Jaws, Teeth, Mess

A few things have come up suddenly on this end, so I will unfortunately not be able to make the NY tourney next weekend, although I very much would like to. For those of you going, I hope you all have an awesome time! I'll be cheering you on from afar.

WCSC is about the only tourney that's somewhat doable now before year's end. I find out this week if I'm able to attend that...

You will need to have played LOZ: A Link to the Past to understand this. I found it rather amusing...click here for the win!

...but man, it's been a good one! I am somewhat reflective at the moment, as I am heading off to university next week (Sept 2nd is orientation, 3rd is first day of classes). It's been 3 years since I graduated from IT School in Calgary, and 5 years since I started in that program; schooling feels like a lifetime ago! For those of you who haven't heard, I've been accepted into the Bachelor of Arts degree program at the University of British Columbia's Okanagan campus (it's here in Kelowna), where I'm aiming to major in Spanish and minor in French. I'm excited to be learning more about two languages I've wanted to read/write/speak properly for ages now, so I don't think it'll always feel like work, but more like fun!

I took a look at the questions wallydraigle left for me in my previous entry, and managed to answer most of them. He was kind enough to talk me through it as I was searching myself for answers (thanks man). So, I've decided to put Scrabble study (and thus at least for now, major improvement) on the shelf. It just isn't significant enough to me right now to warrant all the time I'd need to put in to substantially improve. University studies and my workout program are the two current items high on my list of priorities, so I'll be pursuing those first and foremost. Any Scrabble study at all (if I do it) will likely be Jumbletime/Aerolith daily challenges, and nothing beyond that. I'll likely go to the WCSC in October in Calgary, and then call it a year (Scrabble-wise, that is).

Earlier tonight I played my first long series of Spazzble games, first against pwerth (I still don't say pee-werth, I say pwerth!), and then against rafij0052. Winning percent against pwerth? At least 90%. Winning percent against Rafi? At least 80%. Net rating after both series? -1. Grrrrrr! Getting to play GUAIACOL as a natural through an A to open one of the games was pretty sweet. Maybe I should just treat my tournament games as Spazzble games...look out bbstenniz, I'm challenging you to some Spazzble games soon!

Yeah, it's taken me this long to get to my "Part 4" post. Since August 6th, I worked all but 2 days as a temp hire at a big warehouse sale for clothes. By the time I got home each day, I was pooped and not at all thinking about finishing up my Orlando tale & analysis. Anyhoo, here goes...

I was going to examine my last 7 games, but really, I'm just too lazy; in my case at least, those last 7 aren't likely to indicate much that the first 21 didn't. What did my first 21 games indicate? That I only show up mentally to some of my games, and sometimes only part of one.

My word knowledge is very clearly random. Truth be told, I have only ever specifically studied 5 bingo stems (RETINA+blank, ARSINE+blank, SENIOR+blank, SENIOR+blank+blank, ARSINE+blank+blank, and that was back in 2003, my first year in the NSA). The only things I've ever studied by probability are the Top 1000 7s and the Top 1000 8s. I specifically studied every single TWL06 new word from 2 to 8 letters long before they were all made official. After that, anything else I know has come in one of four ways. The first and most tedious way that I learned words was by randomly looking through pages of an OSPD3 each day, and writing down 10 bingos that I'd never seen before into a notebook. I'd certainly never study that way now, but I enjoyed doing it back in 2003 when tournament Scrabble was still fresh and very exciting for me. The second way I learned words was getting walloped by players way better than me, and memorizing their cool words (I couldn't even begin to tell you how many hundreds of games I have lost to nagekinoki, for instance). The third way was also very tedious; to learn the 4s and 5s, I generated two separate lists out of the now defunct LexPert, one for the 4s and one for the 5s. Any word that I knew, I deleted from the list. Whatever I was left with was my final list. I printed both lists off, put them into a binder, and stared at them nearly every day after that for a long time. Any time I played one of the words, I put a check mark next to it on the list. It was a total motivator for me to be able to check words off! Crazy, yes, but also fun at the time. The fourth, most recent and most effective way has been via JumbleTime (and more recently, Aerolith), playing all of the daily challenges. Even those just pick random words though...

