Green Room - Week 29 - Day 6

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

It was a dark and stormy night...

No, really, it was.

Really stormy.

It didn't make matters any better that there ended up being a water pipe that burst a couple streets over from where we were heading.

Traffic is bad on an average day when you are leaving the city and coming into suburbia. But when you add "bad weather" into the mix, it's just going to get worse. Throw in "traveling on bus" - and then once you get home, needing to run back out into it - yeah, it becomes less of a "am I going to be late" and more of a "HOW late am I going to be?"

Especially when you haven't factored in actually eating dinner.

But that's what you sign up for - sometimes you just have to *not* eat in order to get everything done that needs to get done.

When those "perfect storm" situations hit, you try to be more understanding about other people who may be going through something of their own on their end of the internet.

Which is why I send out my patented "You coming?" emails to people who haven't made it in yet. To find out what is going on - and if they just forgot to link their entry. When I'm running ahead of schedule, I tend to look for those myself - and usually end up finding a few on even the best of weeks. (rarely the same person)

I understand - things can happen.

Which is a long way around getting to the question that I have multiple copies of in my inbox last night/this morning. What it boils down to is "Do you enforce the deadlines/why have rules if you won't enforce them?"

There are definitely people who have come in on the wrong side of being late for a poll and have been eliminated as a result.

Deadlines are set. But, since Season 1, the policy has always been "If you get it in before I post the poll - I'll allow it." That's always the been the rule for what gets in the poll and what doesn't.

I can think of someone off the top of my head (a personal favorite of mine that season actually) who ended up submitting their entry less than a minute after a posted the poll. *That* was heartbreaking, but it's one of the dangers involved with posting at last minute. You never know when I am going to be have things ready to go! Things like last night, or where LJ just goes wonky/something wrong with the coding are pretty rare. The closer you get to that edge, the more likely it is to end up costing you.

Some people don't like that. They say it shows too much mercy.

Some people don't like when I have a twist that they think is too cruel.

To me - the mercy and the cruelty ends up evening out. :)

I can let people into the polls. Or come into the game late through special events and powers. Ultimately though YOU will decide if they are going to stay.

That's your power as voters. If you want to use "were they on time?" as a criteria - that's your criteria.
"Have they been here the entire time?" Again. Your criteria.
"Can I beat them?" (I've seen that one used before) That's on you.

The main one should always be "What did I think of the entry?" But those are certainly valid tie-breakers if everything else is equal.

This week has a Contestant Only vote component to it: http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/809247.html which is a chance for the contestants to have their say. I hope that you will use it - and if being late to the party is something that bugs you - don't vote for them. If it's not, and they are putting out something you enjoy, do.

This is one small area where it really is "your call", where your will is going to be enforced! Use it wisely.

Comments

[xo-kizzy-xo.livejournal.com]

First?!?!?

Right now I'm juggling dogsitting with attempting to make chocolate espresso cupcakes. This is going to be interesting because the adolescent boy dog is practically bouncing off the walls because it's raining outside. I'm too old for this :sigh:

[theun4givables.livejournal.com]

I'd take him off your hands but I don't have the yard/patience to deal with a hyper husky dog and I think my landlord would kill me. xD

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

Ooh, chocolate espresso cupcakes sounds delish!

I'm going to be baking a batch of Orange Cranberry cookies, it's a very simple recipe, which I like. :)

[theun4givables.livejournal.com]

I, for one, am not worried about this poll. I am happy with what I put forward. I have plans to participate as much as possible the next few days, and to enjoy the tiny bit of a break we get with Gary giving us more time to read and comment and cote. :)

This morning I had little patience for much but the child has been mostly well-behaved and is currently messing around with the editing photographs feature on my phone. Anything to keep him out of my hair, at this point. (Literally and figuratively -- he has no school this week and he likes to play with my hair.)

[dmousey.livejournal.com]

Oh noes! You rarely run out of patience. Rough night? Did you work?

[xo-kizzy-xo.livejournal.com]

And crap, I forgot I need a couple of foil pans and somebody has to drive me to the store because it's raining :headdesk:

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

I need to get a new aluminum roasting pan, our old one broke and my roaster isn't big enough for a friggin' 21 lb turkey. Sigh...

[xo-kizzy-xo.livejournal.com]

I'll put this out here: I really miss the everyday GR kaffeklatch chitchat. It's always been one of the things I adore about Idol. As I said yesterday (it probably got lost in the comments because I posted it late), I think everybody knows that people have been bonding elsewhere and that LJ seems to be the place where you just post an entry and that's it.

