Walt-O-Matic

You know how TGI Friday’s has all that junk nailed up to the wall?

Well, while we were eating, we happened to notice some kid had long dropped his sun glasses on the floor. Rather than have them thrown out by staff, I social engineered our waiter to put them on Nixon.

Let’s see how long before someone notices.

When I see a nozzles up high, I want to turn them to see what they’ll do…

So, I’m driving down Waxpool in Ashburn, VA on my way to work, and there’s a truck in front of me with a huge spool of wire on the back.

What’s more curious to me is the way the tools were being transported. Someone had tied a bucket to a rope and put their tools in it hanging off the back of the truck.

This can’t be safe. Well, I guess if there’s no room on the passenger side…

While visiting Ted’s in Sterling, VA, I noticed that their bathroom was either missing a very vital component, or that the place was very accommodating for drunks used to using an alley.

I keep trying to explain there are differences between men and women’s bathrooms. Women have it better. In this case, men just have a wall.

Not retouched.

While hanging out at Potbelly in Ashburn, VA, I found they have a little used book area in the back. I love going through used books, primarily because you find interesting hand written notes.

Here’s one from a dad to his daughter. Not only does the title of the book convey the dad’s impression and confidence, but we also get a peek at his spelling. One fears that it may be possible to piece together a little bit more about this family than we wanted to know.

A while ago, I thought it might be fun to conduct an experiment and rank anything and everything that Amazon showed me. In fact, the rank wasn’t necessarily even important, I just wanted to see what would happen as recommendation after recommendation was ticked off. Would Amazon’s suggestions get better? Would it run out of suggestions? Would it result in an overflow message?

Well, I ranked over 10,000 items over the course of several months, ranging from computer books to perfume. What I found was that in the short term you could get Amazon to run out of things to recommend you. In the longer term, it got a little better recommending things, though the categories get broader, and if you stumble into a new kind of category, it leaps at the chance to have options again to show you. And, finally, nothing spectacular happened numerically when I crossed five digits.

That said, every so often, Amazon makes some amusing recommendations choices. However, this time it was the presentation that was amusing unto itself that I took a snapshot.

Know those split-books you had as a kid, where the page was divided? You’d get half an animal on top, and half an animal on the bottom. Allowing you to make a giraf-o-potamous, an elepha-gator, or a kanga-mander.

Amazon selected two products and presented them split-book fashion. Order, it turned out, was important:

It’s the top of a woman from 2002, and the bottom of another from 2007, put together it looks like one woman standing behind two cut outs on the product recommendation page. I couldn’t help but give each half five stars for creativity.

Coastal Flats has an enjoyable sense of humor.

I walked up to the hostess desk, and they recognized me immediately. Jokingly, I was asked, “What name shall we put you under as, Walt?”

I attempted to make up a name that would require horrific use of Unicode, if not make it look like a terrorist convention was occurring.

I got a smile as they handed me the pager.

But as I passed by their computer, I noticed they planned to turn the joke at my expense. Here’s how I was paged…. and, boy, did the staffer who seated us look confused.

The $899 price is right.

But it’s the price for a 100 units, not one.

Now, think about that.

A box of 100 leg razors. That’s 10 across by 10 down.

It will set you back nearly a thousand dollars at the check out counter.

A thousand dollars.

For 100 razors.

Think of something that costs a grand, a box of razors next to it.

Me, I’m thinking a fully loaded Mac Mini.

Got to hand it to Costal Flats in Tysons Corner, VA. They certainly have a sense of humor when it comes to their Emergency Exit.

Sometimes I question the self-centered behavior that frequents Ashburn parking lots.