DigitalSandbox

http://digitalsandbox.us/wp-content/gold_box.gif” alt=“Amazon.com Gold Box” />I am convinced that my Amazon.com Gold Box (which I shall hereafter refer to as my “Gold” Box) has me confused with my brother and/or The Wife. I don’t even know why I bother to check it anymore. Now correct me if I am wrong, but I thought the “Gold” Box was supposed to use the information that Amazon has collected about me (from purchases, searches, etc.) to get me deals on items related to those categories. At least that’s how I remember it.

The problem is that it only have about 1 item out of every 75 that I am even remotely tempted to buy. Allow me to guide you through a typical trip through my “Gold” Box.1. Some lovely earrings

2. A spatula (a fancy spatula, but a spatula none the less)

3. A set of knives with storage block

4. A necklace

5. A necklace (diferent than the last one, but still very similar)

6. A DVD for some old movie that no one cares about

7. A cooking dish, who’s intended purpose I cannot even begin to comprehend

8. More earrings/necklaces/jewelry of some variety

9. A worthless electronic gadget that you typically find in the checkout line at Wal-Mart (think calculator/pocket knife, you know so if your lost in the woods you can amuse yourself by typing words out of numbers while whittling a stick)

10. Yet another pan or pot of some variety.

Let me tell you what kinds of things I look for/buy on Amazon and you tell me if they have my interests screwed up. I look for a lot of DVDs. I am a hopeless movie lover who wants to get special edition DVDs so I can waste hours and hours on the Special Features (“Oh look, this one has a commentary by the guy who brought the doughnuts every morning. Sweet!”). I search for electronics quite a bit. Now I know what you are saying, “Well you got some electronics in the list up there, dumb-dumb. And a DVD, too.” First off, it is exactly one, 1, uno, ichi, and at the risk of repeating my self, ONE DVD. Would it kill them to add another two the selection? And secondly, the electronics that I look at are not the kinds of things you see in the check out line at Wal-Mart. I have never performed a search for a pocket knife calculator. I have, however, done a few searches for computer accessories (I actually bought a KVM switch from Amazon, where are some similar items to that), cell phone accessories (I bought two phones from Amazon, how about some accessories to go with that), digital cameras and memory cards, and, well, you get the picture. These are the kinds of electronics I am looking at while touring the Amazon. But do these kinds of things end up in my “gold” Box? Noooooo.

I really don’t understand what is going on here. Okay, I can understand the jewelry as The Wife uses the same account, but I don’t think that either of us has actually ever searched for jewelry at Amazon. I know that we haven’t bought any from there. It is really the cooking stuff that has me baffled.

My brother the chef of the family. He is really good at it and makes some really delicious dishes. I mean, we are talking about a man who’s favorite channel is the Food Network. He would probably be able to tell me why I would use these various utensils in the course of meal preparation. However, this does not explain how his interests are showing up in my “Gold” Box. Does Amazon know that we are related? Have they been mapping my family tree in an effort to get me to shower my family with gifts? Has my brother hacked into Amazon in an effort to send me subliminal messages to shower him with gifts? I don’t know. All I know is that I want to see more of my interests in my “Gold” Box.

Of course, maybe the “Gold” Box knows me better than I know myself. What if, deep down inside me there is a gourmet chef yearning to break free. Maybe all I need to do is embrace my inner chef. Perhaps I have been denying my destiny and have shunned the reason I was put on this earth. What if its like they say (not really sure who they are, but I am sure there is someone who thinks this), “there is a little Emeril in all of us.” Or maybe, just maybe, the system is screwed up.