One Man's Demons
This is beyond obsession! It is 9:00 A.M. on a Sunday morning, and I have been sitting here "voting" for the past three hours. Abbey Loo is right. The quest for free computers has overtaken my life to the point that I am ignoring other responsibilities to keep our vote count up and our rank on a continual ascent to the top spot. (As I write, we are ranked 17th. We were 18th when I started voting this morning, and I voted more than 1000 times--yes, I actually counted. Sick, isn't it?) We currently have almost 44,000 total votes, and I am pretty sure that about a fourth of them are mine. If there were 10 of me working on this, we'd already be in first place, but I have established that I can't win this computer lab on my own. We need the help of everyone who is willing to donate some time every day between now and the middle of November to go to the web site and vote for our school. Here are some of the things I have learned in my analysis of this competition:
1) The best time to vote is in the middle of the night. The servers are less clogged, fewer people are online, and you can tally a greater number of votes in far less time than you can in the middle of the afternoon. Am I suggesting then that my students get up in the middle of the night, lose precious sleep, just to vote for this silly computer lab? YES, I AM! But I can't force anyone to do that; all I can do is encourage. For our upcoming UEA weekend, when all students in Utah have 4 days off, I suggest this motto: "Vote all night! Sleep all day!" Have a party with your friends. Rent some movies (maybe scary movies of the Halloween variety in honor of that upcoming holiday). Have a few of your best friends over for a sleepover. Stay up really late watching movies, but have one person on the computer voting at all times. If your computer is in the same room as your TV, all the better. See how many votes you can tally from your computer, working as a team. Got two computers in your house? Capital! Use them both! Have a contest to see who can vote the fastest, who can get the most correct entries in a row, who can go the longest time without beginning to bleed from the eyeballs! Just keep voting!
2) The trick to moving up in the rankings is to remain one of the "hottest" schools day after day. ("Hottest" means the most votes that day.) If you are consistently one of the hottest schools, you are going to move up. Of course this is difficult because it means you have to have a bunch of people voting all the time (night and day). One school earned 27,000 votes in one 24-hour period; obviously they had a major push from their entire community, and they have cracked into the top ten with that effort. We have yet to get above 10,000 votes in a day, but we've only been at this for 10 days. We still have 30 days to go. If we can be in the top 5 or 1o hottest schools for all of those 30 days, we can easily break into the top 5 by the end of the competition. But that requires a committment from lots of people to help out. If you know people who have access to computers--parents, grandparents, relatives, friends, neighbors, etc.--encourage them to help out. If you have already told them about it, remind them to KEEP VOTING! E-mail them again! If every parent and grandparent with a computer would commit to vote 10 times a day, we'd be in great shape! (Remind them that if we get a free lab, we won't have to harrass them with as many fundraisers later on. It will be one less time you are asking them to buy magazines, wrapping paper, fancy candy, or coupon books. We need no money, just a time commitment.) If we get 1400 people to vote 25 times a day for the rest of the competition, we'll have over a million votes. But that's a lot of people. Everyone has to contribute! Tell everyone you know: Just keep voting!
3) At a time when the system is not clogged (i.e., the middle of the night, very early in the mornings, weekends), it is possible to vote 100 times in about 20 minutes. (This, of course, is assuming you know your keyboard well.) The problem is that many of the votes won't count because the verification code is so hard to figure out that you will miss them. Assuming you can get about 4/5 of your votes to count, you can tally 100 votes in 25 minutes, which equals more than 200 votes an hour. I once counted that I was able to get 50/53 verifications, but I have been doing this long enough that I recognize all the funky-looking letters. (Trial and error is a great teacher!) The problem is when one of the letters is only partially visible and you have to guess at what the rest of the letter might be. I suspect that some of the codes are not meant to be visible. This is to smoke out hackers. (If someone writes a computer program that will read the code behind the graphics and automatically enter the correct answer every time, the contest judges will know that there is some cheating going on, and that school will be disqualified.) You're not supposed to be able to get every one right, so don't get frustrated. Just keep voting!
