– Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth, Futurama

If you’ve been following my most recent entries, you know that A) I begged the internet to help spread the word about my wife’s artwork entry in an online Duran Duran voting contest and B) I thanked everyone for their help, because it looked like she made 13th place out of > 300 in a contest that takes the Top 10, which in itself was an amazing feat.

Well, we found out over the weekend that after what we assume was a re-tallying of the eligible votes, her entry was officially named a member of the Top 10!

[cue the holla]

According to the official contest website, “Winners announced in 1 day”.  The details indicate that final judging ends tonight at 8:31pm EDT.

What does this mean?

Well, it means that for sure, the band viewed her artwork!

This was the huge thrill she was after — I mean, sure, it’d be incredible if they chose her artwork as the grand prize winner, but just having them look at her artwork is an amazing experience.

She’s so thankful to all of you who helped her get into the Top 10.

We’ll be paying close attention to see who wins the Grand Prize.  There are so many beautiful entries I’m sure it was difficult for them to choose.

And for those D2 fans out there, here’s a little sumthin’sumthin.  How many references can you spot?

To whom it may concern: Is there anyone out there tempted to add a little UMF to the Duran Duran Artwork contest? I tricked out my entry so you should click on it, zoom in, and give in to the reflex to vote for my success. Can you deal with it? I don’t need to be the last man standing, just one of the top 10. Sorry if it’s too much information, but I’m barely still breathing at the proposition that one of these days I might go from nice to notorius my own way. I’ve had a few friends of mine click faster than light and I’m about to come undone! It’s like being freed from chains on the perfect day in my finest hour. Fame is not a big thing to me, it’s just a matter of feeling what the first impression will be when the wild boys of Duran Duran take my artwork and look at it with their own eyes. It’s like my artwork is pleading “hold me” and that would make me smile.

Thank you, and we’ll see what happens tomorrow. I’m serious.

Well, the contest is over.  The gist is, we don’t think she made it, but we won’t know for sure for 9 days.

I’ve flirted with the limits usually ascribed to “friend” and “acquaintance” and “fellow blogger” by invading Twitter feeds, plastering onto Facebook walls, infecting email inboxes and exploding forth with word-of-mouth tenacity.  I’m sure some people are fed up to “here” with whall and his constant reminding to vote.

Then again, I’m sure some people… dare I say more people… are happy to have helped and are hopeful for her entry.  They’re truly excited to find out results and have wished her the best the whole time.  It’s these people who mean so much to me.  They know I don’t go on daily, weekly or even monthly “help me” online frenzies.  I think everyone’s entitled to a little wacky-involve-everyone-you-can-this-could-be-big excitement every once in a while and I’m glad for those of you who helped.

As far as status goes, the contest is currently in the Judging phase:

To be brutally honest, we’re not thinking she made it.  But there’s still a slight possibility she might make it, so we’ll stay tuned to see what happens.

There’s more detail in the extended entry.

Here’s what we know for sure:

Her entry was in and out of the Top 10 for the past few days

This shows how awesome my friends are.  There was a time in the beginning where she was #1.  She was all over the place, and it was great to see her way up there.  I’d see a marked improvement in her standings a few hours after I’d send out my blast, and I knew it was my friends’ assistance and willingness to spread the word that helped so much.

THANK YOU.

We are both happy with whatever happens

My wife won’t be devastated with the results of this contest, no matter her placement based on voting.

She gets that this is an online popularity contest, and we’re both humbled by the response from our friends, both in-real-life (IRL) and online.  There are people I haven’t even met who are responsible for dozens of votes based on their forwarding of my request alone.  She was excited to have entered, and happy for my online group of friends.

THANK YOU.

A few entries shot up from nowhere into the Top 10 recently

I suspect a few of the entries of benefiting from illicit voting.  I’m not saying conclusively that cheating occurred, but several entrants were scratching our heads when one of the entries, a pencil drawn image evidently different from all the other submissions shot way up in no time and with barely any comments.  Most of the other entries in the top 10-20 had dozens of comments, both from Facebook-authenticated users and otherwise, and this one only had 4 or 5 anonymous comments but clearly a massive number of votes relative to the rest of us.

