Technically Incorrect

I have avoided Black Friday every year. Somehow, the idea of baying, greedy crowds fighting for $100 off some piece of electronica seems like the equivalent of searching for stray wax in a stranger's ears.

But there's a Best Buy opposite the greatest Starbucks in the world--at Marin City, Calif. (one-time home of Tupac Shakur). And, struggling after an interesting Thanksgiving meal of, well, too much good food, wine, and secrets told after the good food and wine, I parked outside my Starbucks and was drawn by the fascination of the blue and yellow.

A large sign outside Best Buy read: "Line starts here," but there was no one standing there. Had people simply ignored the sign, smashed down the doors, and stormed the building, in search of the weekend's dream of a larger, flatter screen?

I walked gingerly toward the front door, fearing I would immediately see tense bodies and twisted faces fighting over the last box with Samsung written on it. Instead, a chap in the blue polo shirt bid me good morning. Inside, it seemed like any other day at Best Buy.

My receipt, complete with markings from the Best Buy magic marker.

(Credit: Chris Matyszczyk)

People milled around with seemingly little purpose. Best Buy employees stood around, one or two stifling a little yawn, a couple of others not bothering with the stifling.

A few people hovered over the MacBook display. Should they buy the MacBook Pro, or the little white MacBook, on offer for less than $1,000?

Most of the aisles had no more than one person in them. Wandering around was as simple and comfortable as a Wednesday stroll on the beach. But finally I saw a line. What was it that was drawing so many people (at least 15) to one place?

Ah, yes, these were the excited folks trying to line up an appointment with the Geek Squad. Names were being called out. Satisfaction was being doled out.

Then I remembered I needed some ink for my printer. I wafted over to the aisle and noticed that the price of an Hewlett-Packard double pack of black ink and color had actually gone up since I'd last bought some. There didn't seem to be any special offer on this one.

Should I buy it anyway? Wouldn't it be a pain to stand in line?

Then I looked up and saw that the line at the cash registers consisted of precisely three people. Two of them were together. As I paid my $34.87, the clerk had particularly bleary eyes.

"Crazy day, huh?" I said to him.

"No," he said, in an entirely friendly way.

"Is this usual?" I asked, somewhat confused.

"Oh, yeah. I'm happy," he replied.

After he'd taken the time to tell me that the man in front of me in line had enjoyed precisely the same security code on his Amex card as mine, and after another Best Buy employee had marked my receipt with a special marker, I disappeared to Starbucks.

One of the great baristas of our time, Kershina, told me that she'd opened the store at 5 a.m. and there had been around 200 people outside Best Buy at that time.

Now, just after 9, there was no one. It was just another day in the Marin City firmament. How typical this was of the rest of America, I have no idea. However, as I took my lattes back to my car, a couple were piling their own two-pack of boxes, both with an LG logo, into theirs. They seemed strangely relaxed.

Now that Circuit City has enjoyed something of a last lap in physical retail, Best Buy seems to have decided to take on another large rifle in electronics retailing: Wal-Mart Stores.

Wal-Mart has been upgrading its electronics offering and Best Buy clearly sees the Arkansas retailer as a potential source of pain and anguish.

In Best Buy's new TV ad, we meet employee Rachel Muñoz from Best Buy store (No. 1,473, if you're interested) in McAllen, Texas.

Muñoz, who seems like a very nice woman, tells the story of how she took a call from a man who asked some searching questions about TVs. It transpires the man was not merely full of purchaser's angst, but also at Wal-Mart.

Muñoz recalls saying to him: "Well, you're obviously calling us because we're knowledgeable."

So she persuaded him to hotfoot it to store No. 1,473, where he became, Muñoz thinks, "a BestBuyer for life."

I must confess I did stop a little when I heard Muñoz's claim to knowledge. I read CNET's Sharon Vaknin's slightly sobering description of her experiences as a Best Buy employee. Example: "We have no formal training in consumer electronics."

But one's view of a retailer is always colored by one's own experience--very often the first experience--with the retailer's service.

I confess that at my local Best Buy (I'm sorry, I don't know the number of the store. Until today, I didn't know they had numbers like schools in Eastern Europe) it is very easy to get a "Hello, welcome to Best Buy" and a little more difficult to attract an associate's attention thereafter.

And once, when I inquired about buying a rather substantial sound system and TV, I was told I would have to wait 10 days for the Geek Squad to drive the two miles to my house to install it. Which the associates found terribly normal and I found terribly disappointing. (I bought elsewhere.)

