Happy Thanksgiving

First and foremost, whether you can sit back and enjoy the cooking of others or have to work and make life better for others, I hope you have a pleasant day and a chance to gather with family or friends in the days to come.

This contest attracted 15 entrants, I think that's a record. The contest is to pick the total points scored by all six NFL teams on Thanksgiving. Here are the picks:

45 GregRulz

67 ChrisBlackburn

77 JennaChelle

87 Sheila618

90 bluebelle27

97 Spartan75

100 QuickSparrow14

117 71fraz

120 Pinksushi66

128 DiceDominatorOKC

129 azjim1

129 PenguinRnbwUnicorn

129 totallyquacky

142 Xray1989

157 alyssajandm

It seems as if every contest has a number that two or three people pick, and that's the case here. DiceDominator can only win if his pick is exact. I'll hold a tiebreaker if the total is 129-141.

Fun fact, if we had held this contest on Thanksgiving last year, the winning total would have been 141.*

Finally: Here's recent video of the Goofball Bros., dancing to one of our favorite songs:

*fact is not fun

AND THE WINNER IS....

To be determined. Sure enough, the combined final score of all six teams is 129, which three people picked, so we need a tiebreaker.

If you're one of the three winners, send me a private message, picking three numbers from 1 to 3, in order of preference.

If your first choice is 3, your second choice is 2 and your third choice is 1, message me with 3-2-1. Once two people have picked their three numbers, in order of preference, we can hold a tiebreaker.

AND THE WINNER IS!

That didn't take long.

Funny story, PenguinRnbwUnicorn and totallyquacky are two of our new team members, and are husband and wife. They both picked 129 without consultation. Logic suggests they should compare notes and pick two different numbers to give their household a better chance of winning. They didn't, and they ended up picking the exact same number.

We'll be spinning the roulette wheel to choose our winner. Each player will get one column. If the wheel hits 0, we spin again. totallyquacky was first to respond, and her first pick was 2, so she gets column 2.

PenguinRnbwUnicorn responded second. His first pick was 2, which was already taken, so we go to his second pick, which is 1. He gets column 1.

Fun fact: They both picked 2-1-3 as their order of preference. After 21 years of marriage, you think alike. That's the lesson we're learning from all of this.

azjim1 is out of town this weekend, so it's no surprise he wasn't quick to respond. He gets column 3 since that's the only column left.

If you are the winner, send me your name and address by private message.

With that, here's our winner.

Another photo of the Goofball Bros.

I did not take this photo of the Goofball Bros., but it was taken a couple of hours after I picked them up from school on Oct. 8 and took them to the park for an hour or so. I think this was on their car ride to swimming lessons.

Rules of the game

I created our family on a lark and named it after my podcast because I could.

I had no idea there would be Family Feasts, and that having active family members would be beneficial to winning a few simple virtual prizes. But that's how it works.

As time marches on, we've learned that delaying the start of the Feast makes it easier to win them. Few people seem to object to that. I encouraged RDoc1 to move on and find a new team if s/he wasn't happy with having "boring" Feasts. I totally support moving onto a new team if there's any reason you're not happy with the one I put together.

As for RDoc1, s/he joined a team that requires you have 10 help points every week, and earn at least 50 bags in each Family Feast. If it makes him/her happy being part of such a team, I'm glad s/he joined it.

I have talked with one of the captains about having a minimum requirement for the Feast, but I have not implemented one. I'm still not going to.

But here's my loose-knit guidelines for membership. Apologies if I'm asking too much.

I don't care about how many or how few help points you have. I don't bother to look these days. If you ask for free rolls and scratchers, and don't help anybody earn them, it's no big deal. We have plenty of people who spend the 3 seconds it takes to help multiple times per day. Our team has a huge help score. As of this moment, two members have scores >200.

I am not setting a minimum on Feast contributions. Beyond the daily free game, I spent less than 20 rolls on the last Feast, and scored 40-something bags. I spent no rolls on the prior Feast and scored 30+ bags just by playing one free daily game.

All I hope for is to have active players who engage regularly and play their free daily Feast game, if nothing else. Almost everyone ends up with 20+ bags during each Feast. That takes very little effort.

But I'm not setting a minimum requirement. I try to watch the bottom of the player score total at the end of each Feast, but I don't keep stats. If I notice somebody is consistently inactive, I will consider removing them. I know people take breaks from the game, and some folks are kind enough to let us know. But I'm not going to set a minimum requirement for the Feasts. I couldn't care less if we win or finish in 20th place, but I'd rather have a chance at winning, and therefore I'd rather have modestly active players on our roster.