There were also a small number of entries that shot up to the Top 10 in a matter of minutes, where I hadn’t recognized the entry in the first say 50 entries (I looked through a lot of them), and 5 days into it they shot from  > 50th place to 8th.  The entry I’m talking about ended the contest in 3rd place.  I grant that this could possibly happen legitimately… say, someone’s speaking at a conference and asks everyone to go vote for their entry.  Or they have a highly visited website, twitter feed or facebook wall and they posted it, and that’s when everyone voted.

For those of you who put up with my ranting and unique style of logic in this section, I

THANK YOU.

There’s a bit of drama in the comment section

This is to be expected, so no big deal, really.  There will always be haters, trolls, and immature people sharing their opinion or stoking the fires.  Some of it was a little funny, actually.  I think it could have been a little mitigated had the company running the contest allowed the “nickname” to be shown with the comments, and it probably would have been a little more fair if they required an email address and verification link be clicked in order to count the vote.

Some of the drama came from inconsistencies with the contest rules as written and the implementation of the contest rules in the voting app.  The contest rules specifically stated “Limit one vote per person per day” and for almost three weeks, all the entrants had to go on were the contest rules.  This is not my first rodeo – I’ve seen online voting contests before that allow one vote per day.  In order to win, you have to get as many people as you can to vote – ONCE PER DAY.  This is where I knew we had the upper hand over most of the other contest entries — I knew people who would actually be willing to click once per day. I had a twitter feed, and a facebook page, and a blog.  I’m not even a big deal on the internet, and I knew I could move the troops.

I even registered a domain name just to point people to the entry.  It was a vanity name, easy to remember, easy to type, and easy to tell people when you meet them.  With a domain name like voteformedaily.com – how could it not succeed?

Well, the contest started.   THE ONE FLAW IN MY OTHERWISE PERFECT PLAN.

Despite the contest rules stating people could vote once per day, the actual voting app stated people could vote once per entry for the entire contest.  So now people assumed that if you asked people to vote once per day, you must be cheating somehow.  My new domain name was not only useless, it was worse; it was a liability.

I changed the domain to point to my blog entry about the contest instead of the contest entry itself.  I made corrections about voting once per day and explained things a little better.  I did damage control.  I didn’t want to cheat and I didn’t want anyone thinking I was cheating.  I didn’t want to jeopardize my wife’s entry in any way.  I started getting emails, texts and DM’s from people on the second day of the contest saying “I tried to vote again, but it wouldn’t let me.”  I patiently explained the issue and then decided I needed to change tactics.  I needed more people to vote, not just more votes from the people already willing to vote.

That’s when the email and facebook message barrage started. Fortunately, everyone either voted or ignored the email; no hate mail arrived, and no people demanding to be left alone for the rest of their lives.  Some responded with best wishes, some responded with sharing on their wall, and some lamented not being able to vote twice.  Truly I have the best Internet friends humility can buy.

THANK YOU.

Christy was in 13th place right before voting ended

I checked the status of the contest every day, multiple times per day.  I had the web page saved as a favorite on my phone and my computer so I could quickly see if she’s disappeared from the first page, or doing comfortably well.  I toyed with the idea of writing a quick script to pull the first page of entries, sorted by votes, every 15 minutes, then alerting me if she got out of the top 10… but then decided that that itself might be seen as cheating or some sort of tampering from their weblogs.

For the last day of voting, her entry danced between 11th and 12th place consistently.  A couple of times, she was in 9th place.  Then 10th.   Then OMG 13th place!  RALLY THE TROOPS!!!!  I knew *all* the contest entries in the top 25 would likely be pushing everyone to do what they could to increase votes, so if I didn’t do the same, the entry would be yesterday’s toast.  So I did another tweet, another email, and it seemed to help because she held her place.

About 10 minutes before the contest ended, I checked again and she was 13th place.

