One long day...

A little while ago, I put the finishing touches on the translation of the steel standard, and sent it off. I do not want to see it any more, though it was a fairly inoffensive piece of work that went rather quickly. With the file sent, I am now free to devote myself completely to the store.

Galina got a call today from someone in the Colorado tax bureaucracy. After she hangs up, she tells me this person will be visiting the store on Monday or Tuesday. "What does he want," I asked. ""I don't know," comes the answer, followed soon by: "Why are you getting excited?" Ah, well... there's nothing to do but wait until this person shows up.

It's nice to have DSL at the store, but it's also a pain. When I overheard Galina and Drew repeating wild rumors about possible postal rate hikes to customers, I took a moment from compiling my postal reports to find news stories that might clarify the issue.

It took me less than 5 minutes to find the appropriate news articles and print them out, but having done so, I now stand accused of "Web surfing while others are hard at work." The fact that various other interruptions stretched what is normally a one-hour task (preparing two postal reports) into 5 hours of utter frustration cuts no ice in some quarters.

In other store-related news, I don't understand why, but for some reason linuxconf never got installed on the Linux box at the store, which makes it somewhat more difficult to pursue various configuration tasks. Having noted that, I don't think - given all the things I have to get done before leaving for Houston - that I'll really be able to do anything about it for a while.

BTW, the user agreement with CenturyTel says pretty specifically that I'm not to resell their bandwidth. I had been planning on putting a machine or two out in the customer area for people to be able to surf the Web, etc., but between this provision of the agreement and my concerns about keeping people from unleashing the Computer Virus From Hell from my store (I don't need publicity that badly), I think it will be a little time before those machines are set up.

* * *Lee called this morning to tell us she'd been in a car accident. She was the fourth car in a 4-car pileup, and fortunately escaped without any apparent ill effects (but with the knowledge that the car is probably totaled, as well as with a traffic ticket). I exchanged messages with her about an hour ago and she still doesn't feel 100%, and plans to go to a doctor tomorrow morning if things don't improve.

* * *Shannon will be traveling to California at the end of the month to be present at the wedding of, if memory serves, her sister. With Shannon traveling on the 25th or so, Galina leaving for Houston tomorrow, and me going down to do some work at JSC at the end of the month, we're going to have to sharpen some travel planning pencils soon.

* * *The snow that all the weather dweebs were talking about for the past few days slid down the east side of Colorado and left us'ns over on the west side of the Rockpile pretty snow-free. A few flakes fell during the day, but for the most part, the past couple of days have actually been unseasonably mild.

* * *The store's newest customer hails from China and is opening a Chinese restaurant in our shopping center. Yes, I'd say things are definitely looking up!

Cheers...

Chess ... The three nerds.

I'm not completely sure, but I believe that Ira Guterman, André Gordon, and I became fast friends somewhere around the sixth grade. Thinking back, I recall that Ira played a clarinet in music class, while I sat on the other side of the room, the only baritone horn player in the crowd.

My memories of our escapades are dim. I know we often ate lunch together and discussed the fine points of the popular television shows of the day. Ira and I were not very athletic and invariably were the last two players to be chosen for any game of ball (assuming we'd be chosen at all), while André was of a more delicate build, more suited to watching a ball game than being in one.

It turned out all three of us developed an interest in chess at about the same time.

And the astounding part of it was this: for the longest time, I lost each and every game to Ira, who in turn lost each and every game to André, who in turn lost each and every game to me.

Go figure.

Our family moved out of Queens two years later and I lost track of both chums. I think they came to visit me once while I was at college, but the contact was temporary. I remember playing one last game against Ira, which I won (finally!).

Eventually, I came to understand - or at least believe - that the key to the riddle lay not solely in objective factors, such as skill at chess, but had to also take account of a very important subjective factor: one's state of mind when facing an opponent. I believe that in junior high, all three of us developed an "expectation" of what we could and could not achieve over the chessboard when playing the other two members of our little group, and that any chess skill took a back seat to that.

When I sat down across from Ira for that last game, my confidence was at an all-time high (I'd successfully hustled a little chess in the Village and at the university, for cigarette money). I "knew" I could beat him, so I did.

And now, it's really time to go to bed.

Cheers...