Fangoria Spooksmodel Voting Problems

In the past three days I've gotten at least 15 30 complaints from people who have tried to vote for Nora as the next Fangoria Spooksmodel. The complaints break down like this:

-I voted for Nora, and never received my confirmation email
-I voted for Nora, received my confirmation email but my vote didn't register on the results page
-I voted for Nora, received my confirmation email but the link didn't work
-I voted for Nora and just kept getting a box requesting my email, again and again

These complaints are coming from people who know how to use computers, not from ignoramuses.

Here's something else I found odd. BlueGal was kind enough to give Nora a plug on Crooks and Liars on Saturday. BlueGal linked to us here and directed her readers to come here for directions on how to vote. According to Site Meter over 500 visits came to Sprawling Ramshackle Compound from Crooks & Liars; at least 50-75 of those visitors clicked out by visiting the Fangoria Spooksmodel voting page. During that time Nora did not generate more than 10 votes. No one else generated more than a handful of votes either.

What gives? I don't know yet if we're going to be confronted with hundreds of digital hanging chads turning up in a shoebox or what. Nora is contacting some of the other contestants to see if they're getting similar complaints from their supporters. (*Note: as of 5:25pm Nora says that she's hearing the same complaints from the other contestants.)

The company running the contest is Creation Entertainment based in Glendale, California. Creation Entertainment is using web polling from an outfit called Sparklit based in Victoria, BC, Canada. We're trying to figure out who to contact if this keeps up.

In the meantime, I apologize to anyone who tried to take a couple of minutes to help Nora out and instead had to experience the unwanted frustration I described above.

And if you haven't voted yet, please give it a shot:

Fangoria Weekend of Horrors Spooksmodel Contest

VOTE FOR NORA!

Screw it.

Ok, I finally got some time to catch up on reading my favorite blogs, and doing some commenting, and along the way I decided to make a couple of changes to the way things look around here. I saw a little button that said something like "update template" and I clicked it. End result? I just lost all the links that used to appear along the side of this page.

I'll probably post again sometime next week. I'll probably comment on some of your blogs after that. It's back to work tomorrow.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with a nice image.

This is a cherry mint julep. We made it up this evening after we got done in the garden. It's a standard mint julep, with the addition of a few sweet cherries muddled in with the mint and syrup. It's tasty.

If I'd known the frustration I'd be having with this damnable blog template, I'd have had 5 or 6 of them.

Hope everyone had a good weekend!