Out of > 350 entries.

13th place.

THANK YOU.

There are 18 hours between voting and judging

I noticed the contest ended midnight on the 28th, but the judging period didn’t start until 8:31 PM the next day.  That’s 18 hours that I assume will be used to validate the voting.

Why validate the voting, you might ask?

Well, there are many ways to cheat in this contest.  I think Wildfire did a decent job of trying to mitigate fraud, although it’s always possible to do more.  I think they struck an acceptable balance between the effort required to have a 100% error-free voting system, the ease of voting, and avoiding most forms of fraud.  If you make it too hard to vote, people avoid the contest or complain. If you make it too easy to vote illegitimately, people avoid the contest or complain.

I expect them to categorize the massive number of votes a few ways:

Facebook votes

I would expect counting Facebook votes to be an easy process.  After all, a person’s vote is tied to their Facebook login, and they don’t need fancy computer terms like “cookies” or “forms-based captcha authentication” to verify a vote.  If you’re logged into Facebook and you cast a vote, that vote should be a 100% certain non-duplicate vote.  The only issues that might come are from Facebook accounts that are new (ie, say someone created a bunch of Facebook accounts just to vote with – those would be cheaters).

Non-Facebook votes

I found it extremely easy to vote without being logged into Facebook.  This is a good thing for those of us who don’t have Facebook accounts or who aren’t comfortable sharing their Facebook information with the company running the contest.  Privacy is a big deal to lots of people, after all.

However, the system needs a way to reduce duplicate or invalid votes.   You no longer have a one-to-one mapping of human being to their vote like you did with tying a vote to a Facebook account.

In order to do this, the voting app did two things — first, it popped up a window with CAPTCHA word authentication.  It presented two disfigured word-like forms and you had to decypher the letters and type them in.  This helps validate that the entity doing the browsing is not a computer, but rather a human.  Secondly, it stored a cookie on the person’s browser, which is like a little breadcrumb designed to help servers recognize you when you return later.

If a person re-visited the site again later to vote, the voting app would check for the presence of the cookie, and if it was there, it wouldn’t let you vote again — instead, it replaced the “Vote now” button with an “I voted!” button.

Now, the web-savvy people out there are already saying “well, what if you removed the cookie?”  Without the cookie there, the “Vote now” button would return, and you could vote again.  All browsers have a menu option to remove cookies.

I’m sure several people did this.  A few people even commented on the entries and said as much, instructing others how to clear their cookies so they could vote again.  Some used that to call foul, and things got a little more heated, because with a little knowledge and a lot of emotion comes drama.

More than CAPTCHA and Cookies

However, they probably weren’t aware of a third mechanism that I expect Wildfire to employ, and that’s of logging identifiable information with each vote.  When you visit a website, your IP Address is used on that website, and is almost always logged.  Every device on the Internet must have a unique IP Address in order to work, although in many cases, multiple devices share a single IP Address, such as in the case of multiple devices in a home, or multiple computers at a single company.

So, Wildfire needs to figure out a way to still count valid votes (ie, 15,000 Dell employees potentially sharing one IP Address) while weeding out the cookie-clearing-cheaters who just stayed at one computer, clearing their cache, and voting again over and over.

There is other information typically provided by your browser to the voting app as well, and that’s the version of browser you’re using.  For example, if you go to ipchicken.com, it will tell you the IP Address you look like on the Internet and the browser you look like (you will also get a chicken, but that’s beside the point).

In my case, it’s

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/10.0.648.204 Safari/534.16

Wildfire can use that information, along with timing of votes, to attempt to identify cheaters.

Now, the super-web-savvy people out there are already saying “well, what if I used a different browser?  and a different IP Address?”  Yes, yes, yes, there’s always another step you can take towards cheating and there’s always another step the contest has to take to prevent cheating.  The trick is — how much fraud prevention should they do?  What’s an acceptable amount of risk?

