The countdown begins!

363 days until the next Bump.

The news this year is that we used tabroom for all the tabbing, and it worked fine. In fact, there were some benefits that we uncovered along the way, like the ability to print up skems for the other building and distribute them without having to rely on a runner to bring the good news from Ghent to Aix. It was our first MJP experience with it, and that definitely was more efficient than TRPC, where half our time is spent doing busywork to see who’s free and who isn’t and moving people around from room to room and the like. I certainly like that fact that when a judge misses a round, you can immediately impose a fine (although I do have to clean up my registration procedures to fully take advantage of this). I certainly went at my miscreants with a vengeance after the tournament ended. Walk out on me, will you? Well, it’s gonna cost you.

It’s amazing how quickly I’ve gone from, maybe I’ll do this, perhaps, somewhere, to doing it everywhere, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. There are still issues to be overcome that have nothing to do with the software, e.g., the lack of internet access at some venues (not to mention the smug expression on CP’s face). At Sailorville we couldn’t connect to the internet because, first, I’ve never been able to connect to our internet, and second, it had just been hacked and eaten a whole bunch of teachers’ files, and I had been warned off by the principal telling me to pass the word. When I announced that people shouldn’t try to access the internet most of them didn’t believe the virus story. Presumably if they ignored me and hacked their way in, the truth of my pronouncement is now clear to them. Anyhow, I had my little Virgin MiFi which worked only through registration in the cafeteria; the walls of the library are too thick, which also affected Kaz’s phone, although she could access the internet if she put her phone on the windowsill in the grammar school. We used CP’s wifi in the HS, and that got us through, but I still maintain that the Hud isn’t the only antediluvian technology setup, and that this stuff just isn’t moving all that fast. With luck, I’m wrong. Anyhow, we’re ready to go at the Tiggers and Ridge, using e-balloting at the latter. I’ll get myself a refresher course on e-balloting when I head up to Wee Sma’ Lex this coming weekend.

We had fewer alums than usual, but of course that’s because in the last few years we haven’t graduated that many debaters. It was good to see Eric again after a long break before he heads down to Nicaragua for the next three years to set them straight. The People’s Champion seems to have recovered from the Vassarian Section, but I didn’t get to ask him what he did with all the leftover hot dogs. Kaz stayed with us at the chez Friday night, since she didn’t have any kids to schlep to Newburg. It was nice to get back early enough to chat for a while rather than being lucky if you get 2 hours of rest between the two days. Having eliminated housing for commuters and stopping earlier and starting later on Saturday made this happen. Unfortunately, it also postponed semis until Princeton for one round and Lex for the other, but a solid 12 hours of debate seems enough for anyone, however pumped up they might be. And they already got their bids, so now all we have to do is hold the round to make it official. Not a big deal. And I’ve always been against torturously long debate days, which offer no educational benefit except to demonstrate that people who run tournaments can be heartless nincompoops, but most people know that already, so it’s not exactly a stop-the-presses learning experiment.