I get it: Nobody wants to put themselves out here for a myriad of reasons. I'm very careful as to what I put out here. I'm not blaming anybody for that.

OTOH...I dunno. The GR is becoming a very quiet place unless Gary posts something which elicits responses. If he doesn't...well, I suppose there's the crickets in the floorboards :/

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

Which is why I try to grab something that I *know* people are talking about.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.

"Why are people posting late allowed to be in polls" is definitely something people are talking about. ;) (based on my inbox)

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

I'm cooking for 9, which isn't a whole lot of folks but we got a 21-lb turkey, oy!

I'm also making a batch of deliciously simple Orange Cranberry cookies that I found the recipe for on Allrecipes:

Preheat over to 350.

Mix together 1 box (18 oz) Orange Cake mix (I have Duncan Hines Orange Supreme), 1 cup sweetened dried cranberries (or more to taste), 1/2 cup vegetable oil, and 2 eggs.

Drop 1 to 2 tablespoons of batter onto a baking sheet. Bake 6-10 minutes or until cooked through, cool on baking sheet for about 5 minutes, then transfer to a sheet of waxed paper to cool completely.

Tada! You're welcome.

[kithan.livejournal.com]

I want to like this comment. :-)

[kithan.livejournal.com]

As an early poster of the polls, I can vouch for the 'in before I post the poll' exception.

This doesn't mean contestants have carte blanche to ignore the deadline because there are times when the poll is nearly ready to go or times when we haven't caught that someone posted. It happens and truthfully the deadline is there for a reason. There's no guarantee when you post after the deadline.

Also, Gary makes the rules so.. if he makes an exception, it's made. His contest, his monkeys. Wait, that's not it... :-)

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

I get monkeys!!!

Woo hoo!!! Monkeys FOR ME!!!!

[bleodswean.livejournal.com]

I'm not voting based on deadlines or when entries get posted. I will say....that I think....it's true that at times some entries have been written long long before the prompt was posted. That feels disingenuous to me.

In the spirit of GR ramblings, I ramble with this -

On a Thanksgiving note with a dash of literary thought. I'm thinking here of "Like Water for Chocolate" and all of the Turkey-day culinary items that have been requested of me. (Does everyone know this wonderful small book that deals with magical realism???) Yeast Dinner Rolls, Flourless Chocolate Cake, Pumpkin Cheesecake, Gingerbread, seasonal cocktails. I'm wondering what resentment tastes like? Or at the very least, harried put-out irritation? I don't mind AT ALL baking. I love it. I think we are good at the things we love. I love eating chocolate and pumpkin and bread....but it's the expectation that I will produce despite feeling not well and having issues with one of the dinner guests....

Just pondering it as I start another sinkful of pots and pans....

[xo-kizzy-xo.livejournal.com]

Hmm...interesting thought as you ponder the dishes in the sink :)

My first batch of mini cupcakes just came out of the oven. They need to cool before I reuse the tin for the second batch. I noticed the upper end of my cast slipped a few times (it's like a gutter where my forearm rests in it and it flares at the elbow so I can bend). Now everything is starting to ache and I'm like, REALLY??? I'm making a fairly simple recipe without a mixer for crying out loud!

And then I'm like, oh yeah, I bake for a living. That's why I'm out from work :p

I wonder what frustration/irritation tastes like...

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

I have one thing to say, and not about GRs, but Work Rooms: I actually made myself wake up at 6 a.m. my time when they were normally posted in order to get into the 'live' discussion. It's really nice, and the first half a day of a Work Room very lively indeed. :)

[bleodswean.livejournal.com]

I still haven't been able to use the Work Room. I just can't see what other people are thinking or doing before I write....it's too sticky and shiny, if you know what I mean. Interesting to hear that the WR is lively, though! Are there actual threads about the process of writing?

[lrig-rorrim.livejournal.com]

Today I am making brownies for my roomie's birthday, doing ALL the chores, hopefully buying new snowboots, and doing some prep for tomorrow's feast. Oh, and also freaking out about the vote/poll a bit, and reading where and when I can. Heh. I promise I didn't know it was going to be this rough when I laid down my challenge. So far, the entries I have read have been fabulous, though. :)

recipe time

[lrig-rorrim.livejournal.com]

Because why the hell not?

Brownies like whoa

Ultimate Brownies

8 1 oz squares of unsweetened chocolate
1 cup butter
5 eggs
3 cups sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups chopped pecans or walnuts, lightly toasted (optional)

Preparation:

- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Grease a 9 x 13 pan.
- Melt chocolate and butter in a saucepan over low heat; set aside.
- Beat eggs, sugar and vanilla at high speed for 10 minutes.
- Blend in chocolate mixture, flour and salt until just mixed.
- Stir in the nuts.
- Pour into prepared pan.

