Time for a science lesson.

Remember high school biology? Let's a have a mini refresher course in one particular aspect. I've always liked the concept.

com·men·sal·ism [kuh-men-suh-liz-uhm] 

noun

1. Ecology . a type of relationship between two species of a plant, animal, fungus, etc., in which one lives with, on, or in another without damage to either.

2. Sociology . peaceful coexistence among individuals or groups having independent or different values or customs.

3. See picture below.

  

That's what we are, guys. The bird and the deer. Bird stays on deer's back and eats fleas and ticks and deer provides a buffet of fleas and ticks.

What does this have to do with anything? Well, lots. We can only do our job if others do theirs. And when we don't get donations or (worse) get people complaining about the lack of new books, well, it's like you guys are the bird and you aren't eating the fleas and ticks. We are getting itchy and can't do much other than roll in grass to relieve the itch.*

*Please ignore how strange and awkward this analogy is getting.

 Now, we can't force people for donations (obviously) but we can try encourage it. Just like non-profit charities can issues tax breaks we can offer an incentive. It's not much, but alas, we are, essentially, a non-profit charity.

Like all charities, we survive on the blood (books) that are donated to us. We would not have survived this long without them. Not a chance. We would have died out sometime in December and I would at times find something to remind me of that cute little program I created, that subsequently died when I ran out of my own books. Let me say it again, to make sure it sticks: donators = the reason we live.

So, what's the incentive?, you ask impatiently.
Preferred treatment to those who donate books.

Cannot TELL YOU how excited I was to find that gif set.
But anyway, yeah, don't freak out. Here's why:
1) A lot of those who donate, hardly ever request. Don't ask me why that is, I've just noticed the trend.
 2) A lot of the time the people who donate, don't go for the big titles anyway. Not always, just, again, a strangeish trend I've noticed.
3) It won't be a preferred treatment, like holding books for anyone or especially rescinding books after emails have gone out. No way. 

Will this be a big shift in everything we know and trust in this reality? No.
Does it mean you might loose out to the donator who requested the same book 15 seconds after you? Maybe. (You'd be surprised how often this happens anyway when people request when they are on TWTO unknowingly.)
Do I hope for a big influx of cast-off books from your school reading list just to get preferential treatment? Oh, gods of Olympus, I sincerely hope not. Yes, we'll take Pride and Prejudice, but the day any blogger tries to play this off as a hip and fun read is gonna get a big eyeroll from me. I'm an English major, I can say it.

You might not realize it, but at the end of this month, this little program is a year old. (Yes, the blog didn't get started until late July - but who's counting?) I keep worrying and almost waiting for it to lose momentum and I don't want to see it die. I've worked hella hard on this blog (and all the spreadsheets) to watch it die so easily. Even with me moving and maybe starting some kind of life and Lili going to college, we are willing to keep it going. But we can only do so much. We need you guys! I hope this gets a little more life pumping in the system and if not, well, back to the drawing board on our side.

 

Officially official.

We haven't had gifs in a while. That's a sad thing. Let's fix that.
But first we need some gif-worthy news right? Well. I just so happen to HAVE SOME.

Jennifer IS moving. And it's not to LA. LA fell through like the gods themselves were telling me this was a bad idea.

Instead, Jennifer is gonna party it up in New York City *said all Pace Picante commercial style*.
You remember this if you were a child of the 90s. 

And guess what. I have a place and a date and hopefully my retail job transfers and few friends and I'm really excited... it might turn out HORRIBLY, but this is what your mid 20s are for. Screwing up.

Now for the excited gifs.









And lastly, and maybe the best by far...

A little giveaway that doesn't have much to do with ARCycling.

Unless you are new, don't follow me on Twitter, or don't pay attention to any posts, tweets, etc, you know that I love Percy Jackson. Not like a little. But like any decent 12-year-old boy with ADHD or dyslexia does. Enough to where the following picture is my cover photo on Facebook:

 [link]

Before that, it was this: (I upgraded to have Nico in there. Nico is freaking boss.)
[link] I can't find the exact link, but that's the link to the amazing artist's Tumblr, if you like Percy at all you need to familiarize yourself with Burdge's fan art. Seriously.

