Jessica, her brother, and I rewatched the first episode of Flight of the Conchords earlier this week. The first song is a serenade to a party guest, the "most beautiful girl in the... room (the whole wide room)." It includes these lyrics:

You're so beautiful
You could be a part-time model
But you'd probably still have to keep your normal job

Exactly. I consider myself good enough to be a part-time Charitocrat, but I'd be crazy to quit my day job.

However, after a winter and spring of overdoing it, working crazy (even for me) hours, burning out, and then collecting my thoughts for a few weeks, I made the decision to officially become a part-time model volunteer coder for Charitocracy. My day job now has time boundaries, and I think those boundaries will help me do great work at both places, and just be a more balanced and dare I say fun person for everyone else in my life.

What this means for Charitocracy is that I'll have at least one day each week to devote myself 100% to it. Also, my nights and weekends now have a better chance of seeing some Charitocracy progress, too.

Transitioning from the "Year of Benj" (full-time Charitocracy) back to real life was like hitting a brick wall at 100 MPH. Now I've pulled some bits from the wreckage and am capable of at least puttering along at a steady 20 MPH. Slow and steady wins?

I have been all-consumed by my day job. This is always a rough time of year here, but this year more than ever. Instead of working the 75-80% I signed up for in October, I'm at about 250%. (Ask Jessica, I do not exaggerate.)

While this is slowing down new features at Charitocracy, it isn't impacting the day-to-day operations. I automated almost everything, and I'm delighted to see it chugging along without my intervention. Not as delighted as I'd be if I could get in there and tinker every week, but still proud of the great causes you're all nominating and voting for in my "absence."

Tonight we'll choose another winning cause, and it's a hot contest! So if you haven't voted yet, or you'd like to change your vote last minute, go nuts! Tomorrow will be a new month, and as always we're excited to see which new causes you'll surface.

Don't worry, I'll eventually be back with a vengeance.

Just a heads up on a tiny little update to the rules regarding tiebreakers: if the stars align and multiple causes have

1. the same number of votes from
2. the same number of voters and
3. the same number of likes...

... then the first of them to have been nominated wins. First come first served.

I had to make this rule up on the fly last night. I received an email just after 1am reporting that the Vote page wasn't listing any causes any more. (Thanks, Stephanie!) I checked my server logs, and sure enough there it was, the result of the Top 10 selection process:

tie for votes AND voters *AND* likes!
need quadruple-tiebreaker?!

So I chose a 4th criterion that cannot result in yet another tie, since two causes cannot be nominated at the same time; one of them will make it into the database first. And that one will edge out any others with the same number of votes, voters, and likes.

For example, let's say there's a cause called The Nature Conservancy and another called St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, and both are vying for 10th position in the Top 10. Let's also say, hypothetically, that as of midnight both have 2.5 votes from 3 voters and 7 likes. That's when a friend emails you that your server's broken, and you spend from 1am to 2am fixing the voting criteria, and St. Jude, nominated just 3 days before The Nature Conservancy as it would turn out, secures its spot in the Top 10 for March.

Usually I make my own memes. But this one I found on an old blog post about NCAA March Madness was too perfect and timely as-is. (Now pardon me, I have to go Pimp My Charity some more.)