I was obviously not thrilled to only finish with 12 wins in Orlando; I'm pretty sure that I am better than that. I do know what I have to fix, though:

1) Keep focus throughout an entire game, and ultimately throughout an entire tournament
2) Solidify my word knowledge
     a) Be sure of any word I play before I play it
     b) Challenge correctly
3) Improve strategically

1) is a matter of discipline, and should be less of an issue once I make an effort to deal with it.

2) is pretty much self-explanatory; people getting away with phonies on me, me incorrectly challenging valid words, me chickening out on a valid play (all of which happened), points to the need to not just know all the words roughly (and I'm not even at that stage yet), but know them cold. To get there is a commitment that requires a lot of time, though.

3) is where I have the most trouble right now. Excluding missed bingos or obvious missed large plays, I don't understand why some of my plays are wrong when Quackle says so. Please understand that I do not by any means believe Quackle is correct even close to 100% of the time; I am very much of the opinion that Quackle makes crazily wrong suggestions at times. What I mean is, when Quackle makes a suggestion that isn't crazy wrong, sometimes I don't understand why it sims higher than my chosen play does. Some of it may have to do with rack balance; besides some of the more obvious rules (4:3 consonant/vowel ratio, E-A-I-O-U being the vowels in order of preference to keep), I really don't understand it. I honestly couldn't tell you if TINE or TIRE is a better leave, because I really don't know. I don't know where to even begin learning about which letters have better synergy together. Some of my trouble may even have to do with Quackle not always understanding inferences on the opponent's part. Whatever it is, I'm feeling really stuck. I am aware that my strategy is lackluster, to say the least. I just don't know what to do to improve it, other than play for many more years before understanding, but I figure there has to be a better way than that.

People have told me that I need to make a choice: be happy with being a great player, but not elite, or make Scrabble a huge focus in my life, and hope to eventually attain 'elite' status. I've tried to avoid coming to such a choice, but it's clearly there. It's been 3 weeks since Orlando, and already the desire to become an 'elite player' has significantly waned. When I am honest with myself, I recognize that the desire is only there when I'm in a tournament setting. I have placed a lot of importance on being perceived as a great player. I know that's not right; how I am perceived should never be based on how I perform. I have been a complete slave to the performance mentality in the past, and it's nearly killed me. I now face the dilemma: do I accept being where I'm at and aggressively pursue other dreams and desires that have surfaced (music and languages being several of many examples), or do I continue to focus on Scrabble and lightly pursue those other dreams and desires? Would love to hear your thoughts.

A friend of mine from Calgary recently posted some of her thoughts on suicide in a note on Facebook, as one of her sister's friends apparently committed suicide recently. Some of her thoughts included that no one is at fault for a suicide, and that it is unfair to call the person selfish for committing suicide. Her note was inviting to feedback, so part of my answer included this:

"...However, an action as drastic as suicide would never come into being without significant external influence. To be in a place of so much pain that death becomes more appealing than continued existence is simply impossible without SOME form of instigation. Suicide without fault is impossible; no action so drastic can ever be unfounded."

One of her other friends responded with this to me:

"What factual reasoning and understanding do you have, other than your own personal opinions from your experiences in life? I'm calling you out Jessie, not because I disagree, but because you make such statements without any indication of if they are your own opinion or if you they are valid, from a well educated, professional source. I do so to make an example out of you, in hopes to show everyone how important it is to speak clearly always, and especially so regarding such a controversial issue...If you are not educated in psychology, or more specifically the psychology of suicide and the affects sociology, society and other environments has on suicide then your statements are indeed not valid from an educated stand point."

