2013-2017 Teaching Bridge to Young People

Posted on November 7, 2023 by Mike

Let me begin by setting the record straight. Most of this was not my doing. The main players were my good friends and bridge teammates, Bob and Shirley Derrah of Springfield, MA1. I saw them often at tournaments and occasionally … Continue reading →

Let me begin by setting the record straight. Most of this was not my doing. The main players were my good friends and bridge teammates, Bob and Shirley Derrah of Springfield, MA¹. I saw them often at tournaments and occasionally at the Hartford Bridge Club, before and throughout these adventures.

New England Youth Bridge, Inc.: At some point in 2013 I was at a regional tournament when an announcement was made that there would be a meeting of the New England Youth Bridge group during the evening. I cannot remember at which tournament this occurred. It was also mentioned that anyone who was interested in helping to attract young people to the game was invited.

When I arrived at the site of the meeting the only other people there were Jim Rasmussen² and Adam Parrish³, who had called the meeting. I introduced myself, told them that I was interested in whatever I could do for youth bridge, and mentioned that I had recently become the webmaster. One of them asked me, “Webmaster of what?” They were pretty surprised that I was the I managed NEBridge.org.

Later I met Jeff Lehman⁴, who was about to become the president of the group, Lisa Allison⁵, who ran a successful youth bridge program in New Hampshire, and Pam Miller⁶, Jim’s partner.

Over the course of the next few years I corresponded with Jeff frequently.

East Longmeadow Several times in, I think, the spring of 2013 Bob told me about the progress of the students he was teaching to play bridge at a school in East Longmeadow, MA. I think that it was a middle school, but since I was never there in person, I may be mistaken.

According to Bob, most of the participants had only a passing interest in the game, but one of them, whom Bob referred to as “that autistic kid”⁷, seemed to be a natural. His name was Jack Donaghue.⁸

In the school year of 2013-2014 Jack was a student at East Longmeadow High School (ELHS), which is just north of the state line, a short drive from Enfield. Somehow a bridge club was formed at the high school.

In those days I was not as busy with work at TSI as I had been a decade earlier, and I had developed a strong interest in bridge. Even a casual observer of the competitive bridge population could easily realize was that it was quite elderly and getting more so every year. In my youth a lot of people learned bridge in college. Although I don’t remember how I did it, I learned to play bridge in high school. Many of those college students took up the game again when they became “empty-nesters” or retired. That cycle started to break down when computers became prevalent.

In 2013 I was 65, and Bob was sixteen years older than I was. I was definitely interested in promoting bridge among younger people. So, when Bob asked me if I wanted to help with the club at the high school I told him that I definitely was very interested.

I attended two or three of the after-school meetings at ELHS. They were held in a classroom at the school, and only a handful of students attended. Jack, who had been elected president of the club (an office with no duties) was heads and shoulders (really hips and knees, too) better at bridge than the others. One student was female and Jack’s age; the others were guys who were bigger and evidently older than Jack.

The setting was not ideal. There were no tables and chairs. Four desks (the kind with a seat that you enter from one side) had to be pulled together in an X shape. I don’t remember Bob ever trying to present a lesson. The attendees generally just took a seat and played, with Bob making comments about what was transpiring. I filled in to make a fourth or an eighth when necessary.

The girl, who attended every week and obviously had a crush on Jack, brought with her a book on bridge that had been written by her aunt or grandmother. She obviously treasured it.

The attendance from the guys was not as regular. They seemed to be more interested in sports and other activities at school. In the last week that I attended, only Jack and the girl were present. She pleaded wtih Bob and me to do something to prolong the club.

After that debacle Bob told Jack that it was up to him to resuscitate the club. I could understand why he said that, but Jack did not have the kind of personality that might enable him to pull this off. Besides, he had at least as much interest in skiing as in bridge. The club died, but Bob maintained his relationship with Jack.

The Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) annually held a one-day bridge tournament for beginners. Bob contacted them about arranging a partner for Jack at the event scheduled for October 26, 2014. Trevor Reeves,⁹ who at the time had very few masterpoints, agreed to play with him. I called Trevor to explain Jack’s situation. I think that my wife Sue might have provided transportation for Jack and herself.

Trevor and Jack did very well in both sessions.

They won Flight C in the morning and both Flight B and Flight C in the afternoon. Those performances earned them 2.71 masterpoints. Most beginners play regularly for several months before amassing so many. Sue, who had been playing for more than three years, was upset that Jack and Trevor had edged out her and Judy Cavagnaro in the morning round.

I saw Jack at a few tournaments after that. I said hello to him, and he mumbled something in return. Bob told me that he had decided to join the skiing team at ELHS.

Duggan 2016: One of Bob and Shirley’s grandsons, Matt Sullivan,¹⁰ was the vice-principal at Duggan Academy in Springfield, a middle school with grades six through eight. Matt was interested in Bob’s idea of teaching some of its students how to play bridge.

Duggan was like no school that I had ever been in. There was much more security. Only one door could be used, and someone at the office needed to unlock it remotely. A policeman was assigned to the school and was always present during school hours.

The school banned the wearing of hats. I always wore a baseball cap when I was outside or driving to protect my eyes from glare. My optometrist had recommended it. Several times I was asked to remove my cap before proceeding to a hallway, stairs, or classroom. Two or three times the school went into lockdown while I was there. Nothing came of any of these events.

Duggan was not a local grade school. It was a magnet school with a focus on Social Justice. The school’s emblem emphasized Diversity, Opportunity, Equity, and Justice. This contrasted with my grade school, which had no Black kids in any grade, and my high school, which had one out of eight hundred. There were some Hispanic students, but in Catholic schools this was to be expected.

The school year at Duggan was divided into “cycles” of four or five weeks. In each cycle the students were allowed to participate in one “Enrichment Program” to supplement their regular classes. These programs were allotted two hours per week during regular school hours. Matt and Bob worked to have bridge included beginning at Duggan in January of 2016.

Two classes took bridge, one of sixth graders and one of seventh graders. My recollection is that Duggan did not have an eight grade class until the next school year.

The kids needed a lot of supervision. To help out with managing them Bob recruited Maxine Cechvala¹¹, whom I knew from the HBC, and two people with whom Shirley had played in a local club. My wife Sue and I also attended every week.

In those days an annual event for beginners was held at the largest bridge club in New England, the Bridge Spot in Woburn (WOO bun), MA. Matt offered the kids a chance to participate in the one on Saturday, May 8, 2016. He would supply the transportation and treat them to supper at a restaurant in Boston. I am pretty certain that Bob footed the bill for most of this.

Bob had devised a good plan for getting the kids up to speed. They would begin by playing whist, which is essentially bridge without contracts. We then graduated to Mini-Bridge, in which each player announces his/her masterpoints. The team with the most points names the trump suit (or notrump), and a table is consulted to determine the contract. The hope, of course, was that the students would get tired of this, and we could move on to bidding for the contract, which I have always thought was the real attraction of the game.

The tournament in Woburn used the Mini-Bridge rules. I have posted a description of the tournament itself and the subsequent supper here. If you examine only one of the hundreds of links that I have posted, check out this one. It is short and endearing, if I do say so myself. Included are many photos and the names of all of the participants.

The Bridge Bulletin, the official publication of the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL), published an abbreviated version of the text and pictures of the webpage mentioned above in its August 2016 issue.¹²

We never got to bidding in either of the classes, but it was a marvelous experience for everyone involved. Bob and I were enthusiastic about the prospect of working with these and other kids in the upcoming years.

Duggan and Chestnut South 2017: As I mentioned in the write-up of the trip to Woburn, Bob was fairly confident that in the following year we could expand our efforts to more middle schools in Springfield. The reason for his optimism was the the employment of another grandson, Matt’s brother Dan¹³, as the vice-principal of a middle school on the west side of town. Unfortunately he had a much more difficult time enlisting helpers. I went to every session that I could, and Sue occasionally helped, but Maxine was no longer around, and no one else volunteered.

The security at Chestnut South was at least as tight as at Duggan. The door was unlocked, but we were required to stop at a table, sign in, and then go through a metal detector. We then had to proceed to Dan’s office. Someone there would eventually unlock the closet in which the tables were kept and the room that we were assigned to use that day.

Chestnut was designed to serve the “talented and gifted” students of Springfield. This was encouraging, but it did not have an Enrichment Program. The bridge group met once a week after school. The kids had to arrange their own transportation, which was certainly a potential problem. Many of the students rode the bus to school.

The bridge program at Chestnut South never really got established. At first we had a classroom that we could use. On one occasion we had even enough participants for three tables, but attendance fell off dramatically after that. After a few weeks only two or three players came regularly. Only one student was both willing and able to go to Woburn to play in the second tournament. He had to play with a Duggan student that he had never met.

We entered a door in the basement on the far right.

We ran into problems at Duggan, as well. Part of the Enrichment Program had been moved (for at least a few cycles) from the school to a nearby Boys and Girls Club. The idea was that the students would be excited about the environment and would have a place to hang out if they wanted to

The kids were bussed there from Duggan and bussed back to the school at the end of the session. Of course, the transportation used up part of the period. A bigger problem, however, was that our room was near the gymnasium, and many of our students wandered over there instead of coming to the bridge room.

My recollection is that the sixth-graders, whom we taught at Duggan, seemed to have a lot of potential, but the drop-off in the participation in the other two grades was marked. Only a few of the students from the previous year returned the second year. Because the classes were populated mostly by new students, we had to start at square one in all three classes. The eighth-grade group was much too chatty. At one point I had to ask Bob to switch tables with me before I lost my temper.

I remember one peculiar situation in which one of the girls touched the place on the back of one of my hands where a vein was prominent, just to see what it felt like. I was startled at this, but I did not say anything.

The highlight of the year was the time that a crew from one of the local television stations visited the school, filmed a group of seventh-graders playing bridge in the hallway outside of the auditorium, and interviewed one of the students, Joe Walsh, about the activity. He was very polished and explained the situation very well. It was shown on the station’s newscast. A very nice report was broadcast locally.

