Well, we didn’t win. That’s a shame, as we were really, really depending on it to help get by.
Even though it sounds completely biased, we felt that we were the most deserving “contestant.”[1] One person was in the same situation as us, but 70 years old, another’s story had nothing to do with a roof, and more to do with the husband who died of cancer, and the fourth had basically neglected her roof for 40 years.
The winner was the last one. I don’t want to venture into libel, so I won’t make any declarative statements, but the person who was was formerly an executive secretary on the Lake County Educational Services Center. While I’m not a Lake County (Ohio) resident, I do wonder how many of the votes for her were made or advertised using county equipment or county resources. When I worked for the Federal Government, this sort of misuse of the taxpayer’s dollars was a major no-no.
We were told by the roofing company that the winner won by “a lot”, and that the runners up were still being decided, as they had to eliminate duplicate votes. This means, to me, the analytical one, that the winner had so many more votes than any other candidate that even accounting for a supposed number of duplicate votes applied solely to this candidate, she still would have won. Nevertheless, it seems very suspicious to me (not that I’m indicating conspiracy on the part of the company, but rather, am indicating a desire for more transparency into the raw votes and supposed votes, and possibly the criteria for determining duplicate votes).
Nevertheless, we’re waiting to hear back from the company about what we may have won as a runner up (my wife was told “gas for a year” and “some roof repairs”, but the jury is still out).
I’m very irritated at this whole situation. But I did make promises, didn’t I. Okay.
1. I hereby release Cabbages and Kings by Jacob P. Silvia (2005) to the Public Domain by assigning it the CC0 license. I will update the license on the actual document when I have time. This dedication is effective July 1, 2014.
2. I will announce at a later date the On-Spec Story giveaway. I am trying to figure out if I’d like to do it through a venue that gets more traffic than my blog, because, let’s face it, I get lousy traffic. When I find the best venue, I’ll post a link to it from here. Because of that, there may be an additional caveat that (free) membership to the site in questions may be required to apply. Unless I hear enough complaints, I’ll assume everybody’s cool with that.
3. I won’t be giving away an audiobook CDs. I’ll instead dispose of them in a way that is beneficial towards my financial situation.
There is a rumor that there may be a party entitled “Raising the Roof” at some future time. This is just a rumor and is not meant to indicate any sort of promise of such an event.
But that’s where I’m sitting right now. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
EDIT (07/09/2014)
EDIT (07/09/2014)
We were notified by the company that we came in second place, which is supposed to come with at least a credit towards roof repairs. I'm curious to know by how many votes we lost.
[1] I know it wasn’t a “contest,” but this is the best word to convey the idea.
