the frig blig

On the second day of the US Go Congress I won my tournament game and my mood brightened.

After the prior day’s loss I was gloomy, and resolved if I didn’t end up with at least a .500 record I would quit spending so much time on this game. After all, I’ve been stuck at 8k for over a year. Maybe I’ve hit the wall and am just too stupid to improve past this point. Looking around the crowded game room I am surrounded by hundreds of go players better than me. Depressing.

Winning my second game turned my mood around completely. I’m surprised at how much winning and losing influences my mood. I guess I’m a moody guy.

On the third day I lost again, bringing my record to 2-1. Gloom returns. Then at lunch a 1D from SLC sitting next to me offered to review my game. I replayed it for him from memory and he made several very instructive comments. The gloom is replaced by hope that improvement is possible, and I resolve to try and get as much value out of this week’s gathering as possible.

Go players of all ages and stripes descended on Millersville University campus last night, including A and I who arrived around midnite. A fierce three-hour thunderstorm kept many attendees up during the wee hours.

This morning’s round one of the six-round U.S. Open tournament followed tradition by starting over an hour late. After a nice start, a bad decision cost me my first tournament game by resignation.

After lunch I attended Juan Guo’s review of kyu games; she was entertaining as always. Pointing to a group of black stones in the middle of the board Guo asked the audience ‘How do you kill a fish?’…the answer was, ‘not with your hands, but with a net’.

It seemed so wonderful, but then…as the go players advanced to the cafeteria for supper, who should arrive ahead of them but zillions of highschool cheerleaders. The go players were totally outnumbered. An ignonimous moment, but is it prescient?

My old friend D and his 7-year-old son H spent 6 days in Room 5 while S and I played tourguides of the northwest. D and H live in Tallahassee but manage to see lots of other parts of the world. I was happy to host them, the first visitors from my former hometown to make the 2000-mile trip to Seattle.

Here they are on the Pacific coast west of Port Angeles. I left them at the Alaska Marine Highway terminal in Bellingham, from where they boarded the Columbia ferry to Alaska via the inside passage. I’m sure they had additional adventures there, probably including rocks!

During their stay H and our 6-year-old neighbor R were heavily into Pokemon, and I managed to acquire a few cards via a little wheeling and dealing.

What’s black and white and Zoka all over? Well if it’s monday morning then it must be the go gathering at Zoka Coffeehouse in Wallingford.

Go (also called weiqi in chinese and baduk in korean) is an ancient strategy game played on a board with a grid on it. Two players take turns placing black and white stones on the board, with the intent of capturing territory by surrounding it.

Zoka plays host to an informal gathering of amateur go players every monday morning. The go players find Zoka a friendly and comfortable place to scratch heads, drink beverages, and enjoy their favorite game.

In many countries it would be unnecessary to explain this popular game, but here in america it’s not as common and many people don’t know it. If you’re curious, most go players would be happy to explain how the game works. It’s very easy to learn, but due in part to that simplicity, it takes a long time to become good. Patience and planning are rewarded, but creative thinking can be too.

While it won’t stop the Bush administration from waging war and corrupting the government, it may be a rich and rewarding pastime for these troubled times. I say check it out.

I had a percussion jam yesterday with S on conga and myself on kit. It was fun; we alternated between 2 formats, the first in which we both played simultaneously, and the second where we traded solos, playing off of each other’s riffs and ideas. S performed admirably on her single hand-struck drum, coming forth with numerous variety of sounds via using different parts of the instrument. I felt like I had it easier, having many more kinds of hardware to hit.

S has taken music lessons from M, the guitar and keyboard player in my former band D. So at times I felt like I was playing with M through S.

But the most striking difference from most jams in my basement was, S is six years old.

David M. Walker is Comptroller General (CG) of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). IFPTE Outlook reports that approximately 1,400 analysts employed at the GAO are fighting for union representation after the agency restructured their positions, freezing their salaries and cost-of-living increases after promising not to do so.

“The organizing campaign, the first in GAO’s history…happened because the CG misled the analysts and Congress when seeking the authority to restructure stating that ‘no employee would ever be denied a COLA if the individual’s ratings were at an acceptable level…”.

The day after the analysts filed a petition for an election with GAO’s Personnel Appeals Board, Walker’s representative announced he was challenging 461 (almost one-third) of the 1,386 signatures. The GAO also hired private law firm Venable LLC to assist in their effort of “union avoidance”.

Walker’s actions are a clear example of government interference in the analysts right to a fair election for union representation. And it’s our own tax dollars that are paying for it.

May your syncopated soul wail forever in the Hot Club of the clouds.

Awake and come forth, o spirit sonorous.

Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the quick release action of the buckle.

My resolv.conf file was being overwritten by the dhcp client on my ubuntu workstation. This broke various network connections due to the overwritten file using commas to delimit the domain search list. I couldn’t fix the root cause (dhcp client), but I fixed the problem via a builtin workaround by editing the dhclient.conf file.

This file is in the /etc/dhcp3 folder on my machine. I added a ’supersede’ line containing the domain search list that I wanted, recycled the dhcp client, and checked resolv.conf. Perfect.

The line I added looks something like this:

supersede domain-name “mydomain.com domain2.com domain3.com “;

Notice I use spaces to delimit the entries in the search list.

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales received reports that the FBI had improperly used national security letters prior to testifying before Congress in 2005 that “there has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse,” the Washington Post reported Tuesday.

Q: How can you tell if Attorney General Gonzales is lying?
A: His lips are moving.

Here’s a vista we saw from the hike summit near Grandfather Mountain, NC (I took this picture with my brother’s digital Nikon):