Spring Break Beginning to Set In

Ahhh ... no class last night ... I went home and relaxed! Had a good dinner with the family, put the kids to bed and then read and played chess. It was a welcome break.

Excel Modeling

I'm done with the model ... I just need to do the write up. My wife will be gone all evening, so after I get the kids to bed, I'll do the write up. Last night after I got in bed and started listening to my music, I had this vision (nightmare) of my thumb drive getting destroyed. I realized that the only copy of my model is on my thumb drive! Yikes! So I got my butt out of bed and retrieved my thumb drive and powered on the computer. I hooked it up and copied my model to my hard drive. Feeling a litte more assured, I went back to bed.

Quixote Update
Chapter 14

I read a little of chapter 14. The first part of it was the writing of the young man who has passed on. After his little "poem" who should appear? None other than the lovely Marcela ... the woman whom the young man loved. She explained to all the goatherds that it was not her fault the young man died ... she explains that everyone loves her because of her beauty and as such, everyone expects her to love them back. She actually gave a pretty good discourse in my opinion.

Chess Update

I played a couple of games last night. I won the first on time and I won the second when my opponent blundered. After playing on FICS, I started CT-ART 3.0 and worked through about 20 tactics. I figure if I work through several a day, that will give me a base to work off of for when October rolls around.

When school is finished, I plan on buying the 1000 x Checkmates CD to use for a modified 7 Circles program. I think I might give Man De La Maza's 10 circles a try.

The 3/2/06 chessgames.com puzzle is 34. ... ? My first take would be 34. ... Rxb4 Rxb4 35. Qa2+ 36. Kb1 Qa1++. I don't know if that is sound ... looks good.

The answer is Qa2+ ... my analysis is off because I didn't see that the white queen has b4 covered ... so that wouln't work.

I'm really motivated to get my write-up finished so I can play chess tonight. Maybe I'll get my paper done during lunch which would leave me two hours to play chess! It's going to be a great spring break!