I think all of us who have done our time should drink a toast in wherever we end up this year.

Juliana, the queries to the hotels in Philly are done through hotelplanner.com with my name and log in. Are you going to take over?

For now, at least. Is that okay? And can you send me the info?

Yup, that's fine. I'll email you with it now.

Wait, both Amy and Javachik are pimping Philly?

Vortex, I think originally Amy and Sox were pimping Philly. They asked for help contacting hotels, so I did that. I also posted links re: Philly. I think we're all pimps working the same block.

I am hesistant about hard coding the dates. Depending upon time of year they could permanently lock out cities in warmer climates which would be unfortunate. It could also permanently lock out people who have consistent conflicts at certain times of year.

For picking dates, the way that I think we did it last year seemed to work well. Once we narrowed it down to about 4 dates, we had a poll where each person picked their first choice, second choice, and so on, and there was also a "Which dates can you not attend?" question. We gave each date one point for each last place vote, two points for second-to-last, and so on, and then subtracted a point for each person who said they could not attend that date. Most points wins.

It's the narrowing down that causes a lot of angst. The need for flexibility is why I suggested hard-coding three dates - we could go up to 4, and use the preferential voting we used last year.

Frankly, I understand that there will always be scheduling issues and a need to change things up, but we need a system better than our current dartboard method.

It's the narrowing down that causes a lot of angst.

I thought that worked out OK this year -- didn't we start out with a "Which of these dates could you attend?" poll, and that got it down to five or so?

including Oracle.

Oh good lord.