Tekneek

Has to have been BD. I wonder if anybody has kept a record of them. It would be interesting to see how good he has been.

Dumb attempt at a joke, I know. It's early on a Sunday and I'm in my office working...

I'd be happy if they just told us exactly how amplification is judged, in all uses, and provided examples of it affecting scores in both positive and negative ways. I'm not sure I'd pay any amount of money for that, but I would definitely like to have this defined clearly.

I think we did something like that when I marched. We also did a run-through with the age-outs in the stands on the morning of Semifinals, I think.

I heard Jack Nicholson was there, right on the sideline.

Having only been to two Finals, 1993 and 1994, don't the winners always let it rip?

Hah. Good point!

While you are coming up with these theories, let me know what your theory is for this: 1992 Quarterfinals - Star beats Cavaliers by .7 and Cadets by 1.1 1992 Semifinals - Star loses to Cavaliers by .2 and beats Cadets by .7 1992 Finals - Star ends up .8 below Cavaliers and .3 below Cadets How could that happen when they didn't even have a hash mark controversy?

From what I recalled about them, you might gain a little more insight into how they've arrived at these numbers. The more open the whole process becomes, the better it is for the activity. Maybe it would be meaningless. I'm just thinking that more information cannot be bad.

I think they should release the judging sheets, at least for the regionals.

If they've got that kind of memory, I need to take them to Vegas so we can make LOTS of money and start our own corps. :)

They used to have random seeding for Quarters at least, I think, even as recent as 1990...

Why did you start yelling?

I do agree with this. While the talking still makes the show less desirable for me, they have made it far less annoying than it was earlier in the summer. I still can't imagine ever listening to it or watching it in the future, but if they were determined to keep those elements in the show then they have at least improved it a lot. Much better use of that equipment than last year.

This is a season where it seems I won't like the winner. It has probably happened before, although I don't recall a particular year off the top of my head. I don't really enjoy BD, Cadets, or Cavies right now. If The Cadets came out without their microphones tonight, I might love that show forever, but they seem to think amplified vocals are crucial to a drum corps show these days. So I have a problem with the design of that show. I don't know how anybody can ignore talking throughout the show like that. It is impossible for me to not hear them talking. I really like Phantom and SCV this season, but they are so very unlikely to be able to get to the top. Crown appears to have ruined the end of their show. I gave the talking a chance and I'd rather hear the instruments instead. I got the feeling they just dumbed down the entire presentation. Perhaps they thought nobody understood it was a race and felt they had to talk through it to tell the right "story" at the end. Funny as it may be for some, I found it to be unnecessary. Bluecoats are good, and the amped vocals at least sound a little better going through that other device as opposed to the unaltered voice, but the narration is just way too cheeseball for me at moments. I went 7 deep and I only truly enjoy two of the shows. They will roughly be in the middle of that pack, it seems. I'm happy Spirit made it, as an alum, and hope Phantom and SCV can find some way to move up tonight...

Michael Vick? Seems more like a Steinbrenner perhaps. Not that he is getting rich or anything, but that he is the head of a successful organization and appears to insert himself into the operations much more than others in similar positions (and also represents some things about the activity that a significant amount of people don't like).

You haven't been talking drum corps online for very long, have you? This stuff is normal.

Really? I doubt it works that way for most people, but I could be wrong. They might lament that, to some degree, but watching the show will more likely remind them of all the good things from tour and not about scores/placements.

Maybe a mix of the two would work better. I doubt they are interested in more judges, but that would really give us a better picture of what is going on.

Corps staff and fans don't want each show judged as if it were the only show of the summer. They get upset about any significant variations in the scores from one show to the next. They want to see correlation from one show to the next, which leads to some judges 'doing homework' so they know what numbers a particular corps has been earning recently. Assuming you keep the 'build up' system, I think you MUST have random seeding at all shows. The only exception might be Finals, perhaps, but even then it should be random bottom 6 and random top 6. This means judges will have a harder time 'slotting' by default. This would require that fans and corps give up this fairly recent attachment to performance order based almost entirely on previous scores. At worst, you can give the previous year finalists the last 12 slots (randomly assigned) at both Quarters and Semifinals. Everyone else goes randomly assigned before them. Then the top 12 go to Saturday and are randomly assigned in groups of 6 (or entirely random since there is no broadcast to break it up for).

I don't think it even requires American citizenship. I suspect the requirement is only that you be a human being.

I didn't log off. It logged me off. The webcast died and when I tried to refresh it (since trying to play it just did the "Ready" thing over and over) I was back at the login page. I've sent DCI a nastygram, being sure to emphasize that I was fully prepared to let them off the hook for all their other blunders until that happened to me last night.

Captions being all over the place is far more interesting than each caption being within a place or two of the overall corps number. Plus, that sort of thing always makes me feel like a whole lot of slotting is going on.

I wish I could say I had the same experience. For the first time I got completely locked out about the time Potter was talking about the Hall of Fame inductees. I had been dropped about once per performance during the webcast as well.

Can anybody give me a link to online support?