I know what you've all been thinking: enough with the helmets and the random Euro architecture and get on with the prize drawing already!
Well, you're right, and fine. But first, I want to give a big thanks to everyone who sent in reviews, including those who sent them in well after the deadline knowing that they had ze-ro chance at winning a prize, but who just wanted to share a great book. I'll be posting those reviews this week.
I'd also like to thank those who provided prizes: Duds4Dads and Sparkability (I bought all the other prizes, yo, so those providers already got their reward.)
Now, some stats and methodology [and, finally, the winners]:
There were 35 book reviews submitted by 26 people, 13 men and 13 women. Everyone who submitted a review was equally eligible for the drawing, and I assigned each person a number as I posted their review(s). Then I generated a sequence of random numbers at random.org [your results may vary, duh], and took the first seven results. These were the prize winners.
Drunk with power, I then tried to machinate and micromanage who should get which prize, based on the age of their kid and any other factor I could glean from emails or the reviews themselves. What a waste of time. Bagged that idea. My wife then tore up an envelope from her desk, wrote the prizes on scraps of paper, and folded them up; I picked them from a pile and assigned them in order. And so here are the results, in that same double-random order:
Thanks again to everyone who participated. I thought it went really well. If you didn't, or if you have some ideas, be sure to let me know how to improve it, because it's the kind of thing that I'd definitely like to do again.
how about a CD (or MP3 or whatever) review some time? [good idea. -ed.]