My Goodness!

I don't know where to start!

The race gets started... the Chargers beat the Colts... I took the kids to the Car Show... so much to talk about and so little time! :)

First, I can see by all of the activity in the NDISB forum that you all have found the challenge and are off and racing. Congratulations! Let the fun begin!

Just a couple things that I wanted to mention. Of all the tips that I've seen from veteran racers, the one that seems to pop up most often is "Don't procrastinate". Since they've done this before, I'd say you might want to listen to them!

All teams should have found their thread in this forum, to post links to their challenge layouts. You have all been assigned a volunteer who will be checking with you on the completion of your layouts. They should be dropping in to introduce themselves shortly. Please feel free to ask them any questions also. You might also see me every once in a while!

The challenge prize forums are private forums. You cannot see them yet. All layouts need to be verified before you will be given access to these forums. Each challenge will have its own prize forum, so if one team drops out part way through for whatever reason, they will not have access to future challenge prizes. When your team successfully completes the challenges, and when all layouts are verified for all teams, you will be granted access. This is generally by Wednesday of the week following the challenges. (So for example: this weeks challenges (1 and 2) are due by Sunday at midnight. Prize forums for challenge 1 and challenge 2 will be made available to you by Wednesday of next week.) Also, each team will be granted access individually. You will be notified (probably both via this blog, and the NDISB ADSR4 forum) when access is made available.

The ADSR4 FAQ thread is continually being updated as new questions are asked. New questions are added to the top of the questions list. Please take a look at this list to see if your question has been asked. Speaking of questions - we are still getting many questions that are answered in the rules. Please read the rules if you haven't done so yet. With over 230 teams racing, that is over 450 individuals running the race. That's a lot of repeat questions. Your cooperation really is appreciated!

We have updated the rules to clarify the challenge qualifications. All challenges are for both team mates unless otherwise specified. So, for challenge 1, both of you do your own version of the challenge, and each team mate would post a link to their layout in your thread.

You will notice that if you click the "click here" link under the clock in the upper left hand corner of the blog, it now reflects how much time you have until midnight next Sunday night (EST). We will reset this every week. Also, the Natural Designs forum and gallery time zone may not accurately reflect the time that you make a post. This is intentional. Because of the physical location of the server, we have the timing of the forum/gallery such that when you upload a layout, the date of the upload accurately reflects Eastern Standard Time. Why is this important? Because if you really do upload your layout by Sunday night at midnight, your layout will say Sunday, January 11, 2009 under it. So you see... we have learned a few things from previous races!

Oh yeah... the Chargers beat the Colts, and I took the kids to the car show!

Good Luck!