Or do you have better plans for your six bucks?

- a foot-long Subway sandwich

- 1/4th of a lapdance

- one Sports Illustrated magazine

- a pair of socks

COME ON.  Any of those would be lame and fleeting.  I have a Wenger laptop backpack that has withstood the unspeakable for over two years.  My name is Jack, and I endorse Wenger man bags.

Cheers!

Jack

After that fiasco, it’s time to treat yourself for a job well done.  Not to mention, you probably didn’t get exactly what you wanted for Christmas.  What to do… What to do…

And then you see it.  It’s as if some supernatural force was listening to your desires and answered them.  Your RSS feed rings with glee as the deal crosses your inbox.  That’s right, it’s a deal for the ages, and it’s awesome.

It’s none other than a Xbox 360 Live Value Bundle with Bonus $50 Wal-Mart gift card for only $259 at Wal-Mart!

For this awesome deal, you get a Xbox 360 Arcade, a Xbox Live 12-month card, a choice of two games (including such awesome hits as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Halo 3, and NBA2K10), and optional accessories.

Unfortunately, local in-store pickup is not an option, meaning you have to wait for this bad boy to ship.  Nonetheless, this is a great deal to ring in the new year, and to put a nice little tidy bow on the festivities of Christmas.

(note: the Xbox 360 Elite is also available for $99 more, and is certainly just as awesome of a deal)

1)  As all linguists know, “Bravia” is Latin for “I may never get up from my couch again”.  The 46″ Sony BRAVIA V Series KDL46V5100 LCD HDTV is plenty affordable for a Bravia, today only, at Tiger Direct for $989.  It retails at $1599. It’s 1080p with 120Hz, 16:9, 1920×1080, 50000:1 Dynamic Contrast.  Solid.  And Bravia.  And today only.

2) In the Jumbo yet Less-Known-Brand division, the Insignia 52″ NS-LCD52HD-09 Class 1080p 60Hz LCD HDTV is a mad deal at $1000 with free shipping to your local Best Buy store.  (In fact, the website only allows me to choose local pickup, but free is good.)  52 sweet sweet diagonal inches of LCD dreams coming true for $1000.  I raise my beer in admiration.

3)   So we saw a 46″ and a 52″ TV, and now it’s time for the “just right” 50″ HDTV.  The Panasonic VIERA 50″ 1080p Plasma HDTV is looking pretty darn ownable at $900 with free shipping, also from Best Buy.

Three big, sweet 1080p TVs for $1000 or less…my work here is done. *suspender snap*

Cheers!

Jack

I love that the prices of Blu-Ray players are dropping faster than my self-esteem on Grey’s Anatomy night.  The $109 price that TigerDirect.com is offering today on the Panasonic DMP-BD60 Blu-Ray Player (1080p, HDMI) is good news for anyone in the market.  This normally retails at $200, can commonly be found on sale for ~$130, but $109 at Tiger Direct  is the lowest price out there.

Now go out there, and make the most of your Cyber Tuesday.

Cheers!

Jack

P.S. I may or may not have lied about being sentimental.

P.P.S. We make commissions on many of the items that we feature on this site, and we really appreciate your support!

Lo and behold!  Here we are.  My psychic abilities are now your ninja sword in the attack against high prices. The obvious must-see sales of the day start with the Sears Cyber Monday Sale.  There are several Sony Bravia models on sale in addition to mowers, jewelry for your better half, appliances for your better half and outerwear for your better half.  Translation: Sears know that men only care about electronics today.

Keep checking in as I’ll be posting all of the Cyber Monday best bets throughout the day.

Cheers!

Jack

Black Friday is kind of the same for me.   New Egg is running a Pre-Black Friday Sale that I’d equate to a pre-buffet training meal.  Personally, I’m looking for a 50″ TV.  Will I buy it today?  No way.  Gotta build up to that on Friday.  But today I can do a nice trial run just looking at the 25 items that New Egg has on sale.  For instance, the Seagate Expansion 2TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive is absolutely  killer at $150 with free shipping from New Egg.  You cannot touch this 2TB drive for under $200 anywhere else.  I’ll bet money that this price is as good as you’ll find, even come Friday.  So…for the TV, I’ll sit tight for a few days, but this hard drive is an immense amount of storage for a price that I never could have imagined even a year ago, and I’m on it like an athlete loading carbs before the Olympics.

I came.  I trained.  And on Friday, I conquer.

Cheers!

