Deleuzean Potato

bid on me.

I will kill you all...I am finally on the accursed facebook. Screw you all.

In other news, I have added Ashley, Christian, and Sam PH to my so-called "blogroll."

UPDATE: I just discovered Maire's blog.

I spent most of Sunday morning and afternoon driving between BJ and Ida Noyes. And it's not like I could stop once everything was at judgment; I volunteered to do the TBA item, which ended up being to buy lunch for the judges. So I had to run around for another hour and a half for that. So I ended up not paying much attention to most of our items.

One funny part was when Sebastian and Ben were judging our egg catcher. Both of them threw an egg at it, and both eggs survived. Then I asked if I could also try it. My throw went high and hit the PVC bar across the top of the frame. The egg splattered, hitting Billmire (who was holding the frame), and then hit two judges (Evan and Sonia) and another guy who were standing about ten feet behind the contraption. And of course everyone was watching by this time. The three of them took me outside and opened eggs on top of my head.

We took 3rd. Snitchcock was 1st, Palevsky was 2nd. There were at least two things good about this. One was that Palevsky didn't win. That was good because there was some fear among many scavvies that the Hunt would get boring if the same team kept winning every year. There was also a fear that Palevsky has the potential to become that team that wins every year. So it was good to see that that is not the case. I've also heard several rumors from different corners of the scavhunt community (Palevsky included) about a desire to set up their own independent team. Palevsky's loss might help this movement along, which would both help balance the competition among the larger teams, and get more smaller teams involved. Both developments would be good for the hunt. The other thing I like about Snitchcock's victory was Kevin O'Sullivan's props to us in his victory speech. That (and other things) suggested to me that they were energized in a large way by our energy. It also suggested to me that they had won in a manner that was more similar to the manner in which we would have won than it was to the manner in which Palevsky would have won. So I felt that we had a profound philisophical influence on the way teams do the Hunt. Which is a moral victory, at least.

The other thing that was good about the finish was that we moved up. Last year we had taken fourth. The year before (before I was involved), we had also taken fourth. Two years ago, the FIST beat Shoreland (who had fallen from thier previous glory). Last year, we beat Pierce, but Shoreland had recovered and Pierce was in the process of melting down. This year, we beat a fully competent Shoreland and beat a Pierce which has settled into a new identity as one of the smaller teams (for now, at least). My fear last year had been that we were plateauing, and were going to sputter out. I did fear that we would cease to be a viable team. Our move up one spot suggests that we aren't losing our viability, at least not yet. There remains a question of what we do when Buckley, Sawyer, Billmire and Sam PH all leave and can't make it back anymore. But we brought in a lot of new kids this year. One of the things going on this year was the training of the new guard by the old guard. So the team remains dynamic. There is a chance that we will survive the eventual departure of our All-Stars.

Our prospects for next year? Hard to say. At the very least, the Black Box remains a mess, and I have homework. We'll think about that tomorrow.

We're planning to begin moving our items over to Ida at 9:00. Showcase starts at 10:00. Page judging should start around 12:30 or 1:00. We're much better organized this year than either last year, or the Pierce team I was on two years ago. The roadtrip walked in the door an hour ago. Igor, Sam and I are getting a handle on how much we have, what needs to be moved over, and in what order. We've got most of the list done, but I'm sure most of the other major teams have gotten most of the list, too. We'll be doing awesome if we can get that sombrero together. But there's plenty of time for that. It looks like my job for most of the morning is going to be making a circle around the Midway. Every Mothers' Day, there's a bike race on the Midway. They close it down for the race, so we're unable to drive across the Midway. We have to go around to Cottage Grove and Stony Island.

I got about four hours of sleep between 1:00 and 5:00, so I'm good to go for all of judgment. I'm mentally and physically as awake as I can be at this point in the Hunt. Now we'll just have to keep the energy up long enough to present all our items.

My personal highlight was the Calvinball tournament. Just 15 minutes of complete and utter chaos. Every 30 seconds, someone would shout another rule. The result was, invariably, everyone on the field running at someone or something, then trying to kill each other while fighting for it for the next minute. Absolutely fucking amazing.

The other highlight for the team was the Atlasphere competition. We actually built a structurally sound sphere. Palevsky's was a bit less sound, and no one else even came close. Amber was appointed the Gladiator by default. Shoreland's was built entirely out of ductape and cardboard. When Amber chased their guy down, she crushed half his Zorb under hers. The most surprising thing was that the guy walked away. No, seriously.