Don't even judge me for this. One thing I've learned in my years on this planet, life is too short to be afraid to love the things you want to love. I apply that to lots of things, including my Percy Jackson fan status. Whatever.

Anyway, over the years of my enthusiastic love, I've collected a number of treasures, including, but not limited to, a Son of Neptune promo poster (and you bet your butt I laminated it) and the prize jewel, a Mark of Athena promotional cardboard dump from the bookstore I work at. Perks of being friends with the lead of the Children's Department. However, I might have acquired too much stuff.

It doesn't help that I live in Austin, Texas. Rick Riordan lives in San Antonio, Texas. His launch parties are always in Austin. So there's always lots of signed stock floating around. And I might have purchased an extra signed Sea of Monsters (#2) and Titan's Curse (#3) on a complete spontaneous impulse. Oops. And I might have ended up with an extra promotional Heros of Olympus "water bottle" that was given out by Disney Hyperion. Oops. So, uh, yeah, those things are going to be given away here and now.


Rules? There are none. Anyone can enter! Okay, your dog can't enter, but humans alike can. You don't have to have a status of blogger, teacher or otherwise. And oh, Hades, why not make this international too?

But let's make this fun. And nerdier.
For an extra entry, ask yourself if you can name all of the characters in the first picture. This is all on the honor system for this one.
For extra entries, you're going to tweet something ridiculous. That's all I'm saying.
For extra entries, comment on this post with your favorite Percy(-based) book if you've read them, if not, then which Greek god/ goddess would be your godly parent.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

A crack down. Kinda.

I've spent the last 4 days going over the Review Archive and my long, long, LONG list of Requesters. I mean, the entire thing. Admittedly, I'd let this go too long, but whatever, life is busy. However, what I discovered didn't make me a happy monkey. I knew the review return rate was bad, better than it used to be, but I wasn't looking at concrete numbers. Now I have.

What was I doing? Stalking the crap out of you all. Basically.
But more specifically, if you've ever requested and gotten a book, I went to your blog, looked in your Review Archive or searched (if you had a search bar) for whatever book you got to if you happened to have the review and merely forgot to tell us.
This accrued about 10 reviews. So kudos to you lot for telling us about the reviews! However, less kudos to the kajillion more times I didn't find the book. It got a little painful to see all of the "IMM"s and "STS"s, therefore acknowledging you got the book, but then no review (and I'm not talking from last week. I mean, like from September).
Anyway, I suffered searching through very easily 200 blogs. All of this turned my brain in pudding.

I have suffered, so I'm going to make all of you suffer. A little. Nothing martyr-like.
Let's go over some basic reminders. These should be obvious, but ya know, if I have one piece of sage advice from my close to a quarter of a century on this planet, it is this: never assume anything.

1. The books available here are NOT for blind grabbing. Yes, I know they go fast, but there's a reason we list books like: Catching Fire (#2), then over to the right it would say Hunger Games #2. That means it's a sequel. That means if you haven't read the first, why would you want the sequel? Same goes for the genre and other obvious reasons, if you don't like dystopias and you look up Hunger Games on The Goodreads and it says dystopia, don't pick it. This means:
   • Saying you confused the book you got with another book and therefore not wanting to read it, is not going to fly. I'm going to say 'you've made your bed, now you must lie in it'. Like some kind of Disney villain.
   • Getting a sequel and saying you didn't realize it and therefore won't review it, is not going to fly. Like... HOW? The series number is right next to the title. How do you miss that?!
2. The books available here are NOT for you to NOT review then giveaway on your site. Guys, I went to college, I'm not stupid. If I know you got an ARC of Matched and a few weeks later you're giving away an ARC of Matched, I mean come on. I can put two and two together. I hardly ever (never) ban people myself, but when I saw this (yes, this actually happened) -  INSTA-BAN. If you review it, I could not care less what you do with it after, but that? That's just insulting to me and my hardwork.
3. The books available here are NOT just so you can have the physical version of a book you read on NetGalley. No. If I go to your blog, search for the book and find you thank NetGalley (especially if your review is dated from before you got the book from me), I will take your review, put the link on my site as though it were meant for me. You're cheating my system, so I will use your review to up stats. So there. You want a physical book to own? Go to a freaking Barnes and Noble! This might also end in a banning if I see it happen much more.

