Holiday Mehrican Exchange - interested?
7It seems 2020 has been a year filled with IRKs for many in the community. Plus we all have our own individual sources of junk. Are we interested in misusing the postal service during the busiest time of the year?
I found a site called Elfster that will allow us to do this without much of the work that traditionally goes on manually. We can all sign up and it will do the assignments for us. If there’s interest, I’m willing to get it rolling, and see if maybe @kidsandliz has the naughty list to make sure no known party poopers can sneak in.
What do y’all think?
- 11 comments, 13 replies
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I would totally be in!
/giphy holiday-crap-irk
I’ve got the naughty list. There will be folks who only want to send and not receive, those who want to do both and send an additional one or two. Some only want to send extra as a last resort. With many sending and receiving you will need to manually check that they don’t get themselves or another person they already got. You have some who only want to send near by due to postage costs. You have some special requests that will need to be attached to give to the sender.
All I did was use a random number generator, then sort (excel - you can download the signup list into excel) people in numeric order. I left the first list in order people signed up, the second list in the next column was the random generator version. That took all of 30 seconds.
What takes longer is to be sure you have cleaned up anything like the issues/things I have already mentioned. Then I just copy pasted into emails. If that program automatically emails that is the time consuming part of it. BUT I will whisper you a “secret”. Also be sure to create an exchange email address as you will a fair number of emails, need to send out reminders to those who have no posted/mailed…
Elfster sounds interesting.
I could be persuaded to participate. Post the ‘rules’ and I’m (probably) in.
@chienfou The “usual” rules from when someone else started, then I did it and, unless @dsjlack decides to change it (I didn’t change any rules from @studerc) it are:
Usually there are about 50 people participating, 3-5 who want to send but not receive, and 2 exchanges ago we started the “surprise bonus box” for a lucky one or two sent by some who wanted to send and not receive. How many of those depends on whether or not any of those boxes are needed for someone who got ripped off and how many want to send and not receive.
@chienfou @Kidsandliz assuming we get response tonight that indicates enough people will want to play (I don’t see any reason why not) the rules will probably be shaped by how Elfster works. It may not be able to accommodate some kinds of special requests or things like multiple boxes. I haven’t signed up yet to see.
I mostly saw that site and thought it might be useful for setting up an exchange, and then remembered we haven’t done one in a while, so I guess I volunteered myself without really thinking about what I might be getting myself into.
@chienfou @djslack A number of people like sending and receiving multiple boxes. Maybe there is a way to have a different “first name” at the same address to bypass that issue since it said spouses won’t get each other (I am presuming they go by address)?
We’d also need a way to have back up box people - that could be handled manually.
@chienfou
Ok, I’ll play
I WANT TO PLAY! Thanks for offering @djslack!
Hmm, it seems like a bad idea because of this world-wide pandemic thing, but, on the other hand, crap exchange.
@mossygreen I’ll promise to not cough on anything.
@mossygreen good point, I’ll try to work on a safety rule.
@mossygreen Latest word is that transmission via surfaces is extremely unlikely. Which is not to say, throw caution to the wind*, so yeah @sammydog01, keep all bodily fluids to yourself.
*An unfortunate idiom in this case.
@mossygreen @sammydog01 @ThunderChicken
Pretty sure if you’re not the sort of person to wipe down your groceries/bake them in the sun etc. you shouldn’t worry about general packages. If you are (valid or not) you should not be buying from meh or Amazon in the first place. Causes warehouses. Delayed symptoms. Etc. I doubt anyone immunocompromised would be participating…
Unless you think someone is going to intentionally spit in a cup and provide a happy viral habit till it gets to you and then you open that petri dish and breathe deep… I think would be ok.
The least likely avenue of infection I can think of is meh people somehow coughing on a box of crap, it surviving the trip and having enough of a payload to infect anyone. Especially considering the drop in the ocean those packages are going to be.
Sure
Are there any other Canadians who would want to do it with meeeeee?
Are we limited to meh/irk items?
@chienfou you mean sending stuff from previous IRKs? It was never limited before.
@chienfou not at all. I just figured we’d all had the opportunity to get plenty loaded down by the deluge of IRKs 2020 has brought us. Feel free to improvise as always.
@chienfou @djslack @RiotDemon Since I have yet to score an IRK, I’ll be looking elsewhere, but IRK reveals will provide inspiration.
All right, kids. It’s happening!
See the rules and sign up here: https://meh.com/forum/topics/unofficial-2020-holiday-mehrican-exchange
Can anyone post some reveal links for those of us that are ‘newbies’ to get a sense of the types of
crapwondrous gifts that have been sent.@chienfou I posted some on the “officially unofficial” holiday exchange thread which is here:
https://meh.com/forum/topics/unofficial-2020-holiday-mehrican-exchange
@chienfou several previous reveal threads below. I’m sure there are more if you search meh.com mehrican exchange on google. Or your preferred forum search method.
https://meh.com/forum/topics/unofficial-mehrican-exchange-6-reveal-thread
https://meh.com/forum/topics/the-unmehficial-mehrican-exchange-ver--7-0-reveal-thread
https://meh.com/forum/topics/mehrican-exchange-v8-0-reveal-thread