Am’s mom came to visit this week, and after a couple of days of trying to shop with the boys running around, they decided that they needed to bring me to watch them while the girls shopped.
We went up to prescott, and the while the girls shopped for clothes at Ross, me and the boys wandered up and down the stip mall. In target, I saw their ad for 512mb flash drives for $9.99. So I drag the boys to the electronic section, but of course they are all out of the ones that are on sale. They did have a pretty cool bracelet usb drive, but it was only 256 meg. It was like a black rubber arm band, and the clasp part was the usb plug.
Next we went to the Petco, and they were having an adopt a dog sale. It must have been the humane society, but I didn’t see any indication of that. But all of the dogs were kind of “used” looking. The boys went to pet one of them, and they said “oh, don’t let them put their fingers near him, he bites, he doesn’t like kids” Then they invited us to come pet a nicer dog. As we were petting him, I noticed he only had one eye. EZ said “Dad, this dog only gots one eye! That’s Cool!!!” The lady started cracking up and said only a boy would think that.
As we walked by Officemax, I saw a bunch of flyers out front. They didn’t have any great deals, but they did have a 50 pack of dvds or 75 pack of cds for $9.99. I’ve been meaning to make some videos of the boys for relatives, so I decided to pick up a pack of dvds. I also decided to see if they had any flash drives for cheap. They were all in the $50 range though, and that was mostly for 256 or 512mb ones. I found the dvd section, but none were marked $9.99, so I had to compare skus on the flyer to the shelves. Finally I figured out it was the Memorex ones that were on sale. Not bad, I usually get the Great Quality ones at Frys, and let me tell you, that name is a misnomer. Memorex are usually $30, and every disc in the pack works, unlike GQ.
After another hour or two, the girls were finally done with Ross. We went to the mall, and the boys and I played at the play area while the girls shopped for another 2 hours. I’m surprised the mall security guys didn’t think I was some sort of weirdo, watching the little kids play for hours at a time.
After lunch and Costco, we finally get to the last store. Grandma’s favorite, K-Mart. As bad as the name sounds, this store was 100 times worse. We go in and get a shopping cart for the boys to ride in, and every single one is so dirty, I didn’t even want to touch it, let alone put the boys in it. I dig through to get the cleanest one, and we wander the store for an hour or so while the girls look at clothes. We go the the electronics section so EZ can play whatever demo video game they have out. It’s a really dirty, beat up gameboy advance, with mario pinball.
I wander over to the usb drive case, and see a 1gig drive on sale for $14.99. The 128mb one in the same brand is $20, so that’s a pretty good deal. And it’s a Memorex, not some generic junk. So I buy it, and I’m reading the package while we wait for the girls to finish trying on the clothes (more like start trying on the clothes). Under system requirements, it says Windows XP, NT, 98SE as usual. Then a little lower, Mac OS 8.6 and above, and to my surprise Linux 2.4.x. Memorex actually knows what Linux is!!! And they know enough about it to know you need a 2.4.x kernel to use usb.
Reading the package a little more, I see that the drive comes with a couple of applications that are set up to be run off the drive. One of those applications is Mozilla Thunderbird! So not only does Memorex know about Linux, but they’re also helping to spread Thunderbird. Granted, all of the applications are the Win32 versions, but still, every little bit of press helps.
Soon I would like to see them putting a full distro on the drive, so you can just buy it, boot from the usb drive, and test out a new OS. It wouldn’t be that hard, I put PClinuxOS on it this morning, and it only took about 10 minutes including the download. If they put a small distro like Puppy or DSL on there, it wouldn’t even take up much room. And it wouldn’t cost them anything. They could be helping to spread Linux, and at the same time boost the value of their drives over the other companies.
I guess it looks like I’m going to have to start supporting Memorex over the generic stuff I usually buy. I just hope I can find good deals like this every time.
