Thanks to my good friend Brenda (who actually clicked on a link for once!) she noticed the Desktop Apprentice is sold out! From the Staples website:
Due to high demand, we’ve run out of the new Staples Desk Apprentice. We are producing more and we’ll be in stock in about 6 to 8 weeks. If you would like to be notified by email when we have more, just enter your email address below.
Thank you for your patience and we’ll be in touch soon.
This means they either made only a handful or are there are a lot of people out there with large desk spaces!
If you are not familiar with it, it is a film sequel to the TV series Firefly. If you aren’t familiar with Firefly, buy the DVD set NOW! Only 10 of the 13 episodes aired, but all of them are on this DVD set. If you want to learn more without watching the show, check out this site. I will tell you now though, you are just cheating yourself.
But what do reviewers have to say…let’s decipher shall we?
“It looks like one of those fortresses from the Lord of the Rings,” said John Goll of Goll Insurance in Boston.
Well…not so much a review as an observation?
” “We don’t have any desk space that is big enough to accommodate this,” said John Welby at Prime Mortgage Financial. “
Ok, that’s a bit more of a review, it’s big. (duh…it can hold entire reams of paper in the CENTER of it)
Stephen Walker found the item aesthetically upsetting as it sat on the counter of South End Photo.
“I think it’s kind of ugly, kind of cheesy,” Walker said. “I would pass right by (it) if I was walking through Staples.”
What is with everyone being concerned about the “look”? Who cares what it looks like, does it do the job it was designed to do?
The company is touting the product’s “360-degree swivel base.” But David Brown at Guidance Mortgage was unimpressed by a lazy susan for the workplace.
“What this does for you that a non-rotating piece wouldn’t, I don’t know,” said Brown.
Um….allow you access to all 4 sides easily? I know…darn me for using logic.
“Just classify it as useless,” said Insurance Agent Vicky Funderburk.
Again…WHY???????????
Ugh…journalists are turning into a lazy lot I tell ya. It would seem that Jesse Noyes, the writer of this article, really didn’t want to do this assignment, so he took the easiest route possible. Just little sound bites with no explanations.
Mind you, I am not defending the Desktop Apprentice, but I am however attacking lazy journalism.
A little while ago I complained about the evil known as Rachel Ray on The Food Network. Now even the magazine section of your local store won’t be safe from her! Hide your children…seek shelter!
“Fans of Rachael Ray, take heart. If watching her 27 times a week on one of her three Food Network television shows or reading her 11 cookbooks is not enough, you will soon be able to get another dose from the newsstand.”
27 times a week? My eyes and ears bleed at the mere thought. 11 cookbooks? Those poor trees!
“Ms. Ray has teamed up with Reader’s Digest U.S. to publish a food and lifestyle magazine called Every Day with Rachael Ray. Kitty Morgan, the editor of the magazine, said the magazine’s style and tone will reflect those of Ms. Ray.”
It will have nails-on-chalkboard laughing?
“She’s got this high-energy, down-to-earth approach. That is exactly what we will be trying to translate. It will be accessible, casual, very much fun.”
I used to love Staples, we had one in Kirksville for 3 years, and then it went away…darnit.
Anyway, this weeks Apprentice involved designing an improved product for Staples (in case you wondered why I just ranted about them) that would better organize an office. Yay…something near and dear to my heart!
So with the teams set at 3 Manga Corp members to Net Worth’s 2, they went about trying to figure out an exciting new product. Manga went to the Staples office, talked to the executives and then went to a Staples store to talk to actual consumers about what sort of items they needed.
What did Net Worth do? They tried meeting with the Staples executives via phone, which didn’t work out. They then tried cold calling office managers to talk to supply buyers via phone. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
So Manga Corps came with a lazy susan based filing system (named the “Desk Apprentice“) that I actually think is pretty darn nifty. Net Worth came up with…well…I guess you could it a desk. It was just darn silly and impracticle. So any surprise who won? Yeah, didn’t think so.
So since Net Worth only had two members left, Alex and Bren, it was a rather tame Board Room. Both of them were horrible, but it came down who took risks. Bren took no risks and showed no gumption, Alex did. So even though he made poor decesions, Alex was gutsy and Bren was fired.
So we are down to four, Alex , Craig, Kendra and Tana. Of these four, I am most impressed by Tana, but lets see what happens.
Pretty good episode. Reward challange was nice to see them making the tribe fight each other for the reward. Always good to split up the power, make them question each other.
The real drama was in the immunity challange. Nifty will power challange with the first person out being deserted for a night on an island by themselves. That lucky person was Janu, who dropped out after only 6 minutes. Could someone tell me how this women is a Vegas Showgirl? She has NO stamina! Oh well, she went off to her little island, took 2 & 1/2 hours to make fire and did a little dance. Yay for her. Tom won immunity again, the rest of the tribe better watch out for him. He is a power to be reckoned with.
So as the tribe prepared for tribal council, it seemed like instead of voting out the original target of Janu, a lot of folks thought it would get rid of my darling Stephanie, whom they now viewed as a threat. NNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Not my Steph! She could sense it was coming also, and the only one seeming to fight for her was Tom.
So at tribal council Steph couldn’t hold her disgust in, she knew everyone was aiming for her, but then the Survivor Gods smiled down on our little Steph….Janu started saying she thought everyone should vote her out, she wanted to go and it was the smart call on their part. Steph took up the “Boot Janu” banner and helped lead her to say more. Finally Jeff asked her if she just wanted to lay down her torch if she felt Steph was more worth of staying. She said she felt Steph should stay, so she would walk away.
Well Steph asked for a rewording of that and Janu gave it to her. So there ya go boys and girls, Janu threw herself out of the game and saved Stephanie. The Janu fan club line starts forming to the left!
