Give-away U
Posted at 5:01 AM on January 14, 2009
by Dale Connelly
(22 Comments)
Thanks to everyone who entered the give away for tickets to John Gorka's Friday night performance of his Friday / Saturday series at the Village Hall in Marine-on-St. Croix.
We don't have an "official" winner yet. We are waiting.
The winner has a message on his/her phone, with the voice of producer Mike Pengra saying "Congratulations! You're the Winner!" That was a fun thing to say. At this end of things, that's the big pay-off - to be able to say "Congratulations, You're The Winner!" Only members of the Nobel Prize committee and election certifiers and game show hosts get to say "Congratulations, You're The Winner!" It makes people happy. They erupt with glee and say things like, "you're kidding! Me? I never win anything!"
Unfortunately, after saying the magic words into the phone on Tuesday morning, we discovered our "winner" won't be checking messages until late Wednesday.
This was a strategic error on our part.
Experienced prize givers tell us you should never tell a machine "Congratulations, You're The Winner!" Machines don't react to good news with the right kind of emotion. They take it like Midwesterners, logging it and stashing it away for some later time when they can ask themselves if they're happy about this.
Experienced prize givers say you must only tell a living, breathing human being "Congratulations, You're The Winner!" If the first human on your list isn't available, you move on to the second and then the third - you do whatever you have to do to get to an alive person who will be delighted and flabbergasted, and will, if you're a lucky prize giver, cry a little.
Having put the "Congratulations" message on a machine, we must wait. If we went ahead now and gave the prize to the second person on our list, the first would undoubtedly find their life-changing message a little too late, call us, and put us in the sad position of having to say "Sorry, You're No Longer The Winner." That's a downer for everyone, and perhaps the beginning of a lawsuit.
What did we learn? It's a bad feeling to say something in a phone message that you wish you could take back. Maybe you've had this experience. It's a new one for us. From now on, when we call a winner, our first words will always be something like "Hey. What's up?" That's the way they do it at The Current, and it seems to work out well for everyone.
Practice makes perfect. We have a new giveaway today for tickets to a show at The Dakota in Minneapolis this Sunday night. Richard Julian and Sasha Dobson are performing, and they're great. And we have three pairs of tickets to give away, so your chances are pretty good. It would be well worth your time to enter this one. Read the rules. Who knows? You could get a call!
"Hey. What's up?"
Comments (22)
Morning Dale, Mike, Heartlanders! The Johnny Costa was great! Just the energy I need before I go dig out the bottom of the driveway-- again. Is Whitewater Chopsticks still in the library? A little more peppy piano?
Have a great day!
I think I remember the phrase "we are building Radio Heartland from the ground up" in the description of your show. I guess learning how to give away a prize over the phone would be something one learns in the building process. Mr Rogers would be very forgiving and encouraging about the situation, I have no doubt. So just put your shoes on, button up your sweater and keep at it.
Oh, yeah! Those three "feelings" songs were great, especially the sparkling piano-playing. Great work, Dale and Mike.
Anybody else's pc just go quiet? After last week I don't want to assume it's just me. Can't get the "stream" back up. I can hear the radio from the bedroom just fine.
The last time I won a contest was in 1970 and the prize was Breck hair products and a huge blue comb which I still have and sometimes use. It's been a long time and I'm ready to be a winner again, but mostly I want to get a call from RH saying "Hey, What's up?" so I could impress my friends and family. The tickets would be great as well.
Good morning Kids,
That is such a funny story about the winning answering machine. Think maybe the whimsical hand of God had a role in that one too? (I am getting a lot of mileage out of that expression - thank you!) Happy Birthday L.
Sherilee - i'm hearing things ok - hope it's not your computer! i use Windows Media Player
Good morning to all!
Did anyone else that in the national news (CBS) had a reporter live in Minneapolis last night reporting that the weather was (gasp) 0 degrees!
Where are they when it is 20 below? :-)
All these fabulous prizes RH is giving away will spoil us. Most of us are the "blue comb" type winners. My big win was a metric socket set, back when I was high school. Not having any metric nuts did stop me from using it, but I did wind up with a lot of round nuts.
