Remember back in December when we said in January we would start picking random Autopian members to win some fantastic prizes? Well, here it is, a beautiful snowy afternoon on January 50th, and we’re here, good to our word, today picking three randomly-selected Autopian Members to win some absolutely fabutastic prizes! Ah, it feels so good to be punctual!
Before I reveal which three lucky members won and what they won, let me re-acquaint you with The Autopian’s sophisticated random number-selecting equipment. We only use the most state-of-the-art electronic randomizer systems, mostly because my copy of the RAND corporation’s famous book, A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates, is currently being employed as a bushing on one of the engine mounts in my Pao.
That book looks like this, if you’re curious:
It makes for fantastic bedtime reading, if you don’t get to one of the spicier erotic sections, of course.
For our purposes, though, I used this 1980 Commodore Pet with a whopping 16 kilobytes of RAM and a 1Mhz 6502 CPU, arguably the pinnacle of random number-generating equipment:
Full disclosure, though: the PET is only capable of generating pseudo random numbers, for a variety of complex reasons that my ornithologist tells me I’m too “stupid” to “understand.” Still, you should be aware that the numbers generated by this system are heavily influenced by the “seed” number. In the case of Commodore BASIC’s RND function, using a seed of RND(0) keys it to the computer’s internal timer and works better than a seed of RND(1) which uses some set series of numbers in the computer’s ROM, I think? I’m not sure.
What I do know is that computer pioneer John von Neumann once said this of pseudo-random number generators:
“Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.”
So, sinners and winners who may somehow be interested, here is the BASIC program used for picking 10 winners (we’re just using three right now):
…and here are the winners!
So, mazel tov to Members 1362, 1315, and 43!
Here are the prizes you’re getting, as picked by me! Member 43, you are a member who, if my understanding of ordinal digits is what I hope it is, has been with us since early on. That’s why you are now the proud owner of a Porsche dealership! This will make you a ton of money, provided you’re a Playmobil person who lives on Playmobil Earth! Enjoy it!
Member 1362, fortune and decades-old electronics have smiled upon you and gifted you with a Geo Storm promo model, coveted by Geo Stormtroopers across the galaxy:
And finally, Member 1315, you get something that I think all of us have indulged in at one time or another: Hot Wheels. In fact, ten Wheels of Heat, picked at random by our own Managing Editor, Peter. Ten Hot Wheels! What is this, your birthday?
Oh, and it’s okay if you don’t know your member number; we know them, and we’ll be reaching out to the winners!
Yay! See, it’s worth it to become a member! We sometimes give you fantastic stuff, randomly selected! What more could you want? And, if you’re still not a member, then I’d say this is the ideal time to solve that very solvable problem!
Become an Autopian Member today! Just click the graphic:
I do have one question about this post. What is the story about the hat on top of the monitor? It looks very mid-80s Russian to me.
I bought a very cheap watch in 1986 Moscow with pretty similar graphics. It still might work, but I haven’t wound it up since, oh, only slightly later in 1986.
Somehow, this music wouldn’t leave my head once I started reading your article.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2tvlp7RnlM
Is that article series about the worst cars still going on or has the book been completed addressed?
Oh, I think he (Jason) totally lost interest in exploring the rest of that book.
And, I don’t mind actually. Most of that book was so stupid to even bother with.
The most fun people I know in my life have short attention spans and broad ranges of curiosity. Jason definitely fits the bill.
Aw, man! That Commodore PET, tho—complete with its own Commodore Hat!
I’d love a tour or some stills of Jason’s bunker to pore over. He did some videos at The Old Site with this amazing arrangement of vintage video game components Zip-tied to a pegboard in the background. I’ve wanted to study the setup ever since, just for the nostalgia.
I’m about to turn 62. My first computer was a Commodore 64, bought from Montgomery Wards in 1983 or 84. (Coal fired, steam powered!) Seeing the lines of code on that PET also brought back some major Deja vu. I wish I hadn’t given it away.
If I recall correctly (I may be confusing it with the TRS-80 my high school had), the seed for pseudorandom numbers in these old machines was the last digit of the computer’s clock time when the last keystroke was made. Since the clock counted in 1/16,384th of a second, with zero being whenever the CPU booted up, and then took a number based on your finger doing a thing, it was pretty close to random.
The first computer I actually owned was a C64. Followed a few years later by a “Fat” Mac in 1985.
In college (UCSD), I took some courses in Pascal. UCSD Pascal it became to be known as and then fell into the rubbish bin of uselessness.
While none of that was useful, not being scared of computers led to the more lucrative part of my career. And I was actually pretty fond of working with RHEL and CentOS. They were a nice step up from Irix, Ultrix and SCO Unix. Now that I’m retired, all that is leaking out of my brain and I’m ok with that.
At 67, vas deferens segmented, I’m biologically redundant.
Freshman year (wow! was that almost 50 years ago!?), it was all IBM punch cards fed into a reader and handed off to a Burroughs 6700 mainframe so big it wouldn’t fit in my garage. And I imagine its power consumption wouldn’t fit in my budget.
Then, the school got some PDP-11s, which allowed us to input commands more directly via terminals. The closest we had to a videogame was playing StarTrek on a teletype terminal and entering directional commands in Cartesian coordinates. And it was still fun.
