Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Links

I caught this link over at "dubiousquality":

http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~kritip/managers job.htm

Kind of makes you stop and think about all the opportunities you could be missing out on!

Ed.

The Mages Spellbook

I finished with my homework a little earlier than expected today (8pm). That gave me a chance to get home and play some Oblivion! I booted it up and decided to continue my quest to get into the Mages Guild. To gain status, you first have to travel to all the guilds in the various cities and garner the recommendations of the head mages in each guild. What that inevitably entails is a series of quests. For each recommendation, they all have something they want you to do for them first. I've already gotten 2 recommendations and I was going to try for my third tonight. The deal is this. I need to find a missing mage. He hasn't been seen in a while, so if I can find him I will get the recommendation I need. I start talking to some of the other mages in the guild and learn that he and Valdermort (made that name up) liked to play games with each other. So I go find Valdermort and he tells me that he'll help as long as I agree to get him the head mages spell book... as a prank. It's locked in the head mages desk, so he gives me a spell to unlock the desk. I find the book and I return to Valdermort. He asks me if I've gotten him the spellbook yet. Unfortunately, even though I have it - it's in my inventory - the "quest" in the game doesn't seem to recognize that I have it when I'm talking to Valdermort. I can't give it to him.

Have you ever seen a grown man cry?

The tears. They're welling up again just thinking about it. I had to turn the game off. How could I go on? What's the use? Why?

So I moved on to chess...

I played a game/15 tonight on the ICC against Znebster. I have no idea who Znebster is - as is so often the case when playing on the ICC. I was a little nervous when the game started because my opponent made his first move almost instantly, but then took almost 90 seconds for his second move. That's very unusual in a "quick" game. I started thinking that maybe he was going to grab a book or something. I know, I always think the worst.

It turned out to be a very exciting game. As I started an attack against his kingside, he was planning an attack on my queenside. The goal, of course, is the equal and opposite reaction. In this case it turned out to be not so equal, but it was fun finding out! I was nervous about his attack because I knew that if mine fizzled out I'd find myself immediately on the defensive.

Here's the game:

[Event "ICC 15 0"]
[Site "Internet Chess Club"]
[Date "2006.06.27"]
[Round "-"]
[White "EdBorowski"]
[Black "Znebster"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ICCResult "Black resigns"]
[WhiteElo "2012"]
[BlackElo "2034"]
[Opening "Queen's bishop game"]
[ECO "D02"]
[NIC "QP.06"]
[Time "21:23:29"]
[TimeControl "900+0"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 d5 3. Bf4 e6 4. e3 Be7 5. Bd3 O-O 6. Nbd2 c5 7.c3 Nc6 8.Qe2 c4 9. Bc2 b5 10. e4 dxe4 11. Nxe4 Nd5 12. Bd2 h6 13. a3 a5 14. O-O Qc7 15. Ng3 Ba6 16. Nh5 b4 17. Qe4 g6 18. Bxh6 Rfb8 19. Nf4 bxc3 20. Nxg6 Nf6 21. Nxe7+ Nxe7 22. Qh4 Nfd5 23. Qg5+ Ng6 24. Bxg6 fxg6 25. Qxg6+ Kh8 26. Ne5 Ra7 27. bxc3 Qe7 28. Nc6 {Black resigns} 1-0

The critical move was my 20th. It was one of those moves where you know it's right even if you can't fully calculate a win. You just know it has to be winning, so you play it anyway. Of course, you keep your fingers crossed - and hidden - as you do. This was the position before my 20th move. What would you have done?


I know... just like you would have played it! ;)

Until next time, Ed.

Manic Monday

I didn't plan on being up at midnight tonight. It was a good plan. After work I'd do my Linear Algebra homework until 7pm, then work on my Decision Support project until 9. What happened? Well, my Linear Algebra homework took me until 7:30. There were only a few questions for chapter 2.1, but they took a long time! Mostly because it took me a while to "get it". That and I had a few interruptions.

My project, well, similar I guess. I won't get into the details, but once I got going I kept at it. Until about 11:45. Just a few minutes ago. When you get into something it's hard to let go. Why is it so hard to get into it though? I must say though... Office 2007 Beta definitely takes a little getting used to. Once you know how to get to things, it all works pretty much the same. The trick is figuring it out. As for my spreadsheet, I'm going a little overboard. I can't help it. I need it to be cool, so cool it must be.

BTW, if you happen to know what "GREEN EMPORER WAY WHERE TOWER TOUCHES MIDDAY SUN" means, please let me know. If you're not playing "Oblivion" for the PC, don't worry if you have no clue what I'm talking about. Not many people do! I would like to get a little ahead on my assignments this week into Saturday so maybe I can spend at least one day this weekend playing some more. I love that game!

I hope you enjoyed your Monday.