The blog is really quiet today. I'm assuming those that must brave the elements are tending to the associated tasks (car starting, snow shoveling, bundling children) and the rest of us are clutching our hot beverage of choice in chilly hands. If it makes anyone feel better, according to the calendar we are close to the bottom point for average low temperatures. The days are getting longer and the temps will soon be getting warmer. Spring flowers and tweety birds before you know it.
Good Morning!
I am enjoying today's warmth since that's how we will think of today when tomorrow dawns so much colder.
I always think back to a conversation I had many years ago with a consultant who was born and raised in San Diego. He had been sent to Minneapolis in November which he thought was great since it was long before winter would arrive. When he got here it was 12 degrees and was certain he would die walking across the street. I took the opportunity to congratulate him for getting his trip in before it actually got cold but somehow he didn't see the humor in it..
If the forecast of 27 holds for Sunday, I may host a beach party!
Good morning, Kathy in WI - I know for a fact that you are warm just thinking about your blues cruise coming up. Is it too late to request a cruisin' song for Kathy?
This is my first venture onto the new blog. I've been listening to Dale and Jim Ed for 25 years! I'm so grateful that we've got Dale back online! Yay!
To keep up the weather conversation, my husband likes to remind me every day that we are "one day closer to spring," and also that we now have more than 9 hours of daylight per day.....winter is a great boost for optimism .... unless you are a pessimist.
Mark, I have been dealing with a researcher from the U who just moved to this area from the East Coast, and she stated her dismay at this winter. I was easy on her, though, and told her that this winter did seem particularly bad, due to the fact that the cold had arrived sooner than usual.
Dale, I was thinking on the way to work this morning that I'd like to hear some Gram Parsons but (because I was busy slogging through system logs) didn't bother to make a request on the blog. The service is really good in this joint!
Kathy - I also thank you for your warm words. (& to you too Barb... my pc started working after about 15 minutes).
Everybody have a good, warm day. And good luck to all those trying for the tickets today!
You're welcome Elinor.
Thanks for the telepathy. Please send more secret messages about what I should do with this Saturday night's show on MPR news.
The help is appreciated.
oh happy day! oooh happy daaa-ay!
i'm singing to myself because today, by some freak astral alignment, my new HD radio alarm clock went off at the right time (with an unusual blinking blue strobe-like light) and turned on RH, and i could lie quietly in bed in the dark morning listening to music and then hear Dale gently break the news of the weather, which made me feel better about bundling up....
great to have you back in my morning, Dale--
Thanks for the update, Kay.
I'm always encouraged to hear that some technological thing is working the way it's supposed to work. The blinking blue strobe light is a new wrinkle. Is that intended to wake you up if the music is too low-key and drowsy?
speaking of notifying winners, a phone answering machine caught part of the middle of the night call notifying a sleepy Stanford professor that he had won the 1996 Nobel Prize for Physics.
Listen here http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2001/october3/osheroff_audio-103.html
Priceless.
We had a heat wave this morning, and it was only -20F outside as opposed to yesterday morning's -30F. Dale, I'm appreciating your hot songs. "California Dreamin'" really did it for me... shades of home. If you're still looking for cold songs later, I'll suggest Charlie McGuire's "I Like it Here".
dale and others---
at the risk of too much information---
i got the radiosophy HD100 radio, to use it as a bedside alarm- clock radio---the sound is better than my old clock radio with the 1-inch speaker, but not really high quality---
have been messing around with it since saturday, since the directions were....well....spare, to put it mildly. hard to tell if/when the alarm is set.
anyway, the digital display window darkens when the radio is off---and i expected just that the window would lighten when the alarm went off-- but no, it strobes--made my black cat look very interesting, with the blue flashing off the sheen of her fur...
regardless of manufacturer intention, it did, in fact, assist in getting my eyes opened, though there was nuttin' wrong wid de music!
Since the Duluth station doesn't carry Radio Heartland (at least, not yet) I haven't been tempted to go to HD radio. Y'all are making me more certain I'd like to let the kinks get worked out first.
Dale, another great "cold weather" song I'd love to hear is "Baby It's Cold Outside". I particularly love the Claudia Schmidt / Paul Cegar (sp?) version, which is unfortunately truncated in the archive from the LGMS.
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