Round TWO

Hey!

Big props to the dozen or so DreamHosters who showed up and got $61 of credit to their DreamHost account.. I scored 29 points total, Micah 32!

Unfortunately, Micah didn’t get to move on to the next round, tomorrow at 11am in the Venetian (ballroom C).

BUT I DID.

All thanks to my mad 17 point handicap (in a game to 21) against two guys in my round-robin! BOO YAH. And the other guy dropping out because he “hurt his shoulder”. Pshaw.

So, if you missed the first round, here’s your (last) chance to get some more credit.. come root Josh on tomorrow (Saturday) and get $2 a point scored!!

To wrap things up, here’s a pic of the big mac I got on our drive to Vegas:

What, was it their first day?!

The New Dream Machine

You may remember Dream Machine from such sports as basketball, basketball, softball, and basketball.

But what you may NOT remember is that we got in trouble with our building when they saw our elevator lobby table tennis shenanigans.

And what you couldn’t possibly remember, is that Micah and I have been working on our game since then and now are officially USATT rated (771 and 720 respectively).

Which is why I’m pleased to introduce for the first time… Dream Machine Table Tennis!

What’s it to you?

Well, we’re headed to the $100,000 Hard Bat Classic this weekend in Vegas, and anybody who shows up to cheer (either of) us on will get $1 in DreamHost credit for every point each of us score.. THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE TOURNAMENT!

That could very well end up being THOUSANDS of dollars of DreamHost credit .. or very well end up being TENS of dollars of DreamHost credit!

To illustrate, I will now relay to you a little story of the LAST tournament we went to, less than a month ago…

The California State Open

The way USATT tournaments generally work is that everybody is grouped into four person round-robin contests, where everybody plays everybody else, and only the one winner advances to the “playoff” bracket.

When I showed up for my under-1100-rating tournament, I found my bracket on the board… and things didn’t look too good:

Jones, Josh 725

Lee, Kenneth 927

Liao, Hung Ju (Andrew) 844

Lu, David 958

Hmm, Jones vs. Lee, Liao, and Lu. Not to be prejudiced, but I was nervous.

And in fact, it wasn’t good… I ended up losing all three matches, although I did win one game at least vs. Ken.

Overall, it was still a lot of fun and afterwards I got everybody from our round robin together to take a picture to commemorate their victories:

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

See you tomorrow at the Venetian!

Big Boy Time is Up!

A couple of months ago I announced our new API, as well as a crrrrrazy contest to go with it.

Well, the contest has been over for three weeks now… which, even I grudgingly agree, is more than enough time for my trusty band of interns (no offense Greg) to review the dozens of submissions we got and decide which ones get to share in the $10,000,000 $10,000 of fabulous cash prizes!

One Ado

Before we get to the winners, I thought I’d first reminisce on how far the API has come in just two short months.

Since we started, we’ve added a test API account (use it to test out the contest winners if you want; username: apitest@dreamhost.com key: 6SHU5P2HLDAYECUM), the ability to get your results in xml, json, and “perl”, and of course tons of new functionality (included just-added mysql and mail filter-related).

Without further ado, the winners in the first official DreamHost API Crazy Contest are:

One Further Ado

Oh yeah, one last thing I wanted to say.. we had a real hard time deciding on the winners, there were so many entries of similar quality and essentially identical utility!

So, as a cop out, there are a lot of ties among the winners, and… we decided to give EVERYBODY who didn’t win a $100 DreamHost account credit as a consolation! It’s already been applied to your account.

Without further further ado, the winners:

The Early Bird Prize: $2,000

For the best application completed before May, we had an early-bird prize.. and the winner (as previously announced) was ChirpBot, a twitter interface to the DreamHost API.

Re-mentioned here for completenesses-sake.

Fourth Place: $750

A three-way tie between all the iPhone Apps created to manage your DreamHost account: