Category: Fourre-tout

Yesterday in Sonoma, 56 players and a handful of former players gathered for a one-on-one tournament. The weather was perfect, with clear skies and a bit of sunshine that added to the pleasant ambiance of the day.

The occasion was filled with laughter, stories, and the joyful renewal of old friendships. It was a time for players to reconnect, share their experiences, and reminisce about the good old days. The camaraderie was palpable as everyone mingled, enjoying the harmonious blend of past and present.

Since neither Tamara nor I didn’t play in the tournament, we were afforded the luxury of coming late, 11:00 am, to be precise. There were a lot of good players on the field, too numerous to name them all, but I took a special interest in my close friends… and people exposed to the sunny side of the court. My camera demanded it.

When you are the armchair umpire, it seems that you see things more clearly than the players on the field, but regardless of my feelings, I always keep my mouth shut during a game.

Tamara and I left around 3:00 PM without knowing the final results.

On another note, my website has been down for more than 3 weeks due to a technical problem. But what I have discovered so far, is that you can access my blog with a different browser than Safari. On my Mac, for instance, I cannot access my blog with Safari, but I can with Google. You can also access the site with an iPhone.

This does not mean that I won’t try to fix the existing problem, but it proved to be a little more complex than I anticipated. In the meantime (if you are curious and want to see some pictures) use Google instead of Safari.

It was nice to see you all, and I promise to attend future tournaments even though I don’t have the stamina anymore to spend an entire day chasing an elusive piglet.

In the meantime, if anybody has the final results (and the pictures of the winners), please send them to me so I can include them in this little report.

Alain

Flash: Final results from Kevin:

1st place: PJ Malette
2nd place: Dave Lanter
3rd place: Kevin Evoy

Patrick Vaslet won Concours B

After receiving another policy renewal notice and being shaken for more money, I was all set to express my dissatisfaction about this stinky annual rite. But when I opened MS Word to express my unhappiness, I was presented with a new alternative.

Why don’t you let us write that piece for you? suggested Microsoft. Just give us an idea of what you want to say, and we will do the rest for you.

Out of curiosity, I agreed to that proposition and wrote two lines about what was bothering me. I then clicked on a little icon, and within a minute, I was offered a full page of well-worded recriminations.

It was very well-written indeed, with no errors whatsoever. Was I pleased? Heck no! The entity that laid that page has nothing to do with me. The draft sounded like it had been written by a “faux cul” lawyer. It was too formal to be credible.

But make no mistake. Artificial Intelligence is here to stay. Soon, it will be everywhere, to the delight of teenyboppers. They won’t have to learn multiplication tables anymore, and they won’t have to slave over some English essay either. Mighty AI will do the work for them. And kids are quick to jump at any new opportunity to play video games while AI  is doing the thinking for them.

My refusal to submit to AI does mean that I am going to let my grudge against these pesky notices vanish. I want the authors to know that I am unhappy about these annoying notices. But I want to tell them with my own crude words. Complainers are usually angry, and an ultra polite-worded letter would not have the same effect as a hopping mad message.

I find AI useful but extremely dangerous. It will soon become an addiction, and like any addiction, it will be difficult to drop. We are on our way to becoming caricatures of ourselves, unable to think and reason by ourselves.

I have a nasty feeling that AI will be very popular with the White House and its new occupants, and this worries me a great deal. Can a machine, have feelings, like a dog? I doubt it very much. Feelings are becoming obsolete and unfashionable and will soon be banned by executive order.

Puppet masters will create algorithms to guide AI on the right path to keep us subservient to their whims. And in case of a catastrophe that will deprive us of our dependency on Artificial Intelligence, we will be like helpless mooing cows in a meadow.

Don’t follow blindly the directives given by the high priests of Technology. Keep a streak of independence and keep a wary eye on Big Brother.

Don’t become too dependent on Artificial Intelligence and keep your wits about this ever-obliging friend.

Alain