In which the actor's tombstone does not read: "Here lies W.C. Fields. I would rather be living in Philadelphia."

Another Penn is in the can. I would have written about it yesterday but I spent the day sort of zoned out. I watched Solo, a movie with nothing to zone in on. It’s nice to have a day off after a nonstop weekend. 

First of all, the staggered schedule worked like a charm. People knew that we were depending on them, and they rose to the occasion. 40 rooms, going to PF at 8:00, 21 and 19 going to Policy and LD at 10:00, then back to PF at 12:00, etc., etc., for the rest of the day. It was a gamble, but we pulled it off. My unspoken backup if things went south was flight one of the last PF on Sat and flight two on Sunday, but that didn’t have to happen. 

Whew!

There were incidents, but not many. A couple of times people questioned decisions, and we got in touch with the judges who verified what they had written, and there you are. There was a suggestion that the judge in one case was wrong, a suggestion that makes one wonder A) how could a judge ever be wrong, and B) how can that particular genius kid ever lose. The answer is, ) did you ever hear of a 2-1 decision, and B) your particular genius kid isn’t quite the ball of fire you thought. So it goes.

Meanwhile, there were lots of emails from very few people. Almost all of the emails were dumb stuff that had already been answered. We had much discussion in tab about my 10K emails. The theory was that too many emails don’t get read, which countered my theory that too long emails don’t get read, which is why I wrote so many in the first place. I have some ideas on this that I’ll be parsing over the next few days. The goal is to get information to people. The best way to do it is the best way people absorb information. There’s a lot to think about in this. 

There was one tabroom mystery I’m still working on, where a student wasn’t correctly credited in the rounds. More on that TK. 

I did notice fewer issues with hitting Start. Are people finally getting the message? Given that if they don’t hit start we send endless messages to them, their coaches, their next of kin and their family lawyer, maybe they’re beginning to believe that we mean it, and they want those bugging messages to end. I assure you, we don’t send them to people who start their rounds in a timely manner. Maybe we really are evolving into an e-tournament universe. We did e-ballots in all divisions, including speech and congress. In a world where everyone is staring at their phones every waking hour, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that sooner or later they’d adapt. 

Welcome to 2019.