Consolation Awards

Apologies for the delay ... and again for the
"fewer-than-usual" number of awards - every now
and then I have to actually WORK for a few days.
This will be the last MOO POTM mail ... when
things settle down at work I'll start thinking
about the NEXT contest - until then, if you have
any POTM ideas - please send them to me!
Thanks for participating!
=Fred

Now, to business.

The "I SHOULD HAVE INITIALIZED MY DAMN VARIABLES" Award
	to Wolfram Hinderer for QuackTheDuck
  Even with the error, QuackTheDuck was very respectable.
  After the error was corrected (following the deadline)
  the entry showed its potential.

The "ONE ENTRY TOO MANY" Award to Pavel Ouvarov for
	dancing_letters
  Shortly before the deadline, dancing_letters was tied
  for the lead.  A new version arrived with less than
  2 hours to go.  While the new version was probably
  better overall - it dropped him one point behind on
  the three final words.  Thus eliminating the need for
  a run-off.  Can you spell "ARRRRRGGGGG"?  No matter,
  since the top two entries arrived even later than that!

The "NYAAAA - I'M AT THE TOP" Award to Shawn Smith for MOOtPoint
  Shawn's entry, while completely legal, just "happened" to
  use PINEAPPLE as the fifth guess - thus achieving a top
  score on the system test word.  A good lesson for all
  POTM participants:  don't be scared off by great system
  test scores!

The "NYAAAA - AT LEAST I FINISHED" Award to Michael Chen for "naive"
  With a final score of 111 on the final, Michael was a bit
  off Frederic's winning pace on the finals - but I'd wager
  that Michael is a "good guy".

The coveted "BEST PROGRAM NAME" goes to Joshua Huntington for "XYZZY"
  While XYZZY has nothing whatever to do with cows, or bulls, or
  this contest at all - it DOES have meaning to old (mature?)
  gameplayers like myself.  XYZZY was scrawled on the cave floor
  just inside the entrance to Colossal Cave in one of the earliest
  text adventure games: "Adventure".  Along with the later PLOVER
  and PLOUGH, these magic words helped intrepid players avoid the
  grues.  The award was simply for bringing back some happy memories.

Best "BOVINE RELATED PROGRAM NAME" to Randy Saint for NoBullPeacePrize
  Randy (or his better half) always seems to come up with one
  of the best program names ... sometimes I think they're putting
  more effort into the name than the program ... (wink, wink)

Best "WHAT DO I DO FOR FUN ANSWER" to Bernard Hatt (pat)
  Bernard listed his interest as 
    "Programming/Gardening/Cooking/Eating/Wine making/Drinking"
  The last two struck me as the ideal pairing of interests.

BEST POTM IDEA ON THE QUESTIONAIRE to William Little
  who suggested the best POTM idea would be: Large cash prizes!
  Yeah.  I think so too!

The "BETTER LATE THAN NEVER" award to Ben Angrim for "steak"
  "steak" came for the first time with just minutes to go
  before the deadline.  It compiled.  It ran.  It solved
  the problem.  What more can one ask?

The "WORST JOB DESCRIPTION" award to Mark McCann 
  Mark's answers to the final questions in the questionaire:
   WHAT DO YOU DO FOR FUN? DO FOR WORK? INNERMOST SECRET? POTM IDEAS?
	Argue with project managers 
	Argue with project managers
	I really don't enjoy arguing with project managers
	An aid to argue with project managers. 
  Since I am (among other things) a project manager, I doubt
  that I'll be using Mark's POTM suggestion any time soon.


The BEST PERL PROGRAM to Mike Liddell for "Nero_the_Horse"
The BEST JAVA PROGRAM to Ted Alper for Cowculator
The BEST SHELL PROGRAM to Brian Rapp for Moot_Force

And finally

The OLDIE BUT GOODIE AWARD to Scott Kennedy for MooIndigo
  Scott was one of the original co-founders of the POTM
  wellover ten years ago.  In those days, it was a very
  local contest at one AT&T location.  The winner of a
  POTM took on the responsibility of running the next
  contest and one of Scott's contests was the first
  version of MOO - the inspiration for this POTM contest.
  Personal thanks to Scott for participating, and 
  congratulations on a third place (tie) finish.