So in my last post, I blogged about my favorite Advent books. This post then became a Bright Ideas Press post, and there, we held a contest and offered one to a lucky reader. Although that has been done on this blog many times before, I have never done it. This was a learning experience for me. So I sit at my computer in Michigan on Thursday morning to announce the winner. But how do I do this? It's on a computer screen! Do I just send the mouse whizzing down the page and see where it stops? I dunno. Must call Maggie. Maggie says, "When we do this in the office, we put numbers or names on slips of paper in a hat. And then once we have a winner, there's some way to get the e-mail address of that person." OK, I say. So I pull out my little pad of paper, cut up strips, write names on each fold them up, find something to put them in (a crystal bowl that was a wedding gift - nothing but the best around here) and call my five year old over to draw a name. Not a great choice. She wants to know what she's doing. So in a great homeschool moment, I have to expand her concept of the Internet, explain Bright Ideas, the blog, the concept that people can comment on the blog, the contest, and the way we have to draw names for the winners of the contest. 20 minutes later we were drawing a winner.
Ok. Now that I have a winner, I have to call Tyler to figure out what to do next. How do I get their e-mail address to notify, what's the best way to get the info onto the blog? Tyler says, "Wait, what was the contest deadline? I have a bunch of unapproved comments here. We need to draw again." And suddenly, through the magic of the web, I have ten more entries that need to be added to my crystal bowl. I start snipping my paper schnibbles so I can write the new names on them and that brilliant computer guru, Tyler, says...wait for it..."Would you like me to randomly generate a number between 1 and 27." And in three seconds, we had a new winner. Good thing SOMEONE at Bright Ideas Press is living in the 21st century. It's not me...I'm stuck in the '80's.
