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Intro\n\nRandy and Christa chime in with some stats and thoughts as we approach the Black Friday Season.\n\nAnnouncements (And Lots of Show Notes!)\n\nBlack Friday is the day after Thanksgiving, which means that Thanksgiving is on Thursday. Do not forget that, you turkeys. I did not know this, but the term Black Friday is used because, since the early 1950\u2019s, when sales on items would be so big, stores would tip into \u201cThe black\u201d.\n\nAs retailers continued to grow, they pushed Black Friday openings to earlier and earlier times\u2026many stores promoting the idea of opening at 8pm on Black Thursday..but those sales tactics didn\u2019t work.\n\nThen, of course, you have the door buster deals. I think most people understand how that works, and that\u2019s when a store has a EXTREMELY limited stock on some goodies they\u2019ll hand you at the door. It\u2019s clever, but it\u2019s not always likely that you\u2019ll get a free LCD monitor.\n\nLooking back to last year, Walmart was offering \u201cLight up Black Friday\u201d party with free coffee and cookies.\n\nTry harder, Walmart.\n\nAs a tech guy, you\u2019ll generally see this deal often, and that\u2019s where $100 is slashed off the price of many Laptop brands.\n\nRetailers are going to have to be a little more creative to stay alive in this market.\n\nIt\u2019s not necessarily that the Holidays are the best time to buy.\n\nThings such as Winter clothing and fitness equipment is almost always less expensive in late winter and, according to Business Insider, fitness deals peak in January. That does seem to make sense, because I know it\u2019s easy to predict that every year we\u2019ll see the Fitness Clubs posting their New Year Resolution commercials to get people in the gym.\n\nDeals: By Keyboard\n\nOr, you can avoid stepping foot in a store altogether. You can stay safe off the roads while others are rushing to the store. I have this theory that online retailers like to space out their extreme web server traffic. Think about it, even Amazon\u2019s site can crawl on \u201cPrime Day\u201d \u2013 if you remember the terrible website issues they had in 2018, when many saw a \u201cSorry\u201d message with a photo of a dog, rather than the product they wanted to snag a deal on.\n\n\nMore of the same as last year \nGoogle trying hard to sell Google Home, Amazon with Echos \nGoogle\u2019s Home products can answer more complex questions, Alexa still hears better, in my opinion, and I still think that the Echo Plus is a great device and I\u2019m happy I bought it for the ZigBee Radio abilities. \nDeals on the Google Pixel 4 \u2013 Don\u2019t buy it. It snaps like a twig. \n\nDon\u2019t buy Google Stadia \u2013 Let it die. Gaming does need to pass any more control to the cloud. How would you like there to be a real remote shut-off switch for all of your shit? \u2013 well, Stadia is a great start. PC Gamer\u2019s website does bring up a good point, though, and that is that \u201cNo one wants to be the Blockbuster to someone else\u2019s Netflix\u201d. \nSource: https://www.pcgamer.com/what-happens-if-stadia-wins/ \nUse a computer. I don\u2019t care how fast and efficient you are with a smartphone. \nI could have my 89-year old grandfather sign in on a laptop and whoop a mobile phone deal-seeker\u2019s ass. Even better, for you multi-monitor users out there, have your deals on different screens, compare them, and defeat.\n Sites that can save you time\n\nBrad\u2019s Deals \u2013 \nBen\u2019s Bargains has a team of deal seekers, even providing a paragraph Bio for each of them on the site.\nProbably the most-popular, boasting numbers of 10 Million Monthly users, with 80% returning visits and 15 Million app installs. They\u2019re hiring in California and Nevada. The cool thing about Slick Deals is that the deals are \u201cRated and Reviewed by the community\u201d. \nFor the totally-obsessed, Slick deals even has a Live Feed view (in beta). It basically looks like a twitter live tweet screen for deals. So if you\u2019re insane, definitely check that out. It\u2019s at Slickdeals.net/live.