Yesterday I went shopping, in search of the fabled DS Lite. I placed my faith in the inventory tracking system of Best Buy, which assured me that both hardware and potentially free copies (see the last post) of Brain Age were in stock at the two brick and mortar locations nearest to my home.

It's not clear to me now exactly what that system keeps track of, but either (A) it's a day or more behind actual inventory counts, or (2) after leaving regional distribution centers on trucks bound for physical markets, said products' status are updated to "In Stock."

Meanwhile, back in reality, both stores were sold out of both products, leaving me DS-free and fairly disappointed as visions of a gigantic Mario vanished from my head. But fortunately, I have one of the coolest brothers in the world, thanks to whom I now have a DS Lite winging its way to me (with great lethargy) via the United Stated Postal Service. The short version is this: he bought one off of eBay just before launch day (after hearing rumors of a shortage), and then on launch day saw a stack of them sitting in his local Circuit City and just couldn't resist; a win-win-win situation. Maybe one more win, I'm not sure...

So, while I was out yesterday, I decided to go to the shopping mall next to Best Buy, where I purchased a copy of Brain Age from EB Games and then headed to Waldenbooks. From there, I picked up a copy of the excellent Marvel trade paperback House of M, and two issues of one of the greatest magazines ever printed -- Make:

I had heard a lot about Make: from diggnation and other random sources, but I'd never done more than skim the website. What caught my attention was the cover story about building your own Kite Aerial Photography rig, and now I'm completely and utterly hooked. In fact, I'm hatching a plan to build my own rig and take some aerial photos from the top of Currahee mountain, the former site of the US Army paratrooper training camp, Camp Toccoa.

Also, I've written my review for Ratchet & Clank, and I'm thinking of starting the second game in the series: Going Commando. Or maybe it's time for a nice & long RPG. Well, that's it for today. I think in my next post I'll try and catalog the progress that I have made on my KAP rig.