Only a few students attended the session in Woburn in the spring. Matt drove the students there in his own car, and he actually ended up playing in the tournament with one of the students. Those who attended the tournament and the subsequent supper (complete with oysters) had a splendid time, but it was disconcerting that we were only able to bring a handful of players. No one won a trophy.

The third year: At the end of the 2016-2017 school year a letter was sent to all of the people who had volunteered at any of the Springfield public schools during the year asking for nominations for the “volunteer of the year” award. I nominated Matt Sullivan. Someone, probably Matt or Dan, nominated Bob, and in fact Bob won the award!

Bob insisted that I be included in the award, and so, Bob, Shirley, Dan, Matt, Sue, and I went to a lunch at Western New England University, which was across the street from Duggan. Bob and I were presented with the award. One of the bridge players who attended both tournaments, Tavi Chea, read a speech in which she described Bob as a wonderful person, Shirley as a “silent assassin”, and me as a perfectionist.

The principal of one of the high schools was in attendance. She expressed interest in a bridge program for her students. In retrospect I realize that I should have gotten contact information.

Shortly thereafter Bob’s health began to deteriorate. He gave all of the materials that we had been using—including a suitcase full of bidding boxes with “WMBA” (Western Massachusetts Bridge Association) written on them in indelible ink. He told me that if I wished to continue in the next year, I would need to take charge myself. I assured him I definitely wanted the program to continue and that I would do the best that I could. He gave me contact information for Matt and Dan. With two years of experience under my belt and with a few assets that I had not used at that point, I felt confident of success.

My emails to Dan at Chestnut were not answered. Bob explained to me that Dan had been promoted to principal of both Chestnut schools and he was overwhelmed with the responsibility. Bob said that Dan planned to try to get a program started in January. I wrote to Dan in December, but he did not respond to that letter either. So, there was no bridge program at Chestnut South in 2017-2018.

I solicited by email help from all of the bridge players who were within driving distance of East Longmeadow. I received responses from Judy Hyde (introduced here), Mary Petit, Randy Johnson (introduce here), and Bob Lavin. Here is what I wrote to Jeff Lehman about our experiences:

I finally was called in to meet with Matt Sullivan and a teacher, Tim Hurley,¹³in late September. Duggan’s school year is divided into “cycles” of four or five weeks. In the previous year bridge participated in the Enrichment Program, which is offered during the school day for two hours a week, during the first five cycles. They explained that during the cycles in May and June the students all wanted to be outside. This year we had already missed the first cycle. Tim, who was now running the program, said that bridge would be offered to sixth and seventh graders for three cycles. There would be an after-school bridge club for the eighth graders and anyone else who wanted to attend. The good side of this was that all three sessions would be on Thursday. In the previous year we had met with eighth graders on Friday.
I expended a great deal of effort lining up bridge players from the area to help my wife, Sue, and me. I had no idea how many kids we would be dealing with. A few players committed to one day, but the only serious commitment that I got was from Bob Lavin, who lives about ten minutes from Duggan.
The Enrichment Program sessions were a severe disappointment from the beginning. Before we started I had had great hope for the seventh graders. A very promising bunch of kids in the sixth grade had participated the previous year, but none of them returned. I do not know why because I have no way to contact individual students. The dozen or so kids that we got, with only a couple of exceptions, had no interest in bridge and were quite vocal about it.
The sixth graders were also rowdy. They were all boys, and one had extreme emotional problems. At any rate it was difficult to work with both groups. They were all turned off by Bob’s presentations, which were much too lengthy and unfocused. I tried to get him to limit them to one topic for ten minutes, but that conflicted with his style.
In the third cycle (our second) we had two greatly reduced groups, but I thought that we were making progress. Our most deadly foe was the calendar. Because of holidays, snow days, and test days, each class actually got to meet only twice!
Sue and I showed up for the first session of the fourth cycle. Tim told us that the plan had always been for bridge to participate in only two cycles. This was different from the previous year and different from what he said in our meeting in the summer. He arranged for Dakota, Demetrius, and two others to meet with us that morning.
The after-school club was a fiasco from the start. Dakota and Demetrius came only two or three times. At the first meeting they told me that they wanted to attend the Magic card club, which met at the same time, on alternate weeks. In actual fact, although I always tried to find out if they were going to meet with me using the email addresses they gave the ACBL, I never knew if anyone would be there. Only one other person came the first week. I only saw Dakota and Demetrius once after the tournament in Watertown. These two kids obviously have great potential, but I have no way to reach out to them.
I actually worked harder this year than either of the last two years. When Matt worked with us, he tried to direct the kids with the best chance of success in our direction. Tim did not seem to do that. I made some mistakes (Bob Lavin, especially), but I thought that we had a pretty good group when they cut us off at the kneecaps. Another problem is that the other Enrichment Programs are more attractive than in previous years. They now offer both soccer and football.
In my last contact with Tim he said that he was turning the bridge club over to Mary Kay Brown. He indicated that Demetrius, who surely is one of the brightest kids in his class, was in danger of failing. It certainly was not because of bridge. I have never heard from Mary Kay.

In retrospect, I can certainly understand why Matt would bow out of the bridge program after his grandfather was unable to continue. Nevertheless, I was blindsided by the appointment of Tim as the new contact. When I asked a question or made a request, he responded. However, Matt had evidently shepherded many of the best students into the bridge program. That was not the case in the third year. I was especially disappointed that not a single person from the previous year’s promising sixth-grade class participated in the new seventh-grade group.

Tim’s announcement that it had been the plan “all along” for there to be only two cycles of bridge startled me. I sent an email to Matt complaining about this. All that I requested was that I be kept in the loop when decisions affected me and my group.

The point about having no idea how many would attend was critical. It was important to have one experienced player for each table—or at least every other table. Sometimes there would be three tables of students; sometimes one or less. I was occasionally short of helpers, and at least once I sent one home.

I have attended several of Bob Lavin’s lectures at regional tournaments. He did a very good job in that setting. However, his style went over like a lead balloon at Duggan. The seventh-grade class was openly hostel to him in the one presentation that I saw. Nevertheless, I had almost no choice but to let him manage all the groups while I was playing at a regional tournament in Mansfield, MA. I had made commitments to other players.

One thing that I had hoped to add to the way that we taught bridge was to incorporate more things from the Internet. All of the classrooms had Internet access and large screens. I hoped to be able to use my convertible laptop (a Yoga model by Lenovo) via an HDMI cable that I purchased for just this purpose. I had nothing but problems. The first time that I started Yoga up at Duggan it notified me that it had updates to install. That wasted at least fifteen minutes.

When I got it connected, I was prevented by the school’s security software from accessing any of the sites that I wanted to use, even my own. Tim told me that I would need to submit a list of the URL’s that I wished to use, and someone in the administration would need to approve them one by one. Then whoever maintained the security would need to implement the changes. I did not bother to try to get all of this to happen.

I did finally manage to get in touch with Mary Ann Brown, who was the official liaison with the volunteers. I have a set of emails with her that concluded by saying that Demetrius and Dakota did not seem to want to go to the Holiday sectional tournament in Watertown, MA. That turned out to be false, but I do not remember the source of the misunderstanding..

On Saturday morning December 9, 2017, Sue and I picked up Demetrius and Dakota at their houses, and the four of us drove to Watertown. I wanted them to play in the section that used the bidding boxes, but they insisted that they were not ready for it. There was never any question about any of the sixth- and seventh-graders participating. They would have been an embarrassment.

Sue and I served as table monitors in the Mini-Bridge group. At my table one of the players revoked on one hand, but no one on the other team noticed it. I told them what had happened, but it was up to the other team to spot it.

At the end of the session but before the results were announced, Dakota and Demetrius told me that they thought that they had done pretty well. They were certainly correct. Their 81.8 percent score was the highest that I had ever seen, and six years later I have still never seen one that came close.

Sue and I drove the winning pair back to Springfield and asked them where they would like to eat. They both said that we should stop at Texas Roadhouse near Sixteen Acres so that Dakota could intone, “Winner, winner, chicken dinner.” That’s where we went. We all had a really good time. Then we drove each of them home.

In July I tried to contact both schools about the upcoming school year, but I did not receive any kind of reply from either one. I cannot deny that this treatment made me a little bitter.

Preparation and Finances: The ACBL had a program for providing supplies to players working with young people. I received a pair of boxes that contained books, flimsy backpack, and special decks of cards that somehow were coordinated with the books. The books had a radically different approach from what we were planning. I put them in the recycling bin after giving one to Sue. I gave most of the cards to the students. I threw the backpacks in the trash.

The ACBL gave me a stipend of, I seem to remember, $700. It was better than nothing. I doubt that Bob bothered to apply.

I made name tags for everyone involved, both students and volunteers. I purchased Avery labels with holders. I don’t remember what they cost.

Jeff Lehman spent a great deal of time developing a lesson plan for using Mini-Bridge. Bob likewise spent time adjusting it to our purposes. I developed a fairly large set of illustrated mini-lessons. They seemed to go over pretty well. I still have them.

I went to Walmart and bought for each of the students a folder in which to keep the handouts. I didn’t fool myself into thinking that they would study them, but maybe some day someone would look something up.

Bob purchased tables, a set of duplicate boards and cards. I don’t know (and don’t want to know) how he wangled the bidding boxes. In 2023 they are still in the trunk of my Honda.

Ed Marzo: During the summer of 2016 Bob called me up and invited me to come with him to visit Ed Marzo,¹⁴ the man who had developed the very popular bridge program called DealMaster Pro. I had absolutely no idea that this legendary figure lived in the Springfield area.

I drove to Bob’s house. He drove the pair of us to Ed’s small home. He was living by himself at age 88. Maybe there is hope for the rest of us.

Ed was no longer involved in the development, sales, or support of his product, but he knew it like the proverbial palm of his hand. His short demonstration convinced me that this was a very worthwhile program to have. He told us that he had invented it in order to show a friend what a finesse was, but it was not clear to me how we could use it as a teaching aid for youngsters.

This was right up my alley, but Bob could not follow what Ed was saying. Ed gave both of us a copy. I have used mine extensively for projects outside of my work with the young students. Bob tried to use his, but it frustrated him. I hoped to be able to schedule some time with him to show him how to use the program, but it never happened.