Still, it is heartening to think a retailer might actually put itself in the position of using its customer service as a point of difference.

The only problem will be, naturally, delivering the service.

Despite their calm demeanor and sweet, jovial humanity, it appears that the British are Europe's worst sleepers.

Sixteen percent of Brits claim their nights are not like white satin. (The finest European sleepers are, in fact, the Spanish, of whom only 2.4 percent report problems. We can learn a lot from the Spanish.)

While the British do accuse stresses associated with their jobs, their bank accounts, or their miserable spouses of keeping them up and getting them down, there is a new abomination for insomniacs: gadgets.

Yes, we can now happily diagnose a new disease for which some fine commercial entity might create a pill: electronic insomnia.

(Credit: CC Lee Nachtigal)

BlackBerrys, laptops and cell phones are triggering problems before bedtime, problems that creep into sleep like lice into locks. It seems that men over 30 find it hardest to switch off because they can't switch their gadgets off.

You'd think the traditional British remedy of eight pints of lager would do the trick, but apparently not.

Everyone has an NCAA bracket. It's like underwear. So few people come back home without it.

The problem is that the regular season of NCAA basketball might as well be sponsored by Xanax. It used to be wonderful and then players started leaving after one year of (not) attending college in order to turn pro. (See how many of your friends can name last year's Kansas starting five.)

In any case, the whole point of your NCAA bracket is to gain some superiority in your workplace of painful mediocrity.

So, because the Tournament starts tomorrow and because I care about you and decry the people you work with, please allow me to give you a hint: EA's "NCAA Basketball 2009" simulation.

Perhaps you may not be aware, but EA's "Madden 2009" simulation for the Superbowl was astoundingly accurate. (An example: it predicted the Steelers' Santonio Holmes would have 8 catches for 131 yards. He had 9 catches for, well, 131 yards.)

The Louisville mascot seems rather excited by the news, no?

(Credit: CC Kevin Coles)

In case you don't want to pore over every part of the EA simulation, I can tell you that it has Louisville, Memphis, Pitt and North Carolina in its Final Four. With Louisville winning the whole thing.

Alright, perhaps you shouldn't totally rely on EA. You may also need a little luck along the way- last year's EA simulation only got 27 (out of 32) of the first-round games right. But I have a feeling, you know. Just a feeling.

Please allow me to recuse myself from this Tournament as I obsessively played ESPN's NBA Virtual GM in 2002, to the degree that it affected my very being. So I have promised those closest to me to steer clear of virtual joy.

In my weekly attempt to learn long technical words, I was browsing New Scientist when I came across a concept that made me cough to a splutter.

E-cigarettes.

Powered by batteries, they look vaguely like a cigarette, the end furthest from your lips glows red, they emit smoke, and they give you something of a nicotine hit with every drag.

However, because they don't burn, they are not classified as, well, cigarettes. And because they don't make a health claim, they're not classified as, you know, medicine. Which means that you can sit at a bar and e-puff.

Here's the strange thing. They are being marketed as devices that will help you quit smoking. Just as the condom was marketed as a device to quit sex, you might think. But the theory is that you get a similar amount of nicotine as you do from a patch.

Don't you just adore the word 'health' in the brand name?

(Credit: CC Uduokkamah)

The World Health Organization believes any therapeutic claims by e-cigarette manufacturers are mere smoke and mirrors.

Researchers at a company called Health New Zealand are not so sure. Apparently, each drag only gives you a third of the nicotine of a suck on your American Spirit. And the potential for passive inhalation is minimal.

Murray Laugesen, a public health researcher from New Zealand, told New Scientist: "All pointers so far show the device is safe. Whether it will be a successful smoking cessation device in the future depends on whether governments wrap it in cotton-wool regulations or allow smokers to buy it with a modicum of reasonable safety checks."

So might any of you be prepared to try the e-fag, as they call it in the UK? Or might some of you be holding out for the researchers to create another "healthy" product: John E-Walker?

What is it about the holiday season that makes retailers emit polls like burps at the company party?

I have just been assaulted by a profoundly scientific effort, stimulated by cashback.co.uk, the "site that pays you to shop." (which seems less of a point of difference now than in other holiday seasons, as every retailer seems only too delighted to pay you to shop this year.)

