World's Biggest Problem Now Solved
Well, the world changes today.
A new site - www.buffalolunchrandomizer.com - has just launched. The site, which is still in beta, contains 108 WNY lunch options, which are ranked by the site creators based on overall dining experience. The site includes all kinds of restaurants, from the Malamute to Mythos, from Wasabi to Chuck E. Cheese.
As a result of the quality ranking, some restaurants appear more than others, as the smart lunch algorithm feeds you higher quality lunches more often than lower ranked options. But - and this is why the lunch randomizer must be obeyed - there is always a chance you will end up with some of the more interesting lunch options. For instance, you and your office mates might hit 'feed me' and end up with the cafeteria at Buffalo General Hospital - a 1 in 1000 outcome based on the smart lunch algorithm.
It's Russian roulette with your stomach, and once you agree to submit yourself to the outcome, you simply have to obey. Or else.
As the site is still in beta, the developers are interested in hearing any feedback you might have, so feel free to 'have at it' in the comments, or email them at lunch @ eggheadinteractive.com.
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Comment Options
UrbanGuy
mister pizza here i come!
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Gioia
HA! That is so funny. The list appears to be very comprehensive. Cool idea!
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BuffaloGeek
It seems kind of silly to pretend that this isn't a BuffaloRising product, n'est pas? The registered domain name of the lunch site and EggHead Interactive belong to the owners/employees of this site, Barry and Brett. If you're going to do a private registration, you gotta check ALL the boxes. ;-)
Would anyone have thought differently if you had simply rolled this out as a HLM product? Jeez.
The Registry database contains ONLY .COM, .NET, .EDU domains and Registrars. Domain Name.......... buffalolunchrandomizer.com Creation Date........ 2008-04-24 Registration Date.... 2008-04-24 Expiry Date.......... 2009-04-24 Organisation Name.... Barry Heneghan Organisation Address. P O Box 99800 Organisation Address. Organisation Address. EmeryVille Organisation Address. 94662 Organisation Address. CA Organisation Address. US
The Registry database contains ONLY .COM, .NET, .EDU domains and Registrars. Domain Name.......... eggheadinteractive.com Creation Date........ 2008-03-04 Registration Date.... 2008-03-04 Expiry Date.......... 2009-03-04 Organisation Name.... brett schusterbauer Organisation Address. P O Box 99800 Organisation Address. Organisation Address. EmeryVille Organisation Address. 94662 Organisation Address. CA Organisation Address. US
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Buffalopundit
Seriously, you guys are the "site creators". Why not just say so? It could have been incorporated into Yum and made that section more useful.
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buffawhat
I redub this as the Buffalo Rising interactive Lunch Randomizer, or BROiLR. now send me a check for being so clever.... You guys have a a great tool here, but why so eager to hide your work? Is it perhaps because the credibility of the BROiLR will be affected due to the correlation with BRO? Too bad, label it under YUM and get over it, just don't be shady.
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Brett
Thanks for the interest BuffaloGeek. You’re amazing detective skills have uncovered a non-secret – some of us do work for a number of different companies. Those of us who created the lunch randomizer did so for our own dining purposes because we were sick of the endless lunchtime debates. So we made this program and we shared it with the world via a post on buffalorising.com. Sadly, it’s not a revenue producing thing. See, we have a number of different businesses down here in the Cobblestone District. There is Buffalo Rising, a media company. There is Think Financial, a student loan company. And there is Egghead Interactive, an online marketing company. We have a shared office but not shared ownership structures. It’s not a product of Hyperlocal Media which is why it’s not identified as a product of Hyperlocal Media. And we’re not even sure if it’s a product or not – it’s just a web program that spits out restaurants based on rankings.
All that aside, I would like to personally thank you for providing us all a good laugh this morning. You’re Mike Wallace style investigation of the domain ownership as if the lunch randomizer was some sort of bank account phishing scam is hysterical. We loved it.
A question for you though – why on earth would you spend 10 minutes looking into who owns the domain for buffalolunchrandomizer.com? Did you hit ‘feed me’ and end up with the dreaded Buffalo General hospital? Or do you want to buy the site? The current high offer is $350,000 so let us know if you want to outbid that.
We may also be posting pictures of our trips to random lunch locations and we were originally planning to blur out our faces to avoid detection but since we’ve been outed, that plan is foiled.
Since you’re desperate for full disclosure of nothingness, here are some other admissions:
- I recently sold a pair of shoes on Ebay and received a favorable review - Both Barry and I used to work at some Buffalo area restaurants so their weightings in this randomized may be skewed by the amount of tips we received while working there - Barry once had a lengthy conversation with Charlie the Butcher
If we think of any other non-secrets we need to share, we’ll post them here.