All of that being said, I hate changing rules. It's a headache even for me and it just sucks. So we aren't going to change the rules... YET. But I have decided to do something I've debated for a long time.
Public humiliation.

As the rules stand now, Requesters can get up to five books with no reviews before going on a temporary ban until something gets reviewed. If I'm being honest, I'd love to tell you all that I want to shorten that to 3 books. I do. But first I guess I'd have to discuss that with Lili first. Boo.

What the below spreadsheet shows is everyone who has 3 or more reviews pending.
If you have 3 titles next to your name: This is more of a warning shot.
If you have 4 titles next to your name: A warning shot across your nose.
If you have 5+ titles next to your name: You are temporarily banned. Most of you guys who have 5 titles already know this.

The list is sorted by first name, then blog name. Titles are arranged by date received, earliest on the bottom.*
*Only exception is one group blog that has accrued 7 books with no reviews, that one is by blog name with the individuals listed.
PLEASE NOTE: THERE ARE NO REQUESTS FROM AFTER THE END OF JANUARY. Why? Because I'm not a monster. There's a 2 month window to allow for delivery and reading time. Even if you requested a book from February until this last Sunday, it's not on there because it's not 'due'.



Now I'm sure you big Requesters are all, well, excuse me, but why aren't you going after the small time Requesters? Oh, oh I will. Over the next few weeks gentle 'reminder emails' are going to start floating around. If I was to list everyone here, that would take me many, many, many more hours and guys, I like to pretend I have a life even if I don't.

If ANYONE has questions about books they got, reviews or if you think you're supposed to be here and aren't, feel free to email me! ARCycling@gmail.com I'm pretty nice in emails even if I seem mean here.

Well that was a bunch of depressing crap wasn't it? How about for some good information and some gifs?!

First of all, review return rate is now up to 26%!! Up from 18% in December! That's awesome! Happy Muppet gif time!

PARTY!

So, you see that BIG number over to the right?
No?
Well, let me point it out to you.

THAT IS A BIG NUMBER.
SO I'M GOING TO CELEBRATE.

RISE OF THE GUARDIANS STYLE.
BECAUSE THAT IS MY CURRENT OBSESSION.
Don't even pretend you aren't attracted to Jack. You are. You know it.

I mean look at that:

Anyway... onward...

How I feel about everyone who has ever: donated a book or gotten one and reviewed it:


How I feel when I get on the internets Sunday afternoon:


How I really am when donations come in:


How I feel when a bunch of donations come in 5 minutes before open:


When there are eleventy billion books. Or just more than 20:


How you guys must feel when you really want a book and don't get it:


Me, when a session goes really, really well:


When someone does something they shouldn't:

Okay, this doesn't happen much, but it's one of my absolutely favorite shots in the film.

When Lili and I just KNOCK IT OUT:


When people are super loving on my little program:


When I peace out for another week:


And now I end with the best joke in the whole movie:


You'd probably have to see the movie to truly get it, but it's a HILARIOUS moment. I also recommend seeing this movie if you haven't seen it.

Just an FYI, when we get to 1000 ARCycled books I might just die. Might.

Inside the ARCycling Studio

You might think this going to be a slightly egotistical post, like I'm over here going, 'oh, ah, look at the insane system I've created and how well it works, I am so great', but more often than not, I fail at something. But really this post is to take you inside ARCycling to understand what utter madness happens every week.

First I'm going to explain the spreadsheets. All eleven billion of them. Seriously. I can't even explain all of them at once, I have to break them into the different groups of spreadsheets.

Let's start with Donator spreads:

Donation intake form spreadsheet - oddly enough, this is the newest of spreadsheets and yet the first mentioned. When you submit a book here, it goes directly to that form. Where it sits until I manually add the donation books to two more forms (below).

Donator Master spreadsheet - Books from the above spread get added here, same information, but this time grouped by donation week and then by donator's name. This is vital on the Donator end, it tells me who needs to know where to send their books. It also tracks how long books have been sitting unclaimed by the masses.

