Episode: 843
Title: HPR0843: What holiday tech item
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0843/hpr0843.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 03:23:10

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Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, this is Mr. Ketitz, and I thought I would call
you with a little bit of a new idea here, and maybe this will catch on kind of forward
WICS have caught on, but a lot of people would call them their show about how they got
to Linux, and that seems to have gone in a bit, but for all of you who are new lifters,
people have been calling in shows about how they first started learning Linux, and I've
found them to be very interesting about different people's paths into this particular world.
So, when we talk about what I wanted to bring up, and I'll go ahead and give you my ideas,
so what is that I am looking for, and maybe other people can do it, and that is what is your
holiday tech shopping plan this year? What's the tech item that you're interested in? What
is it you're going to be watching for, and things like that? Now, there's a bit of an anomaly here
in the United States, because of our Thanksgiving holiday coming towards the end of November,
there's somewhat of an artificial timeframe that shortens up our Christmas shopping season,
compared with some of the other, you know, of the European countries that also would be
celebrating Christmas. And I know this for a fact, because I was over in November in London,
that art office on a trip. Oh, well, actually it was last millennium,
potentially speaking, but all of the halls were decked, and all of the Christmas decorations
were out, and all of the stories were very busy on a Saturday, you know, wanting to get you to buy
this better, the other bright and shiny thing to wrap up, but under the tree for someone.
And, of course, ours with Thanksgiving, there is a bit of an issue, I guess, when it got moved
around a bit, as far as which week it was going to occur in, but traditionally it's the
4th Thursday of November, with we are Thanksgiving here, and it's always on the Thursday,
and then I don't need to really bore all the people internationally. I'd be really interested,
is there some other big, huge shopping day that is associated with your holidays,
and what's the history behind that? What's that big shopping day? Here in the United States,
they refer to the day after Thanksgiving as Black Friday, okay? And this is much
contrary to what some people think of, that it's one Friday, because it's such an arduous
task to go out and fight the crowds and purchase things, and it's not because it's an arduous
task to be working retail during Black Friday, although both of those, depending on the
particular person's order, might be both true. What it actually stems from is the fact that
for many retail businesses, that one single day is a significant contributor to their Black
Eek, right? In the old days, back when people used to maintain ledgers to run their business accounts,
using double entry accounting, one of the great inventions of the Italian city states,
the way back when, to be able to accurately determine how much money you had, and where
said money was going, and keep an accounting while such things. You used red ink to indicate a
deficit and black ink to indicate a positive number in the ledgers, and so the Black Friday
refers to this is going to put them in the Black, that's where that phrase comes from, and they're
going to be making a profit, and for a large number of businesses, that one day is a fairly
significant contributor to the profit that they're going to make for that year. Is that something
about the situation of retail, and just how difficult it is? It's over the entire
year, right, that you end up making that profit, and there's lead days, and there's
full days, and Black Friday is one of those full days. Another peculiarity about it,
here in the United States at least, Black Friday, as I say, it's usually a four-day weekend,
although not everyone is off on that Friday after Thanksgiving, including people other than
just policeman, fireman, and people who work in retail. Actually, the stock market,
just as a point of interest, is not closed on the day after Thanksgiving. It's always the
lowest trading day of the year, and they usually will close early, and not spend the entire day
there. One reason why I know that is the companies that I work for, basically a lot of our businesses
tied to financial institutions that, of course, are tied them to stock market trades and things
like that. Basically, if the stock market is open, we're open if the stock market is closed,
we're closed. So in order to have the day after Thanksgiving off, I have to actually take a
vacation day. I always kind of attributed that to a bunch of the people who are stockbrokers,
and things like that, not wanting to have to go out with their wives and help with the
crisper shopping, and they get to say, oh, sorry, honey, I have to go to work, have some shopping,
but actually it's not a bunch of stockbrokers trying to shirk their home responsibilities.
