Final word on Yale: I learned that some of our brave Hen Hud legion didn't get rounds started till after midnight last Saturday. 'Nuff said.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I've begun sending out Bump invitations. I guess I could jigger the invite around for the next 50 years, but nobody ever reads it all that closely, so why bother? Of course, with the Peekskill Motor Inn being renovated, things won't be easy. But somehow we'll muddle through. I'm recommending the Holiday Inn Express over the goat path as the nearest. Not much we can do about it...
Monticello is the order of the day, blogwise. Much to the dismay of all and sundry, they were using the new version of TRPC. In fact, so new that it had a 2005 date on it. Great googly-moogly. The first thing that happened to me was that all the policy folk migrated into varsity LD. So I elimated all the policy folk, 2 divisions of them, polician by polician. After that, it refused to acknowledge some of the byes (but not all), forgot who the judges were on a given round, and generally forced you to keep an eye on it every minute. As for policy, they had the same problems, but worse. Every time Kaz turned around, all the policians had become LDers. Not once but regularly.
It was a nightmare. I installed Good TRPC on Sabrina's machine for the future and clearly labeled it as such, and labeled Bad TRPC as "If You Run This You Will Go To Hell (I'll see to it personally)" or something like that. And I warned Dario, who runs East Side and the new Ridge, and Kurt, who's running the policy side of Montclair. If you want hell in a handbasket, it's your handbasket! Meanwhile, the old TRPC, missing some of the nice features of the new, has the virtue of never giving us the least bit of problem. Do not be fooled by newness!
Meanwhile, in one of those great displays of oversight, one of the computers (new) couldn't connect to the single printer (old). One of them had no serial port, the other no USB (I'll let you figure out which was which). Fortunately I had thrown my printer into the car just for the hell of it as a backup, and I found myself running down to the trunk about five minutes after I arrived. Then the computer didn't have Epson drivers, and I didn't have my disk (which I have now copied and stuck in the bag with the printer-semper paratis, baby!) so I had no alternative but to pull out untried, untested little Elvis, AKA the Hunk o' Hunk 'o Burnin' Love (you don't have to be an Elvis fan to understand what I'm talking about, but it helps). The little squirt ran like a champ! Awe was inspired far and wide. No, says I, it's not magic, it's Little Elvis. Oh yeah, and Virtual PC. But it does work. Go, Little E!
After that, the tabroom was abuzz with tabroomian gossip, much of which you can imagine for yourself, since I won't tell you. Losing NFA was discussed at length. When I was at Hen Hud Friday I put in for our school for Nov 12; we would run an MHL at least, which will help ease the pain a bit. I should know in a couple of days where we stand. For those of you who know the tab room personnel, you know that there is always much comparing of symptoms in the race for who's the most decrepit. "I'm allergic to chocolate." "That's nothing; I'm allergic to wheat." "Oh yeah? I'm allergic to any food derived from either plants or animals!" "Oh yeah? Well I'm allergic to air! And vacuums! So there!" I can't keep up. They make me feel like such a medical also-ran. But it was fun to be back, getting the scoop(s) from everyone, figuring out how we're doing what when. We all seem to share one thing: a strong belief in developing the younger students. Not that we don't highly regard older students, for whom we wish all the best. But if you want solid varsity debaters, you need to plant solid novice debaters. It's as simple as that. Which is why we're so gung-ho on the MHL. Which is why we're so depressed about NFA. But with Hen Hud doing an MHL that weekend, and Manchester doing a comparable (which they volunteered to conduct) on the other end of the geographic spectrum, at least we'll save some of that experience for the newbies. Who, presumably, will be next year's oldies.
On the debate floor, Nicole and Craig had outstanding tournaments, the team as a whole looked none the worse for wear when it was over, and we had a nice batch of Chinese food at the Beach to wind it up. It's not great there, but it is open, which is unusual for local restaurants after, say, eight o'clock when they roll up the sidewalks (except, of course, we don't have any sidewalks around here, which I guess means that they're permanently rolled up). Driving through that storm was wet murder: trees down, flooded roads. But all's well that ends well.
Which is enough for now.
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