I was fairly close to my ppd estimate, but mildly depressed when I sprung a blue leak last night and had to scramble to plug said leak so I wasn't dragging the team down on the home stretch. There was blue coolant all over my dresser and dresser top, lol. I lost over a quart or coolant total. Sheer panic mode.

Just my 2 cents, but we are talking time zone challenge. That covers a large geographical area.  If only 40 people sign up. That wouldn't even be enough to potentially fill 1 person per state. Its always going to be unbalanced in this regard whether you consider population densities or not.  We would need to recruit in the upwards of 500+ people to narrow down the potential gaps in time zones. With numbers like 10 people per team, 1 person can offset the entire competition alone. With 100+ people per team, that number begins to diminish.
 
I don't feel it is productive to penalize, or not count every folding point due to unbalance issues as it is counter productive to the ultimate goal of folding.  Yea it sucks to lose (I am part of the mountain team), but as I have mentioned before, a contest on this large of a scale with a very limited contestant pool, we will run into these issues.
 
Even if your team doesn't win, you are still a winner. Its about who you are helping when you fold. Its not about yourself. Its a donation. As with anything, you can donate a few cans of canned food to a food drive, or an extremely wealthy person can donate $1,000,000 to the same organization leaving everyone else feeling like their donation is useless.  On the other end of the fence, even 1 can of food can make a difference in ones life, even if it is only for a day.  The same concept translates into folding. 
 
I completely understand that competition gives people more drive and motivation to fold the most they can. So its more fun to feel like you have a chance. But then again, a completely balanced competition isn't necessarily fun either.

I know Mt. would not win but that did not stop me from,Firing up every thing I have well all most could of added 2 or 4 more older gpu's. I did not fire them up to win I did it because its fun doing contests here.Lol my 16 core 4p's just set there getting dusty cost way to much to run them but I do run them for contests.
I stopped updating my GPU's after the bigadv thing happened and now mostly buck fold.Really hard to tell what your PPD will be by only folding on 1/4 th of what you can fold on a week or two a month.
I like the TZC the way it is and next year could be even more fun with the big 6o core servers only getting smp's
Well It will have been 3 years on the same computer think the cpu and motherboard will be good for 3 more can not see going from 12 cores to 16 BUT.I all ways have wanted to put 4 GPU's in there its built for it.<<<< wishing I picked up a money pit called a boat on top of my hot rod project not much left for any thing else

Speaking of folks being able to forecast good numbers for contests.  There are factors at play within DC-land work that also complicate a good estimation.  One of them, as Bcavnaugh shared is that people don't just do one thing (Fold or Crunch).  They often do both and can be involved in multiple contests at once.  So they are floating along, possibly sticking pretty well to their forecast and then "bang" your Team needs more help and the cry goes out for "turning up the juice".  So, the likely thing is that you pull some machines into play that you had not expected to use in hopes that you can help the team. 
 
When Bigadv was in its heyday, 8101s could suddenly start landing upon you without mercy and pound you for weeks while other people were basking in better performing WUs.  There too would go your forecast that may have included/anticipated other more tasty Bigadv WUs.  The same thing happens with GPU Folding.  You can be floating along, happy as a clam with your favorite GPU WU and then the WU-fairy decides to deposit a load of the worst WUs on you for days (or weeks).  Call it "luck of the draw" with PG Servers, but those things too used to complicate my best estimates. 
 
So, all this to say that forecasting (for me) was more "art" than "science" when I was Folding and I rarely (if ever) came up with a forecast that was accurate. 
 
I also agree with anyone that just loved the TZC for it's simplicity and lack of complicated rules, formulas and debate of same.  I was very fortunate to have been around for many of Troy's excellent contests and they will always be remembered fondly. 

on a lighter side ...it's nice seeing a 
"2014 TZC Team Display"
 
and the graph says 2011 Time Zone Challenge 
 
hey are we using stats from 3 years ago....LOL

Bummer my 4P OS is down hard....Re-Installing OS.
At least we are somewhat at the end of the TZC.

BOOOM
Mountain takes #2!
well done team, thanks for adopting me!
I thought our power to weight ratio was awesome

Yay! Time for a few games, after the other teams finish :-D

Xavier Zepherious
on a lighter side ...it's nice seeing a 
"2014 TZC Team Display"
 
and the graph says 2011 Time Zone Challenge 
 
hey are we using stats from 3 years ago....LOL

Darn it! You figured out my secret for stability! 

Also, it looks like Mountain crossed the finish line around 2am EST, Dec. 18th