Thursday, September 01, 2011

Me and My First World Problems: A Mini-Mystery

I ran into a problem tonight that was interesting, in the sense that everything about it wouldn't have been possible when I was growing up and what's more, it couldn't happen to people much poorer than I am. And I'm not exactly rich, people!

You need to know this before I start - I loves me some gadgets. I live alone but I own two computers and a big-screen TV with a 240 mhz frame rate, because I can't tolerate 60 frames a second. If I felt like it, I could be watching that TV now as my second monitor. I have a GPS in a car and a digital speedometer on my bike. The pictures that I illustrate this with were taken with my iPhone. Only one phrase in this whole paragraph is a clue to the mystery that follows.

A few weeks back I ordered up a Digital Cooking Timer from eBay. It's Chinese and it would have cost me a dollar if it wasn't for shipping. It looked like this when I left for work this morning:


There it is, stuck to my freezer door with a magnet.

I came home from work and I decided to cook up an Omaha Steaks hamburger patty with some roasted potatoes I buy from Trader Joes. I was melting butter in a skillet when I moved to set the timer and I saw this:


What you're looking at there is a magnet, no longer attached to a timer. A tiny bit of adhesive facing out suggested the magnet was inadequately glued in place. My eyes went to the floor only to find... floor.


Where was my timer? I live alone, and I determined that no one had been in my apartment since I left at 8:00 am. The answer will be in my next post but I want to encourage guessing in the mean time.

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