I’m willing to pay money for a good service…

Example: I bought not too large amount of cheese for almost 20€ recently. At the shop, there was a cute girl who spent like 15 minutes helping me to choose what to buy. When I was interested in some cheese, I could try it out to see if I liked it. The cheese was like 5 times more expensive than your “usual” cheese, but it was excellent cheese and the service was just great.

But I don’t want to pay insane amounts of money for a very crappy service…

For example my bank. They send me all kinds of totally useless letters (snail-mail letters, even) all the time. But when I need to bring them a small piece of paper or they charge me 5€, there is complete silence, they just charge me 5€ without even telling me, hoping they’ll be able to do the same the next month. Also, I originally created the bank account to be able to withdraw my money from paypal and to buy things on the internet with the credit card. They gave me a card which doesn’t allow that (how should I have known?). A card that would enable me to do that would cost me 30€ a year. Also, it would enable the companies I buy things from to steal all my money from the account. What I need is a (possibly virtual) credit card that enables me to pay money through the internet when I allow it (yes, that’s actually possible, thanks to vertigo for telling me). But nope, this bank doesn’t have that, and they don’t know whether they ever will. Well, guess what, as soon as I find a bank that sucks a bit less (shouldn’t be much of a problem, anyway), I’m getting outta there. :/

Another good example of bad customer service is Czech railways. They’ll do anything to prevent you from learning when, how and for how much you can travel. I’m going to Vienna in about a week and it took me considerable time to find out that the return ticket Brno-Vienna costs 50€ (no wonder they are trying to hide that information as deep as possible). Surprisingly, going through Bratislava would be for about half the price (although Brno-Bratislava is about the same distance as Brno-Vienna, plus there’s the extra few dozens of kilometers for Bratislava-Vienna). But I’d have to change trains 2 times and considering the usual delays, there’s a chance that I’d miss my next train.

And for a change, a good customer service again: Student Agency buses. They are rather comfortable (I’d even dare to call them slightly luxurious) and take you from Brno to Vienna and back for 10€ (yup, that’s five times cheaper than the train). And if I had a better credit card, I could even buy my ticket on the internets…

To sum it up, big companies that charge a lot of money for nothing are driving me nucking futs.

Short stories are good when you don’t have much time but want to read something (why welcome, Captain Obvious).

Here are few that I really liked:
Isaac Asimov: The Last Question
Terry Bisson: They’re Made out of Meat
Ambrose Bierce: Moxon’s Master
Edgar Allan Poe: The Pit and the Pendulum

I strongly advise you to read at least the first two.

Somehow, I wasn’t that impressed by other short stories such as Nightfall (it wasn’t that bad, but somehow I expected the generally accepted best short story to be better, it was also longer than needed—the shorter the better) or An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge.

And finally, I would like to ask for your advice. Do you know any really good (and possibly short) short stories?

I’m mildly paranoid – and fully aware of it.

For example, when leaving a windowless room with the lightswitch inside (typically a bathroom) and entering a lighted corridor/passage/room/whatever I always switch the light off before opening the door. Why? Well, if there was anyone out there out to get me, this could give me a considerable edge. First, I wouldn’t be occupied with switching the light off, and more importantly, you always want to be in the dark with the other person out there in the lighted area.

I’m also slightly paranoid in other ways, but it’s not as funny as the above example and I don’t want to tell because you guys would abuse the knowledge to poke fun at me. ;-)

No, not another Pink Floyd post…

It happened that I changed schools again. Faculty of business management at vutbr was real crap (so crap I’m not even giving them a link). Easily the worst school I’ve ever seen. While I think that educashion is very important, I’m not a fan of schooling. One can educate (or should that be “educash”?) oneself watching google’s educashional videos (thanks to keo for pointing it out), reading books (some of which are even available online, like SICP), or listening to podcasts (I’m not really into that, though).

