Beeminder Home
Dog Food Renewed
[UPDATE: The new place for calling the Beeminder founders out when they derail on their meta goals is in the Beeminder forum.]
Half a year ago, with Beeminder in its infancy, we committed to averaging one User-Visible Improvement (UVI) to Beeminder every day for at least the next six months. That contract has been insanely valuable to us.
“Losing momentum is the most dangerous thing that can happen to a startup.”
Lately it’s been a no-brainer (though still really nice to log our progress publicly) but there was a period when we were scraping the bottom of the barrel for UVIs in order to stay on the yellow brick road. It’s clear they wouldn’t have happened without that kick in the pants and losing momentum like that is the most dangerous thing that can happen to a startup. In fact, we were inspired to make our UVI commitment by Paul Graham’s essay “How Not to Die” in which he suggests that if you could just fully commit yourself to not giving up, your chances of success would be 90%. “I’m not kidding,” he adds.
We’ll take those odds. So we’re hereby renewing that contract and making some others public as well…
New dog food! Now with more fiber for regularity!
Here’s how we’re bettering Beeminder. If we go off track on any of the following graphs, the first user to claim the prize in the comments of this blog post, will get the spoils. [1]
beeminder.com/meta/uvi ($1000)
See above. We do whatever Paul Graham says to do to eleven.
beeminder.com/meta/blog ($810)
We hope you like our blog, because you’re getting more of it. We think it keeps us honest, or at least it keeps us talking. Hopefully our commitment to publish (and our sparkling wit and literary genius) will keep you reading.
beeminder.com/b/meta ($270)
beeminder.com/d/meta ($270)
D/meta and B/meta are our graphs of how much time each of us spend building Beeminder. We get a ton of value out of beeminding our Beeminder building, and now we’re getting even more(less) value out of it by promising the spoils to you (instead of to ourselves). We had an incentive problem there that this solves neatly.
UPDATE: Melanie paid $5 to Molybdenumblue on 2011 Dec 30 for beeminder.com/mo/meta. She now has $10 at risk on that goal.
UPDATE: Melanie later coughed up the $10 and the $30. (I believe no one caught the $10 but kohath got her $30.)
UPDATE: Another $30 to kohath! Melanie now has $90 at stake!
UPDATE: $90 paid to Stefan Bloch for Melanie’s road on 2012 Sep 23.
UPDATE: We’re swapping out Melanie for Andy who will bump up his pledge as soon as we add a feature to do that! [Done.] [2013-12-04: Removing Andy again.]
UPDATE: $270 to Henrik Wist on 2013 Apr 12 for beeminder.com/meta/blog. Now $810 at stake!
UPDATE: $90 to Lincoln Quirk on 2013 Aug 15 for beeminder.com/b/meta. Now at $270.
UPDATE: $90 to Patrick Whitaker on 2013 Aug 27 for beeminder.com/d/meta. Now at $270.
UPDATE: $1000 to Henrik Wist on 2013 Dec 3 for beeminder.com/meta/uvi. Another $1000 at stake; derailment story in addendum to our 1000 Days of UVIs article.
UPDATE 2015: The new place for calling the Beeminder founders out when they derail on their meta goals is in the Beeminder forum.
Footnotes
[1] Fine print: The first person to leave a comment here outing us as officially off the yellow brick road, gets the money. If there’s a red dot below the road that means we have until midnight eastern that night to reach the bottom edge or we cough it up. The usual Beeminder rules apply: any changes are allowed as long as they are outside the Akrasia Horizon of one week. The money shown as “pledged” is the amount you’ll win. This varies among the above graphs.
UPDATE 2012: After a ridiculous close call, we’re updating the fine print! We were in Portland on an emergency UVI day, did the UVI, then had to run off to various Important Things all day. We got back around 9pm, which OMG! is midnight eastern time! And we hadn’t yet tweeted the UVI! So there were some number of minutes when you totally could’ve called us out on that $1000. (And, for the record, we were absolutely ready to pay it if you had.) We like having stricter rules for these dog food contracts, but from now on let’s keep it more in line with the rules you all are subject to: you have to wait for the actual skull and crossbones on the graph to claim the money. And we have till midnight local time, wherever we happen to be, to actually get the work done. It’s too easy to forget about time zone differences otherwise.
