We already have someone playing hardcore mode with 25 stickers, meaning he has a 100% chance to win a core i7. The odds of you winning are awesome so please read the opening post for details.
Sorry for the lack of prize patrol updates today, all. Cellular wireless, which I traditionally rely upon for this sort of thing, is AWOL. I even signed up for the grossly expensive convention center wireless and still couldn't get reliable enough service to punt a tweet out there.
I've got some plans in place to make tomorrow considerably better. Stick with me!
Also, we have four people currently in the running for Game On: Hardcore Mode. Three of them are already in the draw for a Core i7 CPU. Do not tarry -- the odds of winning one of these babies is, right this minute, one in three!
I tried my hardest and yet could not find the prize patrol! xD
Same here!
Also, T-Mobile's cell networks seemed to be working just fine, I had almost no delay with SMS on my phone. Borrow someone's T-Mobile phone?
I've got something even more foolproof: People offsite will help me get the tweets out if I can't.
I suggest y'all get familiar with where Microsoft's Games for Windows and the Monaco/Spy Party booths are before I send the prize patrol out. One of them will result in a little bonus prize, the other in some awesome games
Just wanted to say on behalf of me and my team and Intel, thanks for playing Game On again! We gave out an awesome amount of stuff and I got to meet tons of great people and even a forumer (Ninjowned, I'm looking at you!) which was pretty sweet. Okay, some notes:
Hardcore mode participants: We'll hold the drawing for the Core i7 early this week. Hopefully Tuesday but it depends on how much work has piled up since we were out of the office and just how damned tired we are. Please bear with us.
Alumni Edition participants: First of all, thank you so much for wearing the stuff (buttons, bags, shirts) we gave to you from previous PAX's! I was really shocked (in a good way) by how much of it was in evidence. At first we were planning to give you all little things, like pens or bags or something, but I feared those just weren't awesome enough, so we switched it to a drawing for a Core i7.
If you have any questions or comments, please send them my way. The only way we can improve Game On is with your feedback.
I'm going to put this out there on behalf of a very miffed friend. Please don't give out the blinking pens randomly to the folks standing in line/registering for the points program if it's a prize card item. Everyone in my group got a pen at about noon Friday for signing up for the the points program as we picked up our buttons and showed off our alumni buttons. The rest of the weekend with the very few prize cards we managed to snag (even following twitter) we'd wait up to 30 min and win... a pen. Several times we didn't have a big window to visit the expo hall based on our schedules and we'd wait half of it in the Intel line for the pen.
Not intending to brag, but I won an i7 extreme 8-). Unfortunately, I am a poor college student, and do not have the money to build a computer worthy of the 6-core awesomeness . Well, I guess there is always ebay, and using the money to buy a PS3 and a buttload of games.
hargem1 on
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AtomicGaryBuseyI put on my robe and wizard hat.Beautiful Lynnhood, Wash.Registered Userregular
edited September 2010
I won an i7 at the Intel prize desk on Friday. Anyone know how much the taxes on this 999 dollar prize are going to be come tax time?
As I understand it, you just add $999 to your income. Lucky for me, I am 19 and a dependant without a job ( I am a student), so I do not need to pay taxes on it.
edit: meant extra income doesn't put me over the lower limit to file
When I use turbo tax there's a separate statement for prize winnings, they're usually defined as Lotto/Gambling winnings. That's where you report them. I think it is added separately from your regular taxable income. I won lift tickets and Shaun White Snowboarding for Wii from a local radio station once and they made me fill out some tax form so they could report it to the IRS. I think if it's under around $500 for the year you don't have to report it.
trickycoolj on
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AtomicGaryBuseyI put on my robe and wizard hat.Beautiful Lynnhood, Wash.Registered Userregular
edited September 2010
Yeah, the trick is I also won a $200.00 G19 keyboard and a $100.00 G500 mouse at BYOC on Saturday and my wife won a $500.00 iPad last month.
