So: Black Friday. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, the Friday after Thanksgiving is one of the busiest shopping days of the year in the US, because retailers mark all kinds of crap down to insanely, stupidly low prices. You can get really, really good stuff for amazingly, awesomely cheap. Seriously.
Anyway, some really ridiculous things happened on this Black Friday in particular. Such ridiculous things that Meteshjj and I have deemed it "Television Day".
I woke up a bit earlier than I normally do on Friday (I had to do a few errands and then go to work), and as I stumbled into my living room, still half asleep, I remembered that I had heard someone come in through the front door and then leave again, sometime around 6AM. I didn't question it, because stuff like that happens all the time with my house... People forget things, my roommate might spend the night somewhere else and come home early, whatever.
But then I noticed the box on the table. It was a television box, and the thing was still inside it. Written on the side was "Happy Festivus, assholes. Signed, the Nightman." I immediately recognized the handwriting and the It's Always Sunny reference, and knew it was Meteshjj, who I also knew had been out doing Black Friday shopping. I fumbled for my phone and sent him a question asking about it, and he said that it was a Christmas present for my roommate and I that he had bought for (relatively) cheap, and just not to question it.
Oh -- the TV is a 32-inch flatscreen HD LCD. It's absolutely beautiful, and I think I'm going to cry from happiness when I see New Vegas on it.
So I went to work, pretty pleased with things. I was telling the story to a few of my coworkers, when one of them mentioned that he had a TV that he was going to get rid of, because it was broken. According to him, the TV was an older 50-inch that needed a new bulb, and it was going to cost like 300$, and he didn't want to shell out and do it (this guy loves giant TVs. He had another one in the living room). So I called Meteshjj, asked him if he wanted a giant ass TV, and after my coworker got off for the day, we went down and picked it up.
First of all, it's not old -- it's a Sony Bravia from 2005 or so, possibly newer. It's 60 inches, not 50. And the damn thing weighs next to nothing. It's in absolutely perfect condition, other than this bulb that needed to be replaced. We took a look at it, Googled some stuff, used the e-manual my coworker gave us, and determined that yes, it is the bulb -- the guy who gave it to us wasn't sure, see.
Now, if you buy a replacement part from the Sony website, it includes the bulb and the housing, and is about 250 dollars. Not a bad price to pay for a television like this, really. But the housing itself is fine, and it's only the bulb that needs to be replaced. And you can get those new from third-party sources on Ebay. For like seventy bucks.
I'm going to pay for the replacement bulb, Meteshjj is going to fix it, and the television is his. I'm going to keep the 32-inch, obviously.
So yeah. Friend of mine randomly bought us a new TV, then got one nearly twice the size in return. If he hadn't bought it, my coworker would have never mentioned his, and there would be no television day.