Life-changing events

Today I changed the theme on my Yahoo home page from Halloween to Thanksgiving. Talk about momentous! I also just wrote Burgers to tell him I've got my copy of RCT3 for the Mac pre-ordered. Little Elvis has been remarkably game-free till now, aside from poker. It's time to move on. I had also been considering the new Civ; Civ and RCT are the only two games I've ever really allowed to take over my life. Or maybe they're the only games that ever could take over my life. I chose RCT because I think that at the moment I've been Civ-ed out, but I've still got a few coasters left in me. We'll see.

Yesterday morning I met with one of the new APs and explained the ins and outs of Bump and Mini-Bump. She was very nice about the whole thing. One worries sometimes that the school is secretly out to get you, but in the event, we've never really had anything but the most solid support for forensics at Hen Hud. We are so much luckier than a lot of other schools, especially considering that I'm not even there to keep the machinery oiled. Then again, maybe it's better that I'm not there. The more of my oil, the less well things might work.

I haven't seen our results yet from the Home of the Albino Bagel. I did hear from CLG who—surprise—agreed with me on what the topic ought to be about. It wasn't even a bad topic, all things considered. Too bad most people are more interested in winning debate rounds with dumb positions than actually debating a resolution. Averill & Co. did do the LDEP bit to some extent, including, apparently, the much maligned (by me to the LDEP folks) point system that is supposed to average out at 25. This, to me, is such a leap past present practices as to be incomprehensible, especially since I don't see any particular gain from it. Points are the least problematic of the issues facing LD today. Top speakers at tournaments are almost always objectively the top speakers, so why would it matter what numerical device got them there? More problematic would be the assigning of rounds to random rather than rated judges (although it's unclear to me if Tim actually did this). While I certainly support intelligent lay judging in LD, I also believe that if one is running a competition, one needs to address the needs of that competition. If the first 2 rounds are random, everyone has plenty of opportunity to win over less experienced judges. Ditto if you're above or below the bubble. But at the bubble, and keeping in mind that one is playing up the whole TOC qual business, you sort of have to play the game. Hell, I'm even offering strikes this year at Bump. While I think that Mutual Judge Preference is probably antithetical to the ends of LD, I nonetheless don't think it's all that terrible, and I'm frankly not really convinced one way or another about it yet. I've heard good arguments in favor and good arguments against. Not that it matters much, I think, at a tournament like Bump, because it probably simply wouldn't work. It barely works at TOCs, after all.

Of course, I do know that HoraceMan, the superhero without any superpowers, did manage to pull down another qual. This is his third, plus he broke at Bronx. If he keeps this up, I may start to believe that it's not a fluke.

I gather that things were pretty quiet on the Lakeland front. Having two bid tournaments in the same region at the same time did seem to lower attendance at both. Which was predicted by one and all. Obviously there will be much rustling of calendar pages between now and next season. (And for HH, Nov-Dec looks so bleak, at least this year, without NFA.)

An MHL update went out yesterday, reminding the troops of Monti and Mini. I've got a feeling Mini will be oversubscribed; UDL is talking about sending 27 teams (where did they get that weird number, anyhow?). There's just so much space in the old Hud... Not that anyone concerned reads this blog other than the O'C and that piker who just wants to make trouble, but if you are of the concerned persuasion and you're thinking of waiting to the last minute, don't. We're going to have a lot of policy, at least. Obviously, the NFA gap affects everyone.