A new TVFT? A weary world rejoices, sort of.

TVFT fans, celebrate madly: Show #35 is now up and running. Normal people should run for the hills.

We intended to talk about Jan-Feb, but agreed before we started that we should wait, so we mostly talked about wiring tournaments. This tournament does this, that one does that. How can we put it all together? The point is not, of course, tech for tech’s sake, but tech to speed things up. If you can trim ten minutes off each round, that’s over an hour of tournament time we could all spend doing something other than getting lost, waiting mindlessly or scratching our nether portions. Some ideas did come out of it. With luck CP will listen to it (he was recovering from a tour of the slums of Prague) and provide some ideas from his end, i.e., the end of someone who actually knows something about tech.

A lot of people (a lot of people) are going out to Blake this weekend, but some of us homebodies will be working with our local leagues. We have a CFL debate event at Regis which looks to be, as usual, way too big. Regis is always generous with space, hosting lots of events throughout the year, but this one tends to threaten to break through the rafters. Hundreds of LDers and Pfffters of all vintages, plus some assorted Polician nuts, stuffed into every little crook and nanny that can be dug up. The ninth circle is the cafeteria in the dungeon basement, where every table hosts a round and every round is happening at the same time at high speed and high volume. I went down there once years ago to find somebody, and ran back up the stairs screaming, never to return. But, rounds are rounds, and I don’t see any other schools volunteering to host it, so there you are. With JV and O’C off in the Blakewegian hinterlands, and even Catholic Charlie having better things to do, Kaz and I will be flying semi-solo, although we’ve elisted Dunay to help out with the heavy lifting. Four rounds, out by 6:30. Can we do it? Is the Pope German? Ja.

One thing I’ve noticed is that for the next couple of months I’ve had to reserve motel rooms up the wazoo. Newark, the UnHarvard, Bigle X… It’s curious nowadays that Expedia prices are almost identical to the tournament block prices, and one must weigh ease of reserving virtually vs mano a mano (click button vs talk for fifteen minutes to some Yabbo on the reservation desk). I tend to trust Expedia more than a Yabbo, but I’m probably just paranoid. Not to mention that everybody seems to have Marriott points but me. I should do something about that, but that’s the sort of thing that just annoys me, for some reason, i.e., having to keep track of where I’m what. I have enough trouble keeping track of all the websites I’m on, with different passwords and the like. Do I need more of that sort of thing?

I’m up to the Gs cleaning up my contacts on the iPhone (slash iPad slash Vegas Elvis, they being all connected). I don’t know who half of these people even are! A new toy encourages a little house cleaning. This morning I patted my V.1 Nano on the head and thanked it kindly, having moved all talk (podcasts, audiobooks) to the Touch. More housekeeping. I mean, how many iPods does one person need, anyhow? Sometimes I think that I have singlehandedly been keeping Apple in business, but then I look around and I realize that I’m not the only one. And the benefit of all this? When I buy yet another unnecessary essential from them, my email address pops up quickly when they put in my credit card. If they would only off the Frequent Fanboy discounts, I’d be in like Flynn.