The World of Stuff .com

We have a winner

The Change Contest is over. I know you’re eager to find out who won. But first…

My going-away party was last night. Hardly anyone I invited actually showed up (thanks to those who did), but there were a lot of people overall. The party was also for my sister, who’s going to college, and my grandparents, who are moving. The place was packed. There was lots of food, and there still is. Everybody had a good time. There was so much going on that it couldn’t all be contained indoors, so a lot of the party moved outside, where there were all sorts of tables and chairs. Some people stayed inside to watch the football game. Luke tried to play leapfrog with a frog. We talked about plans to go to Miami on Wednesday (everyone is invited, even you). As the night grew late, Luke found out about the Driveway-A-Thon and insisted that another driveway endurance contest be held. He, Justin, TJ, and I participtaed. Luke won, staying on the driveway continuously for exactly 3 minutes.

Today I went to the grocery store to turn my change into cash. Yes, I know the bank does this, but I can’t get to the bank without a car, and I’d probably have to roll all that change, which I’d really rather not do. Plus, I already did this, so it’s too late for you to criticize me. Anyway, I got to the machine and was amazed by how simple the process was. I had expected to be standing there for hours placing each coin in a slot one by one. No. You just dump ‘em in. It only took a few seconds to do that. Then the machine counts. It’s really noisy, but it only takes a few moments. Once it determines how much you’ve got, it gives you a receipt that you can redeem for cash. There’s an 8% service charge, but it’s better than the 8.9% charge that the other grocery store’s machine imposes.

I had my own guess for this contest, and it was based on the amount I had counted when the jar was a little more than halfway full. It was a long time ago, but I remember that the amount then was around $50. So I figured that with the jar mostly full, the amount of money inside would be about $75.

The actual amount of change in the jar was $77.14. Congratulations to Mark Myers, whose guess of $78.87 was off by only $1.73! He gets to write a post about whatever he likes, if he wants to. (And if he doesn’t, then I suppose the runner-up can have the honors.)

In second place was Todd, who guessed $2.86 too high, followed by Natasha, whose guess was $3.04 low. Not bad for people who don’t use US currency. (They’re both Canadian.) Of the 14 valid guesses, the average amount guessed was $64.23, and the median guess was $68.23. Gilbert’s guess of $15 was less than 20% of the actual amount. The highest guess, Daniel’s $100.44, was more than 130% of the actual amount.

Thanks to everyone for participating in the contest. It’s been a lot of fun. Plus, I now have an extra $70!

I knew that Weezer had two eponymous (self-titled) albums, but I didn’t know that there were so many other artists with multiple self-titled albums.

Domain hacks, like blo.gs and del.icio.us, are cool. Here’s a search utility for domain hacks. There are two for “theworldofstuff”: theworldof.st/uff/ and theworl.do/fstuff/. It looks like those domain names are available, too.