So what's my point? I'm not penalizing people simply for starting the Feast 3 or 4 hours after it begins, despite the fact our goal is to wait until the next day. But during the past two Feasts, the players who started it were players who contributed less than 30 bags. And when I sent them private messages, asking if they are paying attention to our delayed start notifications, I got no response. After several messages over several days, with zero response, I decided that it was time for them to go after we finished the Feast.

I don't care if you don't want to chat. We have active players who never chat in the group chat, and that's fine. But I don't think it's asking too much for anyone to acknowledge a private message when one is sent. So if a player starts the Feast, and never pays attention to our announcements or acknowledges a private message I've sent, I figure s/he doesn't much care if s/he is in our group or not.

Am I a jerk, or am I simply trying to build a team of players who pay attention to each other, even if they don't chat? That's for you to decide. If it turns out you all think I'm doing things all wrong, I'll happily turn over the leadership. But I don't see many complaints, and 95 percent of you seem to be active players. We all found our way to my team by happenstance, and it has turned out to be a fun, active group. I don't know how I got so lucky.

Finally, coordinating the delayed start of the Feast has been easy, thanks to our team captains. I set the teams up, and the captains spread the word each time via private messages and reminders in the group chat. Thanks to the seven of you for making it work!

How much do you want to spend to win the Family Feast?

It's boring when we delay the start of the Feast and end up in a pool of non-competitive teams. Although our current pool gave us two legit competitors, yet the only reason we'll finish in second is because one of the teams mysteriously vaporized.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not spending cash, or eight hours, every three weeks, to win another Feast. I'm glad we're delaying our start, even if we can't get everyone on the same page. More on that another day.

One of our family members sent us this image of a current Feast pool that we're not in. Would it be more fun to have this kind of competition? I say no.

One more time

We're going to have one more roulette contest, and it will be similar to the last contest.

But to start, we'll give everyone three options to choose from. We're going to open with columns. Pick your column: 1, 2 or 3.

If you pick column 1, you have 12 numbers on the board, and those are 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25, 28, 31 and 34.

Figure out which column your favorite number is in, and pick that column. Or pick one randomly. What do I care?

All you need to do is send a private message to MikeVegas with your column choice, then hope the ball lands in your column. And whatever online wheel I spin, it won't matter if it has only 0 or if it has 0 and 00. Those numbers are not in play during our contest. (We WON'T be using the same wheel as the last contest.)

So what will it be, 1, 2 or 3?

ROUND 1

We have 12 players for this contest. Here are the columns they picked.

1:

2:

MysticShores

GregRulz

QuickSparrow

71fraz

azjim

Xray

Pinksushi

Spartan

alyssa

spankie

3:

DiceDominator

CheerfulElk

That's right, 10 of you picked column 2. Nobody picked column 1. 

If column 2 is the winner, it is up to you to submit your next pick. If column 3 is the winner, I will contact the Elk and the Dominator to determine their final spin wager. If column 1 is the winner, none of you are. The contest ends. 

So what's the outcome? Witness the video: 

And for no good reason, here's a picture of the Goofball Bros. I took on Sunday.

ROUND 2

Final round already. It's amazing how so many of you are able to eliminate yourselves in the first spin of this contest.

Two players remaining means we go to a 50/50 proposition. In this case it is red or black. CheerfulElk won the choice by being the first to submit an entry in the previous round. Elk chooses red. That leaves black for DiceDominator. If the ball lands in a zero, we spin again.

If you're the winner, private message your name and address to MikeVegas. And choose one of the following prize descriptions: Sexy, pink or emoji.

Red:
CheerfulElk

Black:
DiceDominator

Thanks for playing everyone! New contest coming on Thanksgiving day.

Contest time

All updates will be via this blog post. We have 13 entries for the new contest. It's a roulette contest, one winner TBD. You're responsible for new entry submissions if you win the spin. I will not message participants after each round. If after 1-2 days you haven't responded, you're disqualified from the contest.

First spin is red or black. Here are the picks:

Black:

DiceDominator

PinkSushi

JennaChelle

QuickSparrow

GregRulz

CheerfulElk

Azjim

Alyssa

Sweetkitty

MysticShores

Red:

71fraz

Xray

Spartan

Yes, 10 for black, 3 for red.

If you are a winner, then pick odd or even for the next spin, and message MikeVegas via the app to submit your pick. Good luck!

ROUND 2

Three people left, and these are their picks:

Even:

71fraz

Xray

Odd:

Spartan

If it is odd, we'll have a winner. If it is even, I'll contact 71fraz and Xray about the final spin.

ROUND 3

So we need one final spin to determine a winner.

The final spin is high/low. High is 19-36. Low is 1-18. In order to guarantee a winner, one person picks and the other person receives the opposite choice. 71fraz received the choice as a result of being the first to pick even in round 2.

Therefore this is how it breaks down.

High (19-36):

71fraz

Low (1-18):
Xray

That was fun. Let's do it again next week.