As I put in one of the entry comments, I fully expect Wildfire to do their due diligence with this contest. This is what they do for a living – online promotions, online contests, and voting.  They do this to promote an idea, a band, an album, or a brand.  They wouldn’t be in business if they didn’t at least have some basic protections against these types of fraud.

Therefore, I’m thinking that 18 hours between voting and judging is so Wildfire can toss out the obvious duplicate votes and provide Duran Duran with the real Top 10 winners.

And to Wildfire, I pre-emptively say

THANK YOU

Our hope at this point

As I said above, I don’t think she made it since she was in 13th place in the last remaining minutes before contest end.  But there’s a lingering chance that some of the 12 entries ahead of her had duplicate or otherwise fraudulent votes, and would then be thrown out.  Or, if not the entry itself thrown out, maybe the duplicate / fraudulent votes themselves are somehow removed, and a new ranking of eligible votes is used.

If that’s the case, and her entry had the Top 10 eligible votes, then it could be she goes on.

Also, as shown on the Judging tab on the website, it describes how the winners will be selected.  It says

“We’re looking for a fan artist who captures the feel of the All You Need Is Now album and does it with passion, creativity and beauty.“

We all know art is subjective, and several of the entries in the top 10 don’t look like it captures the feel of All You Need Is Now album at all – it just looks like fan art (not that fan art is bad… just that it’s not inspired by the latest album).

My wife’s entry was inspired by the latest album – the electricity, the colors, the chaos… even the letters themselves are from the font being used on the latest album.  So, it’s possible that the judges take that more into account than most people realize, and that would help her entry be counted in the Top 10.

Either way, we won’t know for 9 days.

At this time, Wildfire has closed down the listing of all entries by vote count.  They only show the top 5 on one page, and all entries on the other page.

In closing, it’s been a fun ride, and I’m thankful to Wildfire, Skin Divers, Facebook, and Duran Duran for hosting or helping with this contest.  Duran Duran fans truly are brilliant, creative and fun folks, and Duran Duran has known that for a looooong time.  I’m glad they saw fit to run a fan artwork contest — how cool was that for the 350+ fans making artwork for their favorite band?!?!?

But most of all,

THANK YOU

…I’ll save you time and just ask that you please go and vote for my wife’s artwork entry in an online voting contest. There’s no login required, Login to Facebook if you have an account, and you can vote once per day (see update at bottom) until 3/28.  Please spread the word (more details below).  I’d really appreciate it.

For everyone else… this is my plea to you.

Most of you who have read my blog (it’s been up for what, 5 years now? Almost 6?) have noticed that I rarely write about my wife.  My son Jaden (now 9yrs old) is all over the place on the blog (he loves the attention and being “on the internet”), and every once in a while I write about my 16yr old Caitlin, but both my daughter and my wife prefer to be a little more private than the rest of us.

My Wife

My wife is completely wonderful.  Those of you who know her know this.  We’ve been married 18 years, have two beautiful children, and get through the daily and yearly challenges of life together.  She’s supported me throughout my career and I want to support her now for something that is very important to her.

It is out of respect for her privacy that I shy away from extolling her virtues and bragging about her all the time.  This blog would be filled with her awesomeness if I could have that publishing embargo lifted, but, alas, it was not meant to be, and I’m fine with that.  Her privacy is important to her, so that makes it important to me.

When I say “privacy”  I don’t mean aloofness, or elitism, or anything like that. She just doesn’t “get” online stuff like many of us do — she’s not on facebook; she doesn’t “do” twitter; heck, she doesn’t even read her email but a couple times a month.  She’d rather talk in person or on the phone to connect with people. People who have her email address know that they can wait a looong time before a response comes.

She just has this… wall.  A wall exists between her and online communication.  She has zero interest in online camaraderie, forums, blogs, tweets or facebook status updates.  She’d rather have a tea or coffee with a friend than type away on a keyboard or read other people’s comments.  It’s just not her thing.

