We have a winner in the Saucer Fleet giveaway! It’s Pierre Rioux, who was commenter #238. I went to random.org and had it find a random number between 1 and 767 (the last three comments were after the deadline, and I deleted one comment that was a trackback from my post reminding people to enter) and it picked 238. I can prove it! Well, as good as proof gets on the intertoobz.
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So I emailed Pierre, he replied, and a copy of Saucer Fleet will be heading his way. But don’t despair! Remember, you can abduct your own copy at a 15% discount by going to Jack’s bookstore to order the book and entering "BABR" (for BABLog Reader) into the promotional code field.
Thanks everyone for participating, and just a tease: I have a lot more stuff to give away. In fact, I may just run another contest very soon, so stay tuned!
March 20th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Congrats to the winner!!!
March 20th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
You might call him “Lucky Pierre”…
- Jack
March 20th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
congrats Pierre
March 20th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Congratulations!
March 20th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Can you arrange for the next giveaway to be an alien abduction?
March 20th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
If the next giveaway is an alien abduction, can I nominate Texas State Representative Leo Berman?
Clear skies, Alan
March 20th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Missed it by that much…..
No the next alien abduction needs to be the Tx State Board of Education…please..
March 20th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Well, poop.
March 20th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
It’s me! I think it’s the first time in my life I’ve ever won something!
I’m so happy! Thank you Phil, thank you Jack.
March 20th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
Darn. I swear, I almost picked 238. At the last minute, I changed to 145. Always go with your gut. At least I can now comment on the other thread without being disqualified.
March 20th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
Hey, Phil. Like, er… I thought you said you were gonna run the random number generator at noon your time (18:00 UTC)? Man, like, er… no wonder the positive waves I was sending out didn’t work!
March 20th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
@Pierre,
Congratulations! May it be the start of a long winning streak.
Clear skies, Alan
March 20th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
Tip o’ the beret to lucky Pierre.
Given the quality of Jack’s previous book on spaceships, I’m sure this one’s a winner. And a 15% off deal is sweet!
March 21st, 2009 at 12:03 am
Congratulations Saucerre Pierre!
March 21st, 2009 at 12:31 am
March 21st, 2009 at 4:57 am
Depleted uranium. 2:38 was the optimal time for popcorn on my old microwave, too.
If only I were a numerologist, so I could find this more than just mildly amusing.
March 21st, 2009 at 7:36 am
Congrats Pierre, and Jack, you have sold a book to this loser.
Meanwhile, I will use random.org to pick my winning lottery numbers since I am on such a hot streak.
March 21st, 2009 at 7:43 am
Congrats Pierre! You lucky cat you.
Hmmm I may have to buy that thing.
March 21st, 2009 at 8:38 am
I once had a calculator that gave a random three-decimal-place number (0.000 to 0.999) at a touch of a button. That was very quick and convenient. Eight or more decimal places would have been much better, that way everyone would have an approximately equal chance of winning. You would key in: [7][6][7] [×] [RND] [=] and round up.
Congratulations to Pierre Rioux! I wonder if the book will be shipped to Quebec or France and how that would affect shipping cost.
March 21st, 2009 at 8:50 am
Congrats Pierre! I’m going out on a limb and guessing Pierre is a Canadian? We Canadians are a nice bunch, and much deserving of this win!
March 21st, 2009 at 8:51 am
What would have made this win epic is if the winning number was 42
March 21st, 2009 at 10:15 am
Yep, I’m French Canadian. I live in Montreal. I’ve lived in California for a few years too. That’s were I learned to say ‘That’s a bummer, dude!’ with the proper accent. Shipping a book from the US to Canada is not much trouble, I expect it will take between on and two weeks. Canada Post is really slow sometimes.
March 21st, 2009 at 10:16 am
Felicitations, Pierre! We’re all totally jealous, and we hate you.
March 21st, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Tim G Asks: “I wonder if the book will be shipped to Quebec or France and how that would affect shipping cost.”
Shipping doesn’t really get expensive until an ocean is involved. The PO sends everything by air now, so nothing is especially cheap, but to Canada a copy of TSF costs $15 to ship International First Class and $25 International Priority These apply to Mexico as well. To France (and most of the rest of Europe) it’s $23 by 1st Class and $42 (yes, 42!) by Priority.
A note for those of you planning to buy the book. First off, thank you! Second, you can get it a bit cheaper at Amazon since they’re basically taking the distributor price and undercutting everyone else. It’s a great deal for the customers, but really tough on the other sellers.
I’m trying not to complain too much since I enjoy the low customer prices on Amazon all the rest of the time, too. It’s just that in this case, I still have a tens-of-thousands-of-dollars investment in the book that I’ll probably never pay off from sales. I write these for the modelers and sci-fi fans, not to make money, but I can’t afford to lose it, either, or I can’t write any more of them.
OK, complaining mode off. While I can’t match Amazon’s price, I did lower it from Apogee’s MSRP of $59.95 to $49.95, plus you guys get 15% off of that. I also offer something that Amazon can’t do, which is autograph them.
Thanks again to Phil for hosting this and to all of you for your kind comments!
- Jack
March 21st, 2009 at 3:01 pm
:: goes to a faraway corner and sobs ::
Congratulations, anyway.
March 21st, 2009 at 4:23 pm
@Wendy : I’ve always wondered what it was like to have enemies.
Of course, if I really want to find out, I simply have to engage the stupid
creationists on Pharyngula. But right now, I’ve no time for that. Will
you be my enemy, please? I’d rather have a clever enemy than a stupid one.
March 21st, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Congratulations, Pierre!
March 21st, 2009 at 8:06 pm
Tim G:
I still have and use a Casio FX-850-P (click on my name for the Wikipedia article on this), which I had purchased in early 1991, and it has a random number generator of up to 10 decimal places — 0.1234567890 — which I have programed in BASIC to select lottery numbers — I only play when there is a whopping rollover!
March 22nd, 2009 at 10:34 am
Congrats! In my misery, I bought the book anyway.