A collection of digital wonders and some other stuff
The invites from the contest have been sent. Sorry it took me so long. I’ve been busy travelling to Medicine Hat for Father’s Day and tonight I finally did the taxes. Looks like I’m even getting a refund.
Despite the money and the quality limericks (thanks guys), my head aches. I’m going to bed.
I have 6 more Gmail invites today. This time you only need to write a limerick but posts must not be posted anonymously. Read last time’s entries for ideas. The limerick can be about anything — ones about me or stuff I like are a good starting point if you have writers block. I will give 5 invites away and save one for a cousin I went kayaking with today.
Now onto your limerick writing. Remember Gmail invites are waiting; contest ends Sunday at Midnight with prizes awarded next week.
If you already have a gmail account but are interested in the fine art of limerick writing then you might be interested to know about some dedicated limerick writers that are rewriting the Oxford English Dictionary in limerick form.
Update: The contest is now closed. The results will be posted shortly.
Last time on Jeff Milner’s Roommate Situation:
“…it turns out that when a NSF cheque bounces, they mail it to you — which means I have to wait until I get it in the mail before he will pay me back.”
Now the exciting conclusion!
When I received the bounced cheque in the mail I called him up and later that night he returned me my cash.
The End.
(I love happy endings.)
The picture below was not from today, but it was taken on the same river I was kayaking down today.
The water was cold, ice cold. The kind of cold that hurts your hands when you put them even near the ice cold iciness that is the Belly River. It makes sense that the water is chilly because it’s coming directly from the melting snow up in the Rocky Mountains about a half hour drive from where we put in.
The water level wasn’t as high as it could have been, but there were still plenty of good features. On about the third really big hole I got stuck for a moment while the water thrashed me about like a rag doll. The water is tricky like that, it pulled me in gently then whipped me around quickly wrapping my head on the large rocks below. This is the first time I’ve ever had my helmet save me from serious head injury but, oh my, I certainly felt happy to have it. I came away with a small headache. The helmet came away with its shiny yellow finish marred in several places with large white scratches.
The incident wasn’t actually that much of an incident and we had a great time the rest of the afternoon. We just cruised down that cold, cold river, playing in the waves, and having a blast. My cousin made some short movie clips of us on his digital camera. I’ll post them when I get them.
It’s the moment I know you’ve all been waiting for … All 6 of you. The results are in and without further ado here they are:
Matt Oneiros:
25 / 25 for explaining why you think I should give you a Gmail invite
200 / 200 for first and last name and email address
15 / 15 for being a blogger account holder and not posting anonymously
5 / 5 for having a blog
70 / 70 for posting both a regular link and a permanent link to my site
35 / 50 for the limerick. You didn’t get a full score because shock and cough don’t really rhyme. :)
Matt’s total: 350.
Melinda Anderson
25 / 25 for explaining why you think I should give you a Gmail invite
200 / 200 for first and last name and email address
15 / 15 for being a blogger account holder and not posting anonymously
5 / 5 for having a blog
70 / 70 for posting both a regular link and a permanent link to my site though the permanent link should have been to http://www2.memlane.com/jmilner and not to the specific post but that’s ok you still got full points.
45 / 50 for the limerick, missed out on a perfect score because of one extra sylabel in the last line.
Melinda’s total: 360.
Richard Biggs
25 / 25 for explaining why you think I should give you a Gmail invite
200 / 200 for first and last name and email address
15 / 15 for being a blogger account holder and not posting anonymously
5 / 5 for having a blog
20 / 70 for posting a link to my site
50 / 50 Nice poem Biggs.
Richard’s total: 315.
Chris Newhouse
25 / 25 for explaining why you think I should give you a Gmail invite
200 / 200 for first and last name and email address
15 / 15 for being a blogger account holder and not posting anonymously
5 / 5 for having a blog
70 / 70 for the links. I would have given you more for this one but I clearly stated my max was 70 – and I’m sad that I can’t because you really went the extra mile, thanks Chris!
35 / 50 The syllables are a little off and I’m sorry but skull and soul don’t rhyme — and I’m just curious but what does a foot killing a skull have to do with anything? :)
Chris’s total: 350.
