Catching up...

It is turning out to be a pretty slow shift, so I thought I'd do a little freewheel and catch up.

I did some fiddling with my Backpack account, creating a mechanism to address the situation that occurred yesterday, where a client didn't get urgently needed files sent by email. This was a task that had to be done once and for all, because this kind of thing - email not arriving at its destination for one reason or another - has happened all too often for my taste, causing me to have to drop everything and scramble to address the client's needs.

How does it work? Well, it turns out that an email address is created for every page you add to your account, and sending an email (with attachments) to the address associated with the page will cause the message and the attachments to be displayed on the page. (There's also a special subject-line syntax if you want to get fancy and upload lists, notes, or images, but that's all gravy, as far as I am concerned.) The bottom line is this: A job delivery should include an automatic blind carbon copy sent to the "client's" page.

But putting the files on a web page is only half the trick. How might a client gain access to that page (and, of course, to that page only)? The answer is simple: Backpack offers the capability of sharing pages with specific users. And there might lie the rub...

For you see, I've invited said client to share the page for future jobs... but that will require registering for a free Backpack account, which might be enough of a turnoff in the mind of the client to scuttle the whole scheme.

We'll see. If my invitation still hasn't been acted upon by COB tomorrow, I'll pick up the phone to find out why. (This also gives me an idea for a presentation at the ATA Conference this fall in San Francisco.)

* * *I made my first contribution to the Wikipedia by uploading a short article on chess about the Gedult Opening, just to get my feet wet, and because what had been there - a "redirect" to an article on something called the Barness Opening - was IMHO utterly inapplicable and/or misleading. I view today's contribution as a warmup to revising the silly article on my favorite opening, the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit.

* * *Apropos of which, one of my phone games via Medieval Kings 2 just ended, demonstrating just how things can go quickly wrong in the opening:

AlexPGP-NN

1.d4 e6 2.e4 {Looking at the French Defense.} Nf6 3.e5 Ne4? {3...Nd4 transposes to a variation of the Alekhine Defense.} 4.Nh3! {This looks counterintuitive, but White threatens an eventual f3, winning the Knight if he can defuse Black efforts to make trouble from h4.} Be7 5.Qg4 {Forking the Knight and the pawn on g7.} f5 6.Qxg7 Rf8 {Forced.} 7.f3! Rf7 8.Qg8+ Rf8 9.Qxh7 Nf6? {The in-between Rook moves did nothing useful; Black is as good as lost.} 10.Qg6+! {The Knight on f6 is more useful alive!} Rf7 11.Ng5! 1-0

Cheers...

Stirlitz, again...

Found while cleaning out a wiki:

Мюллер вызывает Штирлица и говорит: "Завтра субботник, явка обязательна". Штирлиц отвечает "Есть" и, поняв, что провалился, садится писать повинную: "Я, штандартенфюрер Штирлиц на самом деле являюсь советским разведчиком". Мюллер, прочитав этот рапорт, звонит Шеленбергу: "Вальтер, зайдите, посмотрите что ваши люди придумывают, чтобы на суботник не идти"

Müller calls Stirlitz into his office and says, "We're having a Communist-style Saturday cleanup tomorrow. Attendance is mandatory." Stirlitz answers "Yes, sir!" and realizes he has given himself away as a Soviet agent. He sits down and writes a confession: "I, SS-Standartenführer Stirlitz, am in actuality a Soviet intelligence operative." After reading this document, Müller picks up the phone and calls Shellenberg. "Walther, could you please come by my office and look at the kinds of shenanigans your people will pull in order to get out of a Saturday cleanup?"

You know you've flopped as a story-teller when you have to start explaining 'em, but on the other hand, finding humor in Stirlitz jokes is no easy task for non-Russians who have never been exposed to the story line.

The Stirlitz saga concerns the adventures, near the end of World War II in Berlin, of a Soviet colonel of intelligence (Maksim Isaev) who is masquerading as an SS officer - Max Otto von Stirlitz - in the German high command. In the story he works for Walther Schellenberg, a historically real figure who was head of foreign intelligence, and is the focus of scrutiny by the eternally suspicious Heinrich Müller, another real-life Nazi who was head of the Gestapo.

The story's punch line - that moment where the listener is yanked hard-a-port, so to speak - evokes a delicious moment of cognitive dissonance, because what Müller says is both unexpected (strange to say, something expected of a punch line), but also the typical response of upper Soviet managers to excuses proffered by subordinates trying to get out of a "subbotnik"!

A minor theme that is supported by the story is one that runs through much of the Stirlitz body of humor: Nothing Stirlitz does, no matter how stupid, will ever cause him to be found out.

Cheers...