settling in and down

I've been in my new home now for two weeks and finally have a little time to blog. It was only yesterday that I restored functionality to my home PC - the part that distributes power to everything wore out and needed to be replaced. Fortunately, I work at a technical college and we have a "student helpdesk" where staff and students can bring their troubled computers for diagnoses and help from information systems students performing under the watchful eyes of faculty. They discovered the trouble, sent me to get the proper part, and installed it for me at no charge. I set the unit up last night and tested it to make sure all the programs and databases I had on it before the move are functional. Now all I need is a printer stand and to hook up that piece of vital equipment.

While I was occupied with personal life changes, I managed to miss the Wisconsin Veteran's Open in Oshkosh. I never even thought about it until the Sunday of the event. I would not have likely been in any shape to play chess well that weekend anyway, but I might have played just to get the "rust" off. So the next tournament will be the Northeastern Wisconsin Open in Neenah in January. I'll be able to study and train for that, now that I can resume lessons with Yelena and play some chess online. Now that my chess coach has returned home after a good result at the European Team Championship (+2=7 on board one for the team from Greece), we are going to look at another GM of note, Boris Spassky. I have a couple of books of his games, notably the collection edited by Barden that was published before Fischer-Spassky I. Yelena suggested an examination of Spassky's playing style, especially since he favored the Closed Sicilian with White for a time.

I have a lot of catching up to do with chess. Prior to the move, I was working with Glenn Flear's new book "Tactimania!" which is a very good collection of tactical puzzles from his own games and those of his wife. I've looked at a few puzzles in the last two weeks, but nothing that resembles "study." What I like about the book is that the positions are new - not some of the oft-used positions that show up in nearly every other tactics book. They are rated as far as difficulty is concerned and there are a bunch of them right at the beginning to whet the reader's appetite for more instruction and additional challenges.