Friday, February 8, 2013

ThinkGeek contest

So, Kathy from Kindle-aholic and Stellar Four, posted links to a ThinkGeek donation contest this morning. (Yes, I know that line was link-insane -- sorry about that!) If you're willing to give ThinkGeek your email address, you can pick a classroom at DonorsChoose.org. to possibly get a donation.

I'm pretty sure that ThinkGeek is donating $1000 no matter what, so it's not as if giving them your address has any intrinsic advantage to the outcome -- someone's getting that money -- but I picked a classroom anyway, Mrs. DeVille's ESL elementary in Seattle. If you're willing to let ThinkGeek have an address, her number is 1627207291, if you'd like to vote for her, too.

Why did I pick her? Um, mostly, because I looked for a Seattle ESL teacher thinking I might find a classroom taught by a friend, and then found this one and really liked her name. Well, or had sympathy for her name, anyway. I wonder how many Cruella jokes she's heard in her life? And yet she's listed as a "Mrs." which probably means that she changed her name, so I wonder what it was originally? Was changing it a hard decision or an easy one? Yep, questions like this are the kinds of thing I can ponder for hours. Anyway, it's a minor thing, but it only takes a minute to vote, and she, poor teacher, posted her request in November and is almost out of time, with the entire amount to go. And a printer is really a pretty nice thing to have.

I can't decide whether this is mean of me or not. If you're from the northern US and in the midst of a major blizzard, you probably want to stop reading now. But I rearranged my bedroom and this is now the view from my bed.


It makes me think that possibly I should be working a little harder toward finding a job that would let me stay in Florida. I've mostly been thinking that when R graduates from high school, I'd head off to someplace where I'm more employable. But I should stop taking my palm tree for granted.

On February 7th, Ghosts reached a milestone on Amazon -- 100 reviews. I don't know why 100 is any different than 99, really, but it was somehow a thrilling moment in a pretty rocky week. Onward, upward, back to Time!

4 comments:

  1. Yes you should definitely be re-thinking the move thing. Fortunately the sun is shining today and I'm not in the path of a storm so I'm not too envious even though it's really cold out there.
    100 reviews is wonderful. I don't remember if I reviewed it or not. Might have to check. I'm pretty negligent about amazon reviews and I know it helps authors.

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  2. Hey Sarah - wanted to share this with you - here is an easy way to possibly win several books

    http://sn116w.snt116.mail.live.com/default.aspx?rru=inbox#n=2077615490&rru=inbox&fid=1&fav=1&mid=5c9f3940-721a-11e2-8eed-002264c2496c&fv=1

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  3. Hi, Judy,
    Yeah, reviews seem to make a big difference. I think it's partly that people are more curious about a book when it has lots of feedback, but it's also because reviews matter to Amazon's algorithms and sites that promote books. It makes for a weird catch-22 with reviews, because some authors are unscrupulous about getting them any way they can which then makes the reviews less valuable to readers. Amazon is getting stricter about trying to delete reviews that they think are false, though, and also more assertive about trying to get customers to review products. A couple of my recent reviews are pretty clearly responses to Amazon's emails.

    That link takes me to a Microsoft mail password site, so is probably the wrong link? I'll definitely try to win books, though, if you've got a better link for me!

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  4. try this:
    http://megwaiteclayton.com/1stbooks/20books/

    ReplyDelete