We have a winner in the Beautiful Universe giveaway!
There were 276 posts in the thread on BAUT. Wow! So I generated a random number between 2 (my post was #1) and 277. The number was…
99. So the winner is…
[drum roll please...]
Congrats! I have posted in the BAUT thread and sent a PM as well.
Wailashi, please send me your name and address so I can ship to you your fine copy of this cool astronomy book. You can send me a private message through BAUT (click on my username in the thread and send a PM) or you can email me at thebadastronomer "at" gmail "dot" com.
Let me add: if I don’t hear back from Wailashi by one week after the contest ended (Thursday, February 15 at noon Pacific time) I will pick another number and get a different winner. Hopefully this will be enough time for him/her to respond.
I’ll note that Wailashi is a new member of BAUT. It pays to sign up. 
For everyone else, hang in there. This is but the first BA giveaway. I have more stuff, and I will have a new contest soon!
Note: if you click the link to the random number generator, you will probably get a different number than 99. I included the link simply to show you how I got the number. The odds are only 1 in 276 you’ll get 99 like I did.
February 8th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Nice gift and contest. And you had to do all the math.
February 8th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
More contests? Cool! Hopefully, the odds will favor me then.
Oh, congrats to you Wailashi!
February 8th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Congrats Wailashi! Your stated reasons for wanting the book are quite sound, (especially if you happen to live in the Midwest and Eastern US or Canada right now!) Brrrr.
February 8th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Humph. Sounds like the fix was in to me. *I* wanted that book.
February 8th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Congratulations Wailashi!
Funny, I tried the random number generator and guess what the first number I got was… 99!
February 9th, 2007 at 7:38 am
No no no! Here is how you create a random number!
(Boy I hope HTML links work here. Sure would be nice if we had a preview option, dont’cha think?)
February 9th, 2007 at 9:08 am
Jay! Thank you everybody.
To Chip
Actually I live in southern Finland (the approximate coordinates are in my post). It’s been -20C for the last few weeks, and this is considered a fairly warm winter. I’ve been out with a telescope in -30C
To Laguna2
The first number I got was also 99. Seems popular nowadays. Maybe I should try the lottery or something.
February 9th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
The Bad Astronomer wrote:
The odds are only 1 in 276 you’ll get 99 like I did.
I got 99 on my third try. What are the odds for that??