Thoughts: This entry, more than any other, has caused me to think about a few topics in a new way. Remembering Jack Donaghue made me think about myself. Am I autistic? I cannot even remember learning to play bridge. I just picked it up somewhere when I was in high school, probably from a book. If that is not autistic, what is? Also, would a sane person undertake, as I have in the 1948 project, to record absolutely everything that he could remember—and stick with it for more than two years and over 700,000 words? I have always thought of myself as a shy but eloquent person with an exceptional stick-to-itiveness, but maybe I am on “the spectrum”.

I also have been thinking about public schools. The young people whom I worked with at urban middle schools lived in a different world from the one in which I grew up in Kansas City. I developed great respect for people like Matt who devote their lives to helping these kids make something of themselves.

What could I have done to make the classes better? At the end I regretted introducing duplicate scoring. Most of the students did not understand it, and it deprived them of instant analysis of their performances. If I had it do do over again, after the kids became familiar with Mini-Bridge I would have introduced rubber bridge scoring. In that way every table would have a winning pair and a losing pair.

1. Bob Derrah died in 2018. His obituary can be found here. Shirley died less than two years later. Her obituary is here.

2. Jim Rasmussen moved to Seattle, WA.

3. Adam Parrish moved to New York City, where he is a playwright, bridge teacher, and a columnist for the Bridge Bulletin.

4. In 2023 Jeff Lehman was still active in bridge in New England.

5.In 2023 Lisa Allison was still active in bridge in New Hampshire.

6. Pam Miller stopped paying ACBL dues in 2020. At the time she lived in Cambridge, MA.

7. I am quite sure that Bob did not mean this in a disparaging way. I did not know any of the people involved, and he wanted to identify one of them for me. If I had seen them, he probably would have used a physical attribute instead.

8. Jack would be 24 years old in 2023 when this entry was composed. He stopped paying his ACBL dues in 2020. At the time he had 60 masterpoints, which was more than I expected to see. I could not find any references to him on the Internet after that date.

9. Trevor, however, was not new to the game. He had played a considerable amount of bridge in England before moving to the colonies. The ACBL, however, had not yet assigned him a quantity of masterpoints to reflect that experience.

10. I last saw Matt Sullivan at Bob’s wake. I got to meet his (and Dan’s) mother, who was Bob’s daughter. This made me feel really old. In 2023 Matt became principal of Pioneer Valley Regional School. His LinkedIn page is here.

10. Maxine Cechvala moved to Ponte Vedra, FL. She is still an active member of the ACBL. She has returned to New England a few times.

11. The recent Bridge Bulletins, including the one with this article on p. 30, are available online to members.

12. Bob had worked for Monsanto for several decades. He spent a good part of the last few months of his life testifying in one of the trials that the company (owned by Bayer) faced.

13. In 2023 Dan Sullivan was still the principal at Chest nut. His LinkedIn page is here.

13. Tim Hurley moved from Duggan to a different school in the area. His LinkedIn page can be found here.

14. Ed Marzo died in 2019. His obituary can be read here.

15. I used DealMaster Pro to generate a large number of hands to test hypotheses about how specific types of hands should be bid and played. The program allows the user to specify what limitations to put on each hand. For example, North’s hand could be limited to ones with a void in clubs, but the other hands could be generated randomly.

2021-? Bridge: New Partners During and After Covid-19

Posted on October 23, 2023 by Mike

New partners. Continue reading →

As of May of 2024 I had played with 144 partners in at least one complete session of a sanctioned game. After thee reopening in 2021 all of the games that involved new partners were held either at the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) or at a tournament.

HBC partners: Linda Starr (introduced here) was a director at the HBC. Before the Pandemic, she undertook a program of reserving the Sunday afternoon game as a high-low game, in which at least one of the participants must have less than 750 masterpoints. This was an especially good way for someone with a lot of points to play with the person whom they were mentoring. At some point in the winter of 2022-2023 my wife Sue decided that she wanted to play in the high-low game.

I enjoyed playing with Joanne Amenta, but I don’t remember the result or any of the details of the hands that we played together.

I definitely remember one hand in which she was playing in a team game at the HBC. Her partner was John Calderbank. I don’t remember who my partner was.

On the very first hand of the match I made a terrible bid that kept us from reaching a makeable slam. I immediately started whipping myself with a wet noodle.

Joanne had never played against me before. She expressed surprise that I became upset about one lousy hand. John explained that in team play some hands are much more important than others. Missing a slam would probably cause us to lose the whole match because of the difficulty in making up the difference in the other four hands.

Joanne is still an active player. She has attended both regionals and sectionals since the reopening.

I also played with David Brandwein one Sunday in the high-low game. He was a pretty good player, but the bidding system that was used by him and his regular partner, Bernie Selig, was archaic. I suggested a few things that he could add to modernize it and allow him to play more comfortably with more players.

David was elected vice-president of the HBC in 2023. That meant that he was also the chairman of the club’s long-range planning committee, of which I was a long-time member. The first meeting was scheduled for early in 2024.

For a few weeks in the fall of 2021 the Simsbury Bridge Club. (SBC) was not able to run games on Wednesday evenings at Eno Hall. I signed up to play one Tuesday evening at the HBC. Doug Deacon, who had been a regular on Tuesday evenings when I started playing in 2008, needed a partner. So, we worked on a card and played rather successfully (around 55 percent) for two or three weeks.

Paul formerly played with a man from Ukraine named Igor and then with Paul Tungatt.

At the end of 2023 Doug still was still working and playing regularly on Tuesday evenings at the HBC.

One Sunday afternoon Fred Gagnon (GAN yun, rhymes with canyon) drove down from his house in Springfield to mine in Enfield. He had asked me to play with him in the High-Low game and volunteered to drive both of us to the HBC. I had previously referred to him “Boom Boom”, but he said that he had never heard of Freddy (Boom Boom) Cannon or his biggest hit, “Palisades Park”. So, I had downloaded it to my MP3 player and let him listen to it in his car before we left. He said that the song sounded familiar, but he might have just been placating me.

Fred did not play very well that day. He might have been having health issues. He is still quite active in the bridge community.

Barb Gallagher was from Denver. She was in the Hartford area during the summer of 2023 to visit her daughter. I was lucky enough to hook up with her for a few games at the HBC and SBC. Our lists of conventions had a lot of overlap, and so we were able to piece together a rather sophisticated convention card.

I remember that we had one pretty good round, around 50 percent. I had a really good time playing opposite her. I wish that we could have worked in a few more games.

Barb left at the end of September to return to Denver.

YC Hsu has played with various partners both at the HBC and, occasionally, at the SBC. I played with him once in the open game on Thursday morning. Since he sometimes played with one of my regular partners, John Calderbank, it was easy to agree on a convention card.

We had a pretty good game together, and I felt sure that I would play with him again.

Y.C. is from Taiwan. I have seen him many times at the bridge table, but I do not know much about his background.

I played with Diane Tracy in one Sunday afternoon High-Low game at the HBC. She must have enjoyed it; I overheard her singing my praises one day.

Diane is relatively new to the club, but she became a member of the board in 2022. So I have seen her at board meetings once a month. She has offered a valuable perspective because she spent a lot of time in Naples, FL. She has provided us with insights about how the other half lived.

I only played once with Andrea Yalof in the High-Low game, but I was quite impressed with her approach to the game. She and her husband David, who is also a bridge player, moved to Williamsburg, VA, in 2023. David worked at William & Mary. I have it on good authority that Andrea was still active in bridge in late 2023.

The “good authority” is Fran Gurtman (introduced here), who was Andrea’s regular partner when she lived in the Hartford area. Fran and Andrea still play together online.

On Sunday, May 4, 2024, my wife Sue went to a concert in Willimantic with Maria Van Der Ree. So, I volunteered to play with anyone who needed a partner at the weekly High-Low game. I was matched up with Joan Hultquist, a player who joined the HBC when it reopened after the pandemic. I did not learn too much about her. We had a 51 percent game and finished just out of the money. Joan played a high percentage of the hands, one of which was a somewhat challenging slam. JoAnn Scata, sitting to her left, put her to the test on the third trick by underleading her K♦. The dummy had the ace and queen, but Joan elected to play the ace and ended up going down.

SBC Partners: The game on Wednesday evening at the SBC on August 1, 2024, was plagued by last-minute cancellations. We ended up with only five pairs in attendance. The 2.5 table game is deplored by everyone due to the five-board sitout and the fact that results are only compared with one other table on every hand. I therefore suggested that, if two players agreed to go home, we would play a two-table game with International Matchpoint scoring, something that we had not done since the pandemic. Donna Lyons, who had been scheduled to be my partner and YC Hsu agreed to go home. Howard Schiller, who had been scheduled to play with YC, was my partner. We clobbered the opponents in all three of the matches by 31, 19, and 15 IMPs.

Tournaments: For quite a few years John Farwell had served as the one-man partnership program for sectional tournaments in Connecticut. In that capacity I had interacted with him several times when I was in need of a partner or teammates.

The first sectional in Connecticut after the reopening was held in Orange, CT, in June of 2022. I was unable to find a partner for the Swiss event on Sunday, June 5, but I needed to attend the tournament anyway because of the board meeting before the game. I ended up being paired up with John and a pair of people I had never met before and have never seen since. Somehow we clicked together and we ended up fifth out of seventeen overall and first in the B strat. The details of the tournament have been chronicled here.

In 2023 John was still acting as partnership person at every sectional.

When he was a novice Abhi Dutta played with my wife Sue at least once. Ken Leopold and I had also teamed up with Abhi and a partner at one of the qualifying tournaments for Flight B of the Grand National Teams (GNT). Although that was not a pleasant experience I responded positively when Abhi asked me to play with him at the NABC in Providence in July of 2022. The details of that adventure have been described here.

Our next outing together was our most successful. Playing with Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider we won the Sunday Swiss at the sectional tournament in Great Barrington, MA, in August of 2022. You can read about it here.

I have played with Abhi in several other pairs and team events in both regionals and sectionals. I also played against him in a memorable knockout that was described here.

