It's that time of year again...

No, not spring. It's getting messy but there's still a month of the cold stuff left.

Tim Horton's Rrroll Up the Rim to Win promotion (yes, the officially spelling is with three 'R's) is back. Last year at this time, I worked in an office. It was bit like the TV show The Office, although with less excitement, a more competent boss (she was Scottish), and less romance. But, like Pam in season 2, we had our own girl who spent a lot of time talking about and planning her wedding.

My cubicle (or whatever you call a half-wall/desk combo that is actually a triangle) was pretty spartan, but when this promotion Rrrolled along (sorry!) I added one feature: a simple post-it note tallying my rate of success (you know, 0 wins out of 15 cups, or whatever). Think of it as a low-tech RSS feed. Going to the Tims at MTS Centre on my lunch break and then coming back and updating the tally was one of the highlights of my day, along with watching people working out in the hotel gym across the courtyard from our office, and completing Sudokus that I interspersed with my work. The co-workers in my area would always ask about it, and remind me if I forgot to make my update. Only later when, during the World Cup, our boss wheeled in a TV to show the games, did I find something else quite as entertaining.

Even though I hadn't won anything after my first 15 or 20 coffees, I ended up winning somewhere in the realm of 4/35 or 5/40 times, right in line with the advertised odds.

Now, since I don't have any cubicle, I've replaced the low-tech post-it RSS feed with an actual RSS feed (see the entire log here). So you can subscribe and follow my success. This is really just an excuse for me to play around with RSS and XML, but if you are actually interested in such pointless trivialities of life, then go ahead and follow along.

I don't like to admit that I'm influenced by advertising, but when it comes to Rrrolling and Burger King coupons, I'm a sucker.