Turkey, Tiggers and tournaments in general

I’ll probably go offline for a few days, since there’s not much going on forensical over the coming weekend, whereas there’s plenty of real life things to attend to. I trust that you will do likewise. Go cook a turkey or something.

I’ve been adding judges to the hires pool as the Tiggers have signed them up. We’re almost where I would like to be, but not quite. Ratings/striking will take place starting on Sunday, so they have a few more days to get their ducks in a row. The only real problem with late additions is that they’re automatically Cs, even if they’re the cat’s pajamas. Oh, well. Other than that, the tournament is big again like last year, and should be fun for everyone. There’s a real attraction to the Tigger campus. It just feels like college, if you know what I mean, unlike some schools that are in the middle of somewhere else. Like NYU, for instance, which is in the middle of NYC. NYC overpowers the NYUness, whereas Princeton is Princeton, and while they might actually be the pickle packing capital of the world or somesuch, around the university everything is university, period. And what I think people go to the tournament for is the debating per se, since the bid is finals, and therefore pretty elusive given a field of 160. I like that so many people attend. As Soddy once said, he did not run his tournament (Big Bronx) as an entrance event to some other tournament, and that is the way all tournaments should be perceived, as ends in themselves. (I think Kant also wrote about this, but in his case it was sour grapes, because every year he debated he always dropped in the bid rounds.) You go to a tournament for the sake of that tournament. A lot of tournaments have definite personalities, and you want to be a part of the tournaments you like because of those personalities. Presumably some tournaments get TOC bids because the nature of the tournament personality and the people it attracts warrant those bids. As the VCA knows, I value a lot of things about forensics, and among the least of these is the whole $ircuit business. Trust me on this: if you debate now to learn things and enjoy yourself and make friends and do as well as you can, you will value the experience for life. If you debate now to get to TOC at any price and miss out on all the non-competitive aspects of the activity, debate will just be a blur in your past, another checkbox on your list of things that got you into college. Good luck with that one.

And so, it’s off to the holiday. Some early Christmas shopping tomorrow, breaking out the new Wii Resort game with the family, arguing about the Disney trip. (Disney trip? you ask. Yeah, Disney trip. Details to come. I promise you, the VCA is going to enjoy this one. Seriously.) Maybe take in a movie. Clean up this and that. Pack away the rest of the Bump crapola for the year. Play some poker Saturday night. Five whole days off. Ah, blessed peace!

And blessed peace to you, too.

Freedom from Want, Freedom from Fear, Freedom from funny-looking foodstuffs

I let CP go into my computer on Saturday at the terminal level. On Sunday, my iTunes family sharing was dysfunctional. Bleech! Two rules about computers:

1. If it doesn’t work, computer people always blame the computer or the users. CP blamed Snow Leopard for whatever it was that was irking him at Wee Sma Lex that started him crawling into Vegas Elvis in the first place.

2. If it doesn’t work, users always blame the computer or the computer people. At the DJ, for instance, everybody blames the Help Desk, which is in India, and then India in general, when something doesn’t work as they expected. (Makes you wonder if Pakistan also has its help desks in India. That would explain a lot.)

The fault lies not in our stars but in our selves, gentle reader. Except in the case I’m talking about, where it was CP’s fault. (Although I’m not quite sure how he also managed to screw up Little Elvis, who was back home all weekend, by tinkering with Vegas Elvis. Maybe it was the computer after all.) Anyhow, today’s tech tip, aside from that you should always RTFM, even if there isn’t one: if you need to fix family sharing, turn it off and on again.

Another rule about computers: if it doesn’t work, whatever it is, turn it off and on again. 99% of the time, your problem is solved. Wouldst that everything in life were so simple.

Other than the above, Wee Sma Lex went swimmingly, as always. The Sailors in attendance did well, for one thing, all with winning records and one winning her division. This latter was a nice plus, given that said Sailor hasn’t been around much, and this might swing her into more action. She also never ate either matzoh balls or corned beef before, which lacks we erased at Reins Deli, which is why we go all the way to WSL in the first place. (For the record, she did instantly recognize that matzoh balls taste like chalk, only without the yummy flavor, but that’s another thing completely.)