I’m guessing my number is in the triple digits, but if I’m any of these numbers, I’ll be pretty excited for the prize. Congrats to the winners!
Am I member #41? Please tell me I’m member #41.
Are you seeing an Ornithologist, because you’ve been described as a “Bird Brain”?
I wanted to enjoy reading the RAND book, but felt that the story drifted somewhat aimlessly and the plot was hard to follow with a few too many unexplained sequences. I mean seriously, can you believe that 14491 was immediately followed by 93054? Who saw that coming?
Sorry, spoiler alert!
That Hot Wheels Pacifica is… something.
Speaking of random numbers, when is the series defending the world’s supposedly worst cars coming back, if ever?
And regardless of who wins, thanks for doing fun promos like this.
Oh that was a good one. Though (by Torch’s own admission!) he/we were surprised he kept on with it as consistently as he did for that while. I hope it comes back!
I’ll get back to it, at some point!
So what do we have to do to win the PET? Because that’s the real prize right there.
Whoa! For something that special, I’d image you would have to be a 5+ year Rich Corinthian Leather member!
My motor mounts are currently devoid of print media. Should I remedy this immediately?
Playmobil stuff rocks, I’d be really excited to put that together with the kids. The Geo, I mean, who wouldn’t be excited about the Geo?
The Hot Wheels are cool, but I already bought a couple of those for my son. You won’t be surprised to hear that the Pacifica doesnt fair too well in the motorized looping tracks.
Great prizes! I already have five of the ten Hot Wheels shown, but don’t mind doubles as it gives me an excuse to open a few, or if it’s something I’m just not into it goes straight to my renter’s gearhead kid.
Geo Storm promo model – very cool! How are you giving that away, there must be like three left in the wild?! I had a college friend with an actual Geo Storm and sitting in the backseat is likely the cause of any neck pains I have to this day. I’d still like to have that promo-model in my collection though.
The Playmobil Porsche set looks great, and it would go straight to my daughter. She’s mostly into C4 Corvettes and Miatas, but did mention in passing her desire to own a Carrera GT3 someday. Wouldn’t we all.
The prize I would really like is a personal tour of Torch’s presumably secret underground vault where he keeps all of this amazing ancient yet functional electronic gear.
I hear he has a secret, special service line from the power company to power those electronics from the time before they discovered voltages above 100.
Hmmmmmmmmmmnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnmmmmmmmmmmmnnnnnnnn
Neighbors: “Sounds like that Torchinsky fella is playing video games again.”
I am relieved the prizes are not old dirty parts removed from David’s cars because even he can’t salvage them.
I don’t think The Autopian’s business liability insurer would be happy to have those handled by anyone who hasn’t signed a release.
Aren’t they still sending DT rust for the Rich Corinthians?
Apparently it’s a model of this Geo Storm:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTHnqB7w3cA
I always wanted a Commodore PET but wound up with a Franklin Ace. Not sure what I did with it. At least I still have my Atari 400.
I got rid of my Amiga 500 during a move. I had tried to sell it on ebay hoping to find a home for it, but no takers even with a price that would have barely covered shipping.
My cousin had a C64 when I lived downstairs from him and we used to play with it. Even then, seated on the back saver knee rest chair thing, I knew I did not have the patience for a tape drive.
Is there a way for us to see our member number?
Only after Jason teaches the Pet to email.
Just to make things more exciting, the short answer is: NO! Because people become members and then, sometimes, stop becoming members, there’s no longer a permanent member number. Every time we do this I have to generate a new list of members and so you’re getting a “new” number each time, corresponding (maybe) to when you signed up, but not precisely. it introduces more randomness and, thus, more fairness into the system.
I expect my member number to be retired at the end of my career.
Top member comment of the year gets their number retired to the wall of infamy?
I just went back to back COTD.
My number’s going to the rafters!
I briefly stopped being a member when I was experiencing (entirely unrealistic/unreasonable/paternity leave stir craziness related) finance induced anxiety but have since rectified it. I humbly request that my new number include 420, 666, or 69 if possible. Nice.
After parking my “Elise”’s CX-5 tonight I noticed the odometer was reading “6666” not sure what to think about that. Hopefully your financial travails are unrelated to your ride – hopefully they are sorting things out…
The ride is sorted! For now…and honestly we are doing quite well, I think the initial shock of the full cost of having a baby kind of shocked me but we’ve been making adjustments accordingly 🙂
Not that I expect a card mailed to my home address, but I did miss any initial announcement you made about an impending kiddo. Congrats!
Thank you! He’s 7 months old now…soon to be 8. Time flies! Honestly it’s been a blast.
Can I get 80085?
You can, but you’ll either have to have someone in your life who is interested in providing access, or else you’ll have to pay for a dance.
That’s… Weird. Why aren’t they just sequential? We’re not gonna run out of numbers.
Unless you’re saying member numbers only exist when you’re doing drawings, which is okay I guess, but you still might as well have assigned a fixed list from the get-go and run the selector on that, discarding inactive member numbers as necessary.
Maybe I’m missing something but that really just seems like doing things the hard way.
(it’s funnier that way)
Randomly reassign everyone’s numbers hourly, then randomly choose an hour to select winners, then randomly choose winners during that hour. Really maximize the randomness.