NBRC: Tower Teams Read 2013, Round II discussion
Cerulean (AKA “Hobbit Blue”)
>
Captains' Chat
I have sent messages to the three members who haven't responded at all yet and am waiting to see if they respond by the end of today.Gemma just needs to officially join the challenge and then I can add her links as well. DONE!
I am also waiting for my friend request to be accepted so I can add links to md's shelf and challenge page. DONE!
Dee has checked in but still needs to officially enter the main challenge page before I can add her link. DONE!The only two left that haven't checked in at all yet are Sanz and Melissa (ladybug) and I have messages out to them.
Trying to finish two books today so I am reading and leaving my computer on to refresh for new messages every little bit. Also have a play to go to this afternoon so I will be away for a couple of hours later, but I am hoping everybody else will check in today.
I'll keep an eye here.Melissa need to friend you, right? Her profile is private.
Ezi did sign in, but didn't put any books on her shelf (there are two that fit). I'll give her few more days, before contacting. Everything is still confusing :)
Have fun at the play :D
I am waiting for md to accept my friend invitations, but she has already joined and listed her shelf. I just can't get to it until we are friends.Melissa just accepted me as a friend, so I should be able to link her up soon. DONE!
If Sanz uses the same shelf, I could put her profile and shelf link in and wait for the challenge page, but it is easier to see who is still missing if I wait to link until they check in.
Dee's goal is 5 not 10 for this challenge, which brings us at 1349. This way we'll never reach 1350 books. :DMaybe we should ask for reinforcements? :D
I've managed to copy link to md challenge, but I can't check if it's right (it always brings me to her profile page).
And, yeah, don't put shelf name to spreadsheet for someone who didn't join. As you said, it's easier to see this way.
I think she might have put in how many more she can read this year instead of her total yearly goal because she has already read 5 this year.Or, I could probably bring my goal up a little bit. Last year my goal was one book a day, 366 due to leap year, for a challenge my library was putting on for our 100 yr celebration. I ended up with 369 but that was a bit of a stretch for me and I am a fast reader. I was trying to be conservative with my goal this year so I didn't feel rushed and try more than I could handle. So far, though, I am still reading almost a book a day.
Or, there might be another person who wants to join later and needs a team without waiting for enough people to make another whole team.
Only Sanz missing. According to her profile, last post was on 10th.
Mod
Yes, I shot off a "friend request" to her, but - by my date showing - she hasn't been on since the 9th. Neat that GRs keeps that straight. LOL!
OK, I am going to PM Moderators to see how long to wait for a response to my message to her since she hasn't checked to GR for several days.Never mind, see that they were responding as I was.
Moderators of Nothing but Reading Challenges wrote: "❀Tea❀ wrote: "Only Sanz missing. According to her profile, last post was on 10th."Yes, I shot off a "friend request" to her, but - by my date showing - she hasn't been on since the 9th. Neat tha..."
We are different time zones :D Maybe it was 10th at my part of the world and still 9th in yours. I never can figure out at what time is GR set. Mine or theirs.
Mod
She has 60 books as her goal. That is a hard one to call. Some people only get on GRs about once a week.
Ok, so it lets me edit the Captain's Data spreadsheet but not the Team Summary. If needed, I could step up my goal to 130 books.
I think I have it fixed and it should let you edit the Team Summary now. However, the only thing that should need editing is the link to Sanz's name and names of any other member that may end up being added. The other things should update automatically from changes made on the Captain's Data sheet.
Yes, it works for me now.I added the link to Sanz's profile
So I can get an idea, what time/day is right now where you are, Jojiwoji?
The moderators are looking into changing the target due a slight mixup in how long they thought the challenge might last. I don't think you need to change your goal. It really just gives an approximation anyway and helps balance out fast readers with slower readers so one team can't overwhelm all the others.
So you are 17 hrs ahead of me, which means approximate wakeful hours would be between 3pm to 6am here PST to correlate with 8am to 11pm there. That is nice to figure out.
Mod
❀Tea❀ wrote: "Moderators of Nothing but Reading Challenges wrote: "❀Tea❀ wrote: "Only Sanz missing. According to her profile, last post was on 10th."Yes, I shot off a "friend request" to her, but - by my date ..."
