My ranking of Season 3 episodes of The Office

I've been meaning to make a list ranking my favorite episodes from Season 3 of The Office for awhile, but I planned to wait until after the Season 3 DVD set was released. Well, I ended up making my list today, as today marked the beginning of the OfficeTally Survivor Poll. Not wanting to have to think for a long time to pick my least favorite episode each day, I made my list today so I can just refer to it and make my pick without having to think about it (this might seem obvious, but evidently it never occurred to the Minnesota Vikings). This way I can save my mental energy for other cognitive tasks, (such as deciding whether to get Hot Fuzz through Columbia House or the 2-disc set from Walmart, deciding if I'd rather travel into the future 50, 500, or 5,000 years, or deciding if I'd rather have sex with Penélope Cruz or Monica Bellucci).

Making the list ended up being easier than I thought it would be. While the top few and bottom few episodes are pretty much set, I'm still working on the rankings of the middle 15 episodes or so (And since I originally posted this I have made some minor changes - the list below is the current version). Here is the current list (from favorite to least favorite):

01. The Job
02. Traveling Salesmen
03. The Return
04. Women's Appreciation
05. Product Recall
06. Branch Closing
07. Gay Witch Hunt
08. Beach Games
09. The Negotiation
10. Business School
11. Grief Counseling
12. A Benihana Christmas
13. The Merger
14. Safety Training
15. Cocktails
16. Diwali
17. The Convict
18. The Convention
19. Back From Vacation
20. The Coup
21. Initiation
22. Phyllis' Wedding
23. Ben Franklin

It should be interesting to see how the Survivor vote goes. I think The Job will probably win pretty easily, but it should be interesting to see how it the other episodes go.

Northern Attack's 2007 Writing Contest - Final Voting

There were a ton of great entries every week, and the entries for the last challenge in particular were amazing. I reread all the entries a bunch of times just for fun, as I was hesitant to start the inevitable task of reading them critically and somehow picking out 3 favorites. I ended up having 2 super-favorites, and 4 others that were right behind. I couldn't decide based solely on rereading them over and over, so I had to take a step back and make a mental list of what was most important, and I was eventually able to choose #3. As was the case every prior week, if my top 5 (or in this week's case, 6) entries hadn't been submitted, or I was for some reason barred from voting for them, I would feel fine about voting for my next 3 favorite entries. For the final week's entries that was true several times over.

There were so many great entries each week, I think the 3 winnners will have gotten the most votes not necessarily because their entries were better than everyone else's, but probably because their sense of humor, things they focused on, and interests appealed the most to the other voters. I guess that's pretty obvious, though.

Regardless of who the top 3 vote getters are, I predict the following 2 things will be true:

1. Everyone will agree that the 3 winners are very deserving.

2. Everyone will agree that there are other people who were just as deserving of winning, although we'll probably disagree on who among the non-winners was most deserving.

In any event, it was an awesome contest, and I look forward to next year's contest!

Amazing pictures of Earth

Most detailed pictures of Earth ever seen (Daily Mail)