Additionally, CP and I got to hang out for a while, as he runs the Pfffters at the tournament. We did a lot of discussing of this and that regarding the college circuit and MJP and Disney World (major topics of our existence), and especially got to enjoy the phenomenon of the judges putting the forks into themselves because they’re done. Except, of course, they’re not. I’ve talked here ad nauseum about judges who somehow think that a little judging goes a long way, and since they are a short way from home, they decide that’s the way they should go next. This disease always seems particularly rife at WSL for some reason.

When things go awry at tournaments, people seem to think that the tab room can do something about it. Not as a general rule. We can only work with whatever it is that we have to work with. One parent told us how, before arriving that day, all she had been given was a minute of judging instruction, and she had told the coach she had had obligations that afternoon, and now she had to leave. This is not exactly a tab room problem, especially at a tournament with 0 extra judges. If she’s telling the truth, there’s no doubt where the blame should fall. First of all, what self-respecting coach gives parents who volunteer to assist only one minute of instruction? Hell, at the MHL and CFL we have whole tournaments dedicated to parent-judge instruction, not to mention the miles of material I’ve written on the subject. And then the same coach tries to pull a fast one on both us and the parent who was nice enough to help out by obligating her beyond her ability to fulfill the obligation? That is about as low as it gets.

Sigh.

But the biggest sigh of all goes to the magic number, which is 33. Which is what the Panivore was at Glenbrooks. I followed the tournament via text message, round by round. She got to the 5-2 bracket and then, by the proverbial hair, she lost out. Damnation! Of course, the P will immediately get back on the horse again (an exceptionally apt metaphor) and will probably be more determined as a result. A scary prospect, indeed. People were telling me, by the way, that she’s taken to adding a quarter of a teaspoon of cream cheese to her bagels lately. Another scary prospect. What’s next? Buttered toast? It could happen. Stay tuned. (I wonder if the whole family is panivorous. I can just see Dad at the table this coming Thursday, carving the annual Thanksgiving bagel…)

Breaking news!

I just ran the side report from Bump. As it turns out, Aff won a total percentage of almost exactly 50%. Curiously enough, so did neg.

Moral of the story: flip neutral. It wins every time.

In which technology meets reality

The problem is, I collect the recordings, then I mix them, add the bumper music, and ftp the final result to my server. Then I update the TVFT blog page. So far, so good. In a manner of speaking, the episode is published.

Then I forget to update the XML, so it doesn’t go to iTunes.

Or, even more fascinating, I remember the XML but I screw it up, so God knows what it is that’s going to iTunes.

So, last week iTunes lay idle, unburdened by episode six, while this week, two episodes came out at once, although followers of the blog already got one of them last week. What can I say? The hang of this will eventually be gotten. I know it. On the positive side, number seven from this week is the best mixed of the batch so far, and that’s progress, anyhow.

Then again, if you paid me more, I’d do a better job. Stop complaining, you yabbo! Where’s your podcast? Let’s see your tech chops, you braggart!

Feh!

WSM, JSM, MJP, LBJ, JFK, CIA, A/T, TWA (the abbreviated version)

I’m off tomorrow to Wee Sma Lex. It is indeed wee sma on the LD side, but it’s positively gargantuan on the PF side. What’s going on up there in Massachusettsland? At least I’ll get to powwow with CP while I’m churning cards (this one’s going to be manual). We can MJP up tabroom.com to our hearts’ content, for one thing, although I think he’s mostly got it knocked already. Plus we can plan our Tigger dining options, always an important aspect of coachean conferencing.

I’ve been reading the Sandel book, by the way, and while it’s probably fine for general audiences that have never heard of justice, I’m not all that thrilled with it for our purposes. John Stuart Mill came out more in favor of personal liberty than pure utility calculus? Well, yeah, duh. I’m glad to see that the book is a hit and all, but my guess is that beyond introducing the subject to novices, there’s not much here. Then again, there’s nothing wrong with a readable book that introduces the subject to novices, so I just might make this suggested—not required—reading, once it hits paperback. The bottom line is, it’s not original thinking but synthesis. Nothing wrong with that, but not terribly necessary in the LD universe.

