Bag O’ Crap!

There’s a fun little shopping website called woot.com that sells exactly one item per day. That one item is usually tech related & always cheap. The irreverent nature of the site, as much as the sale prices, is what attracts many of the sites loyal (ok, rabid) fans. Amusing sales pitches, pod-casts & weekly contests add to the fun. Imagine a K-Mart Blue-Light-Special with a singing carnival barker salesman & hundreds of shoppers poking fun at (or extolling the virtues of) the merchandise.

They also sell bags of crap.

I don’t know where the idea came from, but it’s genius. Woot.com takes a bunch of stuff they couldn’t possibly sell, dumps it into a brown paper bag (or box for shipping) and sells it for a buck and people go insane trying to get one. Sure, they throw in a few big-ticket jackpots (TVs, X-Boxes, Etc) but the real pay-off is simply the bragging rights of having bought a B.O.C.

Once in a blue moon they’ll sell a BOC as their daily sale and it’s sold out within minutes. This means that I have to stay up until 2 AM EST to catch the new sale as it comes online at midnight Texas time. The other way to earn a BOC is to catch it as it comes around during a Woot-Off. A Woot-Off is when they sell many many items, one at a time until they sell out, at prices discounted even further than normal. Woot-offs typically last a day or two and the items change every few minutes as they sell out. Somewhere in the midst of this melee of might appear the coveted Random Crap.

Watching the recent Woot-off in November I hit refresh as the previous item sold out and was greeted with the link above and the image at the left. I just managed to get the order in as their servers got hammered to death. Today my BOC arrived in the mail courtesy of Jesus the Fedex guy. Jesus, you’re my homey!

Without further delay, here are the contents of my very own personal Bag of Crap! Click the images to make them BIGGER.

The first thing I noticed was a neat compact wireless mouse. Now I can control my Livingroom Media PC from the comfort of my couch! Batteries included, this is worth the $6 by itself.

Next I pulled out the once-famouse CueCat. Around the turn of the century it was dreamed of as a way to avoid using search engines by scanning bar-codes off of magazines, books, TV, etc. The internet bust took this cool cat down with it unfortunately. Read more at the link below. The technology eventually made it’s way into webcams & my friend Ethan was lucky enough to actually have one.

Finally, I plucked forth a Samsonite camera bag/fanny pack. It has many pockets, a strap, handle & ample storage for all my digital camera gear! Wish I hadn’t just bought a camera bag though. 🙂

Collected Links:


Reported Bag-o-Crap Contents
Woot.com’s Wikipedia Entry
Original CueCat link
Dissecting the CueCat

So I woke up this morning having set (most of) the clocks back an hour for the switch back to Daylight Standard Time (IE, the time the rest of the world has been using since the first person noticed that the sun comes and goes on a kind of a pattern). The first thing I noticed was that the two alarm clocks in the bedroom (His/Hers) read 7:10 & 6:10 respectively. These two clocks claim to be Atomic Clock Radio Signal Receiving Clocks that never need setting as they glean the magic of time from radio signals and set themselves. That’s great except (as we learned last year) hers, when resetting to DST also resets the timezone to the default central time zone, so it was actually 7:10 not 6:10 and she was an hour late. To complicate matters, Verizon Wireless in it’s infinite wisdom, hadn’t yet changed back so they said 8:10 making her an hour early. Heather acknowledges that I’ve taken over the clock setting/maintaining job in the household. I pride myself on be punctual. This is an unrealistic self-image though as I’m only actually punctual about half the time even though I have a clock (or two or three) in every room to make certain I know what time it is. At one time I even made a study of how far people set their clocks ahead. It was called The Dalton Difference. So you can guess that it’s extremely frustrating that I DON’T KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS! Adding to the fun, there is the “Energy Policy Act of 2005″ that extends Daylight Saving Time by two weeks. OMG! Does that go into effect this year? Was the news lady on the radio wrong and only Verizon correct? To set matters straight I did what any red blooded American would do. I hit the internet and checked both CNN & FoxNews. If THEY agree then it must be true. I learned that we did “Fall Back” an hour at 2 AM this morning and it is indeed 7:10. Besides Heather being late for her class (yeah, on a Sunday. That’s continuing education for ya.) it was crucial that I knew just what time it was because if I turned on the TV this afternoon and found out that I missed an hour of Football, I’d have to be quite upset. Now, to go and finish setting all of the clocks:

Kitchen Clock – Atomic. Sets itself (and is used as the reference point for all other clocks in the household)
Rice Cooker clock – for setting the timer.
Microwave clock – for knowing how long your forgotten quiche has been sitting in there. Stereo clock – It has a display so they felt the need to add a clock.
VCR clock – For timed recordings. It doesn’t even display, but it’s in there!
DVD player clock – Again for timed recordings, but this one does display.
Luxury Bathroom clock – So Heather knows how early she is in the morning.
Utility Bathroom clock – So Eric knows how late he is in the morning.
Nightstand 1 clock – Heather’s with the broken time zone.
Nightstand 2 clock – Eric’s with the “atomic” featured turned off so to be correctly in sync with other atomic clocks.
Wrist watch clock – *NIU, needs batteries.
Four PC clocks – Set themselves back an hour automatically based on this being the last Sunday in October. What will happen NEXT year?
Den clock – Tells me it’s friggin’ late and I need to get off of the computer and go to bed.
Lock Haven University Mantle clock – Sits in the den under my diploma and chimes on the hour.
Poptarts Gag Alarm clock – Don’t send in your box tops for this clock. The hour hand doesn’t spin so I really don’t know what time it is!
Aquarium Timer
My Car clock – Which I have to look up in the owners manual to figure out how to change twice a year. So sad.
Heather’s Car clock – Which will be correct again if we just wait until March.
Embedded clocks – these are the more annoying ones because you might not remember to get them all until months go by and you’re really tempted to just wait until the next switch when they’ll be right again. These include, but are not limited to: My MP3 Player, iPod, Digital Camera, Heather’s Not -digital Camera, Video Camera, Cable Modem, Router, Printer, Portable-Stereo, Portable-CD Player, Walkman, Stop Watch, Handheld Games, Calculator, Organizer, Spell-checker and both Pedometers.

That’s it. I’m going back to bed and not setting an alarm because I don’t think the clock knows what time it is either.

UPDATE!
11/2/06 – We had a power outage last night and now I have to set half of the clocks all over again. Hooray!

Obligatory Links:
Explanation from the US Government concerning Daylight Saving Time
Ok, so what time is it?
A less US-Centric What-time-is-it link

Greenwich Mean Time

When some grooms would be running around getting doing last minute stuff or being social butterflies to cover the stomach butterflies I spent much of my free time the week before the big pig-roast wedding reception sitting in front of my computer pouring through my music catalogues, downloading & editing stuff I didn’t have & compiling playlists. The end result was three full CDs split up into Music for to Mingle, Slow Beats for Eats, and Dance Dance Reception. There was also a fourth CD with special songs that we could whip out on request like the Electric Slide or Hokey-Pokey. I threw on a few extra dance songs in case the party ran over (I not so secretly hoped it would). I timed the songs to coincide with when we wanted to have our ceremony, when the food would be served etc & nearly everything cue went off without a hitch. Beauty!

Some back story on our wedding song: Several months ago when Heather & I decided to get married we knew we would need a song & when nothing immediately sprang to mind I queued up all of the songs in my musical collection, hit the Random button and let it play. With over 14 Thousand tracks to choose from the computer, in its infinite wisdom chose… “Stairway to Heaven”. We wouldn’t be the first to use it in a wedding, but… no thanks. We ended up choosing”Road to Nowhere” by the Talking Heads not so much for the lyrics (see below), but for the bouncy fun of it all. This road that we are on is going nowhere, but we’re on the road and we are going t enjoy the scenery, the ups, the downs & most off all, the bumperstickers along the way. I’m feelin’ Ok this morning & you know, we’re on a road to paradise, here we go… here we go.

To be honest , my favorite part of the editing process was going through all of the songs that didn’t make the cut, were really inappropriate for a wedding or are just to cheesy to actually use… and splicing them into one long montage of musical mayhem. Just for fun, I added extra cow-bell to several of the songs and overlaid the famous “Mawidge!” audio from the Princess Bride. Wanna guess what song I chose to mix with the movie audio? Why, Stairway to Heaven of course! Take a listen… without fear of lawsuit, I now brazenly post several seconds of a dozen or so songs mixed together with fun sound bytes. Enjoy!

Click to listen to or download Eric & Heather’s Rejected Wedding Songs Medley!

“Road to Nowhere” – Talking Heads – From their 1987 Album “Little Creatures” (We used the version from their greatest hits album “Sand in the Vasoline”)

WELL WE KNOW WHERE WE’RE GOIN’
BUT WE DON’T KNOW WHERE WE’VE BEEN
AND WE KNOW WHAT WE’RE KNOWIN’

BUT WE CAN’T SAY WHAT WE’VE SEEN
AND WE’RE NOT LITTLE CHILDREN
AND WE KNOW WHAT WE WANT
AND THE FUTURE IS CERTAIN
GIVE US TIME TO WORK IT OUT

We’re on a road to nowhere
Come on inside
Takin’ that ride to nowhere

We’ll take that ride

I’m feelin’ okay this mornin’
And you know,
We’re on the road to paradise
Here we go, here we go.

We’re on a ride to nowhere
Come on inside.
Takin’ that ride to nowhere

We’ll take that ride.

