Ilium Software Blog

It’s time to announce the winners of our recent caption contest. We stayed up all night, and even had a couple of pretty good screaming matches trying to decide….well, maybe not. But  there were a lot of great entries, so it wasn’t easy!

 The winners, in no particular order, are:

1. Jaimie Birk: “It was a banner day at the Ilium Home for Wayward Programmers.”
2. spmwinkel: “The Ilium Software team shows the result of another productive day”
3. Judy Dye: “The Harry Potter Wizard theme party got off to a slow start. Only 2 people managed to conjure up non-standard hats”
4. Brian: “This is the best picket line I’ve ever been on! Hats and streamers! Just wait until those scabs at Developer One show up to work!”
5. David Tucker: “Don’t laugh at our thinking caps. When all 10 of us touch the tips of our hats together, our brainpower is amplified beyond all human imagination.”
6. Joe D: “Kirk to Enterprise: Scotty, we have installed NewsBreak 2.0 on our tricorders. Nine to beam up.”
7. Melvyn: “The new range of Ilium Garden Gnomes promises to make your lawn the talk of the town.”
8. Ernie: “Ok, ok, just so you promise you won’t post this picture on the webpage”
9. Aaron: “It’s been 10 years, can we take the hats off now?”
10. Timothy: “See I told you..We couldn’t get jobs at Jack in the Box, but the hats came in handy anyway!”

Congrats – you should see an email from me shortly, so I can get the info I need to send out your prizes! Thanks to everyone for playing, there were a lot of funny entries. I’ll have another contest up and running soon!

I don’t know about you, but I love scavenger hunts. And, because of that, I’ve decided that we will have another contest all about finding stuff on our site. Earlier this week I hid our anniversary party hat inside our website, but this contest is going to be a little different. If you think you can handle it, read on!

Here’s how it’s going to work: below are six questions. The answers to the questions can be found in the product screenshots on our website. The rules are similar to the last contest. The first THREE people who search our site and find TWO of the answers each are the winners. All you have to do is copy the two questions you’re answering (and your answers, of course) into the comments for this post. If you figure out more than two, please don’t post more answers – that way three people will have a chance to win. To win, you just have to make sure the questions you’ve picked haven’t already been answered in the comments.

The winners will all get Ilium Software swag packs – and, of course, the envy of all their friends! Be sure you supply a valid email address when you make your comment, because that’s the only way I can contact you when the game is done.

Ready? Great! Here are the questions:

1. What is James Kirk’s online password for his Earthbank Visa?
2. I like to get my holiday shopping done early. What gift did I already buy for Jeff?
3. What did Woot have on sale on 2/20/2007?
4. What is the number of James’ checking account? (hint: make sure you pick the one he uses for direct deposit!)
5. What was the date I last ate at the MacaroniLand restaurant?
6. How many votes short was Santo from getting elected to the Hall of Fame?

Good luck!

Are you ready for another giveaway? This one should be pretty fun. All you have to do is think of a caption to go along with our tenth anniversary picture, above. We’re going to choose our favorite 10 captions as the winners, so be sure to put on your thinking cap and get creative! The winners will get an Ilium Software swag pack – 2 click-pen styluses, one stick stylus, and one luggage tag. Again, make sure you enter a valid email address when you comment, so I will be able to contact you if you win.

Because of different time zones, I want to make sure you guys get enough time to see this and play along, so I’ll let this run for a whole day before we start the judging. You’ll have until 2 p.m. EST on Wednesday to submit your caption. You can submit more than one caption, but each person can only win once. We’ll announce the winners on the blog as soon as we’ve chosen them.

One more thing…there is still one party hat on our site unaccounted for, from our scavenger hunt yesterday. Read the blog post about that contest to find out more.

Just in case you haven’t heard, all this week we’re having a big, surprise-filled anniversary sale. But we decided, why let the website have all the fun? The blog should get to join in the celebration, too! And so, without further ado, below are the rules to the first mini-giveaway we’ll be having on our blog this week.

This first little game is going to be a scavenger hunt. Throughout our site, I’ve hidden six of our little party hats, just like the one the guy with the binoculars is wearing above.  So here are the rules: the first THREE people who search our site and find TWO of the hats each are the winners.  All you have to do is copy the URL of the two pages into the comments for this post. If you find more than two hats, please don’t post more URLs – that way three people will have a chance to win. To win, you just have to make sure both pages you found haven’t already been answered in the comments.

What do you win, you might ask? Great question! The three lucky winners will get an Ilium Software swag pack – 2 click-pen styluses, one stick stylus, and one luggage tag. As soon as all six of the pages are accounted for, I will send out emails to the winners to get more info from them – so be sure you enter a valid email address when you comment!

One more thing – just so everyone doesn’t go crazy trying to count the falling hats on the home page – that page is not part of the contest.

Happy hunting!