Some Details

One thing I’m allowed to share about my wife is her love and admiration for Duran Duran.  She’s been a Duranie since before I met her, and that was a looong time ago. I wouldn’t even attempt to put into words here what she feels for them for fear that I’d mess it up horribly. Just know that D2, as they’re affectionately called by their fans, means a lot to her.  An incredible lot.

Another thing I can share is that my wife is an artist.  She’s extremely creative and has solid talent in lots of artistic mediums.  She’s simply brilliant.

When she heard that Duran Duran was doing a contest — an ART CONTEST, no less — well, let’s just say it tore. down. that. wall.

The Contest

So here’s the deal – Duran Duran’s contest is where fans submit their artwork and then get people to vote for their artwork.   They are promoting their new album All You Need Is Now (I suggested they call it “Whall You Need Is Now” but they turned me down).  The artwork is judged on Creativity/Originality (50%), Relatedness to Duran Duran’s “All You Need Is Now” (25%) and Aesthetic appeal (25%).  They specifically are looking for art inspired by their new album’s look and feel.

The top 10 vote-getters will advance into the next stage where the band actually views the art and votes on a winner — that winner gets a framed print of their art signed by Duran Duran, 2 tickets to see any tour performance of choice, and 2 tickets to the meet-and-greet tour performance of choice.

That’s right, I said “meet-and-greet”.

Once she realized that the contest was an online contest, I had to explain what an online voting contest was, and that it was largely a popularity contest, and it involves getting people to go online to vote and OH WOULD YOU PLEASE GET PEOPLE TO VOTE FOR MY ARTWORK WAYNE?!?!?!?! YOU’RE A COMPUTER GUY WITH ALL THE TWEETY FRIENDS AND BLOGGERS AND STUFF!!!!

All of a sudden she was OK with making a facebook account and emailing and tweeting and retweeting and asking others to ask others to vote for her artwork because — SHE COULD POSSIBLY GET THEM TO SEE HER ARTWORK!

For her, getting to the top 10 means knowing that the members of Duran Duran saw her artwork.  And judged it. Reviewed it.  And considered it closely.  AND THEY MIGHT LOOK AT MY ARTWORK, WAYNE!!!!!

What You Can Do To Help

This, my friends, is what I’m asking your help for.  I want my wife to get her artwork seen by the members of Duran Duran. That will only happen if she gets to the top 10.

Would you help us?  We need as many votes as possible.

Here’s her artwork – click on it to vote for her entry.

(click here for larger image)

Remember, you can vote ONCE PER DAY (!!!) from now until March 28th.   That’s almost two weeks of voting.  Set a calendar reminder if you have to. (see update, below) You can click on this link, once every day until 3/28 and it will help her achieve her dream.  You don’t have to login or join Facebook – it will only make you type in a couple of verification words to prove you’re not a robot.

And if you know anything about marriage, you know a happy wife makes for a happy husband.  Maybe I should say “happier“.

How to Help More – Share the Love

Won’t you please share this with your friends?  I’m looking to make this as public as possible so she get tons of votes. Point them to my blog entry with http://bit.ly/d2whall or you can use

http://tinyurl.com/voteforchristy

as a short link in Facebook, twitter, email, etc. to go directly to the voting page.

If you’re on twitter, here’s a link that will tweet for you (editable of course)

And if you need a Facebook status to copy and paste, here’s one:

Vote for Wayne’s wife in a Duran Duran art contest, up until 3/28!  http://bit.ly/d2whall (Please share with others!)

Thank you so much!

Update [3/18]: It appears that even though the Official Rules of the contest state that “Limit one (1) vote per person per day“, the voting widget itself says “You can vote for each entry once during this contest.”   This discrepancy and the fast rise in voting for her entry are causing people to question the validity of voting.  I’m not sure which rule is accurate and I surely don’t want to cause anyone any grief.  So, for now, concentrate on your one vote (and vote through Facebook if you can) and spreading the word.  We’re all D2 lovers around here and drama can check itself at the door.

This guest?  Let it not be a Mystery – rather, it’s the one-and-only Gilbert Elorreaga, aka “Mr. E“.

Let me tell you a little about Mr. E.