On Goodreads you see the time according to where you are. For example, Jojiwoji posted and told me it was 10am on April 15th where she is. Anyone in her timezone would see the post as 10am on April 15th. Here on my computer, I see the post as 5pm on April 14th.
Turtlecollector wrote: "So you are 17 hrs ahead of me, which means approximate wakeful hours would be between 3pm to 6am here PST to correlate with 8am to 11pm there. That is nice to figure out."I'm right in the middle between you two :D
Jojiwoji's 8am-11pm are mine 0am-3pm (<-- I've been trying to figure it out for last 20min - it's to early for difficult math like that! ☺)
I got PM from Lisa Kay. In case you didn't, it's about Round II goal. She said we can discus it and give her our thoughts, sooner the better.Options:
- lower the goal to between 850-900, if we want to be done before Christmas
- go for a goal of 1400 and finish on 4-14-14
- make it an even 1,000 and finish during the holiday season (that one has UGH! after ☺)
- just leave it as is an go until someone hits 1350
I would prefer to lower the goal to 850-900, just so we can have this challenge finished up by about Christmas. Also because some people have already lowered their goals, so this seems to me like the easiest option.
Mods made spreadsheet with all the teams (that first sheet in ours). Now we won't have to check every team every time we update it :D
Jojiwoji wrote: "I would prefer to lower the goal to 850-900, just so we can have this challenge finished up by about Christmas. Also because some people have already lowered their goals, so this seems to me like..."
My thoughts, too.
I would also prefer to lower the goal and be done before Christmas. I spend most of my extra time in December getting ready for Christmas and the holiday parties my work has so I don't get as much reading done that month.I also see December as housecleaning month. I like to finish off my remaining challenges and start my year with fresh new challenges to participate in.
Do you think we should start another thread here to record mini-challenges like other teams have? Or just keep them in the main thread?I was thinking that one mini-challenge could be to find books to spell out the month with blue covers to match our team name. We could leave it optional whether to read the books or not to help out slower readers.
We'll play them in the main thread, but we could set up something here, so we can easily see what's going on. (We could call it Hobbit Games ☺)We never discussed what day we'll do update.
I was thinking to update them on other teams but also on us - how many percent each of us read and how close to goal are we. But then I don't want to come as pushy.
That sounds good to me. I think it is all on our spreadsheet so it shouldn't be hard to do. We can start that way and if the team members are only interested in the other teams, we can change it later. We can take turns posting the weekly updates unless one of you wants to do it permanently.Sunday updates work best for me since I work Tues-Sat, but I could do Saturday evenings(here). Most of Saturday for me would be Sat evening or Sunday for you and Jojiwoji.
On my turn if I posted on Sat evening and you two posted on Sundays then the posts would come around the same time every week. We have members all over the globe. If you don't care if they are on the same day each week, I think we can just pick a weekend day for each person and they can post it then. I think people will check more often on weekends than during the week.
I've opened challenge thread :DI was thinking Sundays too. At least for now Saturday mornings are busy for me.
I'll do it this Sunday. No point in all of us doing the same thing in more/less same time. ☺
Turtlecollector wrote: "That sounds good to me. I think it is all on our spreadsheet so it shouldn't be hard to do. We can start that way and if the team members are only interested in the other teams, we can change it ..."I think that as long as it is on the weekend, that would be when people check back most often. Doesn't really need to be at the same time, but preferably close.
How about we use this for May challenge? We can find something for everybody since there are many choices.
I can't get the link to work, but I will be fine with what you want to do and I will start thinking about a June mini challenge.My weekends are switched for the next two weeks and I have all day Saturdays off and have to work on Sundays instead. Should be interesting for me, I have a hard time settling down when I am not used to having the day off. I keep wanting to go to work anyway.
Link is fixed. One " was missing :)Basically it's funny/strange/unique holidays.
For example: May is Date Your Mate Month so I was thinking for that we can ask them to read book with animals in it, or shifters, or where main characters go on date together.
Things like that. There is something for each day of the month.
Too bad for your weekends. If necessary, we can remind you to go to work on Sunday :) Both of us should be up :D
❀Tea❀ wrote: "How about we use this for May challenge? We can find something for everybody since there are many choices."That looks good, and simple too.
Tea, your post of the Read-a-Thon in the Hobbit Games looks good. Should I add a link to the mini-challenge thread in my first post as well or do we want to keep that thread just for the captains to keep track of progress?I can add a post there with a link to the spreadsheet as well.
