More Bietz; more tweets; more Wii; more general aimless rambling

In 4 Bietz quickly votes against flex prep and in favor of CX. I obviously agree. This is merely following the rules of the game. If a tournament wishes to publish some other rules, so be it, but competitors cannot be allowed to publish their own ad hoc rules as they prefer. This could be argued to death when we start arguing with each other, but it seems like a nonstarter to me.

5. Topic selection
Too much pressure is put on the committee at the NFL tournament to come up with 10 good topics. The topic selection process ought to begin earlier in the year and more formalized in the submission requirements. In September the NFL should take submissions of topics and potential wording. Submissions should have to follow some format wherein the author must provide a short essay that outlines the major issues involved, the debatability, what is at stake, and a short bibliography. In December, the submission process is closed and the committee begins to choose the 10 topic areas. In April or May, the 10 areas are released as well as 3 to 5 possible wordings for each resolution for the community to vet. During this time the community can submit ideas for wording. At the NFL tournament, the committee spends its time on the wording based on the community vetting.

To which I say, merely, yeah. Again, let’s add this to the goals of our communication process. If you think about it, even if the NFL pays no attention, it would still provide to that body some good, thought-out resolutions. Needless to say, as we go down the Bietzean list, the idea/need for a robust coachean communication system becomes clearer by the minute. Which was part of his original point, by the way. I’m not discovering anything new here; I’m just repeating it for effect.

His 6 and 7 speak to different aspects the same point, and I’ll look at them tomorrow.

Meanwhile, in other news…

While I agree with MB on pretty much all matters of debate, I do not agree with him on matters of music. He is from Mars. I am from Earth. He recommends stuff in Tweets and on Facebook that makes my ears hurt. Me, I’m realizing just how good John Bucchino is, wondering how Renee Olstead will sound when she’s old enough to drink, and trying to remember to download the new Melody Gardot, while marveling at how my iTunes library is spread across all four of my disk drives like [insert humorous metaphor here for some really spread out thing for reasons that are inherently inexplicable]. Why does iTunes randomly pick a different library every time I rip something? And don’t even ask about podcasts. The solution to the problem, sort of, is turn everything off and attach your iPod. This will highlight any songs not found in the main library. Then you plug the other drive(s) in and start scrolling till you find unfound songs and get info on the missing songs (which you can do now because the drives are reattached, so iTunes can find them but doesn’t automatically unmark them) and move them over to the main library. Quelle drag, as they say in the French regions of our neighbor to the north. There is no command I know of to aggregate all the not-found songs; obviously, the programmers in Cupertino all start out with big hard drives, or else they’re all a lot more careful than I am. My goal is to have all my music in one place before I upgrade the hardware, probably in the fall. Then I’ll probably use Little Elvis as a jukebox. But in a world where drives fail, the first thing is that all the music be safe and contained. Easier said than done.

Tomorrow night I’ll assemble my crack PF team to start working toward CatNats. Getting the Panivore to return to Albany may be harder than it looks, after her exciting experiences at States, but I think that none of the people involved in making that annual nightmare unusual event happen have anything to do with the Catholic Pfffter world. And since the Sailors had trouble finding my recommended fried fish shack, I am on a mission to discover if it’s still there, or if it’s gone the way of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Speaking of which, somewhere I have a copy of Captain EO that O’C passed along to me. I’ve got to find it and watch it. I need to fill that much needed gap in my life of Michael Jackson entertainment.

I continue to see Twitter as an interesting adventure. I continue to refine my followings, and I have committed myself to only posting things I think are funny, interesting or both. I find it curious how I get picked up by phishers (I don’t know what else to call them) based on things I tweet. For example, I mention golf (which, admittedly, most people find neither funny nor interesting), and the next thing I know I’m being followed by some commercial golf venture, presumably in aid of their eventually being able to sell me something. On the other hand, this elevates itself above the mere curiosity level when I think of applying it to the DJ. In other words, the plot thickens.

And not having much debate work to do (although I do need to dive back into the site pages upgrade; I’m halfway through cosmetics, and need next to look at content, a very summery thing to do) means that I can find an hour a night for the Twilight Princess. This is the most gamelike game I’ve played long enough to actually appreciate the narrative aspects. (A while back I tried a highly rated GTA on the PS2 and found myself bored to tears from running down random pedestrians, so I never picked up on the deeper aspects of the thing.) It’s very entertaining. The Lego Star Wars was just running around shooting things. This is different. And I’ve now played a Link game on just about every possible hardware platform Nintendo has to offer. Rather amazing, when you think about it. Also rather pathetic, but that’s a different issue entirely.