1. He’s a talented private lesson teacher at my daughter’s high school (Vandegrift).
2. The kids love him – he’s funny, giving, and extremely good at teaching his students.
3. He played with the trumpets once at one of our football games, up in the stands, blaring out OH_MY_GOODNESS notes from his trumpet.  You know, like that good.
4. Oh, and he won a Grammy last week.
    

Wait, WHAT?  YES, HE’S A GRAMMY WINNER.

There’s more.  I have a PICTURE of ME with A GRAMMY WINNER.

You want more info?  I gots it.

Gilbert is a trumpet player in the Latin funk orchestra Grupo Fantasma.  I mean, can you imagine?  Latin.  Plus Funk.  Plus Orchestra.  Amazing, to say the least.  The band directors played their Grammy-winning album El Existential for us while we all ate some Latin Funk Orchestra food.  You can go online and stream it, buy it, look for tour dates and follow this fantastic group.

The VHS Band Parent volunteers went all out — we had multiple tables full of food, drink and dessert.  OMG the dessert.  Take a look at this Grammy Cake table

The kids lined up after Mr. E. and joined in to congratulate him on his epic win.

You can go online to grammy.com and watch the acceptance (you need to fast forward to the end of the video and it will start Part 2, and then fast forward to 10:35 and you’ll see them).  Or you can see a few screenshots here.

I mean, just look at their competition. I can’t even pronounce some of those names, they’re that good.

Way to go, Mr. E!

(Note: this blog post came about via a twitter conversation with Dave2 from Blogography, Vahid aka Iron Fist and martymankins from Banal Leakage.  I now have fulfilled my obligation and am eagerly awaiting my check)

