Woot! Bag of Crap!

A website I visit on a daily basis is Woot.com.  The website, with its tag line of "One Day, One Deal", offers one product a day at a usually great price.  These items are sometime new, sometimes refurbished and are often tech related but could be anything.  Once a month, they change things up a little and have a Woot-off.  During a Woot-off you will see flashing yellow lights on the page and they will put up one item after another, changing when an item sells out or they pull the plug.  This is also where you might just encounter the coveted "Woot Bag of Crap!".  When the bag of random crap ($8 including shipping) comes up they usually sells out within a few seconds, they are highly sought after.  So what is it?  Well, it could be anything.  Those lucky enough to get their order in will receive a box of random items from Woot about a week or two later.  The items sent can be working or broken, cool or crap.  You never know.  An item that everyone hopes for is "the letter".  The letter simply states that one item of random crap was too big to fit in the box and was shipped separately.  These can turn out to be TVs or in one case, a pallet of car wax.

The latest Woot-off started just ater midnight on August 18th and lasted through August 20th.  A72 hour Woot-off is a long one!  I was running a cool little tool in my browser at woot.kishk.org which can calculate how many of an item are left and estimate the time to sell out.  You can also set it to give audible alerts when an item gets to 20%, 10% or 5% left as well as when the item sells out or a new Woot is put up.  This works OK, but I found that Kishk didn't update very quickly when an item sold out, so when it alerted me that only 5% of an item was left I would start reloading the Woot page until the next item was up in hopes that it would be the Bag of Crap.  This went on for three days!  While at work I would take a short break whenever the audible alert went off (just a minute or so, I wasn't ignoring my job!) and at home I'd stop what I was doing when I would hear the birds chirping from Kishk.  I also have an app on my iPhone so I can keep track of what was going on while in my car, but only when stopped at lights.  So on Friday, Kishk showed about 9 minutes left on an item so I decided I had time for a bathroom break.  I took my iPhone with me so I could play a game while indisposed, but the first thing I did was run the Woot app.  Of course as soon as the app loaded it showed the Bag of Crap was being offered.  Jumping to my feet I shuffled to the computer (which was still showing the previous item), refreshed the Woot page and there it was!  The "I Want One" button was frantically pushed and within a minute or so the order confirmation page popped up.  My credit card security number was quickly entered and the order confirmed.  I'd been this far several times before, only to have my dreams crushed when the order finally finished processing and tell me that the item had sold out before my order could be completed.  This time the processing screen stayed up for what seemed like a LONG time, and when it finished my order was CONFIRMED!  I successfully ordered my FIRST BAG OF CRAP!  Will it contain a new computer?  The Lost Ark of the Covenant?  Spock dolls with their ears missing?  I don't know!  But it'll be fun waiting to find out!