UPDATE 2013: You don’t have to wait for skull and crossbones anymore, since those are going away anyway. Claiming the bounty at midnight is fine.
You’re off the road!
Just kidding. I’m enjoying following your progress.
Ridiculously, my heart actually raced a little when I saw your first comment! As you can see from our revenue graphs, we’re not quite to the point where $1000 is pocket change. In fact, we’re just now about to cross $1000 as the total amount pledged on Beeminder. Not including from ourselves, of course. And not counting things like this from our private beta period: http://blog.beeminder.com/gym
are the beeminder revenue graphs public? (insatiably curious, but understood & no worries if not)
I guess we’re too shy to link to them here but if you click around you can find them. As you’ll see (if you’re sufficiently curious) it’s just a trickle, but the fact that it seems to be a *steady* trickle has us hopeful that it’s just a matter of time before we turn it into a stream.
Per some famous advice from Paul Buchheit, we’re focusing first on making a small number of users insanely happy.
Good strategy. I may have to start doing the “user visible improvements” thing with the games I make.
Point us to your graph if you make one!
Update your Blog Post graph before someone else tries to claim your 270 bucks. Luckily I’m a nice guy and I’ll just donate it back to you for the use of your great site. Never mind
Donate it back? That defeats the whole point of a commitment device! (Imagine me yelling this in a german accent like Dr Strangelove explaining about doomsday devices.)
Then get rid of that donate button. Well that’s really two totally different topics. Great site by the way – keep evolving it.
bmndr.com/mo/meta is off the road and I claim my $5.
Paid! (via paypal; let me know if something else is easier; I think WePay is quite good, for example)
Good catch! You probably noticed I was cutting it really close for a bit there. Only 17 minutes would have put me on the road last night, but I literally couldn’t keep my eyes open to do it. You earned my $5!
I’m not sure what timezone https://www.beeminder.com/mo/meta is in. I expected NYC time, which means by my clock Melanie is off the road. However if Melanie is in another timezone, or I’m reading the graph correctly, then there might be a few hours left. :)
Hmm, the fine print does say NYC time, though Melanie’s time zone is California (pacific), which would give her till 3am eastern.
Wait, as I was typing that she showed up online and started responding to customer emails. :)
I’m not sure what’s most fair given the fine print there. If anyone wants to chime in with an opinion, we’ll definitely listen.
My inclination is to go with her own time zone and maybe even update the fine print such that the same rules apply to us as to Beeminder users: namely, we have at least till 3am in our own time zone to get the data entered. In other words, you wouldn’t be able to claim our money until there’s a skull and crossbones on the graph.
To keep it nailed down in the meantime though, let’s say this: the current fine print stands (you can claim the money at midnight NYC) except for Melanie, who has till midnight pacific.
That’s clearly what she thought the rule was and we have a policy of leniency in the case of legitimate confusion about the rules.
Sound good? Now let’s see if Melanie comes in under the wire in 90 minutes…
Sounds fair to me! Plus, it gives us a possible improvement for @beemuvi:twitter : Show the time in the user’s timezone on each beeminder graph. :)
Is she costing you guys money or is she paying her own way when she’s a slacker?
She coughs it up herself. Wouldn’t be much of a commitment device if Beeminder paid it for her! :) Melanie is my sister, btw.
I guessed you could be related due to the similarity in the names. Further guessed probably your sister and because of which you could be guilted in to taking care of her – like coughing up the cash when she fails to live up to the commitments she makes. I have younger siblings.
Check out the update to the fine print. You better not have held back on calling us out that day out of some misguided sense of mercy! :)
I had actually been checking carefully that day to see if you were going to miss the deadline. I got busy with my own things, and when I went back to check twitter I realised there was a tiny window during which I could have called it, but figured that since you were back on the road, that window had passed.
This, boys and girls, is why you should program bots to do all the important things for you. :)
And no, no sense of mercy here. I assume that if I don’t call you on the $1000 prize, then someone else will— the same end-result for you folks, but less personal benefit for me. :)
You appear to be off the road on UVI.
Mea culpa, I missed the fine print. look forward to seeing the new improvement
Melanie is off the yellow brick road
Thanks for paying such close attention! However, I have until the skull and crossbones actually appear, so I’m in the clear! I have until midnight pacific (I’m on west coast) to complete my time for today. Keep checking in case I fall asleep at the computer though, I *am* cutting it close. :-)
yeah, for anyone confused by this, note the update to the fine print. btw, the alluded to “day in Portland” and “Important Things all day” was when we came out to interview for Portland Seed Fund, which we just blogged about now that it’s official: http://blog.beeminder.com/beehive
You’re off the road!
https://www.beeminder.com/meta/goals/uvi
(Ah, just read the updated fine print. So the first person to post AFTER MIDNIGHT, if you haven’t updated by then gets it, and mine doesn’t count? Ah, phooey.)
Oops, didn’t notice it was sorted oldest first, (and thus there were far more recent comments than what I was looking at when I posted.
Slinking off to go back to working at my OWN job now… =^D
We’re delighted that people are paying such close attention! We’re fine with the false alarms. In fact, if you check out the comments from a few months ago you’ll notice that there was a brief window when we would’ve paid up the $1000 if someone had posted a comment. I’d say at this point there’s less than a 1% chance that you’ll find us off the road at the stroke of midnight tonight. But 1% of $1000 might make it worth your while to make a habit of checking every night. :)
Looks like you’re still off the road? (But there’s a “-1” instead of a skull). =^)
Oh, I see, it’s that you made yesterday’s in the nick of time, and are still under the wire for today. (the -1 thing is confusion. It seems “0” should be off the road and need to update by midnight; “-1” should mean you’re past that point. Or maybe that’s just me)
Exactly. And definitely not just you! See http://beeminder.uservoice.com/forums/3011-general/suggestions/2743406-0-safe-days-should-mean-the-emergency-day-is-today
You’re off the road, Melanie!
(I wasn’t sure if it was kosher for me to claim Melanie’s $10 but she’s about to reset and everyone else seems to have missed it. I figure it’s better for me to claim it than to give the impression that this offer has expired or anything.)
(Note also the $270 at stake on us publishing a new blog post by the end of the day today!)
Melanie appears to be off the road.
She does indeed! Looks like you just made $30! Can you email support so we have your email address for paypaling? (Or we could try wepay or dwolla or something better.)
Done! Keep up the work!
C’mon Melanie! You’re falling off again! Keep fighting!
Another $30 to Muke. Just paypal’d it!
Awesome!
You’re off the road.
Re: UVIs
@54492134f53b689ee024753b1939a275:disqus It’s actually just an “emergency day” today! We have till midnight tonight to get our UVI. When the skull and crossbones appear on the graph that means we’ve officially derailed. Delighted that people are keeping an eye on us!
Has anybody called https://www.beeminder.com/mo/goals/meta ?
Sorry, just seeing this, but I had forgotten to enter data last night after a non-stop day. I did 20 minutes in the morning and assumed I’d do more later, but never did and then forgot to enter it. I entered it this morning and was unfrozen.
Wait, no, this is no good! A deal’s a deal and we spelled it out in the fine print. Stefan saw the skull and crossbones so I’m paypal’ing him the $90. I’ll duke it out with my sister later. :)
No, wait! If the work was done, I don’t want the money. And the plan was to get it in the form a beeminder subscription or “pledge schedule jump gift card” instead of cash.
Ok, duking it out with both Stefan and Melanie. :) I already paypal’d you last night, Stefan. And perhaps we’ll take Melanie off of this dogfood contract (she’s only at 2 hours/week now, which, as Paul Fenwick pointed out it in http://blog.beeminder.com/habits , makes it hard to get in the habit of staying on track!).
But in the meantime, what it says in the above blog post goes, and that’s cash money, not credits or anything!
Ok, I’m claiming Melanie’s $90 myself this time! We still need to keep things reasonably frugal here… :)
crap! I just did 40 minutes of work, sincerely thinking today was my eep! day and then went to my graph to enter my data only to see skull and crossbones. WTH! I could have swore the text for emergency day came this morning, but I looked at my texts and it was yesterday. I really need more than one text on emergency days. It’s true that this is too infrequent for me right now for it to be a habit. I’m relying on notifications and even those are getting lost in my busy shuffle.
Heads up: Melanie is of the road ( beeminder.com/mo/meta ) unless she uses the 3 am loophole.
Thanks Stefan! But if the email/sms bot and android/iphone apps aren’t enough to remind us to keep from derailing, that’s probably a lesson we should be learning the hard way! :)
In any case, Melanie said she got the 12 minutes or whatever in by midnight so as not to officially derail according to our fine print here.
But she’s making me very nervous!
I’m claiming Melanie’s $90 again! And I think we’ll swap Melanie out for Andy in this deal now…
You’re off the road!
UVI is derailed. I (reifi) claim my $1000 :D
My user id is phobbs. This was for UVI obviously.
Wow… two of us sitting by the keyboard. Who gets it?
Hey, your post is timestamped at 4:59. That’s 1 whole minute before the countdown finished :P
Ooh, this was a close call! But notice the updated fine print: the rule is midnight in the timezone we’re in, which is now pacific. It’s 9pm here and we just tweeted our emergency UVI for today. http://twitter.com/beemuvi
(see reply to Thomas Powell) (delighted that people are paying attention!)
I clicked send right as the clock hit zero…
Right you are. Just remember that we’re watching you :P
Actually this timezone thing means i won’t have to get up at 5am to comment so that is better.
I think it would be a good idea to split the money if multiple people comment within a minute of derailing. After all, i assume the idea is to get people to watch your progress not reward the fastest reflexes of button clicking.
Melanie seems to be derailed: https://www.beeminder.com/mo/meta
It’s true! But note the most recent update after coughing up a total of $150 or so for Melanie: “We’re swapping out Melanie for Andy who will bump up his pledge as soon as we add a feature to do that!”
Cutting that one pretty damn close, huh? ;)
Has Melanie derailed on her goal: https://www.beeminder.com/mo/goals/meta
or was it a mistake?
Hey Karlson! Not a mistake and we’re delighted that you’re watching closely but notice our last update where we swapped out Melanie for Andy. So Melanie coughed up $90 on this one (again!) but it’s no longer one of the graphs we pay out on here. Sorry for the confusion on that!
Ah, yes I was confused about that one.
Thanks for clearing it up.
Bizy Bee off the road @ https://www.beeminder.com/b/goals/meta. I (reifi) claim my $90.
https://www.beeminder.com/b/goals/meta is off road. I (reifi) claim my $90
Ha, nice catch! But looking at the fine print (“you have to wait for the actual skull and crossbones on the graph to claim the money. And we have till midnight local time, wherever we happen to be, to actually get the work done.”) I think Bethany eked by here. The countdown did hit zero at midnight pacific, but she had done the work (barely) and it was just a matter of re-syncing her TagTime log to make it show up on the graph.
On the other hand, it’s going to be super touch-and-go again tonight so stay tuned! :)
You are indeed correct. Evidently my reading comprehension immediately after waking up isn’t so hot. Sadly, being 3 hours later means I can no longer use checking for the dog food money as a free un-snoozable alarm clock.
O no, you’re in the red and off the road for blogging- you have only 10 hours to get in the right! D:
Derailed on the blog post, it seems.
I missed your first question before: that $1000 contract predates our ingenius pledge schedule! :) If we cough that one up then we’ll go to the next official level ($2430) like everyone else. Well, “everyone”. One person has ever gone that high. But the point is, yes, we’re very into dog food! We don’t even give ourselves “employee discounts” on premium plans or anything. We use Beeminder the same way everyone else does.
We have a winner! $270 to Henrik! Let us know your preferred way to receive money. (Paypal is most convenient for us, as much as we dislike them.) We’re up to $810 at stake on the blog graph now. Exciting!
Careful careful, almost out. Claiming it if it goes that way. :P
I see a red dot there. Are you off the road?