I have not been able to find out just who the respondents were, but can only assume they were among the folks who earn $10 every time they introduce a friend to the cashback.co.uk family.

Whoever they were, they were united in their belief that the iPod would have been the chosen gift of the Three Wise Men. A spokesperson for the site told The Daily Telegraph: "The iPod has really taken the world by storm and is an ideal present for anyone of any age." Well, for anyone of the 150 million or so who doesn't already have one, perhaps.

Still, as humanity teeters on the curb of Destruction Drive, wondering whether to step into the middle of the road in order to be struck lifeless by reality, one really does wonder just what resides in these respondents' minds.

Jim and Trisha would surely both love slippers.

(Credit: CC Davey Nin)

Because the second-best Christmas gift ever is, apparently, diamond earrings. The third is the quite indefatigably entertaining Wii. While the iPhone 3G languishes in some considerable pain and disillusionment at No 38.

What might these wise and thoughtful respondents have possibly imagined could be better than an iPhone 3G?

Well, at No. 30 they chose a Grease DVD. Which some might find a little "Travolting." Especially as No. 31 was a boxed set of 24.

But this travesty of intelligence and sensitivity is trumped into nanosignificance by the choice, at No. 18, of slippers.

Most will not be surprised that Barbie, having shaken off some difficult associations with Pamela Anderson and the spouses of certain politicians, stood rock solid at No. 10. However, the presence of pajamas at No. 33 might leave some wanting to disappear beneath their comforters until the End of Days.

And will anyone not feel involuntary spasms when discovering that following closely on the clasps of choice number 4--Tiffany earrings--is the gift that says "I love you" without the "I'd bankrupt myself for you"--a box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates?

In case you still had lingering doubts that the respondents to this survey might have been either imbibing considerable amounts of Baileys Irish Cream Liqueur (yes, No. 23) or the bored inhabitants of an institution for those of indeterminate mind, might I direct you to No. 34?

Yes, four places above one of the most dazzling phones ever created, was that essential, exciting, heartfelt, 34th best Christmas gift ever--a bottle of de-icer.

All is not lost, though. The iPhone was 3 places above the Footspa.

A survey of 3000 pet owners has revealed that tech gadgets are proving hazardous to their pets' health.

No, this seems to be nothing to do with dangerous rays being projected from their electronics. Rather, it seems that our dogs, cats, and, goodness, guinea pigs, haven't quite got used to the rapid proliferation of domestic electronic playthings. Neither, apparently, have reptiles and birds.

For a reason that remains slightly unclear, iPods are, apparently, most likely to injure cats. I am not sure if this is because the cats are slipping the headphones into their ears and turning up the volume too loud. Or because their paws still haven't got the hang of the random shuffle.

However, Apple's wonderful invention comes top of the survey's "gadget most likely to injure pets" league table. 15% of respondents appear to have cited their iPod in pet accidents. While around 10% cited the laptops, remote controls, Plasma TVs and Wiis.

Did this dog have an incident with a karaoke machine?

(Credit: CC Otakuchick)

Perhaps the most moving example of pet pain is the story of Pugsley, the Jack Russell cross who cannot resist jumping at dogs that are displayed in the supremely realistic HD of his owner's Plasma.

His owner, Jemma Scott, appears to be so inconsiderate of Pugsley's instincts and feelings that she leaves her Playstation wired up to her TV. Naturally, Pugsley, having failed to make sniffing contact with the projected pooch, then bounces off the screen and gets entangled in the Playstation wires.

With a grim and repeated inevitability, the Playstation then falls on Pugsley's head.

This is clearly a huge and growing problem in our already troubled society. Which is why I am delighted to have discovered that pets can now have their own technological playthings.

Take the PetsCell, for example. Yes, a waterproof cellphone that attaches just under your dog's slobbery parts. The dog has its own number and you can call him whenever you like. To call him back to your side, or just to ask him how he is.

While only 5.8% of the survey's respondents actually said that their own cellphones caused injury to their pets (they swallowed them? they cut their paws on the keyboards?), you may be disturbed that the same number admitted that their pets had been hurt by their karaoke machine.

However, in the midst of all this anguish, you may also want to pause to consider who sponsored this fascinating pet gadget injury survey.

It was a company called Petplan.

You will be stunned to discover that Petplan sells insurance policies for pets.

Let's create our own survey here. How many of your gadgets have caused injury to your pets? Please be honest, now. Even those of you who are secret salamander owners and have a karaoke machine.