Tragedy strikes, policy disappears, Babel rises from the ashes

Oh, the humanity… I’ve lost the O’C interview. I consider this a tragedy in line with NASA losing the Neil Armstrong Apollo 11 tapes. I copied it over from the MegaPod (where I can hear it fine, which I’m afraid was the only testing I did), but in Audacity, even though the tracks look to be brimming over with ex-cruz-iating information, no noise comes out. No amount of coaxing the file into various other formats seemed to work. Losing access to the actual recording before porting it didn’t help. I’ll try a snort of Senuti next to see if I can retrieve the original, but the VCA and the rest of a waiting world may end up in a state of permanent depression. Consarn it!

I did at least put up a new Nostrum Sunday (not that I could find it yet yesterday via Senuti spelled backwards). Which means we’re slowly returning to normal, whatever that is. This morning I met with the Sailors’ principal and did a post mortem on the weekend. As a result, we have officially dropped policy from future Bumps. As the VCA knows, I’ve been leaning toward at least dropping one policy division and replacing it with Novice LD, but dropping both makes more sense. Simply put, any dubious activities over the weekend inevitably fell on the policy side, and this has been the case in the past as well. LDers are no angels, but if nothing else I know most of them, and all of their coaches, and I’m in control. With policy, that’s not the case. But even absent that, the policy numbers just aren’t there anymore. I’m selling all the slots early, but then everyone sends up sending fewer than they had originally planned. Not much point in that, whereas there’s plenty of Novices in LD just looking for that first two-dayer. What I’m thinking is Varsity LD up at the HS, Novice LD and PF down at the grammar school. We’ll make less money, perhaps, but we’ll have fewer incidents and an easier tournament to run. I’m all for that.

Tonight, back to meeting on Tuesday. Much talk, no doubt, about the topic, now that the plebes have been exposed to it by watching break rounds. I’ve got a feeling that we’re about to embark on a jargonfest, where all sorts of fancy terms for the obvious are thrown around in such a way as to obfuscate even the simplest issue and confuse even the most hardened veteran. It had to happen eventually. I fear that they’ll all start talking like Termite, and then they’ll start erecting this really big tower out on the football field trying to reach heaven, and the next thing you know…