Since life tends to happen, I think it is time we go ahead with the rule change
I suggested earlier to allow the meet date to be changed closer to the meet.
The limitation to changing the meet date is there to force lifters to be ready come meet day. This teaches lifters to get their meet prep right which is very important if one ever competes in a real meet where the date will be fixed. In other words, if the lifter flunks his meet prep and is still sore on Friday, (s)he shouldn't be able to just decide to lift on Sunday instead.
In my mind this rule is worth keeping, but we could probably strike a better balance between catering for schedule changes and enforcing the lifting date. I suggest setting the deadline to four days out from the first day of the meet. In other words, given a meet set Friday through Sunday, Monday meet week would be the last day to change the lifting date. For fairness, this should be tied to the local time zone so that the time expires at midnight local time. In practice, this would give lifters about a week longer to decide on the lifting date.
Before taking a decision on this, I would welcome any thoughts or ideas anyone has. If anyone thinks there are compelling reasons for ditching the rule altogether, lengthening it, shortening it or whatever, please post below. A decision on the new rule will be taken on Wednesday, February 11th.