Saturday, September 20, 2008

Friday Follies: Vista Rant - Part 2

Virtually Impossible System To Access.



So it was another exciting night of how many tournament directors does it take to submit a rating reporting on a Vista based machine? Once again three tournament directors couldn't make it work. Vista seems to be the OS version of Where's Waldo? Except here it's where are my tournament files, and where are the export files for the rating report? I know they're out there somewhere. Reminds me of this Moody Blues song. If you too young to recognize it in this video pick one of the concert videos instead.



Instead of making ourselves crazy this week Mike decided he would take the computer home, and try to figure the damn thing out. The back up plan was I had the hard copy of all the quad charts and could recreate the tournament at home like I did last week. Though I would not have to do at midnight or some ungodly hour. Mike was going to sleep on it, and give it a try in the morning.

I left a message on Mike's cell phone saying something to the affect of "This is Polly from the tournament director's help desk. Do you need assistance submitting your tournament for rating?"

The answer to the question ended out being no, though he did admit it took him almost two hours to figure out where the files end out. It seems like everything ends out in the "Mike Folder". He finally got the files uploaded to the USCF website only to have the tournament kicked back with an expired membership error. We had that same problem last week. That's what happens when a kid doesn't play chess all summer, and his membership has expired in the meantime. Mike wasn't quite sure how he had arrived where he had, and was too afraid to even open another window to submit the membership. He ended out calling the family, and walking them through how to renew a membership online. After that was done, he was able to submit the tournament and it got rated this afternoon.

Next week's challenge will be, "Can he remember what he did in order to find the files and upload them to USCF?" I suggested that he might want to get "Vista for Dummies". I wasn't trying to be a smart ass with that comment. I find the "For Dummies" books an excellent starting point for learning a new computer application. Skip the techno mumbo-jumbo and tell me how to do x in the simplest language possible.

Next week challenge for me is "Can I trade off my opponents' knights before one of them get permanently lodged on c4 or e4?" My two losses had a lot to do with annoying knights lodging themselves in my territory with no good way to make them disappear. Maybe I need a book called "Knight Trading for Dummies".

In the last round I'm facing Joshua again. Just like two weeks ago, he wins the coin toss and takes Black. A win will give me a piece of first place at worse. It would also help recover from my rocky first round. A draw or loss gives me nada. Maybe I should play a different opening the next time I'm White against him.

Polly-Joshua091908.pgn


Joshua's game has become more well rounded. He can beat you with a blistering attack, or he can grind you down in an ending. It seems no matter how he does it against me, he takes advantage of the edge he gains on the clock. Maybe he's got me figured out to the point that he doesn't need to spend a lot time. He used about 20 minutes for the 53 moves. I used all 30 of my minutes.

6 comments:

Glenn Wilson said...

Virtually Impossible System To Access. LOL. I haven't heard that before. :)

I'm not familiar with this opening but your Queen looks misplaced on c1 to me. On the other hand, the other squares I looked at she gets pestered by the knights. So, maybe just 10. a3 and then if 10...Qb6 11. Qd3 works well?

Once you were two pawns down it was pretty one-sided, but an interesting try is 42. Bd3 with the idea of 43. Rc2 and trading rooks to get a pure opposite bishops ending (or else getting an active rook). I'm pretty sure it still loses but might give a practical shot at a draw.

Polly said...

Glenn: I love acronyms, so I came up with that one when I responded to a comment on last week's Vista rant.

My idea behind Qc1 was to try to trade off the dark square bishop. However Qb6 made that difficult to accomplish.

Trading off the rooks with your plan looks pretty decent for me. It looks like it's hard for black to make on progress at that point. Even with clock issues I might be able to hold by keeping the bishop on the a4-e8 diagonal.

Dennis said...

I've been looking at buying a laptop to replace my 7 year old desktop machine. I hear nothing but bad things about vista...I wonder if I can still get one with XP on it.

Have a good weekend! (What's left of it)

Anonymous said...

Couldn't you use the search function to find the missing files?
Anyway, i know what a pain VISTA is, still having problems with it at work.

The game looks decent but Be3 without first playing the e-pawn?? Well next time try to push that pawn to e4, gives you much more space aswell.

Blue Devil Knight said...

I need a new laptop, but beause they all come with Vista now, I'm waiting a year before they work out the inevitable kinks. I had a computer with Windows ME for a few years: it was hell.

Polly said...

KF & BDK: I've actually have seen ads for laptops where you can XP Professional put on instead of Vista. There was actually an extra charge for the downgrade ROFLMAO! That just shows you bad something is when you have pay extra for the old better system as opposed to the new "improved" version. I just keep using my old copy of XP. It's amusing that when I run XP on my Mac it thinks it's running on a Compac and keeps wanting to go to the HP website for Compac upgrades.

Tiger: Since I fianchettoed the f1 bishop I wasn't so concerned about the e pawn. However it may be that even though I might end out with an isolated d pawn with the e4 push that the increased space might be compensation for that weakness.