Close Call on Crappy Coffee

A little over a week ago I nearly sold myself out for recognition and compensation. These guys were doing a jingle contest and I attempted to enter, only to be denied at the last minute by the contest website (yes, I waited until the last minute to try and submit my entry, but it was a very busy weekend).

That "SERIOUSLY?!" moment was quite a long time in the making. At first, I was hoping to do the contest with this guy, until we found out he makes too much of his money as a professional musician. Oh, well. Then I thought this guy would be fun to put a jingle together with, but it turned out to be not a good time for him. Oh, well. But all was not yet lost - we have no shortage of musical talent among our comrades, so I gave this guy a call, and he returned an enthused, "let's do it!" Only, schedules didn't jive, I think some illnesses got in the way (oh, well), and long story short, it's February 27th and I've got less than 48 hours to put my song and video together.

So I decide to go solo (well, sort of - I know I can talk my lovely wife into putting something amazing together for the video in a very short amount of time, and she certainly did, as you'll soon see). Oh, and this is the weekend that we're working on the house, have both sets of family in, have our first baby shower, and meet and chat with our future housemate for the first time - but no big deal, we'll squeeze in cutting a music video, somehow.

The deadline is 11:00 PM (midnight Eastern Standard Time), February 28th. Wouldn't you know, we get to about 9:00 PM and I'm still finalizing the song, no video shot yet. We get to about 10:00 and we're just getting the camera rolling. 10:30, Kathryn's editing the video on our low-end laptop (PSA: don't edit video on low-end laptops). 10:48, the video file is exporting. 10:53, I'm furiously typing on the first of three screens on the contest website, hoping to get my personal info and the video submitted in the next 7 minutes. 10:56, the website malfunctions and won't take me to the screen to upload my video.

This is a true story.

10:59 - 11:01ish, Kathryn pulls up the correct screen on the other computer, I throw the video on our jump drive like a mad man, rush to the other room, and get it uploading.

Shortly after that, we get a failure message from the website - they obviously shut it off at 11:00.

No problem, I'll just email the company, explain the issue their website caused, and hope that someone will have the consideration to let me send in my video still, somehow. Two days later I receive a CYA response, with the applicable portion of the contest rules copied and pasted into the email. I was actually impressed how many scenarios they'd thought of beforehand, that they did have actual control over, for which they found a way to excuse themselves of any liability or responsibility.

Oh, well. I suppose the bright side has two parts to it:

1) I don't have to endorse coffee I would never drink, and

2) I have a fun song and video to share with you today*!

*Video does not constitute an actual endorsement for any products it may seem to be actually endorsing. JoeZone and its affiliates are in no way responsible for any dissatisfaction, bad tastes in mouths, vomiting, regrets, wasting of a few dollars or more, or yuckiness of any sort that are in any way connected to you seeing the preceding video and finding yourself unable to control the urge to go out and purchase the coffee advertised in the video.