In which we diddle with odds and ends

The weekend was time for various odd jobs.

I’ve been communicated with Peter C about the Byram Hills tournament, which seems like a million years from now. There may be a date change. I noticed also that Kirby has created Rather Large Bronx for 2017 on tabroom. Then the Paginator jogged my memory that I still haven’t been reimbursed for my meals and hotel by one of the colleges.

Life goes on.

I also drove my granddaughter home from the hospital and learned the lesson, once again, that driving in, through or out of NYC is a mug’s game. This is why they invented the iron horse, although who wants to subject a three-day-old to that? I have a feeling she won’t be riding the rails any time soon, but she will eventually. City life and all that.

I read a magazine article about speeding up your Mac, and proceeded to do what I could. Dropbox—which I really hardly ever use, having ceded it to the Hens at the Hud—was devouring CPU time, so I cut the ties there, but that was about all I could do. My MacBook Pro is from 2009, and is as updated as it can get. Once again I was struck with the idea that I need a new laptop, but I can’t get past the fact that the one I have works, once it gets started, and the Chromebook I have also works, although it can’t print (or, more to the point, can’t print without jumping through hoops, but then again, how often do I need to print anything at a tournament these days). This is why computer manufacturers are singing the blues: if it ain’t not workin’, don’t update it. New Macs are in the $1500 range, if I’m not mistaken. That’s a nice piece of change that, if one doesn’t have to spend it, one won’t.

I did some work over the weekend on the Toolkit. Lots of it is written up and put on the website, but a big part of it was just the PowerPoint slides, and that needs to be put into written form. Plus there’s the need to collect the random pieces on the Fb page. The goal here is everything in written form, perhaps as a single manual as well as specific articles on this and that. Needless to say, it’s very inside-baseball and not of interest to everyone, but there should be enough interest to justify my effort. For anyone who does run a tournament, I would expect it to be required reading, even if they disagree with it completely. Any Tournament Directors who claim to know everything about running a tournament have a fool directing their tournaments.

(BTW, the OED does now accept “their” as a generic singular pronoun. That is, I could have said, Any Tournament Director who claims to know everything about running a tournament has a fool directing their tournament. But it is sooooo hard to type that after a lifetime of recasting the sentences where the problem would occur. But you don’t care about that, do you, you spalpeen! A curse on you and your progeny, if any!)

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