Conference rooms contest winners

Voting for the CoreStreet conference room name contest is closed and the result is a tie.  A [expletive deleted] tie.  With 153 total people voting, “Superhero Secret Identities” and “Historically Important Fortifications” got exactly 60 votes each.  It was a neck and neck race for the past three days.  “Superheroes” did quite a bit of (legal) lobbying here, here and here.  “Fortifications” was the hands-down office favorite and seemed to benefit from a grass-roots email campaign.  To make matters worse, I’ve just realized that I mistakenly wrote “polls will close on 11:59pm on Sunday, July 31st”, when Sunday was, of course, really August 1st.  We’ll never know what multitudes might have been disenfranchised by that somewhat confusing statement. 

I admit to being totally unprepared for a dead-even poll result.  This is especially embarrassing since I’m supposed to be some sort of expert on electronic voting.  I suppose there are ways to resolve this sort of thing: we could have a run-off, or I can extend the polling for another day or I can sift through the logs and disqualify a vote or two.  Perhaps voting should be extended for exactly one more year because in 2005 the last Sunday in July really will be the 31st.  The problem is, all of these options entail more work for me and frankly… see my first real post on this blog.

So we have two claimants for the prize.  Wasn’t there something about this kind of situation in the Bible?  Some wise way to decide who is more deserving?  Oh, I remember: make two babies!

So my post-solomonic determination is to award two first place prizes.  Both “superheroes” and “forts” will receive a $150 Amazon gift certificate along with whatever CoreStreet schwag I can dig out of the supply closet.  There will be no second-place winner.  Since “forts” got the most votes from CoreStreet employees, we’re going to use that as the conference room naming scheme.  We’ll use “superheroes” for something else – perhaps development project codenames. 

I already have contact info for “forts” (my friend, the famous rodeo cowboy Lee Wright).  “Superheroes” should contact me by email.  Congratulations to both!

So let it be written.  So let it be done.