Do you still want to do the May mini-challenge for our group since the mods set up the Read-a-Thon or maybe we can modify it to fit for the suggestion for the Read-a-Thon to perhaps get 5 extra points?
Yes, you can put link in your post. That thread was meant to keep track of progress for us but also for rest of the team. It's not like we can forbid them to go there :D I'll try to reformulate rules (this was just copy/paste) to include everything said and answered.We can do May challenge after RaT (when we'll see how much rest of team likes it :D). I think it would be to complicated to use it as mini-game. Maybe we can do something with our shelves (ask them to show us every x-th cover on their (or their friend) shelf). Do you have any idea for mini-game? Or theme?
Okay, I think I have a spreadsheet ready for the Read-a-Thon. Just a few tips for use:1) DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING on the blue highlighted bottom section of points. I finally figured out how to make it calculate our points for us. All numbers will change according to the information at the top of the spreadsheet.
2) Read column is automatically calculated when current pages and starting pages are entered
3) Enter p in front of the member if they are participating so that # of members can be calculated in the highlighted section
4) Enter 1 in columns for blue book and theme book when read since only one book counts
Don't get confused, but I put a starting page number in for me on the spreadsheet because I am going to use it to track pages until Apr 30 and see if my goal is realistic or not.Theme is so hard, maybe something historical to fit with Dee's book about JFK and Melissa's Sherlock Holmes? Read a book written/set/about an event at least 50 years ago? It is the 50 year anniversary of JFK I think from the title of Dee's book.
I saw numbers and though that they are some kind of test :) Can I put my numbers to track?Historical sounds great - I'll be finishing Wives & Daughters (pub 1826) and The Two Towers :) So that's at least 3 books :D
How's your day off? :D
Sure, you can put your numbers in to track as well. You just need to make sure that they are changed when the challenge starts like I have to. I was also starting to enter the other members goals and participation status so we don't have to hunt through the thread to find it again. Changing it is easy enough to do later if minds get changed. You will want to use the (in progress) sheet not the template though.Do we get more points if we read more books of the theme and color? I thought each person only got one point for reading a book and then the extra points came from how many players read one. Need clarification on that in case I need to change the points system on the spreadsheet.
Since I don't usually start work until 10am(7 more minutes here), it hasn't been bad. It will be later in the day when I look up from reading or something and see that it is noon and think 'Why am I still at home?'
Turtlecollector wrote: "Do we get more points if we read more books of the theme and color? I thought each person only got one point for reading a book and then the extra points came from how many players read one. Need clarification on that in case I need to change the points system on the spreadsheet."You are right, 1 person-1 book, but there are Dee, Melissa and me, so that's why I said 3
Other one will be only page count in my case. They are book I'm dragging with, so this will 'force' me to finish them.
I got few more ideas for games. I'll PM you :) We don't want competition to now everything, right? :D
I am also reading the Sherlock Holmes books so I will have one as well and I was looking at some of the other members bookshelves and they do read some books that are set in the past as well, so if they choose to participate that theme might not be as difficult to fit in somewhere.
I put in page numbers for everyone so we can track them the rest of the month in case they want an idea of how many pages closer to when the Read-a-Thon starts. They have until the 8th to decide to participate or not.
I see you checked other teams' progress and put it in spreadsheet. Thanks :DI'll do another check tomorrow before posting team update.
I think I might be getting the hang of adding pictures. Added a few to my first two posts to try it out, but will probably go back and change them later.
Great work! :DI think we need more reserved posts at the beginning :D
You could put next to Hobbit games that there is no need to post there. It's only for keeping track so we don't need to scroll through all posts :D
The Mods set up a thread for teams to post their Google spreadsheets if we want to. Do we want to? I sent it to the Mod account already so they could look at the sheet for the Read-a-Thon.
NBRC: Tower Teams Read 2013, Round II
Books mentioned in this topic
Dragonfly in Amber (other topics)Caleb's Crossing (other topics)
Eclipse (other topics)
Astor Place Vintage (other topics)
Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Anne Rice (other topics)Janet Evanovich (other topics)
Kristin Cashore (other topics)
Liz Simpson (other topics)
Richelle Mead (other topics)
Also, you need to add Karen to the member list.