That's some awesome wrapping paper. :DI love my gifts. Thanks, SS!
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2018 Era Secret Santa
- Thread starter nicoga3000
- Start date
Opened my gifts before going out of town for the holidays tomorrow.
Thank you very much Septimus Prime !
I have needed a record player for a long while now, and I used the Snatcher Christmas song for the debut.
The Proto Man will go great with the Dr. Wily you got me last year. I have listened to The Internet before and that's a great album.
Thank you again, hope you and yours have wonderful holidays!
Forgot to add a thank you for Timespinner on Steam, which I haven't gotten a chance to try yet.
Thank you very much Septimus Prime !
I have needed a record player for a long while now, and I used the Snatcher Christmas song for the debut.
The Proto Man will go great with the Dr. Wily you got me last year. I have listened to The Internet before and that's a great album.
Thank you again, hope you and yours have wonderful holidays!
Forgot to add a thank you for Timespinner on Steam, which I haven't gotten a chance to try yet.
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I'm glad you liked it! Hopefully the player works well. Happy holidays!Opened my gifts before going out of town for the holidays tomorrow.
Thank you very much Septimus Prime !
I have needed a record player for a long while now, and I used the Snatcher Christmas song for the debut.
The Proto Man will go great with the Dr. Wily you got me last year. I have listened to The Internet before and that's a great album.
Thank you again, hope you and yours have wonderful holidays!
Forgot to add a thank you for Timespinner on Steam, which I haven't gotten a chance to try yet.
Amazon gave me a weird undeliverable message and also a delivery message on Monday...my TT hasn't posted anything yet...worried something happened to the shipment.
I found a package waiting for me outside my apartment door from our neighbors in the Great White North. It was quite hefty! Under the tree it went until I open it in a few days.
I got a shipping update from the package my SS is sending me and it seems as if they delivered to the wrong address and the package is being forwarded to me. I'm in NYC right now but flying home today and both of the packages are projected to arrive today so I'll post here if I receive them when I get home
EDIT: the mistake was due to USPS, not my SS
EDIT: the mistake was due to USPS, not my SS
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Gross, my package from my SS seems to have gotten stuck in Chicago on the way in from Europe for the last 2 days, hopefully it gets released soon as I leave town on the 21st
You are very welcome. Glad you liked them.I love my gifts. Thanks, SS!
I really do! I needed that Empire book to finish the set. I was just looking at it a couple days ago too! I'm looking forward to trying Codenames with my son and wife this weekend. Thanks again!
My gift came over the weekend!
The box looked like it had been kicked, and had a huge hole in it. However, the presents look like they are in one piece (if a bit banged up). Thanks to my unknown Santa! Looks very cool.
The box looked like it had been kicked, and had a huge hole in it. However, the presents look like they are in one piece (if a bit banged up). Thanks to my unknown Santa! Looks very cool.
I finished one of my art pieces which took longer than I'd like since I wanted to get it right. I'm going to finish designing the card in the next day or two and possibly do some last minute shopping for some things to have sent by tomorrow if not Friday.
Whoa , you gotta take a pic of what the Wild cards look like in that UNO game! 😯My gift came over the weekend!
The box looked like it had been kicked, and had a huge hole in it. However, the presents look like they are in one piece (if a bit banged up). Thanks to my unknown Santa! Looks very cool.
Got my Secret Santa gift today. Will post pics of it shortly but I'm convinced it's someone from PoliERA based on what it was, lol.
Received a package from my SS! I'm going to save it for Christmas I think. It's a large box!
And I see my TT got theirs too.
And I see my TT got theirs too.
Haven't received anything about mine being shipped yet. I'm excited to see whatever they chose.
Speaking of which - when nicoga3000 did the whole thing by hand, he could also monitor which Secret Santas ghosted their Tiny Tims and possibly black list them next year.
Do you (Nic) as an admin see the all the matches?
(Which isn't to say that your SS must have forgotten about you - maybe they're just super busy and will explain themselves later. Or just had things ship directly via Amazon or so)
I am an admin on a different SS also using Elfster and yes, I can see all the matches and for each participant I can see if they
- sent their gift
- provided tracking info
- received their gift
I'll be sending the package later today, Amazon really messed up my timing since I could have sent it almost 2 weeks ago otherwise.
oh cool, good to know. Thanks!
But it's not unlikely Nicoga will not use Elfster next year, so that's rather moot.
I think we should be able to whip up an Excel sheet that randomizes participants and validates them against ERA specific criteria. And maybe just randomizes the whole thing until it finds a permutation where all criteria are met.
Like it'd be cool if people could say they'd prefer to receive international presents, if they signed up for international gifting.
We wouldn't need seperate "pools" but rather just people additionally pick the continent they're on (NA, Europe) - "force_international=yes" would add the reuquirement that continent(SS) can't be the same as continent(TT) and so on.
What this wouldn't help us with is the whole "contacting each single person and telling them who's their tiny tim" and all the wishlist stuff.