Ed.

Sunday, June 25, 2006

A slice of life

I had hoped to get a lot of my schoolwork done this weekend. I didn't. My weekend consisted primarily of Oblivion, Chess, and The West Wing. I'm not complaining, it wasn't so bad.

Friday night I decided to get the "Rustic" pizza from Papa Ginos. At the moment it's definitely my favorite pizza. I got there at around 8pm, finally heading home after a busy day. I go up to the register and give them my name. The cashier looks around, then says a large and a small. They have a special - if you buy a rustic pizza you get a free small cheese with it. So I said yes, a large rustic. Oops. It appears after a few moments of confusion that I'm probably telling the truth. Why else would they credit the small cheese on the receipt? So the manager walks over to the register and asks me if I want him to make me one, it would be about 15-20 minutes. I couldn't help myself. I wanted the rustic! So I waited for it.

When I got the pizza, they told me to keep the large as well. Otherwise they would just throw it out. Pizza Fest! On my way home I was heading towards the lights on King street by D'Angelos, at the intersection of King, Bridge Road, and Damon Road, when I noticed it was getting ready to turn green. As I got closer to the lights I started glancing in both directions. It's a habit. I wasn't going too fast, just passing the light, when a car from Damon Road doesn't notice that he's got a red light. He figures it out once he gets about a quarter of the way past the light, blocking my lane, and he stops. Right in front of me. hmm... what to do? So I stop before I hit him, and he's just sitting there. After staring at me for a minute, he finally backs up to the light, and I'm on my way.

Friday night I just watched a couple episodes of The West Wing and ate my pizza. It's a little sad, because I know that this is Rob Lowes last season, and I really like his character on the show. Still, thankfully, the show is full of great characters so I'll get over it.

Saturday I decided to take a break from work/homework and spend the day having fun. So I played Oblivion for most of the day, then went to the chess club at night. At the chess club, like last week, Paul Sarrazin and I played 2 games. If you remember last week I finished with 1.5/2. This week we start out with a game/15. After the game Paul was telling me that he wasn't expecting such a quick time control, and assumed we'd be playing at least game/25. I'm guessing he was primarily annoyed because he got killed on time. He lost on time when i still had 10 minutes left on my clock. In addition to that, he was lost.

The second game we played game/25 and got to the following position:



(the game continued with black playing Rxd2 Rxg5 Kxg5 Kxd2 Kf4 Ke2 and Black wasn't sure how to deal with the White Rook's flexibility.

I had fritz take a look at it today, and it should be a draw. Unfortunately, Paul was down to a couple of minutes left on his clock and I still had over 15. Paul resigned a little bit later because he was about to lose on time and he had dropped a pawn. When I got home from the club I watched another episode of The West Wing.

Sunday was going to be homework day. All day. So I ended up playing Oblivion instead. And some chess too! Not that I'm a huge fan of blitz chess, but today my ICC rating for Blitz just reached its highest. 2005. So that felt good. My ratings on the ICC tend to have a huge fluctuation. My blitz tends to fluctuate between 1600 and 1900 (so hitting 2005 is a surprise to me), my standard between 1900-2100 (my highest was 2199, and the current is 1997).

And on that note, I hope you all had a great weekend!

Ed.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

The Riddle

Yesterday I fell asleep and missed the evening, so tonight I had to play a little catch-up. What did that mean? That meant I got to take my Linear Algebra Chapter 1 Test tonight. So imagine my disappointment when I got home to find my Windows Vista Beta 2 customer preview and Microsoft Office System Beta 2 2007 shipments waiting for me. Guess what I wanted to do?

So I started out by taking the practice test. It was 3 questions and didn't count towards the grade. It was simply to get you familiar with the interface and how you had to take the test. Still, they were linear algebra questions and I wanted to get them right. So I spent about a half an hour on it. I got 2/3. If this was a sign of things to come, I was in for a bit of trouble.

I moved on to the test. I think it took me about 2 hours. There were 20 questions, and even though they were multiple choice they weren't easy. I struggled with the 1st six, and they were only true/false. I also struggled with the last couple. It reminded me a lot of taking the Microsoft tests back in the late 90's. The questions were designed to make you want to pick the wrong answer. You really had to read them carefully, more than once. I'd like to say that I aced it, I really wanted to. I put a lot of time in the chapter, doing all the homework and practice tests. I've probably spent about 2 hours a night for a good week and a half. Still I only managed to pull out an 85. I messed up on 3 of them. I was actually pretty upset about it, but what can I do. Let's hope it doesn't get any more difficult because I've got to start putting some time into my other class as well.

