Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Bag of Crap

So if anyone knows me all that well you will know that I like to frequent the website woot.com. If you don't know much about that site it's ia nifty business idea. They sell one item a day. Usually it's electronics or nerd related but not always. If the item sells out before the end of the day then that's it, you can't buy anything for the rest of the day. However, they don't sell out all the time, which means that they will start to accumulate a lot of inventory of items where they don't have enough to warrant a full day sale, but they have to do something with the excess.

So they came up with the idea of a "Woot-Off". In the Woot-Off they will sell one of those items until it is sold out and then put another item up. A Woot-Off will generally last 2-3 days. Woot-Offs have become great places to get even better deals than Woot.com originally offered. I would imagine their traffic spikes a lot on those days as people habitually come back to the site to see what the new product is.

Another fun feature of the Woot-Off is the Random Crap item, also known as the Bag of Crap or BOC. It is like a mystery box of stuff. It could be one of their high end products, or it could be a bunch of crap. People also rarely refer to it as the Bag of Crap anymore, instead trying to think of clever substitutes for the acronym BOC. Give it a try yourself, Box of Carp. Bastille Only Credentials, Beginners Oft Cry.



Another thing to note is that the Bag of Crap always sells out within 10-15 seconds. And it only takes that long because the servers need that much time to process the massive amount of orders that go in all at the same time. Basically if you blinked when it was posted, you missed it.

I have been trying to buy a Bag of Crap for like 2 years now. It's never happened. I'm never on the ball enough, so this time arond when the Woot-Off started I though, maybe I can help myself out a little. I wrote a VBA program that will log on to Woot and refresh periodically and if it detects the BOC then it will go through and purchase it. So whenever a new product was about to come on I would set the program running.

Well it worked! And I got it this time. Unfortunately... it was also mostly crap. But that won't stop me from trying next time!





Contents:
- 3 XL Fruit of the Loom t-shirts
- 1 USB hookup Hulk smash button (I guess it commences the gamma ray sequence on your computer?)
- 1 Design maker
- 2 Frames ("One Cool Dad" and "Worlds Best Mom")
- 1 Pair of headphones
- 4 Electronics screen cleaner cloths
- 1 Gym duffle bag

I actually find the screen cleaner cloths quite useful for my tablet and phone. And the gym bag isn't too bad either. Headphones never go out of style, but the other stuff... well, they don't use the word crap for nothing...

Sushi!

In our latest exploits, SUSHI! I got myself a nifty sushi kit for a whopping $3 at Bed, Bath and Beyond and now I can make sushi. I learned that the rice for sushi is a bit different and has to be seasoned at makemysushi.com but the rest is pretty easy. Just get some seaweed sheets, whatever filling you want and roll it all up with rice. It turned out pretty good. Now I can eat sushi without having to go to a restaurant (though that practice will still continue as they make it much better).