I have a feeling the IRS is going to look at us, go "LOL" and proceed with the rape. :winky:
All prize winnings have to be reported on your taxes as "Other Income." You total up all cash prizes and the value of non-cash prizes and enter it on line 21 of Form 1040.
An individual prize of value $600 or higher should cause the prize giver to send you a 1099-MISC at the end of the year. If you receive a 1099-MISC, it is highly advisable to declare it on your return, since the IRS is almost certainly aware of it as well. Many organizations choose to send 1099-MISCs for values lower than $600.
The added amount is considered income and is taxed accordingly. The simple way to figure out about how much this might cost you in additional taxes is to look at last year's return and find your taxable income on line 43, see what it caused you to pay in taxes. Then bump up your taxable income by your prize earnings, and look up that tax amount in the Tax Tables.
Example: Using the 2010 Tax Tables, let's say you made $50,000 and were single... you would pay taxes of $8,694. If you won $1,000 in prizes, your income would be $51,000 which would increase your taxes to $8,944. An additional $250 in tax.
Remember that if you typically get a refund, then you might already be "covered" - you'll just get less of a refund than usual. If you usually owe, you may want to either decrease your witholding allowances or make an estimated payment.
I'm going to put this out there on behalf of a very miffed friend. Please don't give out the blinking pens randomly to the folks standing in line/registering for the points program if it's a prize card item. Everyone in my group got a pen at about noon Friday for signing up for the the points program as we picked up our buttons and showed off our alumni buttons. The rest of the weekend with the very few prize cards we managed to snag (even following twitter) we'd wait up to 30 min and win... a pen. Several times we didn't have a big window to visit the expo hall based on our schedules and we'd wait half of it in the Intel line for the pen.
Thanks for the comments, this is good to know. I definitely see how that can be an unpleasant experience. Okay then -- more variety next time and higher value items to boot.
We're also working on ways to get the line moving a little faster.
We're also working on ways to get the line moving a little faster.
Don't sign people up in the same line that you use to scan cards. It tooks almost no time to scan cards, but then that same person would stand around signing up and it meant the line wasn't moving. Send them over to another short line to sign in and you will have a shorter line for scanning prize cards. You'd probably be able to get it down to only one person scanning and two running the sign-ups.
The tweets were also a little infrequent and many times the prize patrol would then run out of cards. When I made it out to WiMax Wanderer they'd also run out of cards and all the other prizes as well. I don't think I ever saw prize patrol just wandering around. The only time I ever ran into them was when I followed a tweet.
I'm going to put this out there on behalf of a very miffed friend. Please don't give out the blinking pens randomly to the folks standing in line/registering for the points program if it's a prize card item. Everyone in my group got a pen at about noon Friday for signing up for the the points program as we picked up our buttons and showed off our alumni buttons. The rest of the weekend with the very few prize cards we managed to snag (even following twitter) we'd wait up to 30 min and win... a pen. Several times we didn't have a big window to visit the expo hall based on our schedules and we'd wait half of it in the Intel line for the pen.
Thanks for the comments, this is good to know. I definitely see how that can be an unpleasant experience. Okay then -- more variety next time and higher value items to boot.
We're also working on ways to get the line moving a little faster.
Thanks! Can't wait to see you guys next year, or maybe sooner... Fry's perhaps?
Hey man nice meeting you guys! Unfortunately I didn't have as much time to participate in the stalking of intel reps this year, but it was fun nonetheless (also missed out on the twitter things, but that was because of how busy I was). By the way, the hardcore edition was really cool and I am a huge fan of these things!
As an idea for next time - completely agree that sign ups should be separate from the redemption line. I can't recall if Prime '08 had sign ups for anything, but it seems like East and this year's Prime had long lines due to people filling forms out. I understand it gets more people on the newsletter etc, but it's a time waster.
Hopefully see you at Fry's! This time I don't have to drive down from Bellingham/Blaine :P
ninjowned on
ninjowned!
