I knew that I wanted to get a Wii from pretty much the moment it was announced. When it was first mentioned with it's motion-sensitive controllers, I thought, "Damn, that's going to be one cool way to play video games." The more that was announced and confirmed about it, the more I knew I wanted to get one.

However, I did not know when I wanted to get one. Of course, I thought it would be great to get one on launch, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to wait in line for one.

Work was being a prick (and still is) about the Wii, not allowing staff to purchase one, and outright refusing to set any aside for staff that wished to purchase one. (They later abated on that and set 5 aside for a random draw.) So, I knew that if I was going to get one, it would have to be somewhere else than at work. Hell, people who worked at Best Buy and waited in line for over 6 hours for a second-shipment Wii got reamed out by the manager about waiting in line because they were staff and as such, not allowed to purchase one. Pricks.

Alas, I digress. Despite all my schemes to get one at work, they were failing because of stupidity on Best Buy's part (big surprise, eh?), so I knew if I was to get one, it would have to be somewhere else. This really didn't give me much encouragement to get one.

It was the night before launch, and I still wasn't stirring, I wasn't even sure if I was going to get one. I had a pretty good idea that I was going to try, but I had no really concrete plan on how to do it. I figured I'd just pop by the local Futureshop and see how much of a lineup was there around a half hour before the store opened. My roommate decided he'd get one too, so after some discussion, we figured we'd head out around 6:30 to get one.

Damn it, I keep getting distracted reading posts on that link up there and thinking, "It's All True."...

So, the morning comes around, my alarm goes off at about 0600h, after about 3 hours or so of sleep, and I turn it off, flip on my tv and lay there thinking, do I really want to do this? I hear Kyle get up and get in the shower and decide, well, if he's up on his own, and is going, I may as well too.

We get to Futureshop at about 0645h, and the lineup as built up considerably. We get in line, and it continues to grow. Let me tell you now, waiting in line on a cold day in CSA approved steel toe and shank shoes is a good way to make your feet go numb.

There, I went and got distracted again.

There were people I knew in line, and complete idiots as well. (The guy behind me, you know who you are -- when bitching about how slow the line was moving, I had to bite my tongue to avoid saying "Have you looked in the mirror lately?" to his comments of "I've never seen anything so slow, etc..." Mean, I know, but damn, my feet were cold, and I was sick of listening to him bitch. Deal with it or get the hell out of the line.

Turns out that a bunch of the people in the line were in groups, and they were enforcing a one-per-group policy, so my roommate "lost his ID", and I didn't say anything to him while waiting. Keeping up appearances...yeah...I was number 51 in line.

So, when the store opened at 0800h, I expected it to be half decent, but it was 0930h before I even got into the store. They were only letting one person into the store at once, and alternating the employees so they would get an equal commission. By the time I got in, there was nothing but Nunchuk and Wii Points available for accessories, so I just picked up my console, Zelda, and a 3-yr PSP. Not on staff mind you, because they were kicking people out of line for that. Again with the idiocy.

So, $400 and 3.5 hours later, I get home with the console. I begin to unpack it, looking at all the bits and pieces of this shiny new toy, imagining how it'll all go together, and how much fun it's going to be to play.

After retrieving the sensor bar from Vaya (damn thief), I have the console neatly laid out in front of me, and...

...proceed to sit down and read the manual for an hour or so.

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