The List spreadsheet - This is the master 'show' list of current books available for the week. This is spreadsheet you see every Sunday afternoon.

Then there are the Requester spreadsheets:
This is the fun part. This is what you see happens every Sunday.

Weekly Request spreadsheet - When you use the form to request a book on those fateful Sundays, they go into their own spreadsheet that is changed out weekly. Requests are timestamped and it's first come, first served. 'Winning' requests are highlighted and books gotten are written to the side for easy reference to us. Then they are deleted from The List.

Suspended (Time Out) spreadsheet - This is kind of a specialty spreadsheet. It's Lili's territory. When someone gets a book, their name is checked to see if it's on here. If it is, REQUEST DENIED. If Lili's working that session, she will politely email you, telling you are still on Time Out or what have you. If Jennifer's by her lonesome, not so much.

Requester Master spreadsheet - If you request and get a book, your information is manually transcribed from the Weekly Request spread to here. This dictates absolutely everything on the Requester end. It's what Lili works off of to manage the Suspended spread and tells where the books from the Donator Master spread go.

Then there are the emails.
For Requesters, confirmation emails go out go out within 20 minutes of start (which is a breeze), but it's the Donator emails that take the longest. In order to email, 2 different spreadsheets have to be consulted. First, the Donator Master spread to get who donated what books, then the Weekly Request spread to get the information on where to send them. Combine that with a 3rd open tab for an email in which to copy and paste the information of both. Then of course, crossing off the people who have been emailed.

During an average ARCycling session, I have about 6-7 tabs open, not including my Pandora channel that keeps me sane. As crazy as it sounds, it's easier to have a million tabs open then to have to go searching around in Google Docs to find a spread in the ARCycling crunch time.

From start to finish, it takes about 3 hours to prep, have the session, then all of the emails and "clean up" aka fixing spreadsheets and organizing the ARCycling inbox, which can get insane. Labels and folders, if you've never used them and have a lot of emails, I highly recommend.

And to top it all off, I keep ALL OF THE INFORMATION ever. Each one of these spreadsheets are forever long because nothing ever gets deleted. I did have to start a new Donator sheet for 2013 because it was getting too long. All this saving helps me track lost requests, lost donors, lost kittens and all-in-all stalk the crap out of everyone.
Me:


Does your brain hurt yet?
Wondering how in Tartarus we do this every Sunday? Me, let's just say I've mastered the keystrokes ⌘A, ⌘C, ⌘V and ⌘Z like nobody's business. Seriously, at times I do them so fast I often mistype them.

Anyway, now I think you guys know why after an ARCycling session I love to hang out and post stupid gifs. Cause me brain dead. And that's why mistakes happen from time to time. Though I *think* I'm getting better at that? Worst/ best part is that before the Weekly Request forms, this was even worse. Seriously. Led to lots of drinking.



Okay, not really. I'm a good girl. Kinda.


But seriously. I think this gif is the spirit animal for ARCycling.


Who doesn't love a cranky crab?

HI GUYS.

I feel like I haven't been here in ages and it wasn't until I actually, like, looked at my blog again was I was like oh, YOU GUYS. I remember you! And then I got all...


I feel like I need to update you guys on my life and what it means for you and ARCycling.

Well, I went to LA Oscar weekend, thinking 'oh, this will be cool!' then we learned the friend we were staying with lives off Hollywood Blvd which is cool, normally, but labyrinthine come Oscar weekend.

No, I didn't see any celebs. Unless you count going to Billy Boyd's band's show. In case you aren't as old as I am, he was Pippin in Lord of the Rings. You know, this dude, the hobbit joke cracker.


Or for a sultryier Pippin...


Either way, yes, it was awesome, he sings beautifully, you should check his band out! It's Beecake. Perfect if you love the Scottish accent!

Anyway, all that driving (22-24 hours solid one way) and... we didn't find nothing.



Big ole WAH WAH for us. So, as of this very moment, I still have no official plans to move to La La land and ARCycling will continue as normal.

I guess that's really all I had to say! An excuse to say hi and use some gifs!

So hang tight and...