Red dot means it’s an emergency day. We have to get the work done by midnight (like tweeting the UVI at http://twitter.com/beemuvi !) but you have to wait till the skull and crossbones appear to claim the bounty. Stay tuned!
I’ll try to claim it in time, however there is one thing that I don’t understand, I’m new to the site and I’ve been reading through the posts and blogs devouring the interesting information and reflexions on this problem. I suffer this problem but I’ve never used any commitment machine on myself.
The thing I don’t understand:
“If we cough that one up then we’ll go to the next official level ($2430) like everyone else. Well, “everyone”. One person has ever gone that high. But the point is, yes, we’re very into dog food! We don’t even give ourselves “employee discounts” on premium plans or anything. We use Beeminder the same way everyone else does.”
Does everyone else have the option to rectify and go into the road after the skull appears? I thought that’s not the way it works, but then I am new and have not yet make any pledge.
Once the skull and crossbones appear you have to pledge money to unfreeze and try again. We hold ourselves to the same rules!
Oh, hey, while I’m at it, let me pimp our latest place to nerd out about Beeminder: http://reddit.com/r/beeminder
Claiming it now :P
Mine, mine mine :)
I refreshed now to see it didn’t went trough, Congrats :P
What I meant was that waiting until midnight on the day it goes off is not a feature for every user, or is it? You should either implement it for everyone or stop using special rules. Of course I would never think you would for today, but think about it. The problem would be how to track it. A way to implement it that comes to my mind would be to be able to define the time it takes for the skull to come after you are in the red without the need to mess with local times, give yourself another 12-24h to get back on track.
If you need that last day impulse to finish things you should be counting on that the day before or implement it in the system.
Another thing I’ve found looking at your UVI graph is that readability becomes hard when the graph goes for long time, isn’t there a way to zoom the graph?
I’m not sure that I want to private myself of the freedom to overcome my flaws and accomplish what I want on my own free will. I don’t want to be chained. Lately I’ve been more aware of my problem and I have been improving, the tool is a good way to track progress anyways, could you recommend any similar tools to track progress without penalties attached? I know it is not what you are working towards, but I would only use something that privates me of freedom (to success or to fail on my own) as the last recourse.
Curiously enough, rather than helping me to get rid of the problem, using this would make it impossible to overcome it, since I would never be able to change my behavior, I would always be dependent on this to do anything. I mean, if you only need it in one facet of your life it is ok to use it to accomplish that one goal, but you will never evolve if you use it for everything.
You are off the road! https://www.beeminder.com/meta/goals/derev
Delighted you’re keeping an eye on our meta graphs! That’s not one of the ones we’re publicly beeminding though. In fact, we’re not really beeminding that at all (since it’s not a thing we have direct control over) and are rather just retrofitting a yellow brick road to see the trend.
Hahaha you guys are awsome, I can’t believe you are really doing this. It also makes me feel less guilty by having lost $270 USD to a goal, I feel its fair. Keep up the good work!
Does this mean you’re off the road? You might have six hours left, better get on that blog post! https://www.beeminder.com/meta/blog
http://beeminder.com/b/meta looks like a derail.
Indeed it is. How can I send you money? (paypal is probably easiest from my perspective).
Woohoo! Paypal lincolnq@gmail.com
Danny, did you derail on your meta goal?
http://beeminder.com/d/meta
I’m off to read that Google Glass review now. I trust it was worth it!
Nice catch! $90 is yours! I think my Google Glass review is pretty good [http://messymatters.com/glass].
And the new amount for my meta goal should be $270. I need to have Bethany or Andy change that for me when they wake up. (We don’t get admin privileges on our own goals. Insufficiently dogfoody!)
Want to email me your preferred payment method?
Unless I’m totally confused about the rules, you’re off the road (UVI). Or do you get until 3am?
Unless I’m totally confused about the rules, you’re off the road
Ooh, yikes! We did the UVI and tweeted it and then I forgot to actually update the bmndr.com/meta/uvi graph till now. So we might actually have to cough this up even though it’s a technicality (we’re purposefully holding ourselves to higher standards — for our users we always make sure you never pay up if it’s a technicality). So we’ll go with the precise intent of the fine print here. The only thing that may save us is how to interpret “you may claim the bounty at midnight”.