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AtomicGaryBuseyI put on my robe and wizard hat.Beautiful Lynnhood, Wash.Registered Userregular
edited September 2010
I have a question for you trickycoolj. What's the estimated ship dates on the i7's for the people who won them from the Game On booth at PAX?
We're also working on ways to get the line moving a little faster.
Don't sign people up in the same line that you use to scan cards. It tooks almost no time to scan cards, but then that same person would stand around signing up and it meant the line wasn't moving. Send them over to another short line to sign in and you will have a shorter line for scanning prize cards. You'd probably be able to get it down to only one person scanning and two running the sign-ups.
The tweets were also a little infrequent and many times the prize patrol would then run out of cards. When I made it out to WiMax Wanderer they'd also run out of cards and all the other prizes as well. I don't think I ever saw prize patrol just wandering around. The only time I ever ran into them was when I followed a tweet.
Thanks for the thoughts, Belgand. We were limited this year by our booth layout, I think -- our Prime 2009 layout was way better -- and what you're saying about signing people up in other lines is quite sensible. I'll float it past the decision makers.
The tweets...well, those were a challenge due to the crappy Internet connection I was working with. The Twitter client would routinely eat updates. Also, PAX had 67,000 attendees and we only have so many prizes and prize cards. Believe it or not, we brought more goodies with us this time than we did to Prime 2009 or East and we still ran out early on Sunday.
At one point what I did is I brought everyone who didn't get a prize card with me to the booth and gave them a card. That's definitely the exception though -- not everyone can win. If you guys have ideas on how we can ensure we cover everyone I'm open to hearing.
I have a question for you trickycoolj. What's the estimated ship dates on the i7's for the people who won them from the Game On booth at PAX?
I'm not the Intel rep, you want Divebommah. (I hope soon for you! That's a sweet prize!)
I would say no more than 4-6 weeks. Some people get theirs sooner.
I was lucky enough to nab one of the i7-980x via the GAME ON! drawings. I filled out all the paperwork and so on, and the lady told me that "we'll be back in the office Tuesday, so you should get it by Friday."
Well, Friday's come and gone, and hasn't shown up yet. I had ordered a bunch of new stuff to put the proc in, and it got here today (and I ordered it on Tuesday; love newegg).
Anyone have any contact info for tracking information or anything? I'm not going to start getting worried about it until maybe next week, but it'd be nice to know...
We wore our big blue intel Game ON! buttons all weekend. We had ours from last year and wore them along with the new ones from this year, which we got in the opening minutes of the show on Friday.
We never once saw, heard, or even got suggestion that anyone from intel was around at all. Never saw anyone at any time during the weekend. We were on-site from 10AM until about midnight on Friday, 10AM until 2AM on Saturday and from 10AM until 6:30PM on Sunday. (We actually kept a couple of the FireFall people in their booth -past- the end of the show with our questions.) Not once did we see an intel marketing person.
Can't complain too much. It's not like we -expected- any swag, but it would have been nice to have been noticed for wearing the big blue buttons all weekend.
My logic: I am not out anything, so if it takes longer, it takes longer.
Yeah, I mean it is a free processor!
Still, I did have to buy a bunch of new stuff to support it, so now I have boxes of motherboards, ram, etc sitting around staring at me that I have to wait to do anything with. :P
i also won an I7 extreme on the first day of pax west and havnt had any contact from anyone, gets me worried that maybe i wrote something down wrong. any known contact i can seek out?
I also won one and was also told it should arrive sometime last week. Not stressed about it, or anything, more just anxious, I think
I had to pick out new hardware to support it as well, although I haven't hit submit on the cart yet. It's sitting in a wishlist on newegg just sorta waiting until the cpu actually shows up.
To Stupid: They were out there. Not always wearing bright blue Intel shirts, though. Following the twitter feed helps, but we got a couple cards just walking around. Once on the escalator, once outside on the 4th floor by one of the hacky sack circles. Bummer you missed out.. must have just been rotten luck.
So, I got the same story from the lady at the prize station, it was supposed to be here by friday. Does anyone have some kind of contact information for them? I haven't gotten an email or phone call or anything.
