Mario and strangers overnite in line at Best Buy waiting over 12 hours to get our Xbox 360 new video game console

 

Mario resting on the floor on the blackberry - yes, with the retro Pac-Man shirt on

Black Friday ALL NITER TIPS: see links below

Dress in layers, very warm remember you can always take layers off, better to have more than less. pack a snadwich and water and other snacks. Have a chair or something to sit on, bring an umbrella in case. Also have alternate ways to pay, 2 credit cards or a  credit card and check in case something happens with your card. Pack an energy drink or vitamin water and most of all hijack, I mean bring a friend so you can hold your spot in line and take bathroom or sleep breaks. Park your car as close to the  line as possible and fill your tank so you can run the heat and get sleep in the car in spurts.

Most stores open at 5am - some places only offer deals til 12noon. Make sure you are in line by at least 9pm the night before to ensure you get your item. The laptop deal of $398 at Wal Mart will be a race so get their early and hey if you can get other family members to stake out other Wal-Mart lines that way you can be sure to get your item.  

Also, if you DON'T want to get in line overnite many websites are offering ONLINE SPECIALS ONLY on Thanksgiving Day so logon to reputable sites and find some deals.

Mario gives BlackFriday Tip of the week on WEAA - Sandy Mallory's morning show:

On todays segment I revealed websites that are showing the holiday discounts before they are printed! These are sites about Black Friday (the big shopping day after Thanksgiving day) and I mentioned  some 'under the radar' websites that are displaying their planned discounts and special sales. Typically consumers have no idea what the Black Friday sales are til the day before when the ads are inserted in all the major newspapers BUT with the internet that's all changing. People on the inside of some of the coupon printing companies are leaking the discounts online and websites are popping up all over revealing the info - you can actually see the printed coupons. One of the best deals I saw was a $398 laptop.
Here are the sites I mentioned:  http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/ 

http://www.bfads.net/adscans.html 

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CONTEST GIVEAWAY OVER   -- WE HAVE OUR WINNER -- Congratulations to Denaya B of City College High School, she is the winner of the "Mario Armstrong" autographed pre-release copy of the PC game Space Station Sim  developed by Vision Video Games for NASA. This contest is only for those that attended the Method 1518 Wired Event at Towson State University on 11-14-05. The riddle was: 29  people in the line at Best Buy - 20 of them have an Xbox360, 15 of them have a ps3. How many people in the line have both Xbox360 and a ps3?

Thanks to all those who participated in the contest - by the way the answer is 6.

Arrived at Best Buy at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore at about 9:35pm with tech writer, Sun contributing writer and friend Rasheim Freeman we ended up being numbers 14 & 15. Yes, 9:30pm the day before the new XBOX 360 goes on sale and we were still numbered in the teens. The person in the front of the line had been there since 5:30pm. He basically walked over as soon as he got off from his job at 5p. I kow this sounds crazy that your boy Mario would hang out overnight in front of Best Buy til the next morning at 9am when the store would open but I wasn't the only one crazy enough to do it. I had people calling my cell phone giving me reports for the numbers of folks in lines around the city. At 10pm I heard the Towson store had well over 80 ppl, White Marsh had 70+, Security had over 100.

Dress in layers, very warm remember you can always take layers off, better to have more than less. pack a snadwich and water and other snacks. Have a chair or something to sit on, bring an umbrella in case. Also have alternate ways to pay, 2 credit cards or a  credit card and check in case something happens with your card. Pack an energy drink or vitamin water and most of all hijack, I mean bring a friend so you can hold your spot in line and take bathroom or sleep breaks. Park your car as close to the  line as possible and fill your tank so you can run the heat and get sleep in the car in spurts.

Most stores open at 5am - some places only offer deals til 12noon. Make sure you are in line by at least 9pm the night before to ensure you get your item. The laptop deal of $398 at Wal Mart will be a race so get their early and hey if you can get other family members to stake out other Wal-Mart lines that way you can be sure to get your item.  

Also, if you DON'T want to get in line overnite many websites are offering ONLINE SPECIALS ONLY on Thanksgiving Day so logon to reputable sites and find some deals.