The long weekend

I hope you all had a great weekend! How was mine? Overall pretty crappy. That's just the way it goes sometimes. It wanted to be good, or at least I wanted it to be. Lots of plans, not a lot of success. My brother asked me today if I was done riding my bike for the year. I think he's tired, after only a month, of it being in his way. What can I say? The most beautiful day of the year... and he chose today to ask me. Maybe in a few weeks, but hopefully we've got a few more good days left.

I spend most of Sunday trying to recover information from old hard drives. Mostly my brother's. He had a lot of stuff on their that he "needed". I rebuilt his computer a few weeks back because it was in terrible shape. And the hard drive had seen better days. Now I can't even get it to recognize the drive. It was very frustrating. And he's not someone who takes "I'm sorry, there's just nothing I can do for it" very well. So Sunday was almost wasted. I spent hours on his hard drive alone, with absolutely no luck. The only good thing that came of it was that I tried one of my old hard drives and managed to get all of my old iTunes music that I had purchased off of it and onto my current computer. That's music that I thought was gone for good. I also managed to recover my sister's old mail off of her hard drive. I also went over her house on Saturday to hook up her new Dell Monitor. She got a new Dell computer the other week, and every time the computer went into powersave she couldn't get the LCD to turn back on. Dell sent her a new one. Let's hope that fixes the problem.

I have my first test tomorrow. I had planned to study for a few hours today. Actual study time... 0. Not so good. What happened? I decided to do it today (Monday), and today didn't go exactly as planned. Mostly I'm just lame. I helped my mother with some ceiling tiles in her kitchen, brought a ladder to my sisters house and held it for her while she trimmed a big bush and cleaned her gutters, then got home with a headache. Watched the 1st two episodes of Studio 60 on the sunset strip, found my head was getting worse and I felt like I wanted to lose it. So I slept until 6 then went bowling.

I had a good first game with a 198, but from there I went to about a 146 and finally a 178 (or something close to those numbers). Adam bowled around a 420 series, so at least I didn't do that. In case you're curious, it's bad if you're Adam.

I'm going to get to bed soon, so I'll probably just try to get up an hour or so early tomorrow to study. At least get a little bit in. I picked up a new chess database this weekend, so I was hoping to spend some time with that. It hasn't happened yet, so maybe in the next few days. I'll be sure to post more about that in the near future.

Some great new games due out this month. I'm really looking forward to Neverwinter Nights 2. I played the first one a few years back when I was still living in Jon's basement. It was a fun game. It's a fantasy computer role playing game. Think Dungeon's and Dragon's. Though I haven't been motivated to get back into Oblivion lately, so maybe it's foolish to be excited about a new game. I'm just not the gamer I used to be years ago.

I went to the chess club Saturday night. I played a bunch of games against Frank (I've mentioned him before, he's a friend of Casey's who comes to visit every few months). He's planning to play in his first tournament soon, so he wanted to get some practice games in. I forget if we played 3 or 4 games. I didn't record any of them, but they were interesting. A few times when he made a critical mistake we moved the position back so he could play something else. He was telling me that people tell him he's probably around 1500 rated. I'm not sure I'd put him at 1500 yet, but he's getting there. Tactics! Study more tactics!

I then played a game against Wyatt. Again I didn't record it. It was another interesting game. I think I'm required to say that about all the games I play. Still, they are interesting. I'm not sure what Wyatt's story is, though chess-wise I'd probably put him somewhere in the 1300-1500 range. Tough to tell.

Holding out the most exciting until last, the Chess World Championship Match between the current FIDE Champion Vesselin Topalov and the Classical Champion Vladimir Kramnik continues. I know I've mentioned it before, but Topalov seems to have this uncanny ability to blow away the competition during the second half of tournaments. Could this continue during a world championship match? After games 8 and 9 one would say yes! Kramnik, who is a very difficult opponent to beat, lost 2 games in a row to the FIDE Champion. So going into Saturday's game he was down 5-4 with 3 games remaining. Of course, one of those losses was a forfeit, but unfortunately that's the way it stands. On Sunday Kramnik came out of the opening with an advantage that was easily turned into a win after Topalov blundered. So the match is now tied at 5-5. Today was a rest day, so the final 2 games will be played on Tuesday and Thursday. If it is still tied, then Friday will be tiebreaks. They'll be going to faster and faster time controls until a winner is determined.

As for me, I'm still rooting for Kramnik. He's never been my favorite player, but after Topalov and his manager with the bathroom debacle, it just left me with distaste. As I'm sure the salad Donna makes for me tomorrow to have at lunch will as well. Still, I hope I'm wrong. About the salad that is. I'd love to find some healthy food that I actually don't mind eating.

I hope that you've enjoyed your weekend.

Ed.