This time of year, TRU must have people lined up outside every day, because the store was already packed with people who couldn't care less about the Nintendo Wii. I dived into the video game aisle to find an extra remote.

A couple poor slobs were standing by the glass display case getting the bad news from an employee. Already out of Wiis. Only received 48 units and 30 of those were for pre-orders. No idea when the next shipment will be.

Here's the line for pickup. One guy who missed his shot at getting one today bought a game anyway, that eternal optimist.

Apparently TRU called all the pre-orders and held a special early opening at 9am. They did not call me, predictably. The other slightly douchey aspect to the early opening was that, after they took care of the pre-orders and gave out a bunch more tickets to the non-pre-ordered, they dismissed the scene... so some late-comers showed up at 9:45am and thought they were first in line! I heard this from the guys behind me in the pickup line. "Can't show up 15 minutes early and expect to get one," one hefty Nintendo fan sadly declared.

Also from this particular rumor mill: the two Targets in town only received 90 Wiis between them.

I forgot to use the three $10 gift cards.

Here's Clark about to start his first ever Launch Day Unboxing. May it be the first of many, my lad.

Clark has already figured out that awesome stuff comes in boxes. We bought him a big kitchen playset Saturday night, as a Christmas gift, and I brought it inside from the trunk and caused a minor meltdown. We didn't think he had the connection yet between Big Box and Big Toy. He has. So right off, he's dragging the Wii box around and gesturing at me to get it opened.

Apparently, the secret surprise announcement is that the Nunchuk doubles as a phone. MEGATON!

As I unpacked it, Clark kept picking up the little foam bags and plastic wrappers and running them out to the kitchen trash can. He's good like that. Of course, I had to keep an eye on what he was grabbing.

I decided to do a partial re-wire of our home entertainment setup, since it's a spaghetti mess back there. I removed the old RCA alternate plugs for the PS2 - which were only there because you can't use the light gun with my usual s-video cable. Since the light gun hasn't made an appearance in a long time, it's officially pulled. I also discovered that I had the VCR hooked up twice, once direct on the cable -> TV path and again on the router. So I yanked that as well. Awful.

Before even attempting the Wii install, I double-checked that everything else worked. PS2, check. VCR, ick, check. Loose plug ready for video iPod, check. The upshot is, it took me an hour to get everything ready for the Wii.

Which we'll get to next time!