Re: [Palindrome] Have we picked a room yet?

[Michael R Korn <mikekorn MIT EDU>]

Hi.

> Not to be alarmist or anything, but have we chosen a room yet?  

An update on the situation.  We have registered for the hunt under the 
name 
"the palindrome team" (name to be changed later).  You can see the list of 
registered teams at http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/attached.html (the 
number of 
teams has increased from 8 to 16 in just the past two days, it seems).

The hunt organizers have suggested that teams should secure rooms through 
the 
"Base Reservation System" which is a collaborative effort between them and 
the 
Schedules office.  The full explanation of this system can be found at 
http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/rooms-04.html.  Basically, the Schedules 
office 
was sick of getting a ton of room reservation requests from Mystery Hunt 
teams, so they made a list of rooms for Mystery Hunt use, and told the 
organizers to distribute them any way they wanted.  They (the hunt 
organizers) 
said that rooms would be assigned two weeks before the Hunt, once everyone 
had 
a chance to register.  When we registered for the hunt, we said that we 
wanted, at the minimum, two rooms with net drops and movable tables and 
chairs.  There are not really very many rooms which fit these criteria, 
and 
I'm not sure what happens if more people request rooms than are available. 
 
They say that they will be adding rooms to the list sometime soon, but 
they 
haven't done so yet.  (I check the list on a daily basis.)

It sounds like the Schedules office is not willing to give out rooms to 
Mystery Hunt teams except through this system.  (And I doubt they would 
believe me if I said I wanted to reserve rooms from Friday Jan. 16 through 
Monday Jan. 19 to hold a seminar on "Parrots Around the World".)  I feel a 
little bit uneasy putting our room reservations in the hands of the Hunt 
organizers, but it seems like our best bet for now.  If anyone has any 
alternative suggestions, feel free to let us know what they are.

mike