But Derek's installations don't end with Walmart.

While rummaging around in second hand stores in his hometown of Fargo, North Dakota, he came across a box of old reel to reel tapes that he purchased on a whim. When he took them home and played them he discovered that some contained the recorded voices of strangers. In a moment of inspiration he decided to digitise these ancient tapes - many are from the late 1970s and early 1980s - and place them on his site as Voices from the Thrift Shop. It is a truly eerie experience listening to, for example, Henry Liam read his Last Will and Testament with his Fargo accent, having no idea at the time of recording that his words would be played back and listened to over the internet in 2002 . Derek has created a kind of audio time capsule of Fargo from a quarter of a century ago.

As Derek states in his history of the project, listening to these recordings is:

`like a snippet of someone else's telephone conversation heard due to crossed wires, the context that the voice lives within must be imagined, or interpolated from the little bit that was heard. However, unlike a contained story, the imagined environment of the sound snippet strikes a deeper chord'.

He keeps an online diary titled 11111001111 (binary for 1999 - the year in which he started it) and the diary and the receipts and the photos on the site all match up. For example, he has a collection of photos showing his young daughter Destiny flying a Barbie kite in early April which he bought her as an Easter gift from Walmart on 24 March. There is also a refund receipt from Walmart that has his name printed on it. It is hard to imagine anyone bothering to fake this level of detail - especially when he doesn't point out the consistency himself.

While it is possible that Derek Dahlsad is just another online persona, like Myself, to those of us who wander by, to make of it what we will.

The WalMart Receipt Site has died. The account has been pulled, for what reason I do not know. Prohosting has told me in the past, "we don't track cancelled accounts," so I doubt I'll ever find a reason. Part of me is very sad. The site is lost, gone forever; yes, I keep backups, but the URL was the thing, and the constant comments kept things going. I felt almost as bad when the original incarnation of I Am was deleted, but the Receipt Site got me in magazines and newspapers, on television and radio. It was a life all it's own, and it is lost forever. Another part of me wants to just let it go, because the site has been slowly declining over the past year. Traffic has been down, and there have only been a few new linking sites. The Site had passed its prime, and there wasn't a lot of reason to keep it updated, other than to appease the Regulars. That's a little harsh, though: the Regulars were the core of what the Receipt Site is about. Unfortunately, they've been the most influential force in the past 6 months, making up 90% of the new comments. That camaraderie is lost, and that saddens me the most.

ok here is an Interview Done With Derek Check It Out If You Want To http://www.istuff.org/week/profiles/derek.html And If You Want More All You Gotta Do Is Search Google With His Name Or search For Walmart Reciepts And It Will Bring Up More Info On Him If you feel that anything else needs to be here please let me know .