How to win at Joe's Jams... :)

[darb21]

Thought that the fact that this worked was funny and worth sharing...

So I got tired of keeping an eye on Joe's Jams (and spending too much money doing so) looking for a specific stick, so I decided to write a script to monitor it for me. The script runs every minute when a Jam is on, and if it finds a match to a stick I am looking for, then it text messages me an alert. From there, I can log in directly with the iPhone and complete the purchase... This worked twice in the past week. First score was a 5er of LP#9s and the second was a 5er of Tat Havana VIs. Both of these were only on the Jam for 3 minutes and I was able to score them both! :grin:

Gotta love puttin' the nerd skills to use for something besides work! :bouncetau

 

[Clint]

Awesome, and thanks for sharing!

For those of use who don't know....How do you "write a script" in order to do this?

 

[Clint]

Or is it something we mortals would find way too difficult?

 

[twenty5]

Or is it something we mortals would find way too difficult?

I'm pretty sure you really need to know what you are doing! lol

I'm sure I could write a script but it would end up screwing up and buying EVERYTHING! I would log in and have a CC bill of like $1200 worth of dog rockets lol

 

[Guido]

That's pretty crafty! I'd have no idea where to even start doing something like that.

 

[Docbp87]

Someone made a joecigar tiwtter account that updates every minute or so, and if the deal has changed, it posts a new tweet with the info and link. I get text message updates from this account, so like you, I am always on top of jams!

 

[darb21]

Awesome, and thanks for sharing!

For those of use who don't know....How do you "write a script" in order to do this?

Heh... so I work as a Database Administrator/Computer Systems Administrator... a "script" is a small program that you can then schedule to run over and over again.

This conversation could spiral into extreme geekdom very quickly, so lets just say that it works like this:

script runs to check the page
if title matches something I'm looking for in a list(for example Liga Privada or Tatuaje)
then text message me
if no match, don't do anything, and exit script

wait 60 seconds and repeat.

And for anyone who understands this mumbo-jumbo, its only about 20 lines of shell code and runs every minute via cron on linux. There... how's that for Geekdom!!

 

[darb21]

Someone made a joecigar tiwtter account that updates every minute or so, and if the deal has changed, it posts a new tweet with the info and link. I get text message updates from this account, so like you, I am always on top of jams!

Thats a nice solution too. ( http://twitter.com/joecigar ). I'm not a regular twitter user, so this may be a stupid question, but is there a way to filter what gets texted to you? Say, I do want to recieve alerts on Tatuaje, but not on 5 Vegas... or something like that?

-Brad

 

[Greyghost]

I wonder how many will try this now.:scratchhe

That's very clever.

A bite to me is what you take out of a burger or hot dog.:hanghead:

 

[darb21]

Yeah, to anyone who is looking to try something like this, I'd suggest you actually track their RSS feed instead of the actual homepage... its much lighter weight and gives you all the info you need.

 

[danthebugman]

Awesome. It's usually not terribly difficult to write a script for something like that, but yeah you still have to know a little bit about coding. Though perhaps for a few sticks a brother would hook you up?

Dan

 

[darb21]

Indeedy.... I'd be more than willing to add some alerts for you guys if you are looking for something specific. All I need is an email address where you want the alert sent and I'll see what I can do.

PM me if you wanna give it a shot.

 

[r3db4r0n]

This, is an ingenious idea. Thanks for sharing

 

[jjon90]

Darb, will this script work?
:%$ "darb gets alert" $%:
:%$ "darb sees they are Tats or LP's":$%
#:& "darb pm's jjon90":#
&% :end: %&

 

[mav_sd]

Darb, will this script work?
:%$ "darb gets alert" $%:
:%$ "darb sees they are Tats or LP's":$%
#:& "darb pm's jjon90":#
&% :end: %&

:hysterica:hysterica:hysterica:hysterica:hysterica

 

[worldishis]

Great idea! Kudos

 

[PepinAddiction]

Nice, I just retired the Cigar Stalker... it did something very similar. Nice work.

 

[mike228]

yeah cigar stalker is no longer working so i will have to try to work out something like this

 

[darb21]

Darb, will this script work?
:%$ "darb gets alert" $%:
:%$ "darb sees they are Tats or LP's":$%
#:& "darb pm's jjon90":#
&% :end: %&

LOL... Nice... Although I think that the multiple levels of communication would take more than the 3 minutes that they are up on the Jam. :frownno:

 

[darb21]

Alright... I rewrote this script today to be able to handle multiple different alerts for multiple different people. Tomorrow, I'll write in a module to only send the alert during specified hours in case you don't want to get alerts during the middle of the night or something...

As of now, its still only 38 lines of code... 9 of which are comments.

I need some guinea pigs (jjon, this means you! :grin: ).... I've got 2 folks that have already sent me lists of stuff they would like to be alerted on. If you want to get alerts on something in particular, PM me what you are looking for as well as where you want the alert sent (email address) and I'll get you added.

And if you know PHP and wanna write a front end for this thing, let me know! I'd love to allow folks to create their own alerts.