We podcasted up last night, so to speak. Tabbing, posting brackets and results, breaking all 5-2s (and, heaven forbid, 6-2s). Some interesting stuff. The tech tip was about Google in general, as in, you want it, they got it. While I’m reluctant to concede some of the maligning done by my partners in podification against poor Yahoo (which is your humble servant’s email of choice, admittedly with half a dozen Google accounts feeding into it, and which is also my team’s listserver of choice, which I think runs neck and neck in functionality with Google’s groups app, with maybe a slight edge to Yahoo because of the calendar), one thing that is true about “the Google” is that there’s always something new going on. I have my Wave invitation around here somewhere, and need to check it out, for instance. And I live on Google’s Reader. (We plan to talk about RSS on a future show, or maybe news in general which, as the VCA knows, is a big concern of mine.) And I blog on Blogspot/Blogger. What can I say about Google, then, except that I just love the Kool-Aid?

So with all of that, I wonder, what’s happened to my world? MJP. Endless tournaments. T shells. That’s just not me. Or is it? We’ll go into all these things in depth here sooner or later. What’s important to keep in mind is that an activity like ours is anchored on certain principles but nonetheless needs to be flexible in its achieving of those principles. I’m very Hegelian on all of this. Very dialectic. From my perspective, one of the biggest problems in LD is not the changes proposed by the wackos, but the unwillingness of powerful people in the activity to listen to what the wackos are proposing. Some of it isn’t wacky at all, if your concern is those core principles. And some of it is so wacky that it evaporates entirely on its own. But at the point where you are unyielding because you refuse to even consider change, then I don’t think you belong in forensics. A few years ago a lot of people were in a snit over the impending implosion of LD. It hasn’t happened. The trends then that were seen as damaging were mostly the use of “philosophers” who were far from meaningful as ethicists, which was a real trend that has mostly passed, and speed, which has been a real trend since my Day One and it’s about time people got over it (a good debater turns the speed up and down depending on the judge, end of story), and theory, which is turning out to be nothing more than people applying names to things that were ever thus, but going overboard with the idea that naming something somehow makes it more important—a dog will still bite you, or not, whether it’s a dog, un chien, or a great googly-moogly. The bottom line is that everything we think we know must always be subject to challenge (which brings us back to J S Mill). The truth will out because it is challenged. That’s just the way it works, like it or not.

It has ever been thus.

You can even put the lime in them; SoCal Cola, available at fine stores everywhere; Tiggers MIA; Et (and his buddy Cetera)

I guess I’m sort of going mentally underground for a little while, following Bump. Running a tournament does take it out of you. Tabbing a tournament is fun and entertaining, but running a tournament, which primarily consists of worrying about what can go wrong, is pretty unrewarding. I wouldn’t recommend it, although heaven knows a lot of people want to do it for some reason. There are more tournament directors manqué than there are weekends to fit them all. They have no idea how much better off they are just going to somebody else’s tournament. Looking for a fundraiser? Go sell coconuts or something. Much easier in the short and the long run. Trust me on this.

Anyhow, my mind has marginally turned off as far as forensics is concerned. I did work with MB yesterday to set up the SoCal tournament on tabroom. (SoCal, to me, sounds like some cheesy off-brand nonfat soda pop. Then again, I run the Bump tournament.) Lawdy, I admit it, I don’t know nuthin’ about birthin’ no speech divisions. I just sort of cobbled together the wisdom of the Tiggers and the Pups and laid it out California style. Bietz has no intention of using tabroom to actually tab speech, so since it’s just collecting names, how bad can it be? I found his invitation only slightly more complex than the formula for changing lead into gold, but he thinks it’s all very straightforward. Whatever. A couple of months from now he’ll be the one going underground.