Several thoughts on it:

1) How is it that unless something written is from "a well educated, professional source", it loses validity? Yes, I understand that ultimately when writing, I am biased (by definition, at least), but that doesn't automatically make me wrong...
2) You want to make an example out of me for not speaking clearly? I took the time (obviously with more than just what I've shown here) to demonstrate how it is impossible, when examined logically, for any action (in this case, suicide) to be without cause/fault. Not a difficult thing to argue. I even said that I was writing from an emotionless, philosophical point of view; is then the basis on which I'm writing not clear? I think it's quite clear... (I didn't even mention the irony of him misspelling my name just before saying that he was making an example out of me, haha)
3) I basically already said that society/environment affects a suicide decision when I used the words "significant external influence" in what I originally wrote. Do I have to hold a PHD in human psychology to be able to understand that society in general is full of self-centered, cruel people?

Another irony he's missed is his clear projection of performance orientation during a suicide discussion. It may not be the case every time, but depression (and in some cases, suicide) often comes about because a person feels unable to live up to expectations, set either by other people or themselves, whether they're realistic or not. Performance orientation is very very dangerous...

I thought about sending him another response, but I stopped myself. Why bother? Oh, and Part 4 of Orlando yet to come.

With half the tournament over and my projected rating relatively unchanged, I told myself it was a new tournament, and tossed the old games/stresses away. After Game 18 I was actually back to an even record at 9-9! Unfortunately, I still had moments of idiocy show up in my games on Day 3, and lost 3 in a row, 2 of them very winnable. I don't have all the plays for my Round 19 game with Rafi (he pretty much jewed me in the 1 game of the 3 I couldn't do much about, not much to write home about), so no annotation from that round, but here's all the rest:

Game 15: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1840 vs David Pearl
Game 16: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1841 vs quinquennia
Game 17: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1842 vs Lisa Odom
Game 18: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1843 vs anendlessnight
Game 20: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1844 vs Ron Hoekstra
Game 21: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1845 vs Jan Dixon

After Round 21, we got an Ultimate Frisbee game in! This is something that we had planned on doing months in advance. I even created a Facebook group in preparation for it! Competitors included bbstenniz, captaino, dillyroo, muzjikman1974, copyright1983, nigelbo, axolotl8, Dean Saldanha, Rafi Stern, Michael Perl, Daniel Fogel, Kenji Matsumoto, Tim Michaels, and Stephen Sneed (hope I didn't miss anyone, sorry if I did!). Dion Saldanha didn't actually play, but she took some awesome pictures. For the record, "Hi, I'M Dion!"

After two UF games (each team won 1 game apiece), a group of us headed for the swimming pool. There was a large volleyball net stretching from one side of the pool to the other, but there wasn't any normal volleyballs...instead, what they use to play is a giant beach ball! Just as I was exercising my dominance at pool volleyball, someone pointed out that there was a basketball hoop around the corner in the pool, and all attention went over there. Nuts! I was never very good at basketball, so I chickened out and didn't play as everyone else started to play "Bump". I had my fun though; I made it my mission to throw people around in the pool, everyone at least once. No one was able to escape my wrath! (especially not you, dillyroo!)

I'm so glad Nationals is never just about the games. Part 4 (including my general/final thoughts about the trip) still to come! Oh, and as always, feel free to leave strategy-related comments for my posted games. I definitely need the help there, so anything is appreciated.

After a devastating 1-6 start (and minus a LOT of spread), it was evident that I would be getting a bye fairly soon, as Division 1 had an odd number of players. I was right; in fact, I started the day (Round 8) with a bye! Needing something to do (sitting around wasn't going to cut it for me), I decided to ask Sherrie St. John if she would like guest commentary for the round. She happily accepted and taught me some of the basics on what to do. There was surprisingly a lot more to it than I thought! It was difficult to not be biased and hover around the tables of my closest friends; Sherrie made it clear that during a game, I should never be by a board for more than the time required to see a player's rack, glance at the board and look for any plays that stand out (both plays already on the board and plays that the player could possibly make). My guest commentary actually ended up getting put up in its entirety under Round 9 on the NSC website. I had a lot of fun doing it, but wow, it's not as easy as it looks, guys! I have definitely gained more respect and appreciation for the work that Sherrie puts in, even with all the mistakes that inevitably come up. She is doing a 2-3 person job on her own, and to that I say hats off!