I was paired up with Phyllis Bloom for the Flight B Swiss event on Sunday, July 17, at the NABC in Providence. Our teammates were Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider, who both came down with Covid-19 a few days later. We finished slightly below average. Phyllis made a couple of very costly mistakes, but I still enjoyed playing with her.

Phyllis was married to Ken Bloom, an expert player. They lived in Sudbury, MA. Ken’s father, Irv, was an expert player. He and his partner, Bob Hoffman, invented the Blooman convention as a defense against 1NT.

I had committed to play with Jim and Mike in the Sunday Swiss event at the sectional tournament in Orange, CT, in April of 2023. I had a very difficult time finding a partner. Eventually Mike suggested that I contact Ros Abel, whom he knew from the Newtown Bridge Club. Rob agreed to play with me in that event and also the pairs event on Friday. We also arranged to play once at the HBC, which was actually closer to her house in Southington than the Newtown club was.

For a new pair we did quite well in both sessions on Friday, well over 50 percent. We also were doing well in the Swiss until the last round, which was against two players from the HBC whom I knew very well, Peter Katz and Tom Joyce. We had bid to 4♠. Ros then bid 5♥. We had not discussed what kind of control bidding we were using. In the one that almost all good players used that bid would show a first-or-second-round control in hearts, but it would deny controls in the two suits that she had skipped. So, I signed off in 5♠ and made 6, which they bid an made at the other table.

I asked Ros later what her bid meant. She said that she was showing a heart suit. So, I guess that she did not use control-showing cue bids at all.

At the end of 2023 Ros was still playing regularly at the HBC.

I have played against Jim Osofsky a large number of times, especially if you count the team events in which we were both sitting East-West at different tables. Jim and Mike usually teamed up with Ausra Geaski (introduced here) and Bunny Kliman, both regulars at the HBC.

For the 2023 Ocean State Regional in Warwick, RI, Jim’s usual partner, Mike Heider, was visiting the Fatherland with one of his sons. I also needed a partner for the four days that I intended to play. So, Jim and I paired up, intending to play in the Tuesday-Wednesday knockout and the Thursday-Friday knockout.

Abhi Dutta asked if he could team up with us for the event that started on Thursday. Later I learned that his partner would be Paul Johnson, the guy whose behavior upset me so much earlier in the year at Southbridge (documented here).

We used the partnership software to pick up partners from Florida for the first knockout. We had a very successful two days with them. The other two days were less so. The details have been posted here.

The last sectional of 2023 in Connecticut was in late October. Jim and Mike asked me to find a partner and play with them in the Sunday Swiss. I had a difficult time finding someone to play with. Eventually a fellow member of the CBA board, Linda Green, lined me up with Terry Lubman, a veteran player with more points than I had.

Terry and I had a little trouble agreeing on a convention card. She wanted to keep it simple, but I was nervous about not having enough weapons. We got off to a disastrous start, picked up a little in the middle, and lost the last match. We finished a little below average. Terry was very frustrated because it seemed that every decision that she made turned out wrong. Also, we had a rather fundamental and embarrassing miscommunication on one bidding sequence that severely impacted our morale. The details are provided here.

I learned that Terry went to Catholic schools (but never learned about indulgences!),never throws anything away (aaaargh!), and is a bigwig in the gardening club circuit in southwest Connecticut and Westchester County, NY.

For the 2024 edition of the Granite State Getaway I submitted forms for all five days that I planned to be in attendance. Denise Bahosh put me in touch with Steve Banwarth³, who actually lived in Nashua, the site of the tournament. So, he was commuting. We played together for three days, and we had quite good results that have been described in this entry. This was my best experience with a new partner in many years.

Steve’s real first name is Cletus. He asked me about Pope Cletus, and I had to tell him that Pope C. had been removed from recent lists of the popes.

Steve had told me that the bridge club in Nashua had closed because it lost its building. He also stated that it took him fifty minutes to drive to the closest bridge club in Derry. I made an issue of this at the meeting Board of Delegates. After having been challenged on the travel time, I asked Steve about it. He said that he took back roads because he did not like driving on highways. He also said that he did not like hotels, and he did not drive at night. So, it will be difficult to pair up with him again. The best chance might be in Warwick, RI. He might be able to stay with his son in Providence.

In the late summer of 2024 Abhi Dutta asked me to find a partner and join him and a new partner in the Sunday Swiss game in Johnston, RI, on September 22. I asked John Lloyd, with whom I had worked in the Board of Directors of the Connecticut Bridge Association. John lived in Avon. I had interacted with him many times at the HBC. He often played with one of my regular partners, Ken Leopold, at the Sunday High-Low game.

John had a lot less experience than I did. I asked him to send me a convention card. We negotiated one that we could both agree on via email. The details of the tournament itself have been posted here.

1. Jim and Mike were at least as odd a couple as Oscar Madison and Felix Unger. Jim was easily the most talkative person whom I have ever met. One of the bridge players called him Chatty Cathy. Mike, in contrast, had a good sense of humor, but hardly ever talked. While Jim was chatting up Donna Lyons, my partner at the NABC in Providence, Jim confided to me that “Jim seems to be coming out of his shell a little bit.”

2. According to his LinkedIn page Steve was retired from the Navy. When we played against Mike McDonald and Tom Floyd, he disclosed that he had been on nuclear submarines. Both Mike and Tom worked at Electric Boat, where the vessels are designed and fabricated.

2005-2010 TSI: For Sale?

Posted on October 17, 2023 by Mike

A long, bitter, expensive exercise. Continue reading →

Documentation: I found a folder that contained a large number of documents concerning the attempt to sell the company. Some of them were in legalese, and some were very long. In most cases when they were germane to the story, I have included links to pdf files posted on Wavada.org.

I did not find any emails or notes about meetings. I have therefore needed to rely on my memory, which never had infallibility attributed to it at the First Vatican Council or anywhere else.

The plan: I had often thought about selling TSI, but I could never visualize how it could happen. In 2005 my partner Denise Bessette (introduced here) mentioned in one of our private meetings that she was interested in trying something different, perhaps in academia. We decided to investigate the possibility of selling the business. We were by no means desperate to do so. We were both earning six-figure salaries in those days. So, we were not going to forgo them unless the money was good. Also, we had a substantial backlog of profitable approved projects, and a new product, A^xN, that was doing better than we had expected.

We agreed on two primary criteria for any sale. Denise would not be an employee of the new company after she sold her shares. Since I could not imagine why anyone would want TSI without both of us, the second criterion was that my role in the company after the purchase would be temporary.

From the outset I was skeptical of the likelihood of selling the company under those circumstances. It seemed to me that unless there were some demonstrable synergy between either AdDept or A^xN and a prospective buyer’s product or service, I could not see the value of what would be left of TSI after both criteria were imposed.

I had informed my wife Sue, the other share-owner of TSI, that we were planning to explore selling it. When I told her that we hoped to get over $1 million for it, she was all for the idea.

Retaining a broker: Somehow we determined that it was necessary to engage a business broker to help us find a buyer. The fact that we had experienced very little success working with third parties other than IBM contributed to my pessimism. Nevertheless, I composed a very long letter that we sent to a few brokers who specialized in businesses like ours, or at least they did not specialize in much larger companies or vastly different industries. I do not remember where we obtained a list of appropriate brokers.

I have posted here a copy of the one that we sent to Steve Pope in March of 2007. He was not the first person to whom we mailed the letter. Here is a list of the brokers that we mailed to:

The first letter was sent to William Gunville², the president of Successions, Inc., in East Weymouth, MA, on March 31, 2006. I found no evidence that he or anyone at his company responded.
The second letter, sent on the same day, went to Kerry Dustin³ of the Falls River Group in Naples, FL. There is no indication that he responded either, but the file does have TSI’s financial statement dated April 8 in three different formats.
On April 28 I mailed four letters. The first went to Merfeld and Schine, Inc., in Boston⁴. We must have had some subsequent communication with them. I have a copy of a blank agreement that someone at the company evidently sent to me in August.
I do not remember ever conversing with Matthew Lerner of Newport Acquisition Services⁵ of Columbia, MD.
No one from the Catalyst Group⁶ in Boston responded to the letter.
The last of the April letters went to the Corum Goup, Ltd.⁷ in the state of Washington. I remember one telephone call that might have been with someone from Corum. The gist of it was that even though we might have found a niche that provided the principals with comfortable incomes, that did not mean that anyone would be interested in buying the company. The man on the phone said that this was quite common. This, of course, confirmed what I had previously thought. This same person also said that the most likely company to be interested in purchasing us would be a competitor. The fact that we had no real competition was therefore a disadvantage!
On May 2 I sent a letter to Bob Capozzi of VR Business Brokers⁸ of Milford, CT. If he responded, I have no record of it. He might have told us that we were too small for his company. Several brokers told us that.
On March 31 of 2009 I mailed the same letter to Robert Meyers of Marshall Business Brokers in Bloomfield, CT. By that time we had worked with Steve Pope for two years. We must have felt that we could do better.

Of all the firms that we contacted Steve Pope was the only person who thought that he could help us sell the business. We met with him a couple of times and talked to him over the telephone quite often.

We signed an agreement with him that cost us $1,000 per month for two painful years. I have posted a copy of it here. Note that our asking price was $1.5 million.

Both Denise and I found Steve to be pretty easy to work with, and he provided us with a great deal of useful information. We did not know what we were doing when we started this process.

At the time his last name seemed an unbelievable coincidence. For the previous three years I had been researching the history of the papacy (detailed here) in hopes of getting my ideas about the popes published.

The valuation: Steve insisted that we hire an outsider to undertake a professional valuation of TSI. He recommended a man named George Abraham⁹ and provided us with a write-up of his credentials and approach, which I have posted here.

We had to put together materials for him. Almost all of the information came from our general ledger. This cost us several thousand dollars and, in my opinion, was worse than worthless. It was obvious to me that he had just run information from our G/L through a software program that basically took the retained earnings and added the value of the fixed assets. Our fixed assets were minimal, and, as a closely held company, we had distributed nearly all of our profits at the end of every year. So, he concluded that our company was worth very little.

