Anyone else here hit up the Black Friday sales? Or the "Moonlight Thursday" ones (just the name I am calling it) that started late in the evening? Turns out I didn't have to work last night, so after I got done with the run I was currently on, I headed to the local Walmart at about 8pm. I was going to try for the Xbox 360 bundle that went on sale at 10pm, and expected them to be handing out tickets (if not already "sold out" like some other stores were by 5pm) but turns out they had a line set up and was still relatively short. They also had a lot of the bundles in stock, which surprised me. After scoring that and running it to the car, I came back to see about the 32" Emerson TV's that were going on sale at midnight. While in the 360 line, I heard that the TV lines were pretty long, so I didn't have my hopes up much. Besides, it was an impulse buy of sorts anyway. We have a tv, but its' over 10 years old, and is pretty small. Not exactly the best thing to play something like a 360 on.

I got lucky again that the line was short and they had a ton of those TV's. I'm used to stores only getting 5-10 of the really hot items like this. Not 56 360's and 82 of the one TV I wanted. So after getting that, I also picked up an HDMI cable and checked out.
When I got back to my truck, I found out the Kinect that is bundled with new 360 systems now uses a special port for power instead of the original USB only connection. I also found out the bundles to come with a power adaptor for use with an older 360, or to use with a computer. Yes, I said computer. I've been working with a guy to beta test a motion capture program and he created a port to use the Kinect for it on the PC, so I had to find a power adaptor for it. That order I placed online, but I was able to get that plus 2 day shipping for only $11, which is pretty dang good considering the normal cost of the adaptor alone is well over $20.
Personally, I'm not so hot on the idea of starting the sales on the night of Thanksgiving and would have been more than willing to wait until the older times of 5-6 am on Friday. The stores all claim that the customers wanted it like this, but I'm not buying it. I think they just wanted to get a jump on other places, and thus the customer has no choice BUT to come in then if they want the deal. I will say I liked Walmart's tierd system of putting things on sale at different times. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to get both items.