My wife just IMed me to let me know my processor showed up. I guess it got shipped to the wrong address first (4503 instead of 9503--didn't think my writing was that bad), but that UPS figured it out.
So, now to get the last bit of the parts and assemble!
My wife just IMed me to let me know my processor showed up. I guess it got shipped to the wrong address first (4503 instead of 9503--didn't think my writing was that bad), but that UPS figured it out.
So, now to get the last bit of the parts and assemble!
W00t! Congrats, I hope mine shows up soon, I have a brand new MoBo that's just waiting for it.
My wife just IMed me to let me know my processor showed up. I guess it got shipped to the wrong address first (4503 instead of 9503--didn't think my writing was that bad), but that UPS figured it out.
So, now to get the last bit of the parts and assemble!
W00t! Congrats, I hope mine shows up soon, I have a brand new MoBo that's just waiting for it.
UPDATE: I just got home and my processor was waiting for me!
Posts
Aye.
I KNOW! I'm from Toronto so don't think this is some anti-Canadian sentiment. It has more to do with tax laws or treaties or something.
Damn am I having a good time!
I've got some plans in place to make tomorrow considerably better. Stick with me!
Also, we have four people currently in the running for Game On: Hardcore Mode. Three of them are already in the draw for a Core i7 CPU. Do not tarry -- the odds of winning one of these babies is, right this minute, one in three!
Also, T-Mobile's cell networks seemed to be working just fine, I had almost no delay with SMS on my phone. Borrow someone's T-Mobile phone?
I've got something even more foolproof: People offsite will help me get the tweets out if I can't.
I suggest y'all get familiar with where Microsoft's Games for Windows and the Monaco/Spy Party booths are before I send the prize patrol out. One of them will result in a little bonus prize, the other in some awesome games
Did anyone here win a Core i7 or laptop?
Nice! The Wanderer and his accomplice will be working at our booth tomorrow, BTW.
Oh, a reminder to everyone here: If you have a Game On prize card, please bring it by tomorrow to get your prize! Tomorrow is your last chance! :!:
Hardcore mode participants: We'll hold the drawing for the Core i7 early this week. Hopefully Tuesday but it depends on how much work has piled up since we were out of the office and just how damned tired we are. Please bear with us.
Alumni Edition participants: First of all, thank you so much for wearing the stuff (buttons, bags, shirts) we gave to you from previous PAX's! I was really shocked (in a good way) by how much of it was in evidence. At first we were planning to give you all little things, like pens or bags or something, but I feared those just weren't awesome enough, so we switched it to a drawing for a Core i7.
If you have any questions or comments, please send them my way. The only way we can improve Game On is with your feedback.
edit: meant extra income doesn't put me over the lower limit to file
I have a feeling the IRS is going to look at us, go "LOL" and proceed with the rape. :winky:
All prize winnings have to be reported on your taxes as "Other Income." You total up all cash prizes and the value of non-cash prizes and enter it on line 21 of Form 1040.
An individual prize of value $600 or higher should cause the prize giver to send you a 1099-MISC at the end of the year. If you receive a 1099-MISC, it is highly advisable to declare it on your return, since the IRS is almost certainly aware of it as well. Many organizations choose to send 1099-MISCs for values lower than $600.
The added amount is considered income and is taxed accordingly. The simple way to figure out about how much this might cost you in additional taxes is to look at last year's return and find your taxable income on line 43, see what it caused you to pay in taxes. Then bump up your taxable income by your prize earnings, and look up that tax amount in the Tax Tables.
Example: Using the 2010 Tax Tables, let's say you made $50,000 and were single... you would pay taxes of $8,694. If you won $1,000 in prizes, your income would be $51,000 which would increase your taxes to $8,944. An additional $250 in tax.
Remember that if you typically get a refund, then you might already be "covered" - you'll just get less of a refund than usual. If you usually owe, you may want to either decrease your witholding allowances or make an estimated payment.