4) Frustration sets in when the going gets tough. It was easy to get people voting when they could see our rank rise every few minutes, but for the past four days, we have been battling mightily just to move up one rank a day. Now that we are in the top 20, other schools see us as a threat, and when we pass them in the rankings, they get nervous and "fight back." That's why we have been wavering for long stretches of time before moving up each day. So far, we have yet to lose ground on any given day, and I'd like to keep that momentum going. If we move up one rank a day, we'll be in first place well before the end of the competition. But it will get harder to do each day because there are a handful of schools around the country battling for those top five spots. The more people we have working in our behalf, the better chance we have. Don't get frustrated! Just keep voting!
5) Incentives might help motivate students. Just to show you how serious I am about this, if our school wins the stuff, I am willing to shave my head! What? Oh, yeah...I do that anyway. Okay, how 'bout this: I'll grow my hair out from now until the end of the competition. If, at that time, we are in the top five and we are selected to receive the free stuff, I will continue to grow my hair out until our winnings are delivered to the school (sometime in January, probably). By then I should have some visible hair. On the day the stuff is delivered, I will shave (or allow someone else to shave) the sides of my head, leaving only a mohawk-like strip of hair on top. Obviously this will be the most hideous hair-do imaginable, very humiliating for me. But I'll do it if you'll help us win the computers! (Obviously this is a violation of the school dress code, but I will ask about being allowed to wear such a hairstyle long enough for everyone to get a good laugh...and plenty of pictures. Or we'll do it in an assembly at the end of the day on a Friday when no astronauts will be here.) That's what I'll do! Now why don't you start asking some of the other teachers what they are willing to do? Wouldn't Mr. Carter look fabulous in an evening gown? Or, for that matter, wouldn't Swanson look good bald? And that woolly beard of Muna's might look nice dyed pink, wouldn't it? And what about Erickson? He can grow a full beard during a budget committee meeting! What if he were to just let it grow...until May? And maybe we could get all the fair ladies in our school to agree on a no-make-up day? I'm just throwing out ideas. I'm sure you can come up with better ones. Why don't you ask around? And if teachers aren't willing to humiliate themselves for the cause, then encourage them to, you guessed it: Just keep voting!
Consider this: 10 days ago we were ranked 998th. Today we are 17th. There are 30 days to go. We can do it!
Please, for the sake of humanity and all that is holy (or at least for the sake of my sanity and green guacamole),
1) The best time to vote is in the middle of the night. The servers are less clogged, fewer people are online, and you can tally a greater number of votes in far less time than you can in the middle of the afternoon. Am I suggesting then that my students get up in the middle of the night, lose precious sleep, just to vote for this silly computer lab? YES, I AM! But I can't force anyone to do that; all I can do is encourage. For our upcoming UEA weekend, when all students in Utah have 4 days off, I suggest this motto: "Vote all night! Sleep all day!" Have a party with your friends. Rent some movies (maybe scary movies of the Halloween variety in honor of that upcoming holiday). Have a few of your best friends over for a sleepover. Stay up really late watching movies, but have one person on the computer voting at all times. If your computer is in the same room as your TV, all the better. See how many votes you can tally from your computer, working as a team. Got two computers in your house? Capital! Use them both! Have a contest to see who can vote the fastest, who can get the most correct entries in a row, who can go the longest time without beginning to bleed from the eyeballs! Just keep voting!
2) The trick to moving up in the rankings is to remain one of the "hottest" schools day after day. ("Hottest" means the most votes that day.) If you are consistently one of the hottest schools, you are going to move up. Of course this is difficult because it means you have to have a bunch of people voting all the time (night and day). One school earned 27,000 votes in one 24-hour period; obviously they had a major push from their entire community, and they have cracked into the top ten with that effort. We have yet to get above 10,000 votes in a day, but we've only been at this for 10 days. We still have 30 days to go. If we can be in the top 5 or 1o hottest schools for all of those 30 days, we can easily break into the top 5 by the end of the competition. But that requires a committment from lots of people to help out. If you know people who have access to computers--parents, grandparents, relatives, friends, neighbors, etc.--encourage them to help out. If you have already told them about it, remind them to KEEP VOTING! E-mail them again! If every parent and grandparent with a computer would commit to vote 10 times a day, we'd be in great shape! (Remind them that if we get a free lab, we won't have to harrass them with as many fundraisers later on. It will be one less time you are asking them to buy magazines, wrapping paper, fancy candy, or coupon books. We need no money, just a time commitment.) If we get 1400 people to vote 25 times a day for the rest of the competition, we'll have over a million votes. But that's a lot of people. Everyone has to contribute! Tell everyone you know: Just keep voting!