Unless you are one of the elite players in Division 1, there rarely tends to be an 'easy game', even with a crappy record. Even so, I wasn't expecting to be paired up against a previous winner of SCRABBLE All-Stars. Yes, at 2-6 -644 (with 1 of the wins being the bye), I was up against none other than David Gibson! In the past I might have majorly panicked and/or psyched myself out, but this time I just laughed and looked for our table. It is so nice to be able to enjoy playing, regardless of whether or not I'm doing well in a tournament. Obviously I'll feel better when I'm winning lots, but you get the idea...

Here is a peek into some of the brilliance (and certainly some of the mediocrity) of my playing on Day 2.

Game 9: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1799 vs David Gibson
Game 10: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1800 vs Michael Baker
Game 11: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1801 vs Robert Ellickson
Game 12: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1802 vs etheridge2
Game 13: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1803 vs axolotl8
Game 14: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1804 vs michaelearly

After Day 2 (and halfway through the tournament) I'm sitting at 6-8, -558. I'm thrilled to almost be at even again after Day 1's disaster!

None of us were really sure of what to expect from the NSA's evening reception. In previous years (particularly Phoenix), it had turned out to be quite disappointing, mostly due to a lack of food. This time, the quality of the food was definitely better, but it sure didn't last long...on instinct, I piled my plate high with the chicken wings, figuring there wouldn't be another chance to get more. I was right. One plus was the fact that we had an open bar for the evening. In a very uncharacteristic manner to what I'd normally do at a party, I actually had 5 Coronas over the course of the evening! Apparently I'm not a lightweight drinker...I hardly felt different. If anything, I was a little more tired than usual at the end of the night, but not much else notable. Here's what I learned at the reception:

1) I would have to drink a lot to get drunk (and I have no intention on doing so)
2) Don't cheat against a drunk Fogel at Blitz (*cough* kangarau *cough*)
3) Don't ever leave your beer unattended, or Krafchica will drink it
4) If you are unagreed, hide your verbiage -i +e when they come looking for you, or you're gonna spend the night outside...
5) Scrabblers are hideously bad dancers (some of them being drunk didn't help, either)
6) Joe Edley actually used to teach ballroom dance!

Near the end of the reception I got to play with Win Inthara against Pakorn and Robin Pollock Daniel in a partners match. When I was asked about the game later, Sherrie insists that I must have been drunk, since I couldn't tell her any plays from the game. I seriously didn't think the game was worth remembering; it was pretty much just standard. I eventually managed to remember one bingo that Pakorn & RPD played (MARTINET), but that wasn't good enough to keep me from getting further teased by Sherrie.

As always, comments, strategy pointers, "How could you be such a freaking idiot?"-esque comments, etc etc, are welcome. More of Orlando to come, stay tuned...

PNS, unlike PMS, is attainable by any gender, and does not come after a specific age, but rather after a specific event, which in this year's case pertains to LARDOON. It is SO hard to go home to the everyday after spending a week with good friends doing something that we all love to do: Scrabble!

I stayed at a cheapo hotel with Kenji, spherulitic  and bbstenniz  on the 24th. Tony Claitor came by with his girlfriend Eva (she's beautiful btw, Tony) to hang out with me and Kenji while we were waiting for Chris and Conrad to arrive. We went off to an all-you-can-eat buffet to have a late dinner in the meantime. Let me TELL ya...one of the things I most miss about living in the States is their buffets. SOOOOO good! I had 3 full plates of various dinner items, followed by a heaping plate of mixed desserts. I could very well have rolled out the door after I was done. Kenji was dumbstruck at how much I could eat!