Alex Ware
15 / 25 for explaining why you think I should give you a Gmail invite
200 / 200 for first and last name and email address
0 / 15 Weak Alex… setting up an account takes seconds and you don’t have to have a blog to have an account.
0 / 5 for not having a blog. Remember it’s never too late to start a blog.
0 / 70 no links
15 / 50 Interesting structure and an ok poem but not really a limerick.
Alex’s total score: 230.
CJ Castillo
25 / 25 for explaining why you think I should give you a Gmail invite
200 / 200 for first and last name and email address
15 / 15 for being a blogger account holder and not posting anonymously
5 / 5 for having a blog
70 / 70 for posting both a regular link and a permanent link to my site
45 / 50 I can’t justify a perfect score, because even though you went the extra mile to include the fact that I am a lifeguard there are too many syllables on the second last line.
CJ’s total score: 360.
And the final results:
1st place: Melinda Anderson & CJ Castillo
2nd place: Matt Oneiros & Chris Newhouse
3rd place: Richard Biggs
4th place: Alex Ware
Since you guys were all good sports, and since I know someone else with extra invites, you all get an invite! Some of you said you would “do the right thing” and give your future invites to strangers on the web also begging for accounts, but I say they are your (future) invites so do with them as you please. :)
I hope every time you check your Gmail you’ll think to yourself — Jeff Milner is such a great guy. Actually no, make that every time you check your new Gmail account you can think to yourself how much better you are than all the other people who had a chance to be a part of Jeff Milner’s Gmail giveaway but were too lazy to come up with a limerick. Thanks again guys for being in my contest. Look for another contest when I have more invitations.
It’s another new round of Gmail invites. This time I have a total of 5 accounts to give out. The contest ends Thursday night at Midnight 10pm MST (I’m excited to give these away and don’t want to wait until Friday) with prizes to be awarded on Friday Thursday night or Friday morning.
There are a few relatively easy things you have to do in order to win a Gmail invite from me. You don’t have to do them all, but the more of them you do, the more points you get, and the people with the most points get invites.
#1 – Post a comment explaining that you would like a free Gmail account and why you think I should give it to you. (Worth between 1-25 points at my discretion)
#2 – Include your first and last name in the comment. I’m no longer going to make up first and last names for people I am sending the accounts to. Also it’s manditory to include your current email address. If you want you can include the word “at” for “@” or the word nospam, which (don’t worry) I am smart enough to figure out and send the invite to the right address.
(Worth 200 points)
#3 – Be a Blogger account holder at the time you post your comment. (Worth 15 points)
#4 – Have a blog. (Worth 5 points)
#5 – Post a link on your blog to my blog. Permanent sidebar links are worth more. You may get double points on this if you post a link in addition to having a permanent link.
(Single posts are worth 20, Permanent links 50, up to a total of 70 points!)
#6 – Compose a limerick about me, my site, things I’m interested in, or Gmail. (10 – 50 points)
The person with the most points who posts before 12:00pm10:00pm MST(as recorded in the comments) will get the first invitation, and the person with the second highest score will get the next one and so on until I am out of account invites.
Update June 17, 2004: The contest is now closed. Please try again next time. I haven’t added up the scores but I will do that shortly and have the results in my next post.
I’ve given away all of this round’s Gmail invites. This time I only had 3 people post comments so I gave all 3 accounts to them. Don’t worry if you are just learning about my contest now, there will be another one as soon as I get some more invites. It’s also more like begging than a contest — so it’s not that hard. Also you could continue to beg in the comments of this post because I know for a fact that Anna-Maria and a few other of my friends have invites and most likely no one to give them too – it’s a shame when invites go to waste. They read this site often, so you could try. No guarantees of course. Oh and in the future all posts asking for Gmail accounts must include a first and last name.
Update June 16, 2004: Actually the next round of Jeff Milner’s Gmail Account Giveaway will be more like a contest than begging. Though begging helps. Just to give you a taste of things to come – having a blog helps, and it’s going to involve poetry.
As I stated in an earlier post, I’m going to continue to give out gmail accounts to those interested parties that comment with reasons why they deserve the account. Don’t be shy, even crappy reasoning can win you a Gmail account. Also please note that last time I had more demand than accounts, but instead of going back and just giving them the accounts, they are free to post again and be re-entered into my contest.
