For those of you who don't know, EB Games/Gamestop started pre-orders for Wii today. So as any good little Nintendo Fanboy would I headed out to the local EB Games store at 8:30 (store opens at 10), with the full intent of missing my CS118 class. Meant to get there an hour earlier, but I guess that's all part of the evils of having a snooze button. That snared me the 32nd place in line, but not everyone in line was buying and the guy behind me in line made a few phone calls and learned that stores would offer "less than 36 units for preorder," so it was worth the shot. So fast forward to 10:40am, where I'm now second in line. The guy in front of me was repeating to me, as he had for the last half hour, how pissed off he'd be if he was the first guy to not get a pre-order (we've learned at this point there were 25 units, so prospects weren't looking good). So as fate would have it his fear was validated as the store clerk announced "ya, we're done." So after 2 hours of waiting and missing CS118, I walked out of EB Games without the pre-order, though probably not as pissed off as the guy in front of me was, nor as pissed off as the girl who screamed "Not again, this just happened to me two days ago" (presumably, she was one of the many people who didn't get the ps3 either).
Anyways, it wasn't a complete loss, as it was actually a pretty damn interesting wait. I met a lady who works as an animator for Pandemic Studios (the guys who made Star Wars: Battefront II) and she in the past did storyboards for the South Park movie. She was missing work standing in line, but not suprisingly her boss was okayed the occasion as a good enough reason to be late for work. Then there was this guy who was counting how many people were in line (something like 80+, not counting people who showed up and left), who yelled out at the people at the end of the line that he was 4th. After the brief deluge of swear words, he yelled out, "but hey, I earned it. I've been here since 8 pm." My reply went something like "so what, that's only half an hour before i got... holy crap, did he say pm?" And then probably my favorite event of all morning was when the guy behind me in line made the comment "The sun is out. That's disgusting."
Oh yeah, and I saw my combinatorics professor in line for the Wii. Probably buying it for his kids or something, but odd nonetheless.