So Somervta is the first to claim it and gets it if it is in fact forfeited, but we did the work by midnight (including publicly tweeting) and entered the +1 on Beeminder in time to keep the graph from officially derailing. So, arguably, the money was not in fact forfeited. (Our minds can be changed here if that sounds weaselly!)
Clearly we need to hurry and add a Twitter integration for automatic Twitter minding to make this moot. (We actually can do that already via IFTTT.com but our UVI goal is still odometer style so it’s easier said than done.)
See reply above. Tentatively I’m thinking the right interpretation of the official rules is that we have to do the work by midnight, you can claim the money exactly at midnight, but the money isn’t paid unless it’s an official derailment, per the standard rules, which means we have a grace period till ~3am to get the data entered (if it’s a graph with manual data entry).
(I’m obviously biased, but this is my view)
On the one hand, this is definitely the kind of thing that would be fine if you emailed support under the category of ‘forgot data’ – I’ve done that myself several times.
On the other hand, this isn’t exactly a standard beeminder goal, and previously on this page when someone forgot to enter data, it’s counted, although that was back when the fine print was ‘if you see the skull, you can claim the money’.
However, the Twitter thing makes this line of reasoning suspect – you forgot to enter data, but you did still announce it.
FWIW I don’t think this counts as a derail.
I think you’ve been clear that you’re holding yourself to midnight in the past – and the graph wasn’t updated. This is a technicality, for sure, but if you’re holding yourselves to a better-than-best standard then I think you should pay.
It might also provide some incentive to add Twitter integration, which would also be a worth goad!
I’m officially throwing this to the mob to decide, namely, discussing on Akratics Anonymous.
I think 2 years later at this moment in time you can be proud of all the hard work! = revenue = value added. Congrats! ;-)
As far as I can tell, the UVI goal is off the road, and unless I’m totally confused with timezones, it’s passed midnight as well. Lucky me (jhwist @ beeminder)
Wow, yes, confirmed! We had a few candidates and I was waiting to confirm with Bethany that they were tweet-worthy and then we were scrambling to get the blog post out the door on time and forgot.
For the record, here are the candidates:
Small #bugfix w/ https://www.beeminder.com/widgets – would give a 500 error if parameters were incorrect and it could not find the goal in question
Archived goals would stick around on the Android app; now the API counts them as deleted for all intents and purposes. #bugfix [doesn’t seem to work yet]
Placeholder: duplicate road rows bug from changing runits [needs cleanup of existing road matrices]
I don’t know if there’s weasel-room if we could prove that the first one was deployed in time but I think we clarified the fine print after the last close call: it has to actually get tweeted by midnight, which this was not!
So… Can paypal handle payments that big?
PS: I’m going to tweet that first one and enter it for now, because regardless of the verdict on this we definitely want to keep on being on the hook for 1 UVI/day with no interruption.
According to https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/helpcenter/article/?solutionId=11196 $1000 should be fine. If it helps the weaseling discussion, I would pass most of this up to a charity (which and how and why should be discussed outside this comment thread).
meta/uvi had a red dot below the road and has not been updated as of 12AM EST, as in the first point of “Fine print.” (I love calling you guys on this for the money, but I hate calling you guys on this, since Beeminder has made it possible for me to track my efforts at quitting smoking by the end of the year. 29 days straight with 0 cigarettes and counting! [100+ days in the last year] ) (I’m user: “alie” here at beeminder)
It’s an emergency day for UVIs, it’s true, but note the countdown timer: we still have 3 hours left!
Oh, I see where it says eastern time. We did explicitly update the fine print though, so I think we’re safe. Beeminder HQ is now in Portland, Oregon.
Then get you coding! :) And I see how I could misread the fine print; I thought point three meant “claiming the bounty at midnight EST is fine, as in point one” not “we still have until midnight local time” or I wouldn’t have warned you, drat. :P
It’s midnight Eastern Time, and jill/meta is off the road. Though her name isn’t here, so I guess her $90 goes to Beeminder like a regular user?