Bake brownies for 35-40 minut

Re: recipe time

[kickthehobbit.livejournal.com]

You've just reminded me of that time I was TAing and tortured my students by writing a brownie recipe on the board along with their homework.

Suddenly I know how they felt. :P

[reckless-blues.livejournal.com]

Recipe:

Buy medjool dates
Eat them
Do not bake them to a dessicated husk
Do not stuff with greasy peanut butter

My dad bought some medjool dates. I mean, real medjool dates, the size of apricots, sticky, moist, as soft as hot butter. They're the best thing I've ever had. I know exactly what he's going to do with them tomorrow. He must be stopped.

[theun4givables.livejournal.com]

OMG, I love you. xD

I needed this giggle.

Mostly because I feel the same way when my brother tries to tarnish a perfectly good recipe for something. It's like -- NO FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T DO THAT. *rips out hair*

[kickthehobbit.livejournal.com]

Serious bits first and then the fun bits, I guess:

I don't really mind if people post after the topic. I feel that the topic deadline is a guarantee that your piece will be in the poll. If you're not in by the deadline, you're taking your entry in the contest into your own hands. Having been on the receiving end of one of the "are you posting?" e-mails (I was taking a bye), I know it's not a "I'm not going to put the poll up until your entry is it!"—it's a warning that you have only a small window of time remaining before you have to be in.

I don't really worry about voting or not voting for people depending on when their entry was in. My voting criteria have stayed about the same throughout the contest:

1). Does it tie somehow to the topic?

I'm not too fussy about this. As long as I can see how it's connected to the topic, you're fine. If it's something where I cannot, under any circumstances, figure out how it's related to the topic, I don't care how well-written it is—I'm not going to vote for you. I view it sort of as...if I ask you to write me a lab report based on the lab that we've done in class this week, and you turn in an essay on Abraham Lincoln, I don't care if you deserve a writing prize for the essay—it's not what the assignment was, and you get a zero.

2). Is it a solid, well-written piece?

Essentially: did you manage to keep my attention the entire time? Did you pay at least some attention to spelling and grammar, or does it feel like a huge, rushed mess? This is part of why I don't care about people posting after the deadline—I've noticed in more than one case that the stuff that gets posted very close to or slightly after the deadline has a tendency toward feeling thrown together, versus things that are done well before the deadline.

3). Did I like it?

You'd think that if we're hitting on 2 that I'd like it, but sometimes I read something, I go, "well, this person is a good writer!" and I don't check the vote-box next to their name. It's become less common as the numbers have thinned, but I used to have a component for originality (I still do, it's just not as big of a thing). You can write something that's pretty solid and still manage to fall into the trap of writing about what everyone else writes about—like at the beginning of the contest, where we had a lot of people writing about either abuse or literal missed steps for The Missing Stair. I got burnt out on reading about both and I was less likely to vote for people that didn't put at least a little bit of a twist on them. :)

2 and 3 are pretty flexible. 1 isn't. So. :P

FUN STUFF, THOUGH:

We're probably headed up to Washington this weekend to go visit partner's dad. :D And possibly headed into Seattle to see FRANDS. I am happy about this.

Also we're totally celebrating Thanksgiving TONIGHT (a day early) because my friend Max has to work, so I'm shrugging off work in about three hours to head home and make turkey and rolls and everything. I made apple pie last night, from scratch, and cranberry sauce and brined the turkey...Max made cobbler, and everything else is going to get made today. ALL THE FOOD. :)

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

1. I agree, but it is indeed very rare that there is no connection to the topic at all. Possibly one or two entries every second week or so.

2. The more so the longer the piece is.

[medleymisty.livejournal.com]

Honestly, as a person who did everything I could to get my entry in and missed the deadline by no fault of my own, and who then went into a depressive funk for a while and did not get any sympathy or mercy or anything other than a "Well, double power outages with the second one coming mere seconds before you link your entry happen, you should have already had it in."....

It's probably lucky for people who are just like "Whoops I forgot about the deadline" and who still get to play that I don't pay enough attention to know who you're talking about here.

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

Note to self: Things "this group" responds to:

- Build each other up
- What annoys them about each other.

:)

[theun4givables.livejournal.com]

Sounds about right. :)

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

I just vote for pieces I like. I follow the links off the poll page, and I assume if something's linked to the poll page, then it was submitted on time!