Arrested Devolopment is in danger of being cancelled. Please take a moment to go by this site and sign the “Arrested Devolopment Loyalty Oath”. And while there, make sure to check out the Tobias video…it’s like a train wreck you can’t take your eyes off of.
The product tie-ins just a keep-a-coming on The Apprentice. This week the teams were charged with coming up with an advertising brochure for the new Pontiac Solstice. (Which I will admit, while not a practicle vehicle choice, is sweet looking)
With Net Worth again down to only 2 members, Trump allowed them to pick someone from Manga to join Chris and Alex, they chose the bow-tie adorned Bren.
Over at Manga, Kendra volunteered to be project manager as she had a histoy of doing PR kits. Tana and Craig agreed it sounded like best choice…and then went on to argue with every choice she made.
Let’s just be blunt, Net Worth made some really poor choices in the design of their brochure. A bland cover, a blurry first photo, read to much like an owners manual, no place for a business card or cd/dvd….just oodles of mistakes. They also felt some weird need to use female models that drew your eye away from the car. Stupid guys.
My biggest bitch this week is with Tana and Craig. At 2:30 AM they decided they HAD to go back to the suite and go to bed. That they couldn’t possibly stay up and work on the brochure, even though it was far from being done. Kendra told them she appreciated their honesty, but she didn’t respect their decesion, and she stayed and finished. She didn’t get home utnil 8:30 AM. YAY KENDRA!
So why does this irk me? I have personally stayed up 1round 36 hours without sleep. I have been at the point of hallucinating and giggling uncontrollably, but you know what? There was a job to be done and by god, I would get it done! I was once handed an enormous project that I had to write and polish 20 pages of a magazine by myself in 6 days. You know what? I did it. I didn’t shower for 3 days (sorry folks), I didn’t sleep more than 4 hours a night, I didn’t shave, I barely stopped for meals, but I had accepted the task and I was not going to let the magazine down.
So you are in a deadline situation, you are tired, TOO BAD! You suck it up and you get your job done! I was almost hoping they would lose just so I could hear Trump go off on them. Instead Kenda (note I did not say the team) did such a good job, Pontiac is actually going to use her design.
When Manga lost, Alex did get railed on by Trump for taking an hour and 45 minute nap, so yay Trump! Rail on the slackers! In the end though, it was the day we had all waited for….at long last the heavens opened, the sun shone down and….ADIOS CHRIS! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
SO as he’s getting up to leave he starts….yep….he started crying. Trump tried to cheer him up and called him around the table so he could talk to him face-to-face, although, honestly, for a second I thought Trump was going to set him on his lap. “Tell me your troubles little boy.”
Poor Stephanie…all alone on the Ulong beach. Seriouslly, I know that sounded sarcastic, but I felt for her. Of anyone in her tribe, she fought the hardest. She was very deserving to be the last of her tribe.
Mark Burnett didn’t keep her byherself for too long, he had her go join Koror. They seemingly welcomed her with open arms, but the also were all fishing to get her to vote with their various alliances. The biggest whiner though had to be Coby. Can you say shut up? I knew you could.
So come immunity time it is the age old stand on a pillar in the water and let Jeff tempt you with food. Always amusing. First he tempted them with donuts…2 gave up for them. 90 minutes later he tempted them with 15 chohclate chip cookies…4 gave in. So only three people left, one of them being Steph, who if I was her, I would be very nervous about not having immunity. Well when the pizza came out, down went Steph and the other remining Survivor leaving only Fireman Tom to win immunity.
In the end though, Coby went. Forgetting one of the golden rules of Survivor…don’t EVER just bluntly reveal alliances to someone you are not sure where they stand. Stupid, stupid Coby. Welcome to the jury.
Ya know, I have been ragging on Chris for several weeks now, but yet I never show you a picture of him. So I thought maybe I should finally share one with you. here ya go
Yep boys and girls, that’s his mug shot from this past weekend. I love TheSmokingGun.com. You can read all about his arrest here. The gist of though is
“…was popped following a disturbance at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Tampa, Florida. Shelton was arrested at 3:25 AM by Seminole Indian Reservation Police officers and booked into the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Department lockup at 4:14 AM, according to records. After posting $250 bond on the misdemeanor rap, he was released from custody shortly after 10:00 AM. Cops allege that a “loud and inappropriate” Shelton–who, of course, was spewing profanities–got into a beef in the hotel’s lobby, and refused to pipe down at the request of officers. Shelton, who had a drink in his hand, was apparently peeved over his inability to get a wristband which would gain him access to Hard Rock bars.”
Poor, poor Chris…let us laugh in amusement shall we?
Now, let’s say by some oddball chance he is one of the final 2 on the show. Trump doesn’t make his final decesion until the live finale. Do you think this might count against our buddy Chris? Yeah…I think so.
Why is Chris still there? Why why why???? Yes, Angie choked during the presentation, I agree.
However, this is a team that was already a person down and one of the team has to go back to Best Buy to find the credit card he lost? And not only that….he was gone 2 & 1/2 hours!
So here you are, the team lost, your Donald Trump and his cronies, you have a choice between Angie, who choked, and Chris who is a moron (Alex wasn’t even really a consideration). So do you choose the person who has flubbed up badly once or do you choose the person who has flubbed up almost every single task?
I don’t know what is going on here, but it makes no sense how Chris has survived this long…no sense!
How? Someone just please tell me how a tribe can lose every single immunity challange. I am thrilled Stephanie survied the lame “start a fire” challange to decide which would leave, but beyond that….what a painful, painful episode.
. If you aren’t familiar with Firefly, buy the DVD set NOW! Only 10 of the 13 episodes aired, but all of them are on this DVD set. If you want to learn more without watching the show, check out this 