I also tried to connect with the Tiggers online, but they’re about as responsive as [enter humorous metaphor here for some really unresponsive thing]. I’m not quite sure what they’re up to, and I surmise from CP’s comments on the subject that he feels about the same way about them. He and I will meet up this weekend at Wee Sma Lex to sort things out. It’s not too late, but it ain’t early, either. We’ll see. The real issue is getting a good pool of hired judges. I have no intention of supporting unqualified Tigs as potential hires, but then again, last year we had a fine pool and a fine tournament. Still, we need to get this year sorted out. If you’re driving through Jersey, beep your horn when you pass near their campus. That might rouse them from their slumber.

Obviously, then, this weekend is WSL. I’ve got perhaps the smallest boatload of Sailors ever for this event, but it is what it is. The People’s Champion and the Panivore are traveling not with us but with O’C to Glenbrooks, so that makes a slight dent in the population. The P has 27 cases on all 3 sides, 11 T shells, 14 tubs of evidence and 17 cases of bagels all ready to go, while the PC was thinking of pulling out the crayons last night to scribble down some possible case positions just on the off chance that they might come in handy on Saturday. He needs that haircut badly: the follicles are sucking out the thoughts from his brain and sending them down his shoulders into oblivion. Or something like that.

After WSL, a week off. No meeting next week. No debate. Nothing except maybe trying to play Sims 3. (It looks dopey, but also simple enough for my elementary gaming needs.) By then, the batteries will recharge, the new topic will be out, and all hell will break loose.

Oy.

Bumpidian musings continued

The worst thing about Bump is that it is in two non-contiguous buildings, usually separated by rain. I find this annoying at best, because my job includes going back and forth between the two buildings to keep an eye on things, and I don’t like having to slog through the mud to do it. The novices who are in that other building don’t seem to mind, though, since none of them, despite my warnings, were in any way prepared for rain. No umbrellas, no hats, no raincoats, no nothing. I used to think that debate addles the brain, but the evidence would suggest that, in fact, we attract the addlebrained to begin with. That would definitely explain a few things.

Anyhow, down in the grammar school we have, as I say, the wet novices. According to O’C, who was running the tabroom with a crack assistant drawn from the vast assortment of crack heads of his team, as usual they made every novice blunder that novices can make, but then again, they got to their rounds and no one got so seriously wounded that they had to be rushed to the hospital, although one person did walk into a wall in the high school and cause a bit of personal damage. (I’m assuming that was a novice. I’m hoping that was a novice. And it does support my contention about their being addlebrained ab ovo.) I do not wish anyone physical harm, but there was at least one bright side to this. JV, who was in the middle of a dicey moment of tabbing, was hunched over the computer when the door opened and, without looking up, he responded as he always does, “If you’re not dead or bleeding, get out.” To which our poor wall walker responded. “Well, I am bleeding.” Finally someone met the high standards JV sets for tab interruptions.

Pffft and VLD were run in the high school. These seemed to transpire without too much ado. We had plenty of judges, which was nice. I did set things up so that the experienced VLD judges who had signed up for either Pffft or NLD were available for our doubles in varsity so that we could single-flight it and speed things up. Bietz longs for all tournaments to break all 4-2s, but I wonder if that will ever come to pass at a 2-day tournament. Where, exactly, do you fit in an extra break round? I mean, not only do I have the costs of custodians that grow the longer we stay in the building, there are those teams that have four- or five-hour trips home. Your punishment for doing well at the tournament becomes the ride home? I can understand his CBA on it—he’s looking at the travel costs per kid—but as a matter of normal operation, I can’t see it happening. Three-day tournaments? Why not? Two-day? Na’ah. Sometimes it’s about something other than the debate per se.

So that’s about it. I’ve reset the website for the off-season. I’ll send the bid info today to Kentucky. I’ve stacked the leftover mugs in the basement and the extra shirts will head up to the attic to stay dry for the next twelve months. Can I interest you in a shirt, by the way? I shoulda known better. They’ll sell eventually, but it’s a long haul, so I’m out some cash for a while. But every year there’s a new herd of troopers just looking to do whatever I would do. What? That’s the most bizarre thing I’ve ever heard. Really.