I've been listening to "The Riddle" by Five for Fighting lately. It's a great song. Here's a piece:

The batter swings and the summer flies
As I look into my angel's eyes
A song plays on while the moon is high
over me
Something comes over me

I guess we're big and I guess we're small
If you think about it man you know we got it all
Cause we're all we got on this bouncing ball
And I love you free
I love you freely

Here's a riddle for you
Find the Answer
There's a reason for the world
You and I

And, yes, I did manage to fit in getting Windows Vista installed tonight - on the laptop. I won't really have time to play around with it, but over the next few days I'll probably have some impressions. I'm also looking forward to checking out the latest office. From the previews I've read, it sounds like it's a significant change.

I've also been playing really good chess lately. I don't know why that is... the busier it gets the better I seem to do. Still, I'm looking forward to mid-august when my classes are over and I have some time for a few weeks before my final class starts in September.

I hope you're all having a good week!

Ed.

Monday, June 19, 2006

Happy Birthday

It's official. I'm 35. Where does the time go? No, you don't have to answer that one.

So what's new with me. Well, life is crazy right now. Between work and two summer classes I find that I have absolutely no time. Part of that is my fault, because the time I do have is spent sleeping. Not the normal, necessary, nightly sleep. We're talking more the lazy, lethargic type. What am I doing to try to fix that? I'm sure there are plenty of reasons for it. Weight, nutrition, and exercise are probably the key reasons though. I'm not stupid, I only act it!

So what have I decided to do about it? The usual I'm sure. The latest attempt has been the addition of a spreadsheet. Years ago I used to track how I ate and found it helped me lose a bunch of weight. After years of failures without, I've decided to go back to it. There are better programs out there designed specifically for this purpose, but they can get a little overkill. It depends on what your goals are I suppose. For me, right now, it's simple. I just want to record the very basics. The weight, the calories, the exercise, and the all important... "How do you feel?". Has it helped me? I just started today so it's too soon to tell. But I think it will. To do this I've decided to use google spreadsheets. I wanted to try it out, and this way I'll be able to access and update my spreadsheet from anywhere with an Internet connection. My first impression is that for basic spreadsheets with simple functions, it's pretty good.

We are always misjudging what we eat. If you know that a typical male can eat 2500 calories a day and not lose weight, and that a pound is the equivalent of x calories, what does that tell you? As I said, I'm keeping it simple, but you get the idea. Today I was going to eat a "relatively healthy" lunch. I was pretty pleased with my choice until I looked it up afterwards. 1600 calories. And since we were celebrating my birthday today I still had chinese food, cake, and ice cream to go! As you can imagine, today was definitely "in the red". A dark, dark, red.

A few weeks ago I went down to the chess club and happened to play Richard Gold a couple of games. For some reason, I seem to have good luck when playing Richard. This particular day it was no different, I finished 2-0. Last night I played 2 games against Paul Sarrazin. I finished 1.5-.5, but they were difficult games. The 1st one was truly a game of mistakes. I think I started out with a winning attack, transposed into a crazy endgame where I'm not exactly sure who was winning, but it was close - and I was lucky enough to win it. The next game was another crazy game that ended in a perpetual check. I hope to get the games into the computer for analysis this week, so I may post them up here.

A final note. Kip put me on to this site on Friday which is truly amazing - and hilarious. The guy is a musician who used to be a programmer, and his songs are great. Some of my favorites include "Code Monkey", "Millionaire Girlfriend", and "A Laptop Like You". Be sure to check it out:

http://www.jonathancoulton.com/songs/

Until next time, Ed.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

The Plan

I haven't forgotten about Day 3. It's still in the plan. Coming soon, I hope.

Ed.

The Powerbook

I just finished a long post about my powerbook. The ups and downs of attempting to replace my hard drive. I did it back in January so I was expecting it to be easy. Yeah, right.

Anyway, I submitted my post and lost it all. What are the odds? So instead you just get to hear me whine about it. It just ruined my desire to even attempt to rewrite it. Instead, this is what you get.

As for the powerbook, it's apart on the desk in my living room. Alone. The strangest thing I've discovered. When I put in the new hard drive my powerbook won't even power on. I put the old one back in and it works fine. A hard drive that prevents the computer from powering on? Hmm...

I have no clue. For now.

The battle has just begun.

Until next time, Ed.

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Mass Open 2006, Day 2

I didn't have a chance to update yesterday. It just didn't happen. I think it was partly because I was planning on spending the $10 for 24 hours of Internet Access from the hotel but in the end I just couldn't justify it. I knew I'd only have an hour or two and it really just didn't seem worth spending the money. I know, it seems unthinkable coming from me, but there it is. For me Sunday was a quiet day. That doesn't mean easy, but there's just something about drawing both of your games. It's like that big eraser from the sky just flew down and did it's think. In the blink of an eye, gone. It was just another day.