In the meantime, i'll keep you busy with my secret username.
Sincerely, Anonymous
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BuffaloGeek
We posted about it over on our site, we thought it was a good idea. My posting was not "Mike Wallace" style, it was simply a question. Defensive, much?
I spent all of 30 seconds looking up the domain name on ajaxwhois.com because someone innocently asked me who was behind it and I thought it was cool. So, I looked. I thought it odd that you guys wouldn't just disclose it. Big deal. Thanks for spending 10 minutes pounding out an unnecessarily defensive reply.
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Buffalopundit
Brett dost protest too much, methinks.
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therealmikewallace
this is SO OUTRAGEOUS. I'm with buffalogeek and buffalopundit and buffawhat - that this free lunch randomizer may or may not be associated with someone who may or may not be involved on this very site makes this whole thing totally unacceptable. i won't be using it and i won't be eating lunch.
but i do have to differ with buffalogeek on one item - what kind of condescending blogging douche still uses the n'est pas?
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Aloha
...Especially when I think the actual term is "n'est-ce pas?"
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BuffaloGeek
Also, to pretend that ThinkFinancial. HLM/BRO (or whatever you guys are calling it now after the recent change in "management") and Egghead are totally separate businesses is as transparently untrue as the BNP's claim that they have nothing to do with the BNE. Sure, you probably all have different Tax ID's, but lets not be obtuse.
Now, let the clever onslaught of single-use, made-up names to insult us begin.
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Buffalopundit
this is SO OUTRAGEOUS. I'm with therealmikewallace - that this is so not a big deal at all whatsoever, and that they're so not embarassed by this that they'd troll their own site and provide 30-line whiny rebuttals about it.
But I do have to differ with therealmikewallace on one item - what kind of troll refers to someone as a "condescending blogging douche"? That's got way too many syllables.
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Rebecca
Back to the post topic...
I think this site sounds like a great idea. In the interest of full-disclosure, I packed a lunch today, and won't be obeying. I lbad for being a tease but I also appreciate the humor and tone of the site.
My feedback: I was delighted that one can choose a location. I don't drive to work so I can't just go anywhere, I need to be able to get somewhere within walking distance of my office. Some nice things would be to offer "Vegetarian" as a food option and let it bring up any restaurant with more than one vegetarian dish.
There may be days when I have to hit it repeatedly because I can't go 3 miles one way on foot during my lunch break. It's not personal - there's just no way to be more locationally precise. If there was a way to be more specific with location...
One last point - how do we know everything is on there? What if I have a favorite joint not listed? How will I ever know?
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Brett
Thank you very much for the nice comments Rebecca. As previously stated, this application was created mostly as a joke with-in our office so we welcome the suggestions and will most likely be tweaking it if it proves to be something people actually use.
The distance option is currently set to the address of our office here in the beautiful cobblestone/casino district so keep that in mind when you make your selection. While most of the selections require transportation of some sort, I can report that our very first random lunch selection yesterday was "street vendors". We hopped on the metro rail (something I personally haven't used in a decade) and rode it until we saw a vendor and a spot to have lunch. The chicken sausage was delicious.
As for your favorite joints, we put in a pretty good variety but may allow other users to add restaurants to the mix.
Would you mind if we added "Rebecca's Bagged Lunch" to the selection? This would require you delivering us lunch every time it hit but we are probably close enough to walk.
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BackInBuffalo
ironically, the 'randomizer' meant to speed up the process, has now replaced wasted minutes of lunch-out-indecision, with wasted minutes of BRO ranting about a typical non-issue.
anywho, very cool! how about 'subcategory: vegetarian'
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dannynoonan
It is hard to believe that BuffaloGeek and BuffaloPundit have so much time on their hands or so little in their own lives that they not only play with the randomizer but also investigate the backgound of the site. May I ask exactly what they thought they would find?? Really, who cares who runs a free site which is merely dedicated to helping,most likely guys, find food during the day. Is there a website that you can locate the corporate structure of any company?? Or is this just more I" i have nothing better to do and I am so jealous that nobody visits my site that I need attention" comments? By the way, who are Brett and Barry? I own Egghead Think, Hyperlocal/BRO, I won them in a poker game weeks ago.
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RisingDamp666
$350,001.98 and that's my final offer. I trust this includes your wives. (Full disclosure: I intend to sell the randomizer concept for a nice profit, to the Chinese prison authorities, to be used for "other purposes". ..not to worry, if the deal goes through, lunch is on me.)
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lauras
It works. Better than Ouija. Truly. Take it for what it is, people.
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