Black Friday sales – ooo shiny things! So I may not be resistant to mass-marketed consumer events, but I think that I made out like bandit. Lets see how I did.

First up, some books to expand my knowledge: Ruby On Rails Tutorial [2nd edition], and HTML5 Applications. Originally valued at $46.99 and $26.50, I picked them up at the Friends and Family sale at 25% off, but then did even better online at 34% off + almost another 5% off with plum rewards card, down to $29.46 and $16.62. A savings of $27.41, or ~37%

Next, a zippy SSD for my desktop because a coworker has been harping on me to fix my dinosaur ways. Cashing in on Tiger Direct’s Black Friday sale, I grabbed this guy, a Plextor M5S 256gb SSD for $189.99 with discount and mail-in rebate, down from $344.99 (arguably higher than the real market value). A savings of $155, or ~45%

Lastly, I’ve been wanting to upgrade my monitor for a little while. You know, a few extra inches. I didn’t see anything that matched my needs and budget during the Black Friday sales but last night, Futureshop sent out their CyberMonday flyer and here was this shiny thing, a 21.5″ Samsung Syncmaster s22b350h with 3000:1 static contrast and 2ms GTG response. With a $70 rebate down from $200 to $130 (35% savings) and free shipping, how could I say no?. Funny enough, my current monitor is also a Syncmaster.

So how well did I do? A total expense of $366.07 valued at $618.49, or 41% off the total bill. Not bad, I think. Not bad at all.