers could then go out, purchase the item 2-3 days beforehand, and return it to the store and repurchase the item at the lower price. Then consumers get the item that they want, at the discounted price, without having to drag themselves out of bed in the wee hours of the morning.

Well, this year, Wal-Mart has threatened to shut down any websites that host that information. Best Buy tried to do this a few years ago, and absolutely failed.

Woot Sells Out! – Everyone’s favorite odd-shopping-upstart is now partnered with Yahoo! shopping. Sounds like now there will be an opportunity for 2 deals per day (unless there’s a w00t-off)!

The *only* advantage to having to pull an all-nighter after a system crash is that I was awake when w00t began their w00t-off tonight.

Lots of good deals so far.

2 databases recovered, 1 to go… I hope.

How do you make the world’s best chicken sandwich even better?

Simple: Give it away for free, with a medium Coke, to the first 1,000,000 people to register.