This is a day very similar to the one I had last year.

Long story, short version. After I got it out of my head to buy myself a Palm Tungsten T3 from the Apple Store, I decided that the best way to let my parents and grandparents in on tonight's present opening bonanza would be with a digital video camera, specifically the Samsung SCD23.

I wanted it by tonight, so Buy.com was out of the running. I wanted someone respectable, so Wal Mart and Best Buy were shot down. So finally I settled on everybody's favorite store, Target. The web site offered the SCD23 for $349.99 with free shipping. I reasonably assumed that the price would be the same as the prices in the store, so I called up the local store and had them hold their last one for me to pick up after work.

I got to the store early, picked up a firewire cable and two extra cassettes and waited for a clerk to come grab my box for me. While I was waiting, an old man with darting eyes was berating one of the clerks about a digital camera, holding it in his hands possessively. I was there just in time to see the manager arrive. The clerk said simply, "We're out of stock of these, but he wants this camera." The old man gripped it a little tighter and said quite forcefully, "I want THIS camera."

It was a pretty beat-up little camera, a demo model probably handled and drooled on by hundreds of shoppers in the weeks prior. But he was adamant. "Then it's yours," the obviously stressed manager said to him, turning and walking back to whatever crisis must have been on the other side of the store. "Sell it to him as-is." The clerk began to tell the gentleman what he was buying; no box, no cables, no manual, no warranty and plopped the camera into a plastic shopping bag as the man rudely cut him off and started to walk away with the camera.

"Uh sir," he said, "You do have to buy that here." This was obviously a very stressful day for Target employees. And $87 later, the old man walked away with a possibly worthless camera that I can't fathom his reason for wanting. Takes all kinds, I guess.

So finally I get my DV camera from behind the counter and plop all my things on the counter to ring up. When he's done I notice that the grand total is $446.22. Now I knew it was going to be a big ticket purchase, but this was a bit more than I expected to spend and right over my margin of comfort. It turns out that the store price of the camera was $399.99, which is $70 more than the sale price that Buy.com had it for just a few weeks ago and $50 more than on their own website.

Sadly, I had to leave without it.

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