quixoticWelcome to the last of the Thirteen Days of Hogswatch. Each giveaway in this year's extravaganza has come with different rules and a different deadline, although all prizes will be mailed on December 30th, because I am bad at going to the post office (and also, avoiding the post office until that other winter holiday is over).
The thirteenth, and last, giveaway is for a MYSTERY ITEM of some kind. What will it be? No one knows! Not even me. This is going to be a random number drawing, because why I said so. So...
1. To enter, comment on this post.
2. If you are international, indicate both this and your willingness to pay postage.
3. Tell me one thing you hope the prize is. (ETA: Please only ask for things I might actually have. I can't give you a new job or world peace. I wish I could.)
4. Tell me one thing you hope the prize is not.
5. Tell me why the RNG should pick you.
I will choose the winner at 1PM PST on Sunday, December 20th.
Game on!
December 14 2015, 05:22:27 UTC 1 year ago
[There is no 2. because I live in the midwest]
3. So ... I have a bit of a story with this one. My wife, two daughters, son, and I moved to Indiana a few years ago. We dumb-lucked ourselves into an amazing house a bit over two years ago (real estate is cheap in Indiana, and we got lucky). I'd be happy to go on and on and on, but the short story is: it's 10 acres, 1.5 mies from where we work. The house itself is a Cape Cod with lots of bedrooms. There's a 2-acre field in back where I mow paths for the kids to play in (my older daughter designed them this year based on Little House on the Prairie). The kids have watched birds of prey do their thing just because it's a Tuesday. We really fell in love with the place, though, when we saw the stream the runs along the South side of our property. On the edge of ~6 acres of our woods (surrounded by more of the neighbors' woods), and the water is healthy and walkable. You turn over the rocks, you find caddisfly larvae. You poke in the rocks, you immediately find 450-million year old fossils (mostly Ordovician horn coral, lots of bivalves, etc.). It freezes over in the winter, and the kids get to walk down the stream to see the limestone seep. It's basically our own little Knowe, but we don't know what to name it. I study diffusion in biological membranes, but my wife nixed Membrane Manor for "obvious" reasons. Caddis Coral Cove seems a bit overblown as far as names go. My wife is a phylogeneticist, and studies birds of all sorts. She also studies ancient Indiana creatures, like the giant beaver (really! They were a thing, not just a bad line at a cocktail party!). Giant Beaver Downs doesn't quite seem like the right name either, somehow. So, deep in my heart, I'm hoping that the prize is "Seanan helps you name something!"
4. Something that's more effort for you than it's worth. Seriously, these things are amazing, and I'm just glad you don't burn out.
5. Because I've taught students how to write pseudorandom number generators! Perhaps one of them has written the one you're using, and has a soft spot in their heart for me?