Chris got to the hotel at 10ish, and not too long after we were playing Super Scrabble. We decided to play with 8 tiles on our racks for the whole game to make it different. I'm pretty sure I won, getting 3 bingos down and some other high scoring plays. Some speed games were up next, in which I got utterly destroyed. Tony and Chris went out to drink, while me and Kenji opted to stay behind. Unbeknownst to spherulitic, I took all of his clothes he had left on top of a dresser and began to 'evaluate' them. Kenji just shook his head, amused, and eventually joined in! We agreed that there were only 2 shirts in particular that we really liked, while the rest of the them were given grades ranging from 'average' to 'thisoneneedstogobacktothestorepronto'.

Chris and Conrad both got in fairly late. Much spooning between Chris and myself commenced. His attempts at becoming big spoon were futile; he eventually gave up.

On our way to the event hotel the next day, we guessed at who the first Scrabbler would be that we'd see. None of us were right; Conrad saw some people that I actually didn't know, but the first Scrabbler I knew that I saw was dianagram, standing in line waiting to check in to her room.

The resort was gigant0r! Our room, of course, was a bajillion miles away from the playing room & after hours room. Man though, the rooms were freakin nice, well worth the $159 per night...shared with 4 other people. SQUISHY-SQUISHY! We quickly found out that getting to inexpensive food was not going to be possible without getting a ride in someone else's vehicle, which of course were too few and far between. Thankfully, I knew how we could fix that problem, at least for breakfast: employing the wrongradical  strategy (going to the gym to get an apple at the front desk). It is a well kept secret, which very few Scrabblers knew of, as there were always plenty of apples available at the gym whenever we'd go. NOW NOW, no telling!

There were a LOT of people delayed getting to the tournament. Our room checked in 8 other people besides ourselves! (mostly Conrad doing the work, though) In the meantime, I sat around in the afterhours room, waiting to collect roto money from people who chose to pay on-site for James' roto. I had collected from all but a few people and it was getting later in the evening (like 8 PMish), so I went with Conrad, Kenji, Evans, Michael Perl and Jason KB for dinner somewhere at Universal Studios. We ended up at Hard Rock Cafe, and met Shannon Burns there, one of the best players from the Calgary Scrabble Club. While waiting for dinner we read out Trivial Pursuit questions (we had all received a copy of the game from Hasbro in our registration packet), most of which we actually managed to answer. Definitely wouldn't have been the case if it had been the genius edition...

We got back to the afterhours room, and of course as I had predicted, there was someone looking for me that wanted to pay roto fees. Susi Tiekert flagged me down, telling me that Ron had been looking for me for the last hour to pay for the roto. She probably would have given me a tirade that would have taken my head off, but I managed to keep Mount St. Susi dormant by telling her that I hadn't eaten since the morning (which actually was true, with the exception of the small sandwich that Joey Krafchick's mom graciously gave me in the afternoon). I found out that cesarsalad, aka Cesar Del Taco, was going to be late (he had to get a new flight to Fort Lauderdale and drive up 4 hours to Orlando!), so I stayed in the afterhours room until just about everyone had gone. He was originally going to stay from 10 PM to midnight to collect any last minute entries, but obviously would be unable due to his poor luck with his flight. One plus with the afterhours room this time around: they had snacks! Partially stale popcorn and various snack chips, along with water, but hey, it's a step up from nothing at the Biltmore...

In the morning it was a pleasant surprise to only have 10 minutes worth of announcements. We were all expecting a lot more of them. I would also be surprised by my day's results, but they were anything but pleasant...

Game 1: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1779 vs. chaithedog
Game 2: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1787 vs. Marty Gabriel
Game 3: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1778 vs. magratheazaphod
Game 4: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1788 vs. Dave Leifer
Game 5: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1789 vs. dillyroo
Game 6: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1790 vs. olaugh
Game 7: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1791 vs. Steve Glass

Not gonna lie, was definitely expecting better than 1-6 after Day 1. Oh well...

