A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO BLACK FRIDAY

Black Friday seems more of a holiday than Thanksgiving itself. It has the power of Christmas Eve vs Christmas Day. Every media outlet spouts about Black Friday. Forget the family traditions of Thanksgiving.

I mention this because I hate Black Friday. You’ll never catch me standing in line at 10pm to catch a midnight sale that may be a bargain now, but guess what, as Christmas nears, you’ll get pretty much that same bargain (so I’ve found in the past). And the crowd madness? For me, it’s just not worth the savings. Therefore, I stay safely in my home on Black Friday.

Not so this year. My original plans for Black Friday consisted of editing a file of photos and working on the 2012 budget for the Studio. But alas, on Thanksgiving Day, my computer decided to spit and moan and begin its slow death of old age. You see, in computer age, my machine is about 109 years old (that’s six years old in real age). I’ve been putting off updating my machine because I just love XP and have heard mixed reviews on Windows 7. Now, I could convert to a Mac, which is my dream, but when I think about all the programs I’d also have to convert, well, the Mac just isn’t going to happen.

So I spent Thanksgiving Day browsing the Black Friday newspaper ads and the online ads and found a machine or two that I wanted to check out. Thank goodness for office supply stores, because there was no way I was going into Best Buy, etc to battle the masses.

On Black Friday, I had a client appointment and decided to stop at my store of choice and check out the machine (after much discussion with my computer guru about what I needed). On a side note here, my computer guru said my dying machine needs a good cleanout (hey, I blew it out at the first cough) and a format. Well, I started backing up at that first cough so everything was good on that end, but I wasn’t quite ready to wipe it clean. So back to my store of choice. I did find a computer that gave me all the things I needed (except for XP – but that’s okay; so far I like Windows 7). Not a Black Friday advertised special, but it was on sale.

Then the problems began. Loading all the software. It’s the curse of computer buying. What was and wasn’t compatible with Windows 7. Turns out, my lifeblood, Adobe Creative Suite, wasn’t compatible. I have an older version that I planned on upgrading in the 2012 budget. Well, it got slipped into the 2011 budget. Again, thank goodness for Black Friday Specials (and I also got a 

great deal on Norton’s that day).

Now I patiently wait for Amazon to deliver the goods (Adobe). I’m at a mild standstill, but nothing is at the moment classified as URGENT, so by the end of the week, it’ll all be good. In the meantime, I’ll take my Black Friday chore of the 2012 budget and throw it all together while I wait. Seems Office loaded just fine.

As for Black Friday itself, I’ll still opt to stay at home. There’s always Cyber Monday.