We considered the value of our company to be in its client list, the relationships that we had established with the clients, the strength of our staff, and the fact that the clients were totally dependent on us. None of this appeared in the valuation. When I complained about this, Mr. Abraham said that all of that was considered “good will”. He could increase it, but the first thing that any prospective buyer did with a valuation was to discard or at least disparage the portion that was attributable to good will.

I felt as helpless in this situation as I did when I had to fill out a “Request for Proposal” form designed by a consultant to use to assess potential software solutions. Those forms seldom allowed me to highlight the parts of our system that would help the prospective client the most. In the same way the valuation was going to be the first thing that a prospective buyer would see, and it did not allow us to highlight what was good about TSI.

Nibbles: TSI rented box #241 at the post office in Warehouse Point for communication that we might receive from Steve or from anyone else involved in the project. I went there every couple of days, take the junk mail out of it, and throw it in the recycle bin. I very seldom brought anything back to the office.¹⁰

I remember that a couple of times over the next few years Steve tried to connect us with people who might be interested, but nothing came of any of these exchanges.

I found four documents in which I answered questions about TSI’s approach. The first was a letter that I sent to Steve on January 31, 2008, about the alleged obsolescence of the AS/400, which by then had undergone a few name changes. I have posted it here.

I also have posted answers that I provided to many very detailed questions to people that I don’t remember named Peter, James, and Len. The first two were dated February 4, 2008. The last one was sent on March 14, 2008.

Denise and I were encouraged at first, but after a few months we began to hear less and less. Steve still called once in a while, but there were no prospects who could be considered even lukewarm.

The buyer: Steve told us in early 2010 that an “entrepreneur” from St. Louis who had bought and sold several companies was interested in buying our company. His name was Tim Finney.¹¹

Denise and I had a conference call with him and Steve in early March. Evidently we did an abbreviated demo of our systems via Webex.¹² I don’t remember the details, but I found a letter that Tim sent to us on March 15 (beware the Ides of March!) that provided a fairly detailed analysis of what he was willing to pay us for our stock in TSI. It has been posted here. The important features were:

The total purchase price was $1,000,000 for 100 percent of the stock.
We would need to pay capital gains taxes on this amount.
I would work for another two years at a salary of $95,000. He would have the option of extending this another two years if “Tim and Mike agree that the business can or can not sustain itself at that time based on Tim’s progress with the software code/business.” In any case Mike would work for two months for nothing.
Denise would work for two months for nothing.

We were very interested. On May 7 Tim sent us a confidentiality agreement, which Denise, Sue, and I signed and returned to him. The confidentiality agreement has been posted here.

Tim sent the Letter of Intent a few days later with the specification that the closing would be by July 15, or earlier if possible. I made it clear every time that I talked with anyone involved that I needed for this either to be completed before August or postponed until September. Sue and I had scheduled a trip for August 8 through August 21.

The signed LOI has been posted here.

Tim made a trip to Connecticut in early June after the LOI had been signed. I discovered an outline of what I wanted to say to him. It is posted here. Denise and I met with him on a Saturday or a Sunday. I remember two things from that visit, which seemed to go very well. The first was that Tim said that he had purchase several companies, and had resold most of them. One that he was still holding was a software company, and he mentioned some sort of difficulty with it. The other memorable event was the surprising statement that he would have no difficulties with his banks. He claimed that he had great relationships with all of them. I only had two banks, and no one at either one had any idea who I was.

Both of these should have been red flags. I was already dreading needing to work for Tim for two or four years. If he already had trouble with other coders in a similar position, it might be even worse than I had imagined, and I already imagined myself being screamed at over the telephone on a regular basis,

His mention of the banks made it clear that he had not yet obtained the financing. I should definitely have called a halt to proceeding any further until he had lined up the money. It was a rookie mistake.

The office of Andros, Floyd & Miller in Hartford.

The lawyer: Back in April Denise and I could understand that we might be in over our heads. We asked our accountant, Tom Rathbun, if he knew of any lawyers that could help us in dealing with a prospective buyer for our business. He recommended that we contact Mark La Fontaine of the law firm of Andros, Floyd & Miller. We contacted him, and he sent us an engagement letter on April 5 that stated that his billing rate was $300 per hour. He waived the retainer fee.

Denise and I drove to his office one afternoon in April. We explained our situation to him. For some reason he was most concerned about Sue’s status with the company and the fact that she was part of our group health insurance. He strongly advised us to remove her from the group. I disagreed with his assessment. I was quite sure that I could defend our approach if someone accused us of fraud.

Mark explained the process of selling the company. I did not think that I got $300 worth of advice out of the meeting. I just had to hope that he would be worth the money when the exchange of paperwork got more intense. I am pretty sure that we provided Mark with a copy of the Letter of Intent. I don’t recall whether he had asked us if Tim had said in writing that he had lined up sources for the financing.

On May 20 Tim sent me forty-one “due diligence” questions. They are posted here. I wrote up answers, and Mark reviewed them. I then sent them to Tim together with the necessary attachments on May 24. The answers are posted here. Bring a lunch; it has eleven pages and several attachments that I did not post.

A second set of twenty-one questions came on May 28. They are posted here. My answers and supporting documentation was sent on June 2. They are posted here.

The third set of ten questions arrived on June 17. These, which were more personal than technical, are posted here. By this time I was getting very antsy about whether this process could be completed before Sue and I departed for our vacation in Russia. The file of answers has the same date and is posted here. Since all my answers were reviewed by Mark or his staff, one of the dates must be wrong.

I remember one after-hours telephone call that I had with Tim. I have always hated telephone calls, and I had been spending an inordinate amount of time writing up very detailed answers to his questions. He told me that I sounded like I had “seller’s remorse”. I explained that what he heard in my voice was my lifelong aversion to negotiating over the phone.

On Thursday, August 5, Tim finally sent to me and Mark the purchase agreement (here), promissory note (here), stock pledge (here), and employment agreement (here). I immediately called Mark’s office and left word that I was leaving for vacation on Sunday and would be back in the office on Monday, August 23. Nothing was to be done until they heard from me. I asked Denise to keep me apprised of any developments, but I warned her that I was not confident about how reliable my access to the Internet would be.

The documents were long and complicated. However, they appeared to my untrained eyes as pretty much in accord with the LOI. My obligation, which previously had consisted of a definite two-year commitment and another tentative two-year commitment had been changed to a definite three-year commitment.

Russia: For many months Sue and I had been planning to take a river cruise in August in Russia from St. Petersburg to Moscow (described in great detail here). Because the arrangements had been made in conjunction with our friends, Tom and Patti Corcoran, postponing the trip was never a serious consideration. I had put in a lot of effort to get the most out of the trip including spending a lot of time trying to remember the Russian that I had learned in the sixties. I even downloaded a set of flash cards for Russian vocabulary from the Internet. I used them for at least an hour per day.

I was very excited about the prospect of seeing both the major cities of Russia as well as a little bit of the vast territory between them. I was happy that the deal with Tim seemed to be nearing consummation, but I did not like the fact that I would be on a ship in Russia while the unsigned documents were in Hartford and St. Louis.

Viking Surkov is now known as Viking Helg.

On day #11 of the cruise, Thursday, August 19, our ship. the Viking Surkov, was docked on the northern edge of Moscow. I was scheduled to take a bus tour to Sergiev Posad, which had been outrageously described to us as the Vatican City of the Russian Orthodox Church. Before breakfast I had made my way to the center of the ship, where the Internet service was the closest to tolerable. My journal has only this brief description: “I had just enough time to download my e-mail messages. A couple of the work-related ones were rather disturbing, but there was not much that I could do about them.”

The disturbing messages were from Denise. Evidently Tim’s lawyers had been communicating with Mark about details of the agreement throughout my absence. That was disturbing enough, but Tim himself had contacted Denise and had told her that his bankers had been questioning some aspects of the deal. He wanted to rewrite the purchase agreement. I was astounded to learn that the bankers were still involved. I thought that surely he must have shown his plans to them before he sent them to the lawyers and then to us. What in the world was going on?

Tim’s new plan: I don’t have any documentation of the new plan that I had to deal with when I returned to work, but I am pretty sure that I remember it in some detail. He proposed to buy only Denise’s 25 percent of the shares immediately. Sue and I would still be majority owners. I would hire him as marketing director at a salary of $50,000 per year. In three years he would buy the remaining shares if we had met the sales objectives that we had outlined. They are posted here.

I considered this proposal laughable:

Sue and I received nothing.
Since the business was not being sold, Steve Pope received nothing except salary cuts.
He wanted me to let my most valuable employee go and voluntarily terminate a relationship that I had worked hard to cultivate.
My new partner would be someone with whom I was dreading working.
TSI’s new marketing director had no credentials and no ties to either of our target markets.
He wanted to set his own hours and work from home.
If (actually when) the plan failed, it was still my responsibility.
Sue would kill me if I agreed to this.

I tried to explain why this was a non-starter. I don’t think that Denise would have agreed anyway, but our agreement with her prohibited her from selling her shares privately.

I made one more trip to St. Louis to try to persuade him. Denise thought that it was a waste of time and money, and so I had to pay for it myself. Tim picked me up at the airport in his snazzy Lexus sports car and drove us to his house/office in Chesterfield, MO. I tried to resurrect his original proposal with every argument that I could think of. He listened to me politely and said that he would think about it, but I knew that the deal was dead.

I wrote a letter terminating our contract with Mark as soon as I returned. Here is the text:

Please terminate our contract immediately. At this point, it appears that the deal is beyond resuscitation. If this transaction is somehow revived, we may want to start anew.
Thank you for your assistance. It is a shame that so much effort was wasted on such a futile endeavor.

Explanation and Speculation: Here is what I think might have happened. The banker(s) were probably not impressed with his idea. However, they must not have rejected it out of hand because he was still willing to buy out Denise. So, he must have been able to lay his hands on $250,000. I think that they probably were asking him to put up his house or some other fixed asset as collateral for the rest of the money. Either this gave him cold feet, or perhaps his wife put her foot down. In either case I blame the feet.

Could this gigantic SNAFU been avoided? I think so. I should have insisted that Tim show the Letter of Intent to the bankers. He had allegedly already bought and sold companies. I assumed that he would have lined up financing first before telling someone that he wanted to give them $1 million. Like Fllounder in Animal House, I fucked up; I trusted him.