I didn't make it up to do the Rock last night; I was too tired, and needed the sleep too much. Buckley went up instead. It sounds like it went just fine, despite this.

I absolutely screamed at Sam and Ashely this morning (over different things). Quite frustrating that we all let ourselves get that frustrated over very minor things. Things are much better now. I did manage to get a good look at the resumes before the draft. That almost didn't go so well. One of the Vegans' All-Stars (Allie) got sick after giving blood (she's the only Vegan that's been allowed to actually give blood). The judges were going to give the first team to draft only two All-Stars, which would have sucked. I was randomly chosen to draft first, which was a problem. We didn't care about the difference between drafting first and fourth, because we knew the first pick was going to be one of our people. We weren't allowed to draft our own people anyway. So drafting second or third wasn't going to hurt us at all. The Vegans did manage to get a replacement, so we got three people.

Our submissions were Sawyer, Igor, and Buckley. They went 2nd (Max), 4th (Vegans), and 5th (Snitchcock), respectively, which was a bit low. We really expected them to go 2nd, 4th, 3rd. I managed to draft Corrigan (from Snitchcock), Kathleen Moriarty (from Pierce) and Joel Laneta (from Shoreland). None of the kids from Max were drafted until 15th. Snitchcock assembled a decent team. They got Buckley, Stephen Dranger (Max) and Eric Purdy (Vegans). Stephen's good, but I had little interest in drafting him. He had answered the question "True or False: Corporate sponsorship is the best way for ScavHunt teams to have sufficient time and funds to create items that are both interesting and satisfying" with "True (just to piss off the FIST)." Point is, he and Buckley probably won't get along well. Eric will be a very interesting addition to that team as well. That group will either kick major ass, or detonate, killing everyone within a three-mile radius.

Preparations underway for the zombie/vampire party.

One of the items was to give a professor a wedgie. I did it. Boo-yah. I will not name names, in order to protect the innocent (ie, the poor professor involved). I did manage to cause quite a stir, though, when 12 (!) judges showed up to the relevant class to watch.

Things have settled down quite a bit. We're actually able to work on shit now.

So here's what they did for list release. They took one captain from each team, and led them into the lounge. Everyone else followed, and remained out of the way and quiet. Each captain stood on an X taped to the ground. Moving off of one's X committed one to taking a list. Each list was given a different point value. The first list was 0 points. The 10th list was 150 points. Palevsky moved almost imediately, and said, "I'll take list number 10." That earned him list number one. A minute later, BJ/the no-name team claimed list number two. After about five or ten minutes of people trying to figure out how to resolve things, I eventually said, "Fuck it," and convinced Sara to claim list number three. We then double-checked our list to make sure that was the whole thing. We returned to HQ very orderly.

I like this release. It forced us to value points against the amount of time it takes us to get the list. I would estimate that 150 points is worth no more than an additional 30 minutes of time to get the list. Which is why we decided to just grab it and go. We had a copy of the list in HQ by 12:20. Which is a significant improvement over last year's release.

Connor has a very nice description of the judges' perspective.

Didn't involve us digging at the beach this year. We actually had a copy of the list in HQ by 12:20. We've just finished reading it out loud. Preparations are beginning for tomorrow morning's stuff.

Loading in as I type. Rehearsal was actually 7-9, not 8-10 as I thought. Gave me another hour to run shit around Hyde Park. Which is good. List Release is in 70 minutes. Hopefully it won't be as bad as last year's was.

Let's do this.

So, SG elections are this week. Anyone who talks to me for about 5 minutes will figure out exactly how seriously I take this. For those people, I offer my official endorsement: The Moose Party. I assume no one will require any explanation for this obvious choice.

Now, the gentleman running for Studen Liason to the Board of Trustees is unopposed. I, therefore, have taken it upon myself to conduct a write-in campaign. So vote for me.

I'm giving a talk to the SPS kids tomorrow evening about the Breeder Reactor that Fred and Justin built (see item 240). I'm trying to piece together some semblance of information for the talk.

... as Connor would put it.

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As a member of Blogger, everytime I sign in, I get this little reminder from the folks at Google that I'm invited to try GMail. I have at least one concern about it, but I think I'm going to give it a whirl. There are a few things I'm meaning to test with it. And maybe it will get my seal of approval (as if Google really gives a crap about that).