We just finished up our first Drink What You Kill Competition, and boy was it an incredible success. And by "incredible" we mean we brought in enough money to cover our prizes. Our first place winner took home bottles of 1997, 2001, and 2002 Ardente Espressione Cabernet Sauvignon. Or, as we'd call it around the Con Daily HQ, "He got three glasses of wine."

With the holiday (and Spring semester text book buying) season coming up, we're going to start a new round of our competition, going from now until January 31st.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, here's how the game works:

We have an Amazon Associate account for Con Daily. That means whenever we refer readers to products on Amazon through one of our special associate links and a purchase is made, we get a very small piece of the action. It doesn't raise the price of your purchase at all, just decreases Amazon's share a bit. It also doesn't matter whether what you purchase is what we referred you to - you just need to have been sent to Amazon by us.

We send you to Amazon, you buy stuff you would have bought anyways, and we get a couple bucks.

But why should you bother helping us out at all? And why shouldn't you just set up your own Amazon Associate account and take the money yourself?

Well, first, Amazon doesn't let you do that, so you can't.

The better reason though is because you'll get an awesome prize if you use our account. The person who racks up the biggest bill between now and January 31st will win something totally awesome. Prize the first time around was $130 of wine ...of $60 of wine if you consider what we actually paid Wine.Woot for it. If wine isn't your speed (or you live in a place it can't be delivered to) we'll gladly substitute in something else.

To participate, you need to do three things:

1. Go to Amazon through a link from this site. Such as this one. Most of the links here have our special associate tag embedded, but some older articles might not have been updated. To be safe, follow this link. Even better, bookmark it.

2. Make a purchase. It can be anything really, law school text books, office supplies, early Christmas presents, whatever. Perhaps even all the supplies your small law practice needs (thanks Namby Pamby).

3. Claim your purchase. Amazon will tell us what was purchased and when, but obviously not who the buyer was. To participate you'll need to e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with the subject line "Drink What You Kill" and tell us what you got and the date you ordered it. You'll need to let us know within a week of ordering, though it's best to claim your order after the product has shipped. We'll then confirm the purchase on our end and enter it into our handy dandy spreadsheet. The information will be kept strictly confidential, but there's really no other way to do this contest.

Come February 1, whoever has the highest order total will get their prize. (Actually, February 7, to give people time to claim last minute orders.) It's that simple. Except for the caveats:

1. If for some reason we didn't get credit for the order, we can't count it. But, if you follow one of the links here and make your purchase, you should be fine. Just don't go closing the window and then coming back a day later and complaining it didn't take.

2. The value of the order is based on what you actually pay. If you buy a used book from a third party vendor, you get the actual sale price, not the sticker price. If you cancel your order, it doesn't count.

3. Namby Pamby is not allowed to win. (Same goes for the rest of the Con Daily crew. Sorry, us.)

4. You can most definitely band together. Get your small law practice participating, or your study group, your roommate, whatever. You just need to contact us from the same e-mail address every time you claim your purchases.

5. Here's the caveat you'll like. If a lot of people are participating, we'll bump up the value of the prize. Either one big first prize, or multiple prizes for second and third place. And even better, we'll run the contest another time.

Now get out there, and start buying some shit. You can win some booze. But more importantly, you'll help keep us at Con Daily liquored up.