Would the original plan have worked? It would only have worked if Tim had been able to convince two or three large retailers to buy AdDept. At that point the only ones left who did not use AdDept and also did a lot of advertising were Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe’s. Dillard’s, and chains of grocery stores and drug stores. Maybe he could have pulled it off, but I cannot imagine how. Maybe he knew how to persuade them to let me talk with the advertising managers and then give a presentation, but I had seen no evidence of it.

At the same time we probably would have needed to pivot our development to use more attractive input and output. We also probably would have needed to come up with a way to handle Internet advertising in a useful manner. Both of these tasks would be daunting.

Even if we had succeeded, I think that my life would have been hell for three years. I was absolutely and completely honest in everything that I said to him, but there were certainly things that he did not understand. For example, I seriously doubt that he understood that the A^xN revenue was dependent on the AdDept clients. When an AdDept client stopped using the system, was purchased or absorbed by another retailer, or outsourced the buying of its newspaper ads, all or at least a majority of the associated A^xN revenue disappeared.

Denise, who was ten years younger than I was, wanted to sell because she desired to try something else. I had no such ambitions. I wanted to sell because I could not see a way to make the business continue to be viable without a huge expenditure of time and money.

I would have done everything that I could to make it succeed, including going back to working 70-hour weeks. It would have required a herculean effort to make the business work without Denise. Keep in mind that I had celebrated my sixty-second birthday on the ship in Russia. Whom could I hire to replace Denise? I could probably find someone with the experience and skill of the Denise whom we hired in 1984, but no one in the U.S. could just take her chair and do what she was doing in 2010 without a lot of on-the-job training. My rule of thumb was that new programmers generally cost me more time than they saved during the first six months of employment, and Denise meant much more to the company than any programmer.

I would not have taken any vacations during those three years. That means that I would have missed the South Italy tour in 2011 (described here), which was our last tragic adventure with Patti and Tom. In 2012 we took a Larry Cohen bridge cruise, the famous honeymoon for one (described here). I would never have met Frank Evangelista. In 2013 I spent a few days at the Gatlinburg Regional bridge tournament with Michael Dworetsky (describe here). A lot of pleasant memories would have never been created.

Worst of all, I think that Tim would have inevitably come to blame me for the company’s failure. I can imagine awkward and even painful telephone conversations on a weekly basis. I don’t know what he would have tried to make me do to fix the situation. You can’t squeeze blood from a stone. He might have sued me. I cannot imagine what the grounds would have been, but he probably had much deeper pockets for legal fees than I did. For a guy like me that would have been a real nightmare.

Expenses: Denise and I spent a lot of money, and I took on more than 75 percent of the cost. We spent $24,000 for Steve Pope’s activities. I don’t remember what the appraiser charged, but it was much more than $1,000. Mark charged us at least $12,800. The trip to St. Louis cost $500, and our dinner with Tim was nearly $150. So, the total charge was around $40,000. I also spent a great deal of time on this project, and at the time we were billing out my services at the rate of $1,000 per day.

This was not quite as bad as it looked. The expenses were deductible, and at the time I was paying a lot in taxes. Furthermore, if the effort had been successful, Sue and I would have received hundreds of thousands of dollars. In 2009 I invested a high percentage of my savings in an indexed fund based on the S&P 500. I would presumably have augmented that with an even higher percentage of the windfall. From that time through October of 2023 the S&P 500 has increased in value by approximately 300 percent! Do the math.

1. Steve Pope was still in the business brokerage business in 2023. His company was called Pope and Associates, LLC. The website is here.

2. Mr. Gunville’s LinkedIn profile is here.

3. Mr. Dustin’s LinkedIn profile is posted here. FRG’s website can be viewed here.

4. M&F’s website can be found here.

5. NAS’s website is here. Mr. Lerner’s LinkedIn page is here.

6. Several companies called the Catalyst Group existed in 2023, but I don’t think that any were the people to whom I sent the letter.

7. Corum’s website is here.

8. VR’s website is here. Mr. Capozzi’s LinkedIn page (posted here) indicated that he owned a VR franchise.

9. George Abraham’s LinkedIn page is here.

10. For a short while I placed the most current TSI backup tape in the P.O. box. The clerk quickly put an end to that. He said that it was not allowed for the owner of the box to put anything in it. The owner could take things out or leave them in the box, but only post office employees could place anything in the box. I did not argue. I think they were worried about a bomb.

11. Tim Finney’s LinkedIn page lists his occupation as CEO and Founder. It is located here.

12. Webex is an Internet product from Cisco systems. It allowed people to view on their own systems what was being displayed on remote systems. This was, of course, before Zoom existed.

2011 Jim Wavada’s Funeral and Estate

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Mike

The last of the Mohicans. Continue reading →

My dad died at Hartford Hospital on Tuesday, September 13, 2011. At the time he had been living in Connecticut for almost six years. That period has been described in some detail here. After his death it fell to me to make all of the arrangements for his funeral, disposition of his estate, and other such tasks.

My wife Sue definitely helped, and my dad made it easy for me by making a lot of preparations. He had written a carefully worded will, and he made me its executor. He had also added me as a signatory on his bank accounts and beneficiary of his investments.

The first thing that I did was to call my sister Jamie and notify her that he had died. I asked her to attend the funeral and told her that there was enough money in his accounts to pay for her and her five children to come to the funeral that I planned to schedule in Leawood, KS, where my dad had spent the bulk of his adult life. This was the first time that I had talked with Jamie for several years, as explained here. She thanked me for taking care of him, but she would not consider coming to the funeral. She said that he would have hated her being there, which I am quite certain was not true. None of her five children attended either. I don’t have any evidence that she had anything to do with their decisions, but …

My dad and mom had been active members of Curé of Ars church. I called the pastor, Monsignor Charles McGlinn¹, to arrange the funeral mass. Somehow the subject of Boy Scouts came up. I told him that shortly after my family moved to Leawood back in 1962 I had joined Troop 395 and was the troop’s first Eagle Scout. I had spent most of my scouting days in Troop 295 at Queen of the Holy Rosary. He had also been the pastor there, but well after my time.

He remembered my dad and mom, and he scheduled the funeral mass for 10AM on Friday, September 23. I told him that my dad wished to be cremated. He said that that would be fine. In fact, it was the usual practice for deaths in distant locations. This surprised me quite a bit. I had been taught that the resurrection of the bodies would occur on Judgment Day. I supposed that if you believed that, you could imagine some way that the body could be reconstituted from ashes.

I had been composing dad’s obituary in my head while he had been in palliative care at the hospital. Since newspapers charged by the word for obituaries, dad would have appreciated that I kept it short and to the point. I sent this to the Kansas City Star.

James E. Wavada, 87, died on September 13, 2011, in Hartford, CT. Mass of Christian Burial will be held at 10 a.m. Friday, Sept. 23, at Curé of Ars Church, 9401 Mission Rd., Leawood. Jim grew up in Rosedale, matriculated at Maur Hill, and served in the Army in WWII. He worked at BMA for almost four decades, starting in the mail room and ending as a vice-president of public relations. He had a great love of words, except for “I,” which he almost never used. His astounding memory could produce an apt literary quote for any occasion. After he retired, he wrote Yup the Organization, a tongue-in-cheek guide to climbing the corporate ladder. The best day of Jim’s life was when he married Dolores Cernech. The worst was when she died more than 50 years later. Jim is survived by his son, Mike, daughter, Jamie, five grandchildren, and innumerable friends and admirers.

Four decades? Where did I get that? Well, as usual, nobody checked my work. I was very proud of this little essay at the time, but given another chance I would at least remove the commas after “son” and “daughter”.

I am sure that there was some sort of reception. I think that my dad’s friends had set up something in the vestibule, and there was a reception line there before mass. I don’t remember going to a funeral home there.

I don’t remember calling anyone else about the funeral. Sue might have called the Raffertys. They probably notified their friends and others who knew dad. Two of my cousins lived in KC. One of them probably saw the obituary and notified the others. Charlie, Vic, and Cathy were certainly there. I am not so sure about Margaret Anne.

Somehow dad’s old army buddy, Jake Jacobson², heard about it and came down by himself from Milwaukee. I think that he might have called me to say that he was coming.

I was thrilled that he was able to make the trip. I knew that he was five years older than my dad, but he seemed to be quite vigorous. However, he confessed to me that whenever he changed locations, he made sure that he knew where the nearest bathroom was located.

The other surprise was Joan Dobel³, the mother of Pat Dobel, my friend and classmate at Rockhurst High School and my very first debate partner. I had never met her, but evidently she had been A friend of my parents.

Sue and I made arrangements with Leete-Stephens Funeral Home in Enfield. We decided not to hold any gatherings in Enfield. The people at L-S took care of the cremation privately. They gave me an urn containing the ashes. I was shocked to learn that I was required to carry them on the airplane as carry-on luggage.

Sue and I flew to KCI a day or two before the day of the funeral. We certainly rented a car from Avis.

I am pretty sure that we stayed at the Hampton Inn that was near I-435 in Overland Park. We may have made arrangements for Jake to stay there, too.

I have a vague recollection that Sue and I picked up Jake at the airport, but I am not positive. If I did not, I have trouble imagining how he got around. I don’t remember him taking taxis.

The funeral mass itself was well attended. My parents had a lot of friends in the area. One of the ladies that had worked closely with him at BMA was also there. Dad sometimes talked about her when I was still living in Leawood many years earlier, but I cannot remember her name.

I did not take an active roll in the ceremony. I don’t think that anyone spoke about my dad, but I could be wrong. This was a marked contrast with my mom’s funeral as posted here.

I remember that Sue and I rode in one of the funeral home’s cars out to the cemetery. It seemed like a long drive. We were in the same care as Monsignor McGlinn. I felt uncomfortable, but he did nothing to cause me to feel that way.

By far the highlight of the entire trip was supper at RC’s in the Martin City neighborhood of KC MO. My dad and I frequented this restaurant on my visits to KC (documented here). All my cousins and some of their kids joined Sue, me, and Jake. Cathy’s future husband, Patrick Wisor, was also there. My dad’s estate picked up the tab.

