In which, by the by, we cannot buy a bye

Last year we tried e-ballots at Scarsdale and the technology let us down. This year we tried again—there’s no flies on us—and lo and behold, it worked fine, mostly. Occasionally a judge would wash up onto a deserted mental island and we’d get something scribbled on the back of a discarded daily double betting slip, but mostly it was e-ballots out, e-ballots in. Theoretically this should speed things up, but only if: 1) you don’t do PF, and 2) you don’t have judges operating in their own timezone. As for the PF judges, and the field, for that matter, they have now officially taken a half-hour of debate and turned it into an hour, minimum, of no one knows what. It’s like a football game, where there’s only about 11 minutes of ball movement and 3 hours of advertisements, huddles, recaps and dancing sharks. As for the meatheads without working watches, one LD judge, who will remain nameless, and who will be way less likely to get hired in the future, always started (and ended) at least 20 minutes after everyone else. We demoted him to novice, where at least we had one less round to contend with, but that did nothing to put a spring in his step. Too bad we didn’t have Middle School Parli. If that couldn’t speed him up, nothing could.

Here’s the thing. If the round is scheduled to start at, say, 1:00, you might want to start your round at, say, 1:00. Granted, sitting around being either oblivious or too cool for the room may have its attractions, but it’s hardly a recipe for success in the eyes of the people who, whenever they see your name in the future, will only give you rounds guaranteed to make you quit debate and take up industrial macramé.

We have pretty much now embraced the fact that, while tabroom is good at a lot of things, it doesn’t really arrange byes particularly well. In fact, it can’t handle byes at all, as far as I can tell. In our odd numbered fields, the bottom seed never got the bye. And it’s not just us. I took a quick peek over at California, and in the one division I checked, their top bottom-bracketer got the bye rather than the lowest. We had this problem at Bigle, and as far as I know, we’ve had it since day one. It's not something one pays much attention to. We certainly already know that byes can throw off speaker awards and the like. They are, in a word, the kiss of death. Until this problem is fixed, it’s not terribly hard to pair a round by hand, although if the field is big enough, well, that’s another story. Then again, I’m not sure if all that is needed isn't simply to identify the bye, autopair, then switch out the identified bye. Something to play around with in the future unless, as I say, it gets fixed. My bet is that it’s not an easy one, given that pairing is one of the core pieces of the machinery. I could be wrong. I certainly hope so. (I posted this over at Tabroom Adventures as well.)

Catholic Charlie was with us over the weekend, and we discovered his creative side. He was sort of composing an ad hoc opera as we went along, singing away. The best duet? “I got the bye.” “So did I!”

We do entertain ourselves. Although JV did establish a total ban on Nilsson’s “Coconut.” What kind of tab room is that?

And oh, in answer to Bro Ryan's musing that he has somehow become 1 1/2 people, this is not a factor of having embraced the religious life. When the complaints about non-forensic material and adding labels in CL were being batted around, it was just Ryan and CP on the complaining end, at about 75% strength each, hence the math.