1. When I tried to use my debit card laaaate Friday night (Saturday morning) at a restaurant, the guy said it was declined.
2. I asked them to try again.   He did, and it was declined again.  The guy said it’s been happening to a lot of people that night and it might be a glitch. I finished my transaction with another payment method.
3. I thoroughly enjoyed my food.  Like, a lot.
4. Next day I called my Credit Union to inquire about this issue, and they said the account looked fine and it was probably a glitch.  I noted with satisfaction that I had remembered the restaurant guy using the same technical jargon.
5. Later that day I tried using my debit card online and it was denied again.  I’m pretty sure I sighed loudly and with emphasis.
6. Called the Credit Union back and said it happened again.  They said that my card had been called in “stolen”.
7. I was like, “dude.  wait, what?“
8. They said someone called in and reported my card stolen. I let them know I did no such thing, but it’s probably better if it stays that way and I work on getting a new one.  They said they’d transfer me to the fraud department to discuss further.
9. I was transferred to a department that was not open on the weekend. HEY!
10. So I called back and they said “oops”.  They followed up the “oops” with “sorry, I transferred you to the business hours number; let me transfer you to the after-hours number”.  I liked how they used the semi-colon in their statement so I could identify it for later blogging.
11. I was transferred to a department that only accepts voicemails on the weekend. HEY!
12. Left a voicemail; got no response.
13. Got a call on my cell phone from a number in Miami, FL in (786) area code.  It was an automated system that said “Hello.  This is blahblahblah credit union (not mine).  We understand you’ve received your new credit card.  Would you like to activate it now? Press 1 if so”.
14. I pressed 1, but was already suspicious.
15. Sure enough, the automatron asked me to enter in my new 16 digit credit card number.
16. I hung up with aplomb.
17. Waited until Monday, called in to the Credit Union and we had a good chat about the experience.  They offered to take the block off the card if I still needed it, but I, in my infinite wisdom and a display of extreme mental dexterity deserving of an Oscar, decided to keep it blocked and just get a new one.
18. They said I didn’t even have to wait the 7-10 business days to get a replacement, because now my Credit Union has the ability to print up new cards right inside the branch!  I’d only have to wait a few minutes and I could be off to the races.
19. NOTE: the above race-based comment is not meant to offend anyone of any race, creed, color or national origin.  It is, however, meant to offend people of equine descent.
20. I went in Tuesday morning to take care of this presto-chango gimme-a-new-card-in-minutes service.
21. NOT
22. Turns out the extra “discount package passport modifier” aka Password Unlimited feature I have on my debit card restricts replacements to mail only.  So there will be no presto-chango for me on my card.
23. The Credit Union keeps the card to shred and I’ll just do without for a couple weeks while I wait for the replacement to come by mail.
24. I get to work, EXCITED about the Jon Anderson concert for Tuesday night.  I’m like, super jazzed about seeing him in concert.
25. I check my email for my ticket information, because I couldn’t remember if I had bought a ticket by email that required printing, or if it was Will Call.
26. It was Will Call.
27. (foreshadowing should have kicked into gear by now).
28. I look at the terms for Will Call.  They state that you must have a photo ID that matches the name and address on the order, as well as the credit card used to place the order.
29. Ouch.
30. So I call the ticket place to check on this, given that I had to surrender my card due to fraud.  They said “no problem, you can just bring in a statement or something that lists the card number and your name.”
31. I was like, “FAIL“.
32. Argh.  I realized the problem now was — this is a debit card, aka “check card”.  It’s not a real credit card.  I don’t get a statement that lists the credit card number.  I only get a statement that lists my member number.
33. I call back the Credit Union and ask what official documents they offer that would satisfy the ticket place’s demand for my credit card number.  They say nothing has that.
34. However, I talked with the same lady to took my credit card to shred and let me know she hadn’t shred it yet and if I’d like to come back and get it, I can.
35. I was like, “EPIC WIN“.
36. I retrieved the card during lunch and had a tasty low carb meal from Jack in the Box.  While the culinary detail may not be important to the story, the non sequitur rules dictate the price of tea in china.
37. I went to the Paramount Theatre for my concert, ready to get my ticket.
38. When I got to the window, the teller asked “Last Name?”
39. I said “Hall”
40. She gave me the ticket.
41. No ID.  No credit card.  No paperwork.  No signature.
42. No kidding.
43. Ok, enough of the backstory.
44. The YES fans milling about in front of the Paramount before the doors opened were easy to engage with in conversation.  I even re-met one of the guys I talked with during the Dallas YES show last year.
45. What a show!  THANK YOU JON ANDERSON FOR A WONDERFUL PERFORMANCE.  In case you were wondering, I was the one who shouted “… we just love you a little bit more!” when talking about how great Austin is compared to the other cities he plays. (it’s a lyric reference to his “Everybody Loves You” solo track).
46. An excerpt of his final song is included below for your watching and listening enjoyment.

I’m a little surprised at how small the video is — it makes it look like I was way in the back.  This was taken with my iPhone, and I’m pleasantly surprised at the quality of the sound.  The acoustics of the Paramount are stellar and I’m glad some of that came across with this video.  Maybe there’s a way to zoom in on the video (let me know if you have suggestions) and repost.

If you get a chance to see Jon Anderson in concert, grab the opportunity.  There are only a few more spots on this tour left, and then supposedly he’s touring with Rick Wakeman in Europe.  Check out more info at his website.

This guy is great!  Makes me wanna learn sign language.  At least now I know what “Hey” is in ISN.  I’m no dancer, but I sure do move to this song.

PS: Yes, I really do like the song; no sarcasm here, like you might see on other people’s blogs.

PS#2: I didn’t mean the first PS to point at specific people, nor am I sour about it.  Not a bit.

PS#3: I’ll let you decide if I’m using sarcasm in #2.

That was definitely worth 5 mins of my time.

But I still don’t believe in man-caused global warming.

