And it’s pretty amazing.

First off : tou know how McDonald’s is doing the Monopoly thing right now? ^[1] Well I won something from it recently and it’s a bit more than a burger or a muffin.

It’s a gaming console, namely the Xbox One S.

Something like this, but with a different game.

And the thing is, and this speaks entire encyclopedias about me, I am have trouble believing it. I keep wating for there to be a catch, despite all evidence pointing to the fact that I won the damned thing.

When I first saw the instant-win thing, I couldn’t believe it. And trust me, that speaks an entire wing of a library about my negative tendencies. I thought it couldn’t possibly be that easy. I told myself that it must be that the little ticket just gives you the right to enter a sweepstakes for one. or some other scam.

So when I got home, I logged on to the website on the ticket and put in the code and low and behold, it looked like I had really won the darned thing.

But there was a problem. The skill-testing question^[2] had this asterisk type symbol at the beginning and I had no idea what that meant.

Oh great, I thought to myself. This must be some new mathematical symbol that i did not know. Something they are teaching the kiddies in their new new math.

So I tried to google it. But the only answers I found were part of some pretty advanced relational equation stuff, so that seemed pretty unlikely.

And of course, * means multiplication in many places because unlike an x, a * can’t be mistaken as a variable.

I didn”t know that was the reason till I was trying to solve my problem. Pretty cool, eh?

Anyhow, so I decide that my best course of action is to consult my furry friends, because almost all furries are nerds and a significant percentage of nerds are the mathy kind of nerd.

I was a mathy type nerd… until calculus.

So I copy and paste the equation to them, and they all pore over it, and eventually come to the conclusion that they don’t know WTF is going on either.

So I emailed McD’s about it. And they replied around a day later.

Turns out, that asterisk wasn’t part of the equation at all.

It was there to denote a required field on the form!

Can you imagine? I find the whole thing hilarious.

Armed with this information, I solved the question with ease, submitted the form, and now, AFAIK, I will be getting my Xbox One S at some point.

But get this : for Mysterious Reasons, it wil take them 6-8 weeks to “verify” my identity!

They could verify my identity on foot faster than that. Literally. They could send someone to walk all the way to my apartment,. knock on my door, take a DNA sample, then walk the sample to a lab and have it checked, and it still wouldn’t take 6-8 weeks.

But that’s no big deal. It’s not like I am eager to have the thing. I don’t intend to even open the box. I am a PC gamer and that’s that. I have no desire to add console gaming to my life. My PC gives me more than enough gaming.

With a console, I would have to get a TV to plug it into, then find someplace to put the TV and the console, and then use a completely different device to play games instead of the same device where I do all my work.

And speakoing of work….

Just as I am deciding that I am pretty much done with my first gig, I get a couple of nibbles of interest from others on UpWork who are interested in my comedy writing skills. I text-chat with one of them, and now he wants to Skype-meet with me tonight, and says I am really interesting.

So now I have to comehow get Skype working despite the fact that my webcam appears to have died since the last time I used it.

So now I have to try to get one of my tablets working. I’d rather have used my laptop, but it’s now a craptop because its battery is dead.

Or possibly something worse, because it doesn’t work when it’s plugged in, either.

And I have to make myself presentable, at least from the shoulders up. I am, of course, not at all keen to up the ante from text to video, but I will not let that slow me down.

The job, in and of itself, it just a punch-up of a sort of script this guy has written for a “launch video” for his startup. Pays $40 American.

But the business model is all about connecting brilliant writers with people who need them, and I hope to charm my want into being one of those writers.

So wish me luck. This might actually turn out to be my next gig.

And if not, it’s still extremely affirming. Two people so far have seen my profile and how many hours I have worked for PRasad and decided that they would like to see more from lil ol me.

Heck, I’m just happy that someone is noticing me. I’d be happty to get verbal abuse at this point because it would at least mean I had had an effect on someone.

But praise is, obviously, way better.

So it seems like things might be turning around for me.

It scared the shit out of me to even type that sentence.

And that speaks entire writing systems about me.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

 

[[{1]] For my American friends : here in Canada, McDonald’s does this big Monopoly themed contest where you can collect stamps or win stuff instantly. I am sure they have the same sort of thing in the USA. only with a more exciting theme. [[1]]