Thursday, October 15, 2015

In which we crouch toward Bronxlehem

Crikies. The number of rounds of LD at Lilliputian Bronx, AKA the RR, caused all sorts of heartaches and suffering. The number of judges just wasn’t up to the job. Tabroom does an okay job of staffing an RR, but when things are tight, the odd human (that’s me) can usually wrest another round or two of judging out of it, but ultimately the math is the math. We were struggling with it last night, and then again this morning, but with the late addition of another judge I was able to dump everything one last time and, finally, make it work. This was not heroic on my part. The correct word is dogged. As for PF, that one was large enough to be broken into pods, but it should come as no surprise that we eliminated the flip. Then again, it probably never comes as a surprise to anyone anymore when the flip is eliminated. It’s one of those things that no doubt seemed a good idea at the time, but it seems to have outlived its welcome.

As for Brobdingnagian Bronx, we’re now in the Cloud Cuckooland phase of the tournament, where people ask for the damnedest things, which they may or may not get. For instance, judges. We’ve been pretty good on fulfilling hire requests when all is said and done. I think we covered them all. What we have been unable to cover is non-requests. That is, if you don’t ask for a judge, we’re most likely not going to sell you one. We would like to sell judges to people who don’t ask for them, but the Feds have forced us to abandon our precog program, and so we’re left with only the knowledge of what you actually tell us. Also, when fees are fixed on a certain date, what this means, roughly translated into English, is that the fees are fixed on a certain date. You can drop people to your heart’s content after that date, and we’re happy to see it because you still have to pay for them and we don’t have to sweep up after them, plus we earn a couple of bucks drop fee to cover our Starbucks bill (except there isn’t a Starbucks within a hundred miles of the school, or so it seems). This, of course, is only true at the Bronx, and, I think, every other tournament ever since the invention of the wheel. Also, as much as I would love to assign your inept judges to JVLD, I always find that putting people into rounds in non-existent divisions, regardless of their eptitude or lack thereof, never really works out well. And, as always, Mr., Mrs., and Ms. are really not first names. Except, occasionally, for house pets. I had a dog named Mister when I was a little kid. Granted, my Mister might be able to do a better job at the back of the room than your Mr., but would it kill you to ask for an actual name?

While all this is going on, CP, needless to say, blames me for everything I don’t like about tabroom. It’s good to be the king, I guess. We lowly worms must be screwing something up, except on those rare occasions when it’s all about the prime numbers. Feh. Prime numbers. I’m going to start blaming everything on prime numbers. My boss at the DJ will be happy to hear that. She thinks I’m good at math. That’ll show her. And at home, when I burn the toast. No, that wasn’t me. That was prime numbers.

I’m just going to count to ten until I cool off. 1. 2. 3.

5.

7.

Uh, what’s wrong with this picture?


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