3) At a time when the system is not clogged (i.e., the middle of the night, very early in the mornings, weekends), it is possible to vote 100 times in about 20 minutes. (This, of course, is assuming you know your keyboard well.) The problem is that many of the votes won't count because the verification code is so hard to figure out that you will miss them. Assuming you can get about 4/5 of your votes to count, you can tally 100 votes in 25 minutes, which equals more than 200 votes an hour. I once counted that I was able to get 50/53 verifications, but I have been doing this long enough that I recognize all the funky-looking letters. (Trial and error is a great teacher!) The problem is when one of the letters is only partially visible and you have to guess at what the rest of the letter might be. I suspect that some of the codes are not meant to be visible. This is to smoke out hackers. (If someone writes a computer program that will read the code behind the graphics and automatically enter the correct answer every time, the contest judges will know that there is some cheating going on, and that school will be disqualified.) You're not supposed to be able to get every one right, so don't get frustrated. Just keep voting!
4) Frustration sets in when the going gets tough. It was easy to get people voting when they could see our rank rise every few minutes, but for the past four days, we have been battling mightily just to move up one rank a day. Now that we are in the top 20, other schools see us as a threat, and when we pass them in the rankings, they get nervous and "fight back." That's why we have been wavering for long stretches of time before moving up each day. So far, we have yet to lose ground on any given day, and I'd like to keep that momentum going. If we move up one rank a day, we'll be in first place well before the end of the competition. But it will get harder to do each day because there are a handful of schools around the country battling for those top five spots. The more people we have working in our behalf, the better chance we have. Don't get frustrated! Just keep voting!
5) Incentives might help motivate students. Just to show you how serious I am about this, if our school wins the stuff, I am willing to shave my head! What? Oh, yeah...I do that anyway. Okay, how 'bout this: I'll grow my hair out from now until the end of the competition. If, at that time, we are in the top five and we are selected to receive the free stuff, I will continue to grow my hair out until our winnings are delivered to the school (sometime in January, probably). By then I should have some visible hair. On the day the stuff is delivered, I will shave (or allow someone else to shave) the sides of my head, leaving only a mohawk-like strip of hair on top. Obviously this will be the most hideous hair-do imaginable, very humiliating for me. But I'll do it if you'll help us win the computers! (Obviously this is a violation of the school dress code, but I will ask about being allowed to wear such a hairstyle long enough for everyone to get a good laugh...and plenty of pictures. Or we'll do it in an assembly at the end of the day on a Friday when no astronauts will be here.) That's what I'll do! Now why don't you start asking some of the other teachers what they are willing to do? Wouldn't Mr. Carter look fabulous in an evening gown? Or, for that matter, wouldn't Swanson look good bald? And that woolly beard of Muna's might look nice dyed pink, wouldn't it? And what about Erickson? He can grow a full beard during a budget committee meeting! What if he were to just let it grow...until May? And maybe we could get all the fair ladies in our school to agree on a no-make-up day? I'm just throwing out ideas. I'm sure you can come up with better ones. Why don't you ask around? And if teachers aren't willing to humiliate themselves for the cause, then encourage them to, you guessed it: Just keep voting!
Consider this: 10 days ago we were ranked 998th. Today we are 17th. There are 30 days to go. We can do it!
Please, for the sake of humanity and all that is holy (or at least for the sake of my sanity and green guacamole),
JUST KEEP VOTING!
If this blog has inspired you to help out, click here!
posted by MRT at 8:16 AM
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