I like the current Elfster system, most importantly it makes it easy to contact my TT in case I need to know something that wasn't specified, eg. a shirt size. Of course I have no idea how practical it is for organizing the whole thing, but as a regular user I like it.
Contacting happened last year via multiple people offering to act as proxies and relay messages between SS and TT - which imho made it a lot more personal.
Meanwhile, Elfster reveals the full names and addresses of people, makes conversations / questions public for anyone in the same pool to see, etc.
I think, if we set up a proper network of helper elfs and a better system for doing the whole matching, users should have no issues relaying messages and Nicoga should have a lot less work.
- While not signing up to a platform that is essentially dox-city :P
I don't disagree, just weighed in as far as user convenience. I liked last year's system too, so I'm up for everything really.
I sent my gift today! Yay! Since I was finally able to send mine, I felt it was okay to open the one I was sent.
It's amazing! Thanks to whoever sent it! Must have gone through my post history and seen that I'm OBSESSED with the Battle Network series. :)
MERRY CHRISTMAS BOIIIIIII
Since you opened yours maybe I should give my SS the same enjoyment... SCREW IT HERE IT IS Y'ALL
First off I would like to greatly thank my SS for giving me an empty Fallout 76 steelbook case. True terror shot down my spine as I cracked it open and desperately hoped that there would be no game inside. It was hilarious though.
I expected to have absolutely no use for PUBG "Winner Winner Chicken Dinner" banners, but they turned to be an expert way to troll my younger brother by hanging them up on his bed frame when he came back from college.
I have never touched the Elder Scrolls card game, but I looked it up and apparently that card pack was given out at PAX West? Well now it's a badass promo item, will keep sealed to pay for a new car in ten years.
Fidget spinners are one of those things I always wanted to get but could never actually bring myself to spend money on in a store. So now I finally have one! And it has a Mixer logo on the back so it's even gaming related!
That holographic Porygon card makes for the third Porygon-related Pokemon card I own alongside Base Set Porygon and EX Delta Species Porygon2. It's been added to my two huge binders full of epic cards that will slay anyone who plays against me! Now I just have to find someone to play against me.
The Sonic Pixel Pals figure is awesome. At first I was like "oh this is cool"... and then I saw that it lights up and was like "OH THIS IS COOL!".
And of course, the pièce de résistance... Dragon Quest XI. I actively avoided buying this game at launch despite being a huge DQ fan because I was waiting for the Switch version, but I figured "eh, if my SS gets it for me then I'll finally give it a try" and goddamn. This is the best DQ ever. This is GOTY tier. I'll probably end up double dipping on the Switch version even if it's the exact same thing. THANK you secret santa
oh also I liked that the note was written on Blizzard paper.
Yeah I'm not suggesting I've been ghosted, just getting anxious. Totally understandable if life gets in the way. It did for me so mine was shipped slightly later than I had planned.
Last year was kind of publicly a huge ordeal for nicoga and wasn't without problems despite his best efforts - I don't think we ever found out why the tracking sheet of all the matches released after the fact didn't line up with the matches people were originally provided. Elfster does a good job of automating matching and passing information between all involved parties without revealing identities if used correctly (the main distinction being messages [private] and questions [public]).
Off and on I considered building something custom instead, but I feel with Elfster around it's just reinventing the wheel.
son of a gun, i think the package from my SS is officially in USPS purgatory, its' been at their international sorting center in chicago for 3 days and I leave tomorrow for vaca. Won't be able to get to it until after the 27th now
Well, it would allow for some added customizability, though.
Like the case of international gifting. - I was DMing with another user who was somewhat disappointed to have signed up for "full international" only to find out that their Santa was located rather close to them. Which isn't the fault of their SS, or Nicoga or anyone.
So with some custom engineering, we could avoid these kinds of 'disappointments'.
Similarly, i believe people wouldn't need to be put in "buckets" / "pools" anymore, but could have more fine grained preferences.
Like UK people could sign up for "UK,EU" or "UK" or "UK,EU,INT"; US people could sign up for "US" or "US,NA", "US,NA,SA" etc.
I'd love to tinker around with some Excel Macro writing when i get the time and see if it's feasible with some test data.
Yeah, this would be cool. Like trying to effectively mix those who are willing to go superfar instead of just have a unique pool for international users. If two people from, say, France signed up for full international, they could end up with each other, and so much for the international aspect then.
My first year, I went full international and my TT was someone less than two hours away by car. The second year I did US only and got someone even closer. This is the first year I went international and got someone international.
My package is sitting in DHL purgatory and my Tiny Tim isn't responding to my messages to call DHL to sort the issue out
My TT should be getting their package today! Hooray!
Haven't received anything from my SS as of yet.
Haven't received anything from my SS as of yet.
Got my package, Thank you Shabadoo_69 for the gifts. Love the gifts.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fbl01fb70wzp9iy/2018-12-20 18.36.57.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/p965qxmlsfqssmg/2018-12-20 18.36.51.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fbl01fb70wzp9iy/2018-12-20 18.36.57.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/p965qxmlsfqssmg/2018-12-20 18.36.51.jpg