Jack

I play guitar, and any future child I have will be forced likely want to play, too.  If I had a kid, I’d buy the Fender ESC-75 3/4 Size Classical Guitar in a heartbeat.  It’s on sale for $79.99 – an excellent discount from the $179.99 retail.  This 3/4-sized guitar is perfect for smaller hands and the price means that you don’t have to threaten the kid with being grounded for life if they drop the guitar or give up on it.  I mean, “I” wouldn’t stand for either of those, but I am a rare breed.  Even a gig bag is included, you know, for all of those gigs that your kid will be playing after a year or two of lessons.  Orders of $100 or more ship free with promo code: FREESHIP100.

Another nice deal, if you need a sweet camcorder, is the Sony HDR-XR100 80GB HD Handycam Camcorder for $529.  That’s 29% off the retail and is the lowest price I was able to find anywhere.  This beauty records and plays in high def, so you can see your smiling family in high def on your fancy HDTV.  We have an HD camera and love the quality, but this one makes me jealous because of the built-in 80gb hard drive.  It’ll store 32 HOURS of high def video and over 50 hours of standard def video, or a zillion pictures. That’s pretty awesome.  Ours can’t record Jack without a memory card, so this is way handier. *sniff*

Grab this stuff today as the sale ends tonight.

Cheers!

Jack

“No, officer.”

“Well is there a medical emergency that would explain why I clocked you going 91mph in a 65mph zone?”

“Yes, officer.   I can feel a seizure coming on and I wanted to get home as fast as possible.”

“Whoa Nelly, that’s the best one I’ve heard all week.  You got proof?”

“If we wait long enough, you’ll have a front row seat.  Or you can just look at my medical ID bracelet.”

“Well look at that.  We got real-life epileptic with a life-long cover story.  But, I’m not buying it, Buckey.  If you need medical assistance, you need to call 9-1-1 instead of trying to drive 91mph.  Wait here while I run your plate and write your ticket.”

Speed Racer now has to decide whether he should fake a seizure, but all of this could have been avoided.  New Egg has an entry-level WHISTLER XTR-130 Laser/Radar Detector for a mere $30 and about $2 in shipping.  This detector is rated 5 stars after 2 reviews at New Egg (and 5 stars after 3 reviews at Buy.com).  It offer 360 degree protection from all kinds of lasers and it also has X, K, Ka, and Super Wideband Ka detection.  There are 3 different city modes and the ability to adjust what kind of sensitivity level you want.  Say it with me, Speed Racer: “$30 at New Egg”.

Now go fake that seizure.

-Jack

Best Buy is already running Black Friday sales on 5 LCD HDTVs?  Niiiiiiiiice.  If you’re on a budget and cool with 720p rather than 1080p, the Dynex – 32″ Class  720p LCD HDTV is priced to fit at $299.99.  It scores 4 stars after 142 reviews so far at Best Buy.  The global consensus is that the sound stinks, so hook it up to your surround sound or get a cheap soundbar and you’ll be back in business at a nice price.

Another great deal is the Dynex – 40″ Class  1080p  LCD HDTV at just $499.  It scores 4.4 stars after 8 reviews so far at Best Buy and does offer full 1080p for optimal viewing goodness.  Most of the reviewers are very pleased for the price.  Sound quality reviews vary from “great” to thinking that the sound doesn’t get loud enough, so your mileage may vary.  Again, I award points to a surround sound or soundbar setup to go with this.

Black Friday, how I missed you.

Cheers!

Jack

Fast forward four years and her car’s GPS is the s l o w e s t and dumbest GPS on the road, and now all of the maps are old.  Acura has a real sense of humor, so they’ll sell us a $190 cd to update the maps.  “Lipstick on a pig” comes to mind.  I think it’s time to cut our losses and get a low-cost, portable GPS with all of the bells and whistles that science intended.  I’m really liking the Garmin nuvi 255 Automobile GPS at TheNerds.net for just $135 right now.  The price is very right.  It retails around $190 and has the features to justify it.  Turn-by-turn spoken directions in a clear voice, super-fast route recalculations (hallelujah), 3.5″ touch screen navigation, upload addresses directly to your Garmin from Google Maps or Mapquest, and OPTIONAL service that works with MSN Traffic for real-time traffic updates.  It even uses text-to-speech to read local street names, and this is a huge plus over the generic directions our old nav system uses. “Take the second left turn” just doesn’t sound as confident as “take a left on Williamson Ave”.  A nice safety feature is the “where am I?” feature that tells you your location by street address, city, state, zip code, nearest intersection and coordinates, very important if you need emergency services.

Overall, this is FAST, very portable, and covers all of the features you’ll actually use without adding extra size or dollars for features that will just collect dust.  Eat that, Acura.

Cheers!

Jack