Interestingly enough, I did get to play James O'Dickson again. He and I played in the last tournament I played in late last year. So far we've drawn both games. He's rated 1949. My other opponent yesterday was Valentin Levin who is rated 1906. So a reasonable result. The game against James was pretty uneventful, so I'm excluding it. But the game against Mr. Levin was pretty exciting. I came out of the opening with a much stronger position, went through a series of exchanges that left me slightly worse, and due to doubled pawns in the endgame and his backward b-pawn giving him some dynamic potential when/if he needs a free move I had to be very careful. Here's that one:

[Event "Mass Open 2006"]
[Site "Hotel Marlborough"]
[Date "2006.05.28"]
[Round "4"]
[White "Edwin Borowski"]
[Black "Valentin Levin"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[WhiteElo "1884"]
[BlackElo "1906"]
[ECO "D02"]

1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Bf4 c6 4. c3 e6 5. e3 Bd6 6. Bg3 Ne4 7. Bd3 Nxg3 8. hxg3 h6 9. Nbd2 Nd7 10. e4 dxe4 11. Nxe4 Be7 12. Qe2 Nf6 13. Ne5 Bd6 14. f4 Nxe4 15.Qxe4 Bxe5 16. dxe5 Qd5 17. a3 Bd7 18. O-O-O Qxe4 19. Bxe4 O-O-O 20. c4 c5 21.b3 Kc7 22. Rd6 Bc6 23. Rxd8 Rxd8 24. Bxc6 Kxc6 25. Rd1 Rxd1+ 26. Kxd1 a5 27. a4 f6 28. Ke2 Kd7 29. Kf3 fxe5 30. fxe5 Ke7 31. Kg4 g6 32. Kh4 Kf7 33. g4 g5+ 34.Kg3 Kg6 35. Kh3 Kh7 36. Kg3 Kg7 37. Kh2 Kg6 38. Kh3 Kf7 39. Kg3 Kg7 40. Kh2 Kg6 41. Kh3 1/2-1/2

Larry went on the rampage. After a tough loss Saturday night, where later we found a perpetual check that he misplayed, he had 1.5/2. So going into the final day he's even with me. We both have 2.5/4. He has 2 wins, 1 draw, 1 loss and I have 1 win, 3 draws. The amazing thing about Larry's play is that he's been lost in almost all his games, yet he's managed to survive and even win.

I talked with the bookseller for a little bit yesterday as well. Randy Malcut. As most chess booksellers have learned, the poker books tend to sell better than the chess books so they always have a good selection of poker books at these tournaments as well. So we talked for a little while about poker, his new job working for the US Postal Service, and even blackjack. I felt bad because I've got to believe that the auction was killing his business. With people already having spent a bunch of their money on books, they probably won't be looking for more books.

Later that night Larry and I were going to head out to Wendy's for some dinner. While we were looking at the crosstables Patrick Sciacca stopped by to look at the Open section. I could tell that he didn't completely recognize me, so I said Hi. I told him that Sean would kill me if I didn't say Hi to him. It clicked. He said, "Borowski, right?". Then he asked me if I had more hair back when he knew me. Hair? I had forgotten those days. We all have our dark dirty secrets!

The final note for Sunday, and I say this in the nicest possible way, is the goop. I have no idea what this stuff was, but it was this freaky yellow goop that was all over the sink and the floor in the bathroom. I could tell you what it looked like, but it's just not possible. And neither Larry or I had anything with us that could have produced such a freakish spattering. I had to clean it off the sink, I just couldn't take it, but I wasn't about to get on my hands and knees for the floor, I was just careful to walk around its droppings. My curiosity finally got the best of me and I finally had to ask Larry... was that his goop? He said no, so the only logical alternative was that the cleaning people had a problem. I can't fathom, so I'm letting it go.

Oh - and this post was mostly written last Sunday at the tournament, but here I am finishing it up a week later. So if the tense gets a little odd, there you go.

Round 3 to follow soon!

Take Care, Ed.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Coming Soon...

Day 2 is coming! I was going to post it yesterday, but last night I got caught up in complaining about Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and how it doesn't completely support the ANSI C++ standards - by choice! What the ....! I also ate too much pizza, so I'm going to feel sick today. It's a disease. The cure? I hear Billy Blanks calling! Bootcamp tonight, for sure.

I also played around a little with the Arena chess gui. It's great for playing chess engines, or having tournaments/matches with chess engines, but apparently not designed to have human vs human games. Which means you really need to use some other program to enter your game in, save it to pgn, then load it into Arena to have an engine look at it. Of course, at that point, your almost better off having the other gui analyze the game too.

I had considered just loading my Shredder chess program, which uses the fritz gui. It's one of the most professional gui's out there. But I'm in an anti-establishment phase right now, and that just seems to mainstream. Anarchy, I say. Anarchy.

So, Day 2 will probably be up tonight.

Until then, Ed.