Computer problems, state championship, chess after marriage

Once again, I’m having problems with the Comment function on my blog. It seems to be a different problem this time from the ones earlier this year, but equally unsatisfactory. My blog is not accepting new comments, and all the old ones have disappeared as well.

I hope that this situation is temporary, because a blog with no comments is just a diary. I’ve e-mailed my Internet service provider and we’ll see what they come up with. I suspect that all the comments are still there, but some program is not talking to some other program any more. Isn’t it amazing how our technology can be working fine one day, and the next day (even though you haven’t made any changes) it doesn’t?

It’s spooky, actually. One of these days our computers will go on strike and we won’t have any idea what to do about it…

By the way, my next tournament will be this weekend, so I will certainly have some news here within the next few days. It’s the CalChess State Championship, and it promises to be a great tournament, with fourteen masters preregistered including the Sensei Jesse Kraai, Ioan Chirila (GM from Romania), David Pruess, and the newlywed Andy Lee, who will show us whether there is life in the chess sense after marriage.

I have a little bit of data on the “chess after marriage” question myself. The first two tournaments after I got married were great — I got my rating up to 2237 — but I was not able to sustain it. Whether it’s been real life getting in the way, or the natural aging process, or lack of talent, I’m pretty much at the same low master/high expert point that I was when I got married 25 years ago.

I’d love to hear what you think about any of this, but since comments aren’t working for the time being, here is an alternative. If you want to say something, send an e-mail to me at qxpch (at) yahoo (dot) com, and I promise I will post any non-spammy comments in a separate blog entry. Hopefully this solution will only be necessary for a very short while.

P.S. I am probably going to play in the Expert section this time, not the Master section, so those of you hoping for Mackenzie-Pruess II (or even Mackenzie-Kraai II) will be disappointed.