It actually kind of relates to bank holidays. You'll see bank holidays, and you'll never see a bank
close more than three days in a row. Those bank holidays are somewhat to make up for Saturday
half days and things like that, but you'll never see a bank close more than three days in a row,
and part of the reason behind that, of course, is because that would be the perfect time to
upscone with the money, because you would do your transfer through to some, you know,
solicit accounts, then-dances over to some Caribbean accounts, or whatever it is you're
going to do in the electronic transfer to hide your tracks, and you do all of that just before
close a business on Wednesday night, and by the time people came in four days later,
right, you would be, as Ellen Rickman said, in the first diehard movie on a beach making 20 percent,
first that was the old days, and I wasn't it, but you'd be somewhere where they don't have
expectations, and living off the largest of your nefarious deeds. So that's really the reason why
the day after Thanksgiving is a stock market day here in the United States. Not sure about other
countries and what they do. Of course, they don't have that Thursday off, right, because they don't
have the anything particular at all off that week, but what do you do in your countries about
stock markets and when they're open and close in relation to holidays? I imagine it's probably
something similar, and when I was a kid growing up, my parents were both from the Ozark Hills,
down the south part of Missouri, and I am indeed what you might refer to as a hillbilly,
or at least I'm a first generation hillbilly. My father was born and raised, and my mother
both down in the Ozark Hills, and we would go down there and visit my grandparents, my grandmother
on my mother's side, because my grandfather passed away, and those grandparents were still alive,
and the day after Thanksgiving, after we had gone for our Thanksgiving dinners at the respective
families, we would drive to Springfield, Missouri, which was about an hour away, and it was the
largest city down in that part of the world, and we would go shopping. Now, silly me as a child,
I didn't realize that everybody else in America did this also, right? I thought this is just
something that my family did, that they could pay attention to how busy it all was, and all those
kinds of things. So, largest shopping day of the year in the United States, and there's always
these great sales, and one reason why, for people in the US, this is going to become
of more and more interest as we go through here in October, and then proceed on into November,
is there are several Black Friday sites that will get early kinds of versions of the sales
sliders for the stores, because there's always all kinds of interesting sales on techy stuff
around Black Friday, and there's what they call door busters, right, that get you into the store,
and they've only got a few of them, but you're going to get a fantastic bot, right? You can buy a
laptop for $200 or something like that, but they only have five, and literally you may have seen
some of the news broadcasts from the United States, where literally people will get trampled
during these times of trying to get it into the store and get to that special toy.
I remember several years ago, this wasn't a Black Friday thing, it was just a general thing,
where there's a thing called cabbage patch dolls, really ugly little dolls, but they were all
their age here in the US, and you couldn't get them anywhere, but apparently nobody cared about
them in the UK, and there were some people who literally were flying over to the UK, buying cabbage
patch dolls, and really paying for the trip by flying back and selling them at some exorbitant
funds to people here in the US. So there's no accounting for what's going to be the end toy,
but those kinds of things will be also involved in these door busters, and like I say,
there's usually always some tech that is involved here. Now, the Black Friday sites, like I say,
you can always find those kinds of things, and there's always certain things that will be typical
of that, big screen TVs. One of those things that I always like to track on Black Friday is there's
always whatever is the current size of the SD card, or now micro SD card, I started this back
when it was compact flash, but that memory card, okay, there's always one such the size that it's
just a little bit too expensive, and you'd really like to have one that digs, but it's just way too
expensive, and usually on Black Friday, then Sandisk or one of the other Lexar, one of those,
sorry, one of those major companies that do those kinds of memory, or maybe a couple of them,
will have a micro SD or SD card, and this year I'm figuring it's probably the 32 gigabyte ones,
because the 32 gigabyte ones have been coming down in price occasionally, so I'm figuring
there's going to be a really good deal on 32 gigabyte micro SD cards this year. I think that's
going to be the size of the micro SD cards that's going to have a really good sale, and of course,
there'll be various summary things on Android tablets, I should have mentioned. Usually,
there's very little bit Apple knocks off of their prices, even on Black Friday kinds of things,
although I guess there is traditionally a little bit of a discount on the Apple products that
happen for the Crystal Shopping season just for the one day. That probably won't be in the store,
although it might be, well now I take that back. Yes, the day after Thanksgiving, because last year
I went to the Apple store, and I purchased something for my brother that we had in mind to get,
yeah, I've got him a little nano and things like that, and there was a discount on some of those
things, but it's just for the one day, and just to the Apple side, or at the Apple stores,
I'm not sure that any of the other people who sell Apple products enter the retail get a chance
to have any percentage off, so it's kind of an Apple only thing. It's not much of a percentage,
but it's practically the only thing you're going to get all year long.