I don’t know what about the atmosphere at RC’s⁴ made this such an enjoyable evening for me. I don’t remember any of the details of the conversation, but I do recall that everyone seemed relaxed and having a good time. It helped to cement some relationships between me and my cousins. We had known each other for decades, but we had spent very little time together.

Disposition of the estate: This was a surprisingly easy job. My dad left his financial records in remarkably good condition. He had previously added my name to his accounts, and his will was straightforward. I was the executor. The will left everything to me, but in private conversations he told me that he also wanted to take care of Jamie’s children.

I made one or two visits to the office of Richard Tatoian, a probate attorney in Enfield. I told him that I was worried that my sister might give me some trouble about the will. He advised me that my dad made his intentions very clear, and he did not think that anyone could contest it. The total estate was worth about $180,000. I sent checks for $9,000 each to Cadie and Kelly Mapes and Gina, Anne, and Joey Lisella. After the first of the year I sent a second check for the same amount to each of them.

After Sue and I had taken the few things that we wanted (electronic equipment and mementos) from dad’s apartment Sue contacted Golden Gavel Auctions in East Windsor to pick up all of the rest of dad’s stuff at Bigelow Commons. They were able to sell some of it, but it barely covered the cost of carting away the rest of it.

Dealing with Bigelow Commons was a pleasure. They waived the right to the rent for the rest of the term of dad’s lease. They also told me how much they enjoyed having my dad as a tenant.

Many years later I discovered in my dad’s papers two very interesting tickets: one for Super Bowl III (the Joe Namath game) and one for the 1970 Rose Bowl, Bo Schembechler’s first.

1. Monsignor McGlinn was the pastor of Curé of Ars from 1986 until his retirement in 2015. Before that he had been the pastor at Queen of the Holy Rosary, our parish for eight years. He died in 2020 at the age of 78. His very revealing obituary has been posted here.

2. Jake died in 2023 at the age of 103 and a half! His truly fabulous obituary is posted here. It is by far the best that I have ever seen. The obituary contains a story written by his son Paul (introduced here). It mentioned, among many other things, that Jake was in counter-intelligence in Europe in WW II. This surprised me greatly. My dad was in the infantry in the Pacific. I wondered how the two of them met and managed to develop a relationship that lasted for so long. I could not figure out a way to contact Paul to see if he knew the answer.

3. Joan died in 2013. Her obituary has been posted here.

4. RC’s changed hands in 2023. Its history is documented here.

2023 September: The Big Black Box

Posted on September 28, 2023 by Mike

It’s name is Asus. Continue reading →

By the beginning of September of 2023 I had become quite frustrated about the time that I had been wasting because my Lenovo desktop computer, on which I had keyed in the great bulk of the entries in the 1948 Project (introduced here), was intolerably slow. The biggest problem was that the system would quite often lock up for as long as ten or fifteen minutes. During these periods the disk light was on continuously. I had tried to determine the cause by examining the output available in Windows’ Task Manager, but I had no luck. I had also asked the Greek Squad to look into it. The agent signed on to my system, deleted a lot of temporary files. That seemed to help for a day or two. However, it reverted to its previous behavior shortly thereafter.

Another problem was its connection with the Cox modem/router. The connection would be lost for no apparent reason, and it was often difficult to recover. A few years earlier I attached a modem that I had previously purchased to a USB port. That did not seem to help much

So, in desperation I decided to purchase a new box. I did some research on the Internet. The new systems seemed to have much faster processors than my Lenovo desktop. The hard drives were in most cases a little smaller, but that did not concern me much. The amount used on the Lenovo was far less than the capacity of any of the available machines.

I had had pretty good experiences during my last two computer difficulties (outlined here) with the Geek Squad people at the Best Buy store in Manchester, CT, which was about a thirty-minute drive from my house. I therefore decided to buy one there.

I cashed in the points on my Bank of America Mastercard for a Best Buy gift card in excess of $300. The units at Best Buy started at about $600 unless I was willing to settle for an obsolete model that ran Windows 10 or an “open box.” I decided to put a new system on order shortly after I received the gift card in the mail.

Unless I did not mind making several trips to the store, I figured that the easiest way was to order it online and pick it up at the store. Before I did so I had an electronic chat with one of Best Buys sales agents. I told him which model (an Asus) I was interested in, but I also expressed my concern about the difficulty of migrating the programs that I used. I specifically emphasized that the one that I was most worried about was Outlook, Microsoft’s email product. The agent assured me that the Geek Squad people at the store could help me with that. That convinced me to put the system on order. It was scheduled to be at the store on Friday, September 21. I actually received an email that it had arrived a day early. I had a big project to work on over the next few days, and so I planned on picking it up on Monday.

I had a long and strange electronic chat with agents from Best Buy on Friday. When I explained my concern about Outlook I was transferred to a different agent who allegedly specialized in this. A little later I was transferred again. This agent assured me that the Geek Squad would do the entire migration for me and made an appointment for me for 3:20 in the afternoon on Monday.

I left for Best Buy at 2:30 on Monday and arrived at 3. I had no trouble obtaining the new computer. I had brought with me a bag that contained the Lenovo that I had been using as well as a very old external hard drive for which I had lost the power cord. I intended to ask the Geek Squad people after they had migrated the programs and data if there was any way extract the files that were on the external drive onto something usable.

The Geek Squad guy was very friendly, but he said that they only did data, not programs. This was very upsetting to me. The only reason that I had purchased the machine from Best Buy was for the help that I expected to receive. Migrating the data was no challenge if you had a large external hard drive, and I did. I was so upset about the lies (or maybe misunderstandings) that I left Best Buy without remembering to ask about the hard drive. As I drove out of the parking lot I was so concerned about what should be my next step in making the system in my trunk operational that I almost ran a red light and caused a serious accident. The rest of the drive home was uneventful.

Plan Z: In my research I had come across a company name Zinstall (website here) that markets a downloadable program called WinWin that the website claimed was able to transfer all of one’s programs and files from any Windows computer to a new Windows 11 computer. It cost $129 plus tax.

On the evening of Wednesday September 27² I started an electronic chat with someone named Paul from Zinstall. He assured me that they installed software, called WinWin, that could transfer all the programs, but it was possible that Microsoft would demand proof of ownership in the form of a serial number or program key. A little more research convinced me that this was quite unlikely. Besides, I could not see an alternative. So, I purchased the software. I received the following email:

Thank you for choosing Zinstall.
A. DOWNLOAD LINKS
1. CLICK THE FOLLOWING LINK to download the SOFTWARE: (link)
2. You should download and run the software on BOTH computers: OLD and NEW.
3. IMPORTANT: before taking any further steps, you should carefully read the USER GUIDE. CLICK THE FOLLOWING LINK to download the user guide: (link)
B. ACTIVATION INFORMATION: Below is your Zinstall license activation key serial number. You will need to supply this information when prompted by the software.
Serial number: WNPV-XXRR-BJDK-VJK6-USOP-I2XP-LGXO-6UEV-74
Registered email: Mike@Wavada.org
C. SUPPORT AND SERVICE We are glad to assist you with your transfer.
1. SUPPORT QUESTIONS & TROUBLESHOOTING: For any support questions or assistance, CLICK THE FOLLOWING LINK: (link) where you will find answers and solutions for your questions, as well as options to contact the Support Team.
2. If you require TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE, please submit the “Support Case Form” and run the Diagnostic Tool on both computers (old and new). Both the Form and the Diagnostic tool are available at the link above.
D. FULL SERVICE – REMOTE ASSISTANCE: IF you prefer the convenience of having an expert tech perform the whole transfer for you, you have the option of a Full Remote Service add-on. It is available here at a discounted “bundle” price: (link).
E. BEST PRACTICES: HOW TO PERFORM A MIGRATION? Before starting the migration process:
1. Make sure you have a backup of your computers.
2. Save all open files and close all running applications.
3. Completely uninstall all Internet Security Suites, Firewalls, and Antivirus on both computers – OLD and NEW.
4. You don’t need to purchase any special cables or external hardware to do the transfer. If your computers are connected to a home network, you don’t need to do anything – Zinstall will use the network for the transfer. Otherwise, you can just use a regular network (aka Ethernet) cable – you probably already have one – to connect the computers directly. Here is what it looks like: (link).
5. While wireless is usable as well, if you have an option to use Ethernet – use it. Wireless is inherently slower, and may be interrupted by network disconnects.
6. The migration process requires “Administrator” user privileges.
IMPORTANT: The transfer may continue for a very long time – DO NOT INTERRUPT the process, even if it seems that nothing is happening for a while. REMEMBER: Once started, the migration process is completed unattended – you are not required to stay near the computers, and may leave it for the night to complete.

One thing that had not previously been clear was that I needed to connect the two computers via an Ethernet cable if they were not already on a network. I thought that it would be sufficient that both used wi-fi. I had been planning on sending the data through the modem/router from Cox Cable.

I asked Sue if she knew if we had an Ethernet cable. She said that she had at one time put all of the miscellaneous cables in a big plastic tub. I naturally asked where it was. She said that she didn’t remember. I was not surprised. I made a mental note to drive to Target on Thursday morning to purchase one. Target’s website offered a seven-foot cable for $10, and they seemed to be in stock..

In one of my dreams that night, however, I had a revelation that there might be one in the north end of our basement near the AS/400 that I brought home in the summer of 2014 after we closed TSI’s office in East Windsor.

When I awakened in the morning I hastened downstairs and discovered that there were indeed two Ethernet cables in a snake’s nest of cables near the computer. I wrested one away and without too much difficulty I was able to connect the two black boxes on my desk. When the yellow lights appeared in the sockets for both, I rejoiced. I had saved $10!

The migration: The instructions sited above were thorough and instructive. As someone who wrote such instructions for users of his code for thirty-five years, I have one quibble. Users expect the written instructions to be in the order in which they are to be executed. In this document some of the most important pieces of information are near the end. I admit that I never read sections B, D, and E until I started writing this account on Friday.

