WestJet is running a contest where if you follow them on Twitter, you’ll be entered to win a free round-trip flight to anywhere in Canada, from anywhere in Canada.

I’m a bit of a geek, and I’ve recently taken an interest in actually reading through the terms and conditions for various things.  I’m a geek, but I’m not a lawyer so legally everything I write here might actually be wrong.  There were, however, some things that I thought were interesting in the terms and conditions of this promotion:

Last line under #3 reads:

If you’re already following @WestJet then you’re already automatically entered into each of the daily draws. Maximum one entry per person/follower.

Okay, cool so they’re not going to penalize their current followers.  Good on them.  The only part I thought was weird was is you combine this with #7:

By entering this contest, twitter followers (“Entrants”) agree to be bound by these Contest rules (the “Rules”), which are subject to change without notice, and all decisions of the Sponsor which are final. By entering, Entrants grant the Sponsor and their affiliates the right, but not the obligation, to use their photograph, filmed or recorded image, name and city of residence in all publicity campaigns related to the Contest without further notice or compensation.

What if I happened to follow @Westjet because of my undying love for them, and was completely unaware of the contest they’re running.  I’d be entered into the contest automatically and in turn automatically agree to be bound by contest rules?  This seems a bit slimy to me — essentially automatically being entered into a contract by using a 3rd party service?  I’m going to go put on my Facebook profile that by friending me, you automatically agree to pay me $100.

Okay, so I’m totally playing devil’s advocate on this.  Personally, I’m a huge fan of Westjet — I think that if all airlines operated like them, the world would be a better place.  That said, this seems like a case of them re-using terms and conditions of a past contest with only slightly changing the wording, and not thinking through what they’re saying.  Why do people have to agree to contest rules upon entry, and not upon winning?

Here’s another great clause:

All entries become the property of the Sponsor and will not be returned. Sponsor assumes no responsibility for lost, stolen, or damaged entries. Entries are subject to verification and will be declared invalid if they are illegible, mechanically reproduced, mutilated, forged, falsified, altered or tampered with in any way.  The Sponsor is not responsible for typographical or other errors in the offer or administration of this Contest, including but not limited to, errors in advertising, the Rules, the selection and announcement of winner, or the distribution of any Prize.

Isn’t an entry my following them on Twitter?  That becomes their property?  How?  Do I need to get their permission to unfollow them?  Geez, I hope my twitter account isn’t mechanically reproduced, mutilated or rendered illegible.  In the digital world, that seems a bit contradictory though — it should be mechanically reproduced (backed up) so that it doesn’t become mutilated (suffer a hardware or software failure).  Good to know that I can’t hold Westjet accountable if my Twitter account gets hacked or hijacked though.

Oh, and lastly, under #9:

No correspondence will be entered into except with the selected Entrants.

I guess that Westjet won’t be tweeting much.  Because, of course, that would be communicating with all of the entrants (their followers).  At least they’ll have a nice, high follower count.  Westjet, do you need a little intro to what Twitter does?

This is Papercut from WooThemes.  They’ve got a great promo going on right now where if you buy one theme, you get three others for free.  I took advantage.

I guess you can consider this a mini-review too, because so far I’m really impressed.  The theme is really good quality, and super easy to configure.  I haven’t changed a lot in the code — most tweaks I’ve been able to handle from within the “Paper Cut Options” administration page that shows up.  I’m looking forward to playing with the other themes I picked up too.

Flyingtroll.com is charming in that it’s a complete mix of every random thing I feel like writing about, but there’s really no central theme to it.  I’ve been interested in working on a group blog for a while where I’m challenged to stay on topic and write about something of substance.  Enter DiscoverGulfIslands.com (hat tip to DiscoverSooke.com for the URL inspiration).

There’s a lot of great things about living on Mayne Island, and I’d like to group some of them together.  You won’t find posts about how Reilly and Parker are growing like weeds over there, but you might find posts about us hiking Mt. Parke, and how that’s a great activity.  You’ll definitely find posts about my weekly kayaking excursions (from now on) over there.  This week, we paddled Active Pass and it was a mind-blowing experience.

I’ll be honest, the eventual goal is that I’d like to sell some advertising on discovergulfislands.com, and see if I can do a little side work professionally blogging (but I’m not even going to consider that until there’s a good body of content in place, and we’re seeing some traffic).  Even if it doesn’t get to that point, it’ll be interesting to see just what I can make happen.

The first order of business is that I’d love to recruit some of the other islands.  Mayne isn’t the only island, and I’d love to see the occasional post from somebody from Pender, Galiano, Saturna and Saltspring (drop me a line if you’re interested).  As I alluded to before, there may be some revenue opportunities in the future, but there’s nothing immediate on the horizon (in other words, if/when there are ads, you’ll get a cut).

It’s funny how much it looks like my B.Sc.  Two of the signatures are different (new chancellor, and a different dean), and the University’s logo has changed.

Okay, now off to work…

I’ve put in a temporary fix, removed mySQL from the slice, but I’m not confident that that will completely fix the problem (seems to be okay for now though).

It was an unusual read.  Essentially it tells the tale of Neil’s building fear and unease as to how his country (the US) was being run during the Bush Administration and his realization that the sense of security that many North Americans feel may be false.  Strauss decides to educate and prepare himself to deal with a range of possible situations that may occur; everything from terrorist attacks (he lives in LA) to economic collapse (widespread kind, not just GM).

Up front, I can’t say that I completely agree with his level of paranoia.  Granted, I’m Canadian and I don’t live in a city of several million people, but part of me has trouble believing that some type of event could occur in North America so suddenly that there will be no warning.  Even if that’s the case, I think that with a little common sense, most people can survive a few days with what they have available to them on a day to day basis.

Putting that aside, and unleashing my inner consipiracy theorist though, I have to admit that I had trouble putting this book down.  I’ve always had an interst in this topic though.  My parents got me a copy of the SAS Survival Handbook quite a few years ago, and I have to admit that I have read it cover to cover.  Personally, I find that the novelty of the information is entertaining as opposed to actually believing that some day my life will rely on being able to create a snare trap for food (the great part is that if I’m proven wrong here, chances are nobody will be reading my blog and posting “I told you so comments”).

Emergency is entertaining, and I guess, in some ways rather informative.  From Strauss’ discussion of the various courses he took, and people he met, to his description of his “off the grid” exercise where he shut off all of his power and utilities for a few days to see if he could last, I had Emergency read in it’s entirety in about 48 hours.  I can honestly say that given the need, I’ll be able to free myself from plastic handcuffs (there’s a comic devoted to this topic).

I don’t know if I can outright recommend this book to everyone.  I think, for example, it would bore my wife to death, but a number of my friends would probably get a kick out of it.  In a sense, it’s sort of like recommending a book on programming — if you’re into that language, it’s a good read.  Otherwise, don’t bother.