Congratulations to “Shark” the winner of the contest. There were two people left after disqualifications of three, and in another random number generation selection, “Shark” beat out “Blaine1.” Hopefully the laser helmet will be mailed out asap. I tried to the get the company to send out a second helmet to “Blaine1”, but they did not bite:-(
This is a far lengthier post than I expected to initially write. However, this post will serve as a template for how I run future prize drawings and hopefully my below strategy is not full of logical fallacies (excluding ones that save me time).
I decided to close the prize drawing in the last post after 5 days since there were far more entries than I was expecting considering that the contest was only limited to US (and Canadian later) entrants.
Due to the huge number of first time commentator entrants, I have had to change my strategy on how to select the winner (I will randomly select 5, then remove the suspicious ones or those who do not respond from the 5, and then randomly reselect the 1 final winner). It is possible that a few first time entrants signed up more than once with different IPs and email addresses (even two regular long-time commentators signed on for the prize draw twice with two separate comments). Some of the entrants probably live outside the US or Canada and have no US address so will be removed if in the list of 5. So what I have done is use a random number generator website’s integer generation option to select 5 potential winners and I put in the range 1-182 in there since there were 182 comments in the last post when I closed the contest (I know that at least 20 of those comments were unrelated to the subject matter, but this is the best way I can run such contests without spending too much of my time weeding out unrelated comments). Results of the random generation pasted below:
Random Integer Set Generator
You requested 1 set with 5 unique random integers, taken from the [1,182] range. The integers were sorted in ascending order.
Here is your set:
- Set 1: 12, 21, 45, 61, 178
Timestamp: 2016-09-06 06:51:21 UTC
So now I go to comments number 12, 21, 45, 61 and 178 in the last post:
12 = Farsi “I am in” = Update: Disqualified since IP addresses of past comments all in France and he did not post a comment here or e-mail me with a US address for the two days that I waited.
21 = Frank Plumbo “I to am in!” = Update: Disqualified since no comment here or e-mail to me for two days.
45 = Blaine1 = “count me in”
61 = Shark = “I am in”
178 = mjones = Disqualified for too many (six) unrelated comments in that last prize drawing thread. Plus he did not even sign on for the prize drawing! Will ban him in future so as to get a proper list of 5.
Please note that the order you see the comments in the last thread could be slightly different from the way I see them since I am logged in as “admin”, but hopefully not. If I made a mistake in the counting of comments 12, 21, 45, 61 and 178 above, I apologize, but I will stick with the above potential winners’ names. For all future prize drawings, I will not redo any procedure in case I make a counting error.
So the winner will be one of these four:
- Farsi
- Frank Plumbo
- Blaine1
- Shark
All four of you guys please post at least one comment in this thread using the same email you used last time and the same IP address/ computer/location that you used last time to post your comment. Also email me your full name and physical address from the same email address that you used for commenting. I will wait for two days for responses.
Then I will browse through this blog’s comment history and search for your IP address. If I find anything suspicious or undesirable (repeat entries, too many past usernames under same IP, too many entries from similar IPs in some small town or some small country, too many insults etc…), I will remove you from the list. If more than one person is still left after I remove the suspicious entries, I will do another random generation and select the final winner and post his/her name at the top of this thread.