Category: Random

Is the Coca-Cola app worth installing?

~ Veselin ~ 5 Comments

I drink Coca-Cola Zero almost every day. I know it’s an unhealthy habit but I’ve not yet felt the need to deal with it. As a frequent Coca-Cola consumer, when Coca-Cola Bulgaria started advertising their app, I installed it. I’ve been using it for almost two months, which qualifies me as an expert reviewer.

The Coca-Cola app lets you enter the unique 10-character alphanumeric codes hidden under the cap and probably somewhere inside cans. Each code gives you 1 or 2 coins, which you can then use to buy raffle tickets. The raffle awards vary from completely useless to just useless. I saw IKEA and Dominos vouchers a few times, otherwise not stuff an adult is likely to want.

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The awards, I challenge you to find the oddities.

Observations:

  • There are two types of coins in the app Diamond-shaped and C-shaped.
  • The diamond-shaped can only be obtained from the worst value Coca-Cola bottles, the 0.5l and 0.3l plastic ones. Probably from cans, although I couldn’t find any code there.
  • The C-shaped coins can mostly be used for raffles like a Coca-Cola umbrella or a ticket for the Coca-Cola annual concert.
  • A third type of coin was mentioned when I installed the app, and I must have 50 of it, but I never saw a raffle ticket that could be purchased with it or a place where I can see if I still have the 50 of that coin.
  • Despite collecting all these raffle tickets, the app doesn’t offer a way to see if you won anything or if anyone wins anything.
  • I’m unsure if I ever participated in a raffle or not.
  • Apparently, we have Coca-Cola imports from Moldova and Ukraine, and the bottles from these countries don’t have codes.

What’s the point of all of that?

It’s most likely to gamify the Coca-Cola consumption, targeting people who may be tempted by a GoPro camera, a VR set, or a low-end 40 inch TV. That is clearly not older adults. It attempts to add value to the worst-value Coca-Cola bottles that generate the most plastic waste but might be available in school cafeterias. I suspect it works well, otherwise they wouldn’t do it. Also, it is to discourage people from buying the imported Coca-Cola.

Did I win anything? I don’t think so. I expected that I will, at least, get an umbrella, a concert ticket, or get some indication that a raffle happened and I didn’t win. No Coca-Cola umbrella for me.

New Writing Prompts

~ Veselin ~ 9 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What’s a moment you wish you could freeze and live in forever?
View all responses

Faust broke his contract with Mephistopheles by asking time to stop. It’s a funny blogging prompt to appear today… so let me explain why it shows up, to the horror of everyone who expected the usual May 4th writing prompt and instead sees something new (OMG, it’s Star Wars Day).

I used to rely on writing prompts quite often because I’d run out of blogging ideas. After a 365-day blogging streak, they started repeating. Then, after 730 days, they repeated again. I wanted something fresh, so I began collecting prompt ideas in a spreadsheet, aiming to gather 730 fresh ones. I sourced them from good posts in the Reader, brainstormed with AI, the Sunshine Blogger Award, and picked some from the engagement threads on Reddit. I got to around 400–450, then started cleaning them up aggressively and eventually finalized a list of 366.

My colleague Tess then improved them by rewriting those that weren’t in proper English. She deleted the weakest ones. What’s left is this new batch of writing prompts.

They’re not perfect. I had some goofy and fun ones that didn’t make it to the final list out of concern some of you may find them inappropriate. So here we are.

We have a hackathon called “Radical Speed Month,” where we can ship cool changes without going through the usual approval process. I wish I could dedicate a few more days to this idea but I count my minutes because there are other areas that also need love and are at least as fun.

I hope you like the new prompts. If not, I take full responsibility.

PS. The results of the prompts API call is heavily cached and the new batch of prompts may appear to you within 24h.

Nothing wakes you up better than…

~ Veselin ~ 5 Comments

…Stepping in dog poop.

I had a 1.5-hour drive ahead of me in the rain yesterday, and was very stressed because I was sleepy. While cleaning plum petals off the car, I stepped straight into it. Scrubbing and washing out the winter boots with unpleasantly deep treads woke me up completely and I had a safe drive. This made me want to generalize that certain negative events can have a more positive impact as wakeup calls than the damage they cause.

Meanwhile the plums smell great, look great, just don’t park right below:

Three

~ Veselin ~ 7 Comments

The morning was unusually cold. There’s fresh snow on Vitosha, the kind that seems to freeze the whole city. It was so cold even the Devil stayed indoors. His horns get brittle from the wind.

It was my last chance to set a monthly pull-up PR. I’ve been taking it easy lately, working around a few aches and pains. But this was my last chance for the quarter. I sucked it up, stripped off the frost protection – no hat, gloves, and removed the contents of my pockets, like if the car keys mattered, and gave it a go. What followed could generously be called three reps.