Baby its cold outside…(sang in a smarmy Dean Martin voice)

Man. Some mornings are just bitingly cold. Yesterday was one of them where we had our first frost action here this year. Some areas didn’t officially go below 32 but outside of Austin… i.e. Pflugerville, we saw 28. Today was not much better but still high 30’s for rollout at 6:30am. Let me tell you about the effectiveness of lycra when the temperatures start to go that low. It takes me a good hour to recover when I get here on days I ride my bike. I still love it though and always feel like I accomplished something right off the bat when I ride in.

Christmas is almost here and we have pretty much wrapped up the kid’s lists. One item they have no idea about should be a big hit. It is a much sought after Nintendo Wii. We had pretty much decided on one way back in the summer when we tried one out at Fiesta Texas. They had a Wii Experience demo building with about 10 Wii’s set up so you could play various games. Amber and I just about lost it watching Max and Karah duke it out in the Boxing game. If you don’t already know, the Wii has differentiated itself by putting a motion detection unit in the remote. I guess it’s like a potentiometer or something similar. You can hold the remote and say…pretend it’s the handle of a baseball bat and swing it. It “see’s” the arc of the remote and translates it to graphics in the game. Yes, there is a baseball game as well as lots of others. Once you see it in use, you are immediately drawn in and you start to see what is possible.

Anyway, back to Boxing with K-O Karah and Sugar Ray Max. Once we saw Karah take Max out in 3 rounds we were totally sold. If you step back, you see two kids duking it out with a controller in each hand, some punches high, some low but all hilarious to anyone watching them and not the screen. I tried Tiger Woods golf and it was awesome to swing the controller like I was swinging a club. I immediately was able to hit cleanly and most people that have played golf will feel right at home from the first swing. With games like tennis, baseball, bowling, and golf among others, I can see lots of time lost playing this thing… cant wait for Christmas. ;]

The kids have no idea and getting the thing was no trivial matter. They launched this system last year and it was almost impossible to get one without paying big bucks for one or winning a contest, or waiting in a line for a day or more. It was crazy what people were doing to get one. Well, fast forward a year and guess what, demand was greater than supply and these last few weeks have seen people scooping up lot of them and putting a huge premium on them. They were available online for twice the MSRP. Every store you tried to get one in was sold out. I had a list of 8-10 places I would call everyday to see if they had any. Finally I started to ask employees and managers and we started to piece together a plan that finally vetted one. One employee said that if it is in the circular ads, the store has to have a certain amount the day that ad runs. So one of them let slip that it would be in an upcoming Sunday ad. That was all the tip I needed. I planned to be there at 5am before the store opened.

I roll up at my local ToyRUs at about 4:45am and I noticed that just down the way a line has already formed at the Best Buy. It already has 20 people and it looks like people are showing up as I get there. I notice no one at ToysRUs so I roll down and chat with the guys in the front of the Best Buy line. They are also after a Wii and they think there has been talk of 17-18 allocated for that store. BB (Best Buy) will hand out vouchers at 9 with the store opening at 10. I say “good luck” and as I drive off I tell them that TRU (ToysRUs) is also getting some just down the way if anyone misses out there. The guys in the front of the line give me a condescending “We are all set man” response so I head back to form my line at TRU. A few minutes after I settle in near the front door, one guy comes down from the BB line and joins me at the “now” official TRU line. Both of us agreed that we do indeed constitute a line from this point. He tells me that he and his buddy were number 17 and 18 in the BB line and he wanted to see what I knew about the TRU Wii allocation. I tell him my inside info about it being in the circular of the Sunday paper. I show him the ads and he feels better about his chances already. A couple of other guys start to show up and we all relay info that we know. A couple of overnight stockers come outside and we grill them for info. They tell us that they have 24 or so and that they will open at 8 am. I already feel better as this is the first confirmation of their existence at this store on this day. The guy who came down, I call him #18, starts to tell me that those guys at the front of the line at BB have been there since closing the preceding night. They have stayed in that line overnight and here I am rolling up at 5am and in the same position as they are.

Our line grows and we are all talking about our families and such. We notice that the guy in 3rd or 4th spot doesn’t say how many Wii’s he is after. One guy formally asks him and he says he is thinking 10 or so. I look down the line and start to think that this is not going to go down well as there are already 20 people in our line. He says that if there is no fine print about quantities, he can buy as many as he wants by law. One guy near him says that he has gotten into fights for less than that. We tell the guy that it is not in the spirit of Christmas to deny the folks in line from getting one while he sells his “extras” for profit.

A cool thing happens next. The store manager comes out 15 minutes prior to opening and hands out a flyer with the Wii products on it and a number. One person, one flyer. Myself and #18 are amused to no end because we are just after one for our family. I tell him that it looks like Christmas spirit is being enforced this time around. I love it.