In which we get out of New Jersey and stay out, for a while

From the Department of Unbelievable Results, Forensics Division, I can report that Hunter won both divisions of Policy at Ridge last weekend. Twenty years ago this wouldn’t even have floated in a fantasy novel (although George R. R. Martin did have them winning Dec in an early draft of A Song of Ice and Fire, which was originally titled A Song of Speech and Debate), but there it is. I find myself unable to find a suitable comment other than, more power to them.

Ridge was a little bit balmier than the Sunvitational is going to be, and if you’re going to that latter tournament you could have saved a bunch of bucks and just hitchhiked over to New Jersey. People were hanging around outside both days, soaking up the rays and, probably, trying to get some cell service. We were in what is rapidly becoming the black hole period of debate automation. The spirits at the high schools are mostly willing, but the fleshes aren’t necessarily up to the task. Schools get their admins to set up the necessary nodes or whatever, and it just doesn’t work. Or there’s no cell service in a building because the walls were made to replicate the Bastille in its heyday, so maybe a quarter of the people get any of the texts. (I got a text when I got home to advance a certain team, about three hours after that particular round had ended.) And the wifi is dicey: great on this hallway, impossible on that hallway. I don’t know exactly what the problem is. The admins promise, but those of us on the other end see no delivery. Which means that the best laid plans gang agley with bells on.  CP thinks we’re torpedoing automation because we’re somehow happier entering ballots until our fingers are nothing more than suppurating callouses. Feh. He should tab a real tournament some time.

There was one oddity, where if someone got a bye in a preset, they were on the same side as their non-preset bye the rest of the tournament. This is so specific that I’m sure it’s solvable in the program, but it’s also pretty solvable on the ground, if people just come and tell us. Unfortunately it was in a novice division, so the poor noobs weren’t really sure what was happening. Plus Ridge had the tab room so locked down (more Bastille-ism) that I had to give my grandmother’s maiden name to get in myself, and one poor girl tried to get to us but was banned for life and, I think, has taken up roller derby and given up debate completely, which happens more often than you think.

I’ve come to the realization that every time I see the Paginator, the first thing he says to me is, “Now what are you complaining about?” Moi? This weekend I was usually just looking for a runner. The Ridge team is so big that everyone has a very specific assignment, and lo be he who suggest that you (random Ridge person) just go do what I asked you to do.

Anyhow, I won’t be seeing JV and Kaz again until they get back from Turkey,  where they’re probably planning on acting as mediators in the whole Russian thing. Christmas in Istanbul. No doubt they picked that time of year mostly just to check out the decorations.