Christopher A. Wheeler

So today, it finally came! My Random Crap from Woot! finally arrived!!! And here is what I got:

• A generic red and black backpack
• A mousepad with the American Flag and a bald eagle on it
• A Burglar Window Alarm
• A crazy keychain with a thermometer and compass built in
• Cure sleepiness right away – To Prevent Traffic Accidents, To Ensure Driving Safety

So the generic backpack, I don’t know. We’ll do something with it. The mousepad, I don’t really use one, but I’m sure I know somebody who does. The window alarm… um. The keychain with the thermometer and compass… wow.

The real prize, is the Cure Sleepiness Right Away thing. More about this to come…

So today I was headed over to Iowa Book to get my twice-daily refill of fountain Diet Coke with splash of Cherry Coke, when I saw inside the back of this truck, these guys were unloading stuff. And there was this stack of boxes that were ALL smashed up and stuff, and it looked pretty bad. Anyways, the dudes said to each other, “I wonder how the boxes got to look like that” and other stuff along those lines.

So, I went in, got my refill, and started back to work, and I passed the same truck. This was maybe only 3 minutes later. Anyways, they’re unloading the boxes to put on some of those two-wheeled dollies to pull in, and the dude inside the truck just starts heaving the boxes out into the street, and they hit the ground and tumble a bit, and the other dude moves them toward the dolly not by picking them up, but by kicking them over there.

Hmm, I also wonder why the boxes look like that.

So today I drove to work. I pulled into the parking spot and as I started to feed the meter, I noticed that I inherited one hour and seven minutes, on a two hour meter! That saved me 84 cents!!!

Lots of people ask, “Is the glass half-empty or half-full?” as a measure of pessimism vs. optimism.

I say it matters on what the glass was like before you just showed it to me. If it was empty, and you put water in, it’s half-full. If it was full, and you dumped some out, it’s half-empty.

OK, so, I just turned 30 last week, four days ago to be precise. Anyways, it was the best birthday ever.

On Wednesday, my birthday eve, my in-laws took us all to The Button Factory in Muscatine. We ordered the Twisty Onion Haystack for an appetizer and it was yummy, like onion rings, except better. You know how when you eat an onion ring, and you take a bite, and all the onion comes out, and it is really lame. These don’t do that. For my dinner I chose the Chicago Style Italian Beef sandwich. Superb! I have never had this type of sandwich before, so I don’t know if it is “authentic” Chicago Style or not, but who cares, it was dang good. Then we g0t a free dessert, a brownie with ice cream, which also was quite tasty. And huge enough for all of us to share. Read more »

OK, so you know when you’re at the fast food drive-thru and it says on the menu board “Ask us about our special toy for children under 3″? Well, apparently if we’re in the drive-thru at McDonald’s, and she’s trying to order, and I ask about the toy, Kate gets embarrassed or something and starts laughing and can’t stop. But when you’re at Wendy’s a few minutes later and do the same thing, she doesn’t laugh. How weird is that?

So who knows about Woot? It’s possibly one of the sweetest websites in the world, next to this site.

Anyways, pretty infrequently, they have this item known as “Random Crap”, affectionately know to some as a “Bag of Crap”. In the whole 3 year history of Woot, this apparently was only their 20th offering of said crap. So more about the Random Crap… Read more »