In the afterhours room, Conrad kept telling me I had to throw Matt Canik, aka BingoBOY, into the pool. The only trouble with this is that BingoBOY is 200+ lbs. I told Conrad I could definitely lift him though, which he said he wanted to see. I did manage to do that, and Conrad managed to take a rather awkward shot of it, too! (see Facebook for details, kthxbai)

Strategy pointers (I can always use the help), as well as general comments, are always appreciated. More of Orlando to come!

I am too lazy to do justice to Orlando's awesomeness in writing just yet, but it will come within the week. Anyway, on with the main bulk of this post...

The idea has popped up before, but I've never really thought about it much until now. The only New Year's tournament that happens currently is Annette Tedesco's New Year's tournament in Albany, NY. It's an awesome tournament; heck, I've been there twice it's so good! However, I don't see myself being able to afford traveling that far in the long term for tournaments (for Nationals/PCs and maybe one other a year will be about all I can handle). I happen to be a certified director. No one on the west coast is planning on a New Year's tourney. Vancouver has their main tourney in March, and Seattle & Oregon have larger ones in May. What if I had a tournament in Kelowna over New Year's?

Early thoughts for tourney structure are:

-   Possibly open tournament format
-   Perhaps an EB on New Year's Day (a Thursday)?
-   For main event, something like 4 games Fri night, 8 Sat, 4 Sun?

General early thoughts include:

-   Will people be willing to go somewhere that has no active Scrabble scene?
-   Will people be willing to go somewhere that is not a major airport hub? (4 hour drive/0.5 hour flight from Vancouver, 8 hour drive/1 hour flight from Calgary)
-   As people outside of BC generally don't know much about Kelowna, will I need to sell the location before selling the tournament?
-   I find the experience just as important as the tournament; should my focus be to deliver a superb experience or a stellar tournament?

I have various ideas (including some from pals like bbstenniz) on how I could make the tourney 'a superb experience', but I'd like to hear from you. Do you think the idea of a tournament in Kelowna has any chance?

Police Don't Know What Prompted Vicious Bus Attack

I was flying home from Orlando in the afternoon when I saw this story on the in-flight satellite TV. I just about cried and literally have felt sick to my stomach in varying degrees since. It's no secret that I'm a sensitive guy, but this especially brings that out in me. I am also by nature a very justice-driven person, even on behalf of people I do not know/never knew, so inject those feelings in combination with the aforementioned, and you get where my head's at. I really should not watch the news; it regularly destroys the faith that I put in humanity.

And here I thought that my older bro and his fiancee completely breaking up yesterday (and several friends going through some very difficult stuff this week) was gonna be the big issue for me to work through coming home...

Lookin' like a lot of poop for the week. Not gonna lie, I was not anticipating (and certainly disappointed by) a forecast of a week of clouds with chances of thunderstorms. Thunderstorms = flight delays = chaos

I'm glad I booked flights to get in a day early now...

For those of you who have seen the CGP discussion, you know of what I am referring to.

Let's have some fun with this. If the product were to actually exist...

1) Who would you pick from the Scrabble community to model (at least 1 of each gender)
2) Who do you think would be the most likely to actually buy one?
3) If you were in charge of the ad campaign, what would be your strategy? (optional question)

On Canada Day (July 1st), some 18-year-old guy from Westbank (city just outside of Kelowna) decided to motorcyle into Kelowna DUI, at some point along the way lost control, was thrown from the motorcycle, and later died in hospital. This guy was apparently really popular, and had just graduated from high school the week before. One part of me says "How could you be SO stupid?", but that's not really the reason I'm bringing this story up.

Some of his friends on Facebook made "RIP Chad" groups where people have been posting all sorts of memories they have of the guy, and so often, I see people writing with regret, usually in the sense that they didn't tell him "how much he meant to them" or "what was cool about him", etc etc. Why does it take a death to bring this sort of stuff out? Why do youth (but more or less, people in general) feel like they are unable to share such things under normal circumstances? Now, I'm not an extreme mushy-gushy guy, but I do appreciate any time I get to hear about how something I've done (whether I knew it or not) has impacted someone's life for the better; I feel like I've been able to accomplish some of my life's purpose, and in the process brought someone else a step closer to theirs. What is so hard about expressing how we feel about a friend/acquaintance? Fear of rejection? Fear itself?