So what is that particular piece of tech? Like I said, I'm going to be looking for those
microSDs, probably looking for USB based hard drive that they're really good by, you know,
they have a backup device or things like that. I'm not really going to be looking for any kind
of a tablet, but I'll probably be monitoring the prices to see what kind of things are there for
tablets and things like that. And what's that particular piece of tech? Are you in the market for
a new computer? Because you can usually get them pretty good by on computers there, and even
some of the more high-power computers that you might be looking for might go on a special sale,
and normally throughout the year those don't. So what's your thing this year?
Looking for the tablet, the computer, you already got that flat screen TV, you're going to go ahead
and spend the money on that 3D version of the TV that they want to, you're always pushing off
on you. So what's your particular thing for this year's Christmas shopping season, whether it's
on Black Friday or anytime else during the Christmas shopping season? So call in and tell us what your
plan is for your Christmas shopping this year. And the other thing maybe is that there's the
Cyber Monday, which I think actually had kind of a legit if it started in the first place when
people didn't have high-speed internet at home. They'd go into work on the following Monday
after Thanksgiving holiday, and they'd do some more shopping online. And so some of the places that
were web-based stores, they're noticing this and offering kind of a secondary Black Friday kind
of things with special sales on Cyber Monday. I don't really know whether Cyber Monday
really exists anymore because people don't need to be at work to do their shopping on their
high-speed internet, at least in most places in the United States. You're mileage may vary, right?
In terms of your particular location. So what is it this year? A new camera. Boy, there's some
really interesting new cameras. And how many of you out there in HPR land are photographers?
And maybe we can get into a discussion about digital photography kind of tools that are available
and that are free and open-source. You don't have to pay exorbitant amounts of money to Apple
or Adobe, which are the two major ones pretty much for processing of digital photos and things
like that. And you don't have to pay those kinds of fees. You can get the free and open-source
kinds of tools that can do very similar kinds of things if you're serious about your photography.
Leave a comment on the site, or should we some kind of a comment? Twitter, Mr. Gadget as well
as at www.MrGadget.com. If you send me some email at MrGadget.com that's HPR at MrGadget.com.
I will certainly get that or leave a comment on this show if you're interested in any of these topics
or getting in the session going about photography. If you're interested in photography and you'd
like to know a little bit more about digital cameras, not just by a SLR camera, but you know,
there are some compact cameras that will still fit in your pocket or at least the pocket of your
coat that have some capabilities in that camera that make them much better for digital photography
and give you much bigger latitude in terms of digital processing of those photos later.
And if you're interested in that kind of a discussion of cameras, I could certainly get into that.
So call in the show, call in the show, call in the show, and also did I mention,
Ken would love it if you'd call it in a show. So call in the show or record a show about your
holiday shopping plans or how you use your tech to facilitate your hobby. That'd be another one.
Talk about that. Anyway, that was all I had for today and I wanted to avoid all the other kinds
of things that were going on up there and thought this would be a nice topic to give us thinking
ahead and not being so negative because there's a lot of negative stuff going on across the social
networks here lately about, you know, this and that. And I wanted to do something a little positive.
So this is Mr. Gadget and I'm out here on this technological friend's here trying to blaze the
trail and make sure that the trail is clearly marked for you and let me know what you think.
Call in the show. Did I mention that? That you should call in the show.
And you'd be careful out here. Bye.
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