*** I am not a tax professional. ***
Thanks for the comments, this is good to know. I definitely see how that can be an unpleasant experience. Okay then -- more variety next time and higher value items to boot.
We're also working on ways to get the line moving a little faster.
Don't sign people up in the same line that you use to scan cards. It tooks almost no time to scan cards, but then that same person would stand around signing up and it meant the line wasn't moving. Send them over to another short line to sign in and you will have a shorter line for scanning prize cards. You'd probably be able to get it down to only one person scanning and two running the sign-ups.
The tweets were also a little infrequent and many times the prize patrol would then run out of cards. When I made it out to WiMax Wanderer they'd also run out of cards and all the other prizes as well. I don't think I ever saw prize patrol just wandering around. The only time I ever ran into them was when I followed a tweet.
Thanks! Can't wait to see you guys next year, or maybe sooner... Fry's perhaps?
As an idea for next time - completely agree that sign ups should be separate from the redemption line. I can't recall if Prime '08 had sign ups for anything, but it seems like East and this year's Prime had long lines due to people filling forms out. I understand it gets more people on the newsletter etc, but it's a time waster.
Hopefully see you at Fry's! This time I don't have to drive down from Bellingham/Blaine :P
I'm not the Intel rep, you want Divebommah. (I hope soon for you! That's a sweet prize!)
*I have a question for you Divebommah. What's the estimated ship dates on the i7's for the people who won them from the Game On booth at PAX?
Thanks for the thoughts, Belgand. We were limited this year by our booth layout, I think -- our Prime 2009 layout was way better -- and what you're saying about signing people up in other lines is quite sensible. I'll float it past the decision makers.
The tweets...well, those were a challenge due to the crappy Internet connection I was working with. The Twitter client would routinely eat updates. Also, PAX had 67,000 attendees and we only have so many prizes and prize cards. Believe it or not, we brought more goodies with us this time than we did to Prime 2009 or East and we still ran out early on Sunday.
At one point what I did is I brought everyone who didn't get a prize card with me to the booth and gave them a card. That's definitely the exception though -- not everyone can win. If you guys have ideas on how we can ensure we cover everyone I'm open to hearing.
TBD!
I would say no more than 4-6 weeks. Some people get theirs sooner.
I was lucky enough to nab one of the i7-980x via the GAME ON! drawings. I filled out all the paperwork and so on, and the lady told me that "we'll be back in the office Tuesday, so you should get it by Friday."
Well, Friday's come and gone, and hasn't shown up yet. I had ordered a bunch of new stuff to put the proc in, and it got here today (and I ordered it on Tuesday; love newegg).
Anyone have any contact info for tracking information or anything? I'm not going to start getting worried about it until maybe next week, but it'd be nice to know...
My logic: I am not out anything, so if it takes longer, it takes longer.
We never once saw, heard, or even got suggestion that anyone from intel was around at all. Never saw anyone at any time during the weekend. We were on-site from 10AM until about midnight on Friday, 10AM until 2AM on Saturday and from 10AM until 6:30PM on Sunday. (We actually kept a couple of the FireFall people in their booth -past- the end of the show with our questions.) Not once did we see an intel marketing person.
Can't complain too much. It's not like we -expected- any swag, but it would have been nice to have been noticed for wearing the big blue buttons all weekend.
Yeah, I mean it is a free processor!
Still, I did have to buy a bunch of new stuff to support it, so now I have boxes of motherboards, ram, etc sitting around staring at me that I have to wait to do anything with. :P
I had to pick out new hardware to support it as well, although I haven't hit submit on the cart yet. It's sitting in a wishlist on newegg just sorta waiting until the cpu actually shows up.
To Stupid: They were out there. Not always wearing bright blue Intel shirts, though. Following the twitter feed helps, but we got a couple cards just walking around. Once on the escalator, once outside on the 4th floor by one of the hacky sack circles. Bummer you missed out.. must have just been rotten luck.
So, now to get the last bit of the parts and assemble!
UPDATE: I just got home and my processor was waiting for me!