Maybe you wonder where you are
I don’t care
Here is where time is on our side
Take you there…take you there.

We’re on a road to nowhere (Heh! Ha!)
We’re on a road to nowhere (Ha! Ha!)
We’re on a road to nowhere (Ha! Hah! Wooo!)

There’s a city in my mind
Come along and take that ride

and it’s all right, baby, it’s all right.

And it’s very far away
But it’s growing day by day
And it’s all right, baby, it’s all right.

Would you like to come along

To help me sing this song

And it’s all right, baby, it’s all right.

They can tell you what to do
But they’ll make a fool of you
And it’s all right, baby, it’s all right.

[repeat last 4 stanzas, with feeling]

We’re on a road to nowhere (Hey!)
We’re on a road to nowhere (Heeeaaaah!)
We’re on a road to nowhere (HAAAAH! HAAAAAAH!)

We’re on a road to nowhere….

Don’t download this song? A bizarre ramble…

Once upon a time I built my Fiance a PC and reformat my own HD. I decided to equip our OSes with all the latest & greatest software that money could buy. This meant that I would finally “get legal” with all of my software licences! Gone were the Goldwave & WinRAR… welcome Audacity & 7Zip. No more Microsoft Office! It’s all OpenOffice from here out! Where I couldn’t find a free alternative I purchased a licence. Of course, the most expensive single piece of “software” is the operating system itself. I choose to use the ubiquitous Windows XP because I already owned a licence. I bought another licence for Heather off of eBay. At the same time I also picked up a copy of Office XP. Unfortunately, some idiot fell for a phishing scam & I ended up “buying” a pirated CDR with “MS OFFICE” scribbled in marker on the front. So now I had hit my budget though I didn’t have the legit copy of Office that I wanted. I checked out the pirated copy. It would do the trick nicely.

I paid my dues. I made my honest attempt to get legit & I was robbed for my troubles. I never did install Office.

I would stake a lofty wager that over 90% of this country’s PCs contain illegal software or violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Thanks to the eBay ass clown I saw that I shouldn’t even bother trying to be 100% legal. I’m really not going to hurt Microsoft by using their software 10 minutes a week. I’m not hurting the radio station by downloading music so I can listen to it on my time and skip the commercials. I make it a point to boycott the shite products sold via the FM band anyway so maybe I’m doing them a favor by not tuning in eh? I mean really… does ANYONE buy a car because some jackalope screamed at you for 30 seconds & said his own name 20 times?

But I digress. I’ve never officially weighed in on the idea of downloading Music within the hallowed tubes of this website, so here’s my official stance: I have illegal copies of music & I intend to keep them. I’ll not share them, but I’ll use them for my own personal use. In most cases the music was ripped from my own CD collection. The physical copies of the CDs are kept in the car. This way I can enjoy the music I purchased at home or on the road. This is called illegal. I have over 100 cassette tapes from my youthier days. I used a combination of white, gray & black market to make sure I had a digital copy of my tapes before they rotted to nothing in my attic. This is also called illegal.

When I bought a copy of those albums I bought them FOREVER. For years the record labels made tons of money buy forcing us to buy the music we loved multiple times, from records to 8-tracks, cassette tapes, compact discs & now digital media with a side dish of ring tones for kiddie phones. It’s been their bread & butter for many years. Well, the music industry is about to go on Atkins & find that their bread & butter is off limits. No longer will I buy a song more than once. I will not buy it if it requires an internet connection. I will not buy it if doesn’t play FOREVER. Their whole system is going under & their ain’t enough 14 year olds lusting after yesterdays jail bait with quantized perfect pitch who happen to have $20 to shell out for 2 bad songs and 7 horrible ones. They’d rather just watch the video’s with the sound muted anyway. Wait, can you still see music videos? Sure! Pirates have uploaded all of the classics to YouTube! MTV? Owned by a media conglomerate – don’t bother. Last year some engineer accidentally played a Girls Gone Wild tape instead of the MTV Video Music Awards and nobody noticed the difference. You can still go to one of the online video sites, but there’s no videos for me to view… they’re all tied exclusively to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. I use Firefox as my browser. Now why would they have done a thing like that? Perhaps because Microsoft sells licences to a digital rights management scheme. In other words, they own your music. In 10 years it wont matter what medium your music is stored… whoever controls the codec owns the music. Hear that Music Labels? You’re about to get your asses owned by Microsoft. Resistance is, of course, futile.

In the mean time, download all the stuff you can “illegally” then send the artist $5 or $10 with a note saying how much you really enjoyed it. Listen to independent stuff, buy used CDs & for god sakes, take down the Britney poster… have some dignity, man!

Ok, I’m about done rambling here. I’m going to share some music now.

Weird Al Yankovic urges you: DO NOT DOWNLOAD THIS SONG!
MC Lars urges you: DOWNLOAD THIS SONG!