After I completed my script to scrape websites for Wii availability - yes, I updated the script so that it could watch multiple sites at once, code will come in a future posting - I began to consider whether my chances of scoring a Wii from an online retailer were greater than my chances of trying to track one down at a plain old brick and mortar store. Here's my general line of thought:

'While I can essentially watch these websites and know within minutes of Wii availability, it doesn't benefit most of these stores to sell the Wii online at this time. It's easy for me to get tunnel vision when I shop online. There aren't any pretty product displays to catch my eye, there aren't any impulse buys in the checkout aisle for me to grab as I wait for a checker to ring me up and take my payment. It's definitely a smarter move for these stores (Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA) to have bodies on their premises; people holding Things in their hands as they shop. I think my odds of securing a Wii will increase if I spend a little time trying to track one down in Real Life.'

So I was trying to figure out how to watch the web for available Wii's and I came up with the idea of writing a little script to do it for me. My solution was to write the script in Ruby. Here's what it does:

• Parse the Amazon Wii item page for an out of stock message
• Send email when it fails to find any such message
• Creates a file when the item is confirmed to exist. The script checks for the file. If the file exists, the script exits immediately. This prevents us from getting many extra emails from step two.

Last Friday (Aug. 11) I ordered an off-air antenna from Antennas Direct. I ordered a DB4 antenna, the 18" J-Mount, and 100 feet of RG6 coaxial cable.

They only offered FedEx shipping, which I don't prefer because it seems to be so much more expensive than all of the other alternatives. But that's fine. I had called and asked, since they're located in Eureka, MO (about 35 miles from our house), if they had a warehouse somewhere that I could just go and pick up the items after I ordered them. The lady that I spoke with told me that, no, they don't do that, but they do sometimes have returned items in their office that I could come look at and purchase for a discount. Since their return policy on those items was "No Returns," I decided against going that route.

Don't forget to show appreciation to your local systems administrator tomorrow (July 28th). They do lots of work at night so you can work during the day. There's a great list of nice things you can do to show your appreciation, as well as a photo gallery, over at SysAdminDay.com.

I don't always find the fare on Slashdot to be terribly helpful or useful. In fact, it's often not much more that Linux fanboys getting worked up about something M$ has done, or about some cool new feature in the latest Linux kernel. More, the news posted there is often old. I find that I've already read about whtever it is a day or two before it makes it to /..

But sometimes there is cool stuff there. This post points to a video of a couple of guys with too much of three things: time, Diet Coke, and Mentos.

I just saw this post on Slashdot about two freshmen at MIT who fully automated their dorm room. The system includes voice activation, a touch screen control center, web based control, a security system, and a big red "Instant Party" button. Read all about MIDAS here.

Maybe I could automate our bedroom at home. I could put a mechanical arm in there to lift me up and put my bedrest pillow behind me so that I can recline on the bed and watch the TV, which also gets turned on by the system and set to the appropriate channel or input (you know, if I want to play video games, or something. But then I'd also need a mechanism to bring me the controller and put the right game into the console.)

I stumbled upon this today. It's really entertaining. It's about a guy who got one of those obnoxious singing/dancing santas from Wal*Mart and changed what it had to say. There are videos at the bottom of the page. Above the movies, there's a very complete and detailed discussion of what he did, and how. The details definitely appeal to the geek in me, which, truthfully, comprises most of my self. So I liked reading about it. Your mileage may vary.