Ass Whooping Coming My Way

Last night was day 28 of chess vision drills. I went through all of them. I could still use a little more practice on the "all the minimal knight paths from d5" drill. I wouldn't say all those patterns are etched in my brain, but they are getting there.

After I was done, I decided to power up my newly acquired (but really fricking old) laptop. It coughed up some blood but eventually came on, though it did complain loudly about bursitis in its I/O controller. I loaded the CT Art program and did some tweaking to get display, etc. right and then tried a few exercises just for fun.

Perhaps I was not in the proper frame of mind;
perhaps I caught a lot of the harder ones ; OR
perhaps I really suck at tactical problems, but

I was not blowing through these as I had planned. I had thought I would not really have to give my full attention 'till say week 2. While I can't say that the problems were deeply complex, they were challenging enough that I'm a bit afeared of what they might be like when I get to say ... problem 812.

I dunno. Maybe I was having an off night. I did finally give up on one problem only to discover that I was trying to solve it for the wrong side. Perhaps I am just a moron.

Killing Two Birds with One Stone
The other night I tried some chess vsion drills while I was jogging. Thinking about chess was preferable to thinking: "how much further?", "has my kneee always made that sound?" and "what are the warning signs of a heart attack?". While running, I did the first knight sightedrill. I would picture the square I was on and then think of the name of the squares I could move to. I made it through about two and a half ranks in 10 minutes. I looked a little silly because I was pointing to the squares as I muttered them out. This seemed to help, and I can't look any stupider than I already do wearing the bright orange safety vest. Made the end of the run go a bit quicker and couldn't have hurt my chess vision skills either.

Here endeth the first 28 days, 127 days remain