Uh oh! But, yes, that’s true. We do have one that we’ve been meaning to add to this page though that we’ll officially honor starting now: http://beeminder.com/meta/infra (also at $90)
I, Paul ‘@pjf’ Fenwick, hereby claim $270 for /b/goals/meta being off the road, just past midnight Pacific time on the 19th Feb 2014.
And I’m not sure if I can claim $90 on mo/goals/meta. It’s derailed, but because the raw data isn’t visible to others, I can’t quite tell if it’s been de-railed for a while. (Unless there’s a cool way to do that and I’ve missed it…)
~ P
Confirmed that you won Bee’s $270! She’s at $810 now. Yikes!
(mo/meta is not one of the dogfood goals anymore though)
This looks like fun, I’ll keep an eye out!
So what just happened in the final 30 minutes there? It looked like you were on the edge but then you retweeted a UVI from another app?
We implemented that same UVI ourselves, thanks to Malcolm McCulloch. Delighted that you’re watching so closely!
The incentives certainly help :-)
As I can see, d/meta off road for 3 days!..
Sorry for the false alarm there! (And thanks for the close eye on this!) I had a brief TagTime malfunction and it uploaded partial data to my meta graph and derailed me. Fixed now!
Has something happened to meta/blog and meta/uvi? The links redirect to beeminder.com and I can’t see them in /meta anymore…
Weird, I’m not seeing that. Anyone else? What about here: http://beeminder.com/meta/blog and http://beeminder.com/meta/uvi
OK, now I see both of those and the links are back to working.
I’ve noticed this a few times, never actually asked – why didn’t meta/uvi go up to the normal next pledge level after Henrik spotted the $1000?
Good question. The footnote on Henrik’s guest post talks about that: http://blog.beeminder.com/bikes/#COR
Basically, this goal has never been on the pledge schedule since it predates the pledge schedule. It’s just $1000 per derailment. When we’re rich enough that $1000 is no longer *super* motivating then we’ll bump it up!
Argh, just had a TagTime malfunction on beeminder.com/b/meta and may have lost some data. Will sort it out by comparing to backups soon but in the meantime Danny added a retroactive break in my road to match what my road was showing before TagTime (specifically TagTime’s Beeminder sync, probably) screwed up. It may be that my TagTime data has been off for months and I should’ve derailed but this is the fairest fix we can think of now.
your blog goal is derailed now, though you published last night…
Thanks for spotting it! The wordpress plugin that updates http://beeminder.com/meta/blog seems to have broken. I just added the datapoint for last night’s post manually.
It might be my New Zealand vantage point but I spy a blog graph saying there’s a new post and a blog that has no updates this month. I think this calls for a call out of the cough up kind…
If the post isn’t live when the goal hits its deadline, the $810 is yours! I actually scheduled it to auto-post at t minus 5 minutes and our wordpress plugin to send the datapoint to beeminder is broken. Here’s the secret preview if you can’t wait to read it: http://blog.beeminder.com/fearofbees?secretpreview
Highly unusual for us to be this on top of things, ironically! :) And thanks so much for paying close attention! (It just now occurs to me how shady it looks since the goal is in fact no longer counting down in the red. So we won’t do that anymore. In fact, let me just undo that right now and either automate it properly or set an alarm and wake up in time to post it…) But for the record, the deadline was not in fact reached!
d/meta d/rail?
Confirmed! $270 to Chelsea! (An arguable conflict of interest there so if anyone else was holding back out of shyness, speak now or Chelsea’s claim stands!)
b/meta derail?
mo/meta derailment as well, I think
It was close and she snoozed the deadline (which is allowed, with 6 hours lead time!) but I don’t believe it ever derailed. There was also some question about internet connectivity — letting Beeminder know that she got the final bit of work done — since we were traveling but as far as we can see, it went through in time and everything.
Can you tell us what you saw that made it seem it was derailed?
That one’s not one of the ones we’re paying out on anymore. :( The good news is that we’re paying on a bunch of new ones. See http://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799
Here’s how we’re bettering Beeminder. If we go off track on any of the following graphs, the first user to claim the prize in the comments of this blog post, will get the spoils. [1]