I’ve been short on roommates lately. I have two empty rooms to rent and I haven’t had any roommates in the last couple months — which makes paying the mortgage pretty hard. So a couple of weeks ago I put an ad in the paper. The very first day the ad ran I had two people call me. The first person, I’ll call him Joe, said he would like to take the room but just needed a couple of days to get the money together. The second person, I’ll call him Victor, told me he loved the place and wanted to take it. Victor couldn’t move in until July 1st, but told me that he would write me a cheque for June anyway to hold the place for him. Things were looking up.
A day or two later I got a call from Joe. He said he couldn’t get out of his current lease as quickly as he had thought and so he wanted to let me know he wouldn’t be taking the room. Joe seemed like a cool guy so I was disappointed but life goes on.
Later I stopped off at the bank to cash Victor’s cheque. They gave me cash and everything seemed cool; so things were still looking up. That day, just after returning from the bank, I found a message from Victor on my answering machine. It said, “About that cheque I gave you — someone gave me a bad cheque and so it might not clear, so if you haven’t cashed it yet I’ll bring you some cash and get it back from you.”
Well I had cashed it already and the bank didn’t seem to have a problem with it, I explained to Victor. He figured he must have had enough cash in the bank even with the bad cheque he’d gotten and advised me not to worry about it. Things were a little odd, but still looking good. I was still getting calls for my other room — they seemed like sketchy characters and I didn’t take them but at least people were looking.
Suddenly the phone rang, Anna-Maria picked it up. Victor couldn’t take the room anymore, he said he was on his way over to get back his $350 and he would explain more fully when he arrived.
I told Anna-Maria that I don’t really have to give him his money back, after all he paid me to hold the room and that’s exactly what I was doing. But I also said that I wouldn’t be a jerk and give him it back since it had only been a couple of days.
His explanation boiled down to the fact that the contract he had signed for his previous place said he had to live there for 6 months before he could break the contract and move out. Also he had to give 30 days notice before leaving. He thought he could give his 30-day notice before the end of the six months but his landlord said no. Even though I thought it sounded like his landlord was just screwing him over he just said he didn’t want the hassle and was sorry for the inconvenience he caused me. He would take back his money but leave me $50 for my trouble. So at least I would have some cash for another ad if needed.
Days past. I was pursuing my bank account status over the Internet and was shocked to discover that I had been debited $350 for a cheque that never cleared! Oh hell — I think I have been scammed.
I called up Victor and explained the situation. Luckily he seems pretty apologetic and sounds like he wants to make everything right. He says we’ll go down to the bank together, get the cheque back, and then he’ll pay me back and any charges the bank may have given me. He specifically mentioned that he needs his cheque back before he will pay me for it. I called the bank this morning to find out if they do, in fact, still have the cheque and if I can get it back. It turns out that when a NSF cheque bounces, they mail it to you — which means I have to wait until I get it in the mail before he will pay me back.
Needless to say this is all a very big headache.
On the other hand I have two new roommates — one of whom moved in on Saturday and another one is moving in on the 25th. We’ll see how this bounced cheque situation works out, but for now things are looking good again.
After almost 11 months of no kayaking, Anna-Maria and I packed up the boats and headed out to Park Lake for some extreme kayaking fun. She had just purchased a new wet suit and was eager to try it out. What we didn’t realize, for some unknown reason, is that Lethbridge is perhaps the windiest place on the entire earth — well I’ve never been to Kansas during tornado season but this had to be close.
When we arrived at the lake the white caps from the waves did somewhat intimidate Anna, but I told her there’s nothing to worry about and we pressed on.
As it turns out there really was nothing to worry about. We kayaked across the lake, got wetter and colder from the wind blowing water up onto us, but really it wasn’t that bad. I tried surfing some of the waves in my kayak but then after a moment decided I didn’t want to have to paddle all the way back against the wind. We ended our adventure about a half an hour later and again packed up the boats.
Later that night we went out to The Blarney Stone with some friends where I ate approximately 1 million 15 cent wings. They were so tasty except for TEX-MEX flavored ones. They needed less TEX and more MEX.