I know I've been guilty of taking some of my friendships for granted. I'd like to try to change that. Whether we've only talked on LJ/ISC, once or twice in person, or have known each other for a while, if you're interested to know what you mean to me and what I think is cool about you (I'll keep both short), leave a comment, and I'll respond to it. Cheers guys!

No, not Age/Sex/Location. I was at a sports function tonight here in Kelowna, and two pals of mine (brothers) brought their stepbrother along. I was surprised to learn that my pals know ASL (American Sign Language), as their stepbrother is deaf. I've been aware of the existence of ASL, but I've never really seen it demonstrated. I think it's SO cool! After coming home from the function, I was inspired to learn how to sign "My name is Jesse". I think I've got it off by heart now!

Are there any LJers going to Orlando that know sign, or know people going to Orlando that know sign? I would love to learn a little to surprise my pals. Man, I love languages; I wish it were actually possible to learn them all! That obviously will never happen, but I hope to learn some along the way...

P.S. The $40 charge from OT was resolved, so all good there now.

All the calls on the cell phone outside of Canada during the fiasco that was getting to BAT netted an extra 60ish bucks. That hurt. Oh, and now, for some reason, the Holiday Inn Portland has charged my credit card an extra $40, almost 2 months after being in Portland and not even staying at their hotel!

Me and nagekinoki had driven down from Vancouver for OT a day early (Thursday May 1st) and planned on staying in the Holiday Inn for one night before the event, as we had another hotel lined up the rest of the time. We get to the Holiday Inn and they tell us that there are actually no rooms available, despite the fact we'd booked the day before. They sent us across the street to the Shiloh Inn with their apologies, and a voucher for dinner. Somehow, there is a charge on my Mastercard bill that was just added yesterday, but was supposedly processed by the Holiday Inn on May 1st. My two questions are, 1) what on earth is the charge for? (the room was definitely more than $40 had we been staying there) and 2) why has it taken almost 2 months to show up, as erroneous as it is?

I called the Holiday Inn yesterday and today, and both times their computer system has been 'down', with a suggestion of calling back the next day. Because it's just $40 I'm not at the point of pulling my hair out or anything, but is certainly annoying. It's a good thing I don't plan on doing many tournaments after this year...

I haven't even been studying words. In fact, I've been playing more sports than ever, and doing other random stuff besides Scrabble. I really ought to at least review some before I go. Someone remind me the week before I leave. Until then, I'll continue anagramming road signs and finding all the sub anagrams in them...oh, nerddom, how wonderful you be...
 

632 registered players for the NSC as of this moment. Not too bad...that's 130ish more than the Player's Championship last year and roughly the same number as Phoenix (625 there). I still see no registration from Pakorn, though...that makes me sad. =( Hurry up, man!

Kids these days...so smart! Clicketh this link to see evidence of such.

Yet another reason as to why I can't go to Reno, as much as it'd be fun:

Flight City	Airfare	Driving Costs (from Kelowna)	Fly Time (round trip)	Drive Time (round trip)	Total
Seattle, WA	$260	$140	4 hours	14 hours	$400
Vancouver, BC	$440	$100	6 hours	10 hours	$540
Kelowna, BC	$560	$0	10 hours	0 hours	$560

I haven't even factored parking costs into the Seattle option, which would add more to it unless I knew someone there who'd let me park my car for a week. Even then, that's a lot of driving. Having a SMART car is the only reason the Seattle option even looks as good as it does. It sucks having an automatic $100 added as fuel surcharge for crossing the border...

I think I've picked a good time to make this my last year of playing in many Scrabble tournaments abroad. I'm gonna be sticking to tournaments almost exclusively close to home starting 2009.