After-the-fact editing is a more interesting question for me... To assume that an LJ Idol submission has the inalienability of God's scrit on Moses's stone tablet just strikes me as a blow to the heart of the creative process. If you're a creative person who's deeply involved with something you're creating, the spigot doesn't go off. That's not the way it works. If you think of a change, something that makes your story closer to your creative goal for it, then by golly, I want to read it!

That's just me, of course.

And I'm trying to think if I've ever edited anything beyond obvious typos after the fact... I don't think I have, but I really can't remember back through all 29 weeks!

[lrig-rorrim.livejournal.com]

I think the editing-after-the-fact objections mostly come down to a matter of consistency - we're all linked to a poll, and there's a sort of expectation that what one person reads by clicking through from the poll is going to be the same as what another person reads. To make substantive changes to the thing is to present something different, so people are judging and making voting calls based on a work that is very much in progress, and they may not know that. I think most people assume that if they get to a piece from the poll and then click back the next day there won't be major changes, and that everyone is seeing the same thing - if voters on the first day and the last day are reading different versions of your entry, it can get kind of confusing, you know?

I'm all for the creative process, but I try to get the best work I can out during the time limit stated, and then leave it alone until after the voting is done. If I think of something awesome that needs to change, I might mention in comments ("hey, I had this fantastic idea.." or make edits to my personal, local copy, but changing the version that's online and live seems disingenuous to me, personally.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

People actually have time to click back on something they've already read and look at it the next day? :-)

Seriously, though, I get the point you're making. It's just not that critical to me.

[lrig-rorrim.livejournal.com]

Heh - I will often start to read something, and then get distracted, or open a bunch of tabs and glance at things while I'm picking and choosing what to read. When I come back, I'll hit reload, because I also like to see the commentary other people have made, and that's likely to have changed since I first came to the page. Or, I'll put a star by something in my spreadsheet if I want to go back and comment on it, but I haven't got the time and energy just then. If I go back and find that the entry has changed (and since I'll be looking at it again to refresh my memory, and to pull specific things out about it that I want to speak to, it's likely I'm rereading) then, well, I'll probably be reevaluating my stance.

I think really, it comes down to trying to play the same game as other people (because hey, it is a game! And we are playing it!). There's a culture in the community that says x is ok, y isn't, and we're mostly all going to try to do x and go with the following constraints. When someone else does y, it raises a few eyebrows. But if you're playing the game you want to play and producing work that makes you happy, then it doesn't much matter.

[sorchawench.livejournal.com]

I get to do Turkeygeddon twice tomorrow. Once at the In-Laws at noon, and then with my Father and Brother at 5. I plan on napping until 12th Night.

[kithan.livejournal.com]

I am enjoying the random recipe portion of this Green Room.

I already commented in a semi-official fashion about posting after the deadline, but let me say the following in a completely unofficial capacity representative only of my experience and not a reflection of Gary or LJ Idol - As a contestant, I was booted from the contest because I missed a deadline. Completely. When Gary emailed me about it, I think my response was something along the lines of "Well crap." No excuses (although I'm sure I could have used one). I blew it. I am a world-class procrastinator and it bit me in the ass. I hadn't even started the entry beyond reading the topic and halfway thinking about what I would write.

Worked out well for Gary though because I think it was shortly after that when I got drafted to be Tech Support.

Just a couple cents worth of thought from someone who is barely around anymore. :-)

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

" think it was shortly after that when I got drafted to be Tech Support."

As your punishment.

[n3m3sis43.livejournal.com]

Hm, I wanna post my cookie dough brownies recipe but I think I have done that here before and anyway, we already have brownies posted here. Maybe I'll just post a pic after I make them for the cookie swap in a couple weeks.

[tonithegreat.livejournal.com]

Please post the recipe! That sounds scrumptious.

[crisp-sobriety.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to be as honorable as I can be in my voting.

My rules are, if I didn't get around to reading you, you get my vote. I haven't had to use that yet, because thus far I've managed to read everyone every week that I've been here. But if there ever comes a time when I DON'T read everyone, the people I missed get votes, because for all I know their entries were awesome and they shouldn't be punished for my shortcomings.

As for WHO I vote for, after reading...I have one criteria only: would I feel okay about losing to this entry? If I was voted out, and they went on, could I acknowledge that they genuinely out-wrote me and deserved it more than I did? It works so far. No politics or strategy for me.

[dmousey.livejournal.com]

Well then, damn man! No one must get your vote! :) you're on of the strongest writers in the game. IMO