Enjoy the Archives, 'Like' the blog

I know I need to be posting materials, but what with moving and all I have a rather major hurdle to this: I don't have Internet in my apartment yet. So I will take this time to plug the Archive, located on the right side of the blog a few tabs down. From there you have access to every post I have ever made on this blog. I recommend looking at some of the earlier posts so you can see just how far I've come as a blogger.

Those of you with a facebook account, I would appreciate if you could take 5 seconds to 'Like' the blog if you enjoy the posts I make here.

Hoping to have Internet in the next 2 weeks, so until then I am forced back to the stone age of pictures and text commentary, or random posts like this one. Now would also be a good time to make suggestions, as I have little else to do with my blog until getting my own apartment Internet access.

I have a game to post...

...but I won't be posting it for a few days since I am in the process of moving to my new apartment. On a side note, I hurt my back during the 8.5 hours of moving stuff yesterday, and today I get to move the really heavy stuff, i.e. couches and TV. Goodie gumdrop.

All Quiet on the Wooden Front

Still nothing new to report chess fans. Sadly, none of my correspondence games are ending with interesting tactics or anything, and there are no tournaments around for me to go to. The previously mentioned cool tactic is being ridiculously drawn out by the opponent (who is now in a completely lost endgame), so it will be weeks until I can post it. That is not to mention some of my games, which thanks to my opponents constantly using vacation time and then buying more from the site, have been going on for nearly a year.

On the plus side, I am nearing completion on Dragon Quest 8, to reduce my "need to beat" video game pile to 14 titles. Next on the chopping block: Xenosaga Episode 1, followed promptly by episodes 2 and 3.

So what else is going on? I am taking Differential Equations as a summer class, seems interesting so far. Started going to chess club again, but nothing terribly interesting has gone on there either. I found out that the Hawkeye Chess Club no longer exists within the University, which is a bit of a bummer, but not too devastating to me. I do have one thorn-in-my-side person that constantly wanted me to take over the club and do all sorts of things with it, but I came here to be a student, not to be the overseer of the chess club. Besides that, I will be graduating after the fall semester with degrees in Mathematics and Anthropology, with a minor in Computer Science. Yes, thats right, 2.5 degrees in 3.5 years.

If anyone has anything that they would like to see, please let me know, since otherwise I do not know when the next actual chess-related content will be posted. I am open to Q&A type stuff too, so feel free to ask me anything.

New sidebar thingy for fun

Ever been curious as to what music I listen to? Probably not, but if you did want to know, I have a widget on the sidebar to let you know. Chess updates coming in the next few days.

I've Hit the Big Time!

Look at this! I have a game on the ChessGames site! It wasn't a particularly good game for me, but still!

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=120707

Updates coming

Sorry for the extremely long delay everyone. I had a rather rough semester on both a school and personal level. Now that I have an easier semester coming I will be able to update this more frequently. In the mean time, here is an update on how things have been going:

Almost all of 2008 was a slide for me, all in all dropping to 1900 exactly from a peak of 1941 in January. I recently played in Illinois at Tim Just's Winter Open where I scored 2.5/5.0 and managed to only lose 2 points. On the bright side, I actually think I am a much stronger player than at this time last year. In the next couple days I will post a very interesting game from that tournament in which I really get to use my imagination, starting from move 2! Here is a preview:

Simpson-Madison, Tim Just's Winter Open
1. e4 d6!? (I have not played this in several years!) 2. d4 f5!?(!!) a very unique way to handle the situation. More to come later.