I downloaded the WinWin software to my old system, Lenovo. I found the executable file in the Download folder and ran it. According to the instructions I should have run it as administrator, but I didn’t. The program churned for a few minutes and then asked me whether this was the old computer or the new one. After I selected “old” it told me to do the same thing on my new computer Asus.

I had planned to use the same display on both computers.³ So, at this point I needed to detach it from Lenovo and insert it into Asus. This turned out to be a much bigger pain than I thought that it would be. In the first place the lighting in that area of the office was not good.⁴ The head of the cable was held in place by two screws. No screw driver was needed, but it took longer than I remembered to screw and unscrew them with my fingers.

After I attached the display I turned on Asus for the first time. It came up rather quickly. Among other things it asked for a PIN. I used the same one that Sue and I use for the garage door opener. It invited me to take a tour of Windows 11, but I postponed that adventure until some undisclosed point in the future.

Instead I selected the Edge icon on the desktop, downloaded the WinWin executable again, found it in the Download folder, and ran it. The same window came up, and, when asked, I said that this was the new computer. The program then searched for the old computer. This was the moment of truth, or I should probably call it the first moment of truth.

It was not to be. The screen displayed a sad message (#324) that indicated that it could not find the old computer. The likely cause, it said, was either that the two boxes were not connected or that security software on one of the boxes was preventing the connection.

I checked the back of both computers. The Ethernet cables seemed to be securely attached. I then uncabled the display from Asus and reattached it to Lenovo. By coincidence almost as soon as I could see the display again a window appeared for the Webroot program that the Geek Squad had installed. It had options to end three types of security. I did so. Consequences be damned.

I then sent to the support team at Zinstall an email explaining the situation and identifying the error message number. I received two identical “high importance”messages one minute apart: “Hello Michael Wavada, This is an acknowledgment we have received your email. We will contact you soon. Best regards, Zinstall support team”

I would have preferred something more specific than the word “soon”, even if it was “within the next 24 hours”. I felt that Zinstall recognized the urgency of the problem, and I could expect an email with specific instructions within the next five minutes, or five hours, or maybe five days. I stayed at Lenovo’s keyboard⁴ and won game after game of two-suited Spider Solitaire while intermittently checking the Inbox in Outlook. At about noon I fixed myself a ham sandwich and ate it in front of my desk while I kept my eye on the Inbox.

I almost always took a nap after lunch. Mine on that day was a rather short one, and I rushed back to check the Inbox as soon as I was awake. No dice.

At 1:47PM I sent a short missive to Zinstall support: “How long is soon? It has now been over four hours.” Nearly an hour later I was about to send another email when this showed up in the Inbox. It was signed by Sam R.

Thank you for contacting us.
You have Webroot still active on the old computer.
Please disable Webroot firewall on the old computer (or simply remove Webroot from the old computer), and run Zinstall again on both.
Please let us know how we can assist further!

I replied as soon as I could: “I believe that I disabled it before running Zinstall. I tried to delete the folder named Webroot, and it said that I need permission from SYSTEM to do so. I do not know how to do that. Actually I seem to have two copies of Webroot. One in Program Files, and one in Program Files x(86). The Geek Squad installed them.”

Sam R. must have been horrified about what I had attempted. He wrote back rather quickly.:

You should not delete folders directly; instead, you can typically right click on the Webroot icon in system tray (bottom right corner, near the clock) and select “Shut down” or “Exit”.
Or, to uninstall it, go to the list of installed programs and select Webroot there.
Alternatively, if you cannot get rid of Webroot, another alternative is to use Zinstall with a USB external drive instead of network.
Do you happen to have a USB hard drive available?

I did have an external drive with a great deal of storage, and it was within two feet of my right hand. Nowhere in the emails or the online instructions booklet was there any mention of this option. Maybe that could be plan Z2 if we could not get past the security issue. In the process of disabling Webroot in the way that he described I noticed that the system clock was off by more than two hours. While I was in the same system tray I also found a Malware icon. There was no option to disable it. I select “Quit” instead. Both icons disappeared from the tray.

Uncertain whether Sam R. would still be working, at 5:04PM I sent the following message to describe what I had done since receiving his (her? their?) last email:

I tried this twice. On the first try I received the same message as before even though Webroot was not listed in the Apps. The second time I removed Webroot again (the system had rebooted on its own) and Malware Bytes from the Apps in the lower right corner. This time the program on the new box found the old box, but it warned that I was using a wireless connection that might be slow or fail. The lights for the Ethernet ports are on on both machines. Is there a way to verify the connection? I do not have a network (other than the Cox Cable modem/router). I just ran a cable between the machines.

Later I became convinced that Lenovo had not, in fact, rebooted on its own. I was pretty sure that the AC cable had been jostled loose while I was moving the display cable back and forth between the two boxes.

I decided to try it again, and I was cautiously optimistic. However, the email sent at 6PM told a different story: “It is now showing message #11. This is SO FRUSTRATING!” Message #11 said that my account had reached the limit on the number of tries. I did not receive an answer on Thursday.

I was poor company all evening. I was close to giving up on Zinstall, but I had no alternative at this point. I began to consider contacting American Express to tell them not to pay for the service. I went to bed at about 9PM, which was quite early for me.

On Friday morning I was pleasantly surprised to receive an email from Sam R. The time stamp was 4:14AM.

Thank you for the update, it’s great that the connection issue is solved now that Webroot is removed!
Regarding wireless, you do not have a huge amount of data on the old computer, so you can transfer via wireless as well.
As long as the wireless network is not abnormally slow, it will complete just as well.
Note also that you can use the old computer while the transfer is in progress, if needed – just press the Windows key on your keyboard to get to your apps / desktop.
Please let us know how we can assist further!

I asked him about error #11. He said that that had been cleared. I did not respond to his comment about being able to use the old computer. Once the process started, I intended to monitor it on the new computer. I had no intention of touching any of the cables once the migration was under way. He probably did not remember that I was switching the display from one machine to the other.

Before I ran the WinWin program on Lenovo I made certain that neither security program was in the system tray. When I moved the display’s cable, I was very careful not to jostle the AC cable on Lenovo. I then checked to see that both Ethernet lights were on.

At about 8:20 (I know because I always awaken Sue at 8:30) I initiated the WinWin program on Asus. This time it found Lenovo, and it did not present the warning message about using a wireless connection. It must have been using the Ethernet cable.

The process took about three hours. I used part of the time to go through the papers that had been accumulating on my desk for a few months. That was a worthwhile activity. I found a year-old credit from Costco for $1.48 and the paperwork for applying for a discount on the real estate tax levied by Enfield. I also found my hanging file for income tax for 2019. I had no idea why it was out of the filing cabinet.

I was very impressed with the window that displayed the various steps in which the program was engaged. It also showed two percentage bar graphs that indicated the portion of the step being executed and the total process that had been completed. At the bottom were statistics about things like the rate of data transfer and the size of the files that had been copied.

When it was finally finished, it congratulated me on a successful migration. I have seen many such messages before, but this was the first time that I really thought that we had accomplished something important together—I mean the program, the computers, the cabling, Sam R., and I.

I restarted the system as directed. It came back up rather quickly, and I entered the PIN. The desktop looked almost the same as it had before. The program tray was missing two icons. One was definitely for Spider Solitaire. I purchased a new copy for Asus, for $0, and it popped back up in the program tray. The other one might have been for a program that I had downloaded to convert YouTube videos to MP3 or MP4 files.

Outlook. etc.: It was time for the second moment of truth. With some trepidation I clicked on the blue Outlook icon. Microsoft somehow recognized me and asked me to key in the password associated with the account associated with my email address. I found it on my password list. Microsoft approved it and immediately installed updates to the software. I then needed to key in the passwords for my two email accounts. I got the Cox one on the first trick, but I made a mistake on the one for Wavada.org. Once I got it right all the emails that I had received from both accounts showed up after the next Send/Receive.

Everything seemed to be there, and I liked the new look and feel of the software.

Problems: After one day’s use I had encountered only three problems. As I mentioned, I had left one program open on Lenovo. It took me less than five minutes to bring the Asus version up to date. At one point while I was surfing in Firefox Windows11 interrupted and reported that it needed to restart. I had no choice but to let it. It came right back up, but I lost about an hour’s worth of work in WordPress. I don’t know why it had not been saved, but I will need to be more careful about updating these long blog entries more regularly.

The strangest problem was encountered using the editor of posts in WordPress in Firefox. Below is the screen for editing a blog entry in Chrome. This is also how it looked in Firefox on Windows 10:

Notice the blank area to the left of the text and the slide bar on the right that is now most of the way down the “Post” area on the right.

Contrast this with the same screen on Firefox.

The Firefox version shows a frame from the Dashboard on the left. The two slide bars are both so thin as to be effectively invisible to a septuagenarian. The one to the right of the text works correctly, but the one to the right of the Post column only raises and lowers the Dashboard on the far left, even though it is long enough to need a slide bar. Furthermore, it has no effect on the Post area. This makes it almost impossible to add more tags after a point.

I don’t know if this was a problem in Windows 11 or WordPress. I planned to install a new version of WordPress soon. I later learned that it was neither. The slide bars in Windows 11 were much smaller. Sometimes they were nearly invisible.

Performance: The new box is lightning fast, and so far it has never locked up.

1. The technical experts at law enforcement agencies on television often extract files from hard drives that survived plane crashes, arson, floods, and the like. Surely the agents of the internationally renowned Geek Squad had similar tools at their disposal.

2. I ordinarily played bridge on Wednesday evenings, but the game on 9/27 was canceled because only three pairs planned to intend.

3. Sue thought I might be able to use a gigantic display that she had squirreled away in the three-season porch. I was thoroughly skeptical even before I learned that it had no cable.

4. I did NOT need my cataracts removed. That will probably come some day, but not before my subsequent appointment with the retina specialist on October 18.

Wavablog

Memoirs, bridge, popes, travel, and other stuff

Tag Archives: Comparetto/Wavada, Sue

2013-2017 Teaching Bridge to Young People

2021-? Bridge: New Partners During and After Covid-19

2005-2010 TSI: For Sale?

2011 Jim Wavada’s Funeral and Estate

2023 September: The Big Black Box