See there?  It even says that he’s one of my “favorite performers”.   Here’s the bio write-up from the eventful site:

Jonathan Coulton is the Contributing Troubadour for Popular Science magazine and the musical director for John Hodgman’s Little Gray Book Lectures. His songs about vengeful nerds, ennui-afflicted clowns, partially-imagined historical figures, and devotees of a certain Swedish prefab furniture store are insanely clever without ever being too clever for their own good. They repeatedly lure you into laughing before suddenly breaking your heart. And the sick part is, you keep coming back. Coulton’s is the voice of every spooky elementary school kid who could never quite keep his shirt tucked in or shoes tied; every lovelorn mason and mad scientist; every one of us who has ever sat despairingly on the floor, surrounded by parts of an Ikea endtable, weeping over our allen wrenches. He is ready to soft-rock your socks off.

My interest and involvement in JC has waxed and wayned over the last year; I even wrote a parody song of a parody song of his, sang & recorded it and started a video but then I dropped it for no apparent reason.  I also have footage of me interviewing him DITL-style (along with Paul and Storm as well) and I have yet to incorporate it into one of myDITL’s. 

Yes, I am that potentially famously procrastinatorial.

I’m even slightly interested in the Summer Cruise he tempted everyone with on his blog. 

If you want to meet up for the show here in Austin in February, drop me a line.  You know I’ll be live-tweeting the whole thing.

I was thinking today how… if I wanted to, if I *really* wanted to, I could be unhappy. 

I thought – if I concentrated hard enough, I could find a ton of things to be upset about.  Things to complain about.  Things to ruin my day or my week.  Things that could ruin my life if I let them.

Have you heard of gratitude journals?  I believe Oprah is a fan of them.  You’re supposed to write down the things every day that you’re thankful for.  I’ve never tried it myself, but have heard the wonders it does for people who are depressed or unhappy.

Since I’m so happy all the time, I wonder what would happen if I decided to start a complaint journal.  You know, for balance.

I could dwell on the fact that I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life.  Two hundred and seventy-five pounds of blogging muscle.

I could lament that I’m not at #avitaween this weekend like all the cool bloggers.

There are personal issues that could seriously weigh on me if I let them.  I don’t disclose them on the blog.

I owe a lot. In many ways to many people, and not just financial.

My feet itch.

There’s more politics to rile me up than ever before in my life, and it feels like the entire news media, the government, the blogging world, and most of my friends are against me and my principles.

I went without internet at our new house for a full week. Also, AT&T’s 3G coverage at our new house is horrible compared to our old house.

I forgot to set FastForward to record for my wife.  Now we’re weeks behind.

We still don’t have jet packs.

There are at least 3 jobs in my past that had I taken them when offered, I’d be a millionaire now.  I have 2 jobs in my past that I took a year too late and missed out on a million dollars.

My car’s muffler / tail pipe scrapes the bottom of our new driveway because of the incline.

I have health concerns. 

I’ve had to spend > $1000 on our two cars for maintenance, and I have at least another $1500 that needs to be spent, but we can’t right now.  $320 of it was for a leaking gas tank, and they just had to replace one little rubber grommet, but it costs that much anyway.

I still don’t have the game room TV cable hooked up, and we’ve been in our new house a week.

A road I drive every day will be moving from 2 lanes to 1 lane for 19 months while the government spends unneeded TARP stimulus money to pay workers to rebuild a bridge that doesn’t need rebuilding.

Speaking of driving every day, I used to work from home.  A LOT.  Now I have to go into work with 0% teleworking.  That means an additional $100-200/mo on gas expense.

I took a new job where I’m not the man in charge any more.  No clout, no history, no old-timer’s advantage.

That’s a lot of stuff, and I’m just disclosing or hinting at things that I’m comfortable saying on my blog.  If you know me and my blogging style, then you know there’s a lot more reality behind the scenes.

These were complaints off the top of my head.  Yet, I can easily come up with ten times as many things to be thankful for.  And it’s easy for me. 

In fact, it’s usually all I think about.  I keep being amazed at how lucky I am in life.  Everywhere I turn, I’m impressed with something.  There’s always something to make me smile.

Why don’t others have an easy time with it? Is it just perspective?

Despite all those things I listed above, I’m having one of the best days of my life today.

Here’s one of the reasons.  I found this on Iron Fist’s blog and I love it.

I’m so easy.