The Assorted, Sorted

I've been fighting a chess bot named "Li," who is ostensibly from Taiwan. Rated at 2000, I would say that it's an accurate statement that this level of play is quite challenging for me. I have now beaten Li once out of 17 games. One of those 17 games was a draw, so I guess I have a record of not losing 11.76% of the time. Those aren't great odds. Below is the winning game against Li. Real chess players will see this is an UGLY win, not elegant at all. But a win's a win, right?    At this point in the experience, the only way that I can beat a bot is to make as few mistakes as possible and be ready when it does. Clearly these are programmed into the algorithm so that they make for a more human-like competitor.  On Chess.com, these are considered Advanced competitors.  I have "Charles," "Fatima," "Manuel," and "Oscar" before I reach into the master bot territory. My strategy, though I don't know smart it is, is to...

I have chosen to scrap what I originally was going to write.  It was about spring and rebirth. I was going to tie it in to the good news about my tumor and my recovery. It was about appreciating the extension of my life which I have most likely gotten.  But I killed it dead.  Why, in the face of all of this good news, am I killing positivity? Because sometimes “good news” doesn’t feel like it. It’s just a reminder that it’s still good news about the thing that’s still likely to kill you.  A delayed death sentence is still a death sentence.  Jess and I are in Las Vegas for a long weekend, visiting her friend who lives here. We’ve eaten out at some truly wonderful restaurants. For free because Jess’s friend’s boyfriend was comped meals because of his job. I had a delightful fancy fried chicken one night, and steak the next. We went to the Atomic Museum. And MeowWolf. And gambled with money that Jess’s dad gave us so we couldn’t feel guilty about losing our own. It...

Here's something a little different. Jess and I had a day off from work after conferences (well, technically SHE had a day off because I'm still not working.) Regardless, I had an appointment with my cancer counselor in the afternoon. She's pretty good, and also, her services are provided free by the hospital for cancer patients. "Let's stop for a drink at <coffee shop redacted> on the way," Jess said. So we did, and this transpired:  Okay, at the time, I was feeling a bit spicy because the kid didn't seem to be the paragon of customer service that I expected from the <name redacted chain> of coffee stands, phone never leaving his line of sight. Because of this, I lied and said I was going to my oncologist, rather than "cancer counselor." Otherwise, it was completely true. What you don't see is Jessica right next to me stifling a laugh. Ah well. We're not always nice all the time, are we? 

When I was first diagnosed with my cancer, I wasn’t diagnosed officially. I was told that there was a “spot” on my liver, which Tillamook hospital labeled as 2-3 centimeters. For those in Imperial Measurement Land, that’s about 3/4” - 1 1/8”. I think that can be accurately called a “spot.” Of course just having anything growing on an internal organ isn’t particularly awesome. It’s scary. Jessica and I worked very hard to convince the medical industrial complex and my home doctor that I needed a biopsy to determine what was actually going on. A “spot” could be a benign cyst that wasn’t cancerous, but rather something else. That’s what we were hoping for. But hopes and reality are oftentimes not in alignment with each other.  Eventually I was able to get my biopsy and the more definitive news that punctuation matters. It turns out that a medical error had been made, and the measurement of my tumor (which indeed turned out to be cancerous, <boo, hiss>) was instead 23 cm . Again,...