Currently, I study cca 8 hours a day and I’m learning a lot. Although it consists mostly of selfstudy, if I face a hard problem that I can’t solve or just get stuck, there are teachers to help me. Also, there’s free water and they even pay me money for studying there. All in all, can’t complain.

As some of you might have noticed, I’ve been writing this blog in English exclusively. My “official reason” was for it to be accessible to more people. While I’m happy that more people can read my blog, it certainly wasn’t the main force behind my decision.

I spent my highschool days writing papers in Czech, and I always found it very difficult. For some reason, it never felt comfortable. Although Czech is my native language and I’m certainly much more proficient at it than at English, I definitely prefer English for writing any kind of prose (haven’t tried poetry yet ;)). I am not sure why I prefer English, but I think the language just suits my style of thinking better. The idioms are also quite different, and I like the English ones better.

Writing in English is a joy for me, while writing in Czech is a nightmare. Isn’t that enough of a reason?

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine
Staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun

And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter
Never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught
Or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone
The song is over
Thought I’d something more to say

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
It’s good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.

Probably my favourite Pink Floyd song. The lyrics are slightly related to certain events that happened in my life recently. ;)

It all started about a year ago, at a go tournament in Blansko, where I played a game called “fujtajblíci”. I enjoyed it a lot, so I thought I could create online version. But as you might know, it is quite a huge leap from thinking about doing something to actually doing it.

Anyway, now I really couldn’t resist anymore… And I thought “fujtajblíci” might be a bit difficult for a lot of people to pronounce or remember, so I rewrote the name as “fuytayblees” (insert fanfares here).

There’s much more info (including the rules, for real) at the fuytayblees site itself, so just visit it, register and start playing. ;-)

After a more or less forced break last year, I didn’t think I’d play the championship this year either. I played just one qualification tournament, and I messed it up. But somehow, many people couldn’t (or didn’t want to) play, so I ended up playing.

First two rounds were reasonably easy wins, but the third round against fido was a disaster. I messed up several times in the opening, then had a dying group, and even when I miraculously escaped, it was still an even game. In the end I got a lucky win. But that was about to be the end of my good luck…

On Thursday, I had two not too strong opponents and was determined to win both games. The first game was a bit strange, with nothing really happening for a very very long time, but it got interesting in the endgame. Well, there I made a horrible blunder which cost me about 4-5 points, and finally lost the game by half a point.

The second Thursday game looked more promising, as my opponent made a very silly mistake. But I was impatient and so I gave him a chance to catch up. Then I messed it up several times, among those giving up about a 30 point group which could have lived through a ko (or where I could have got at least 6 points in sente endgame), and – surprise – lost the game by half a point. After losing both games by half a point, I was just aimlessly wandering through the dark and cold streets, angry and subdued.

On Friday I played against Vladimir Danek, who is the only strong Czech player whom I haven’t beaten yet (though I had some close results against him). The game didn’t start well for me, but during the middle game an enormous fight emerged. Basically all the groups on both sides were simultaneously dying. I somehow came ahead of this fight, but then missed a rather easy tsumego, and lost by about 10 points. Anyway, it was a cool game and I enjoyed it a lot. In the afternoon we went to a swimming pool, which was a neat break from all those go games. And we had a party with lots of food and wine in the evening.

Saturday morning I played against Jan Hora, the game started very well for me, but then I made a totally insane invasion, which I also managed to missplay, so the game ended rather quickly. After this I was already almost giving up, I had two more difficult opponents and considered it rather probable that I’ll get no more points. However, afternoon game brought a nice surprise as Radek Nechanicky managed to attack his own group, moreover in a way which helped my huge potential to become a solid territory. After his magic endgame (I was rather scared because I saw I was winning) I survived by 1.5 points.

This result gave me the necessary willpower to come to the last game against Jan Simara with the intention to win it. After making a very bad mistake in order, which killed my own group, my opponent was generous enough to make a blunder of his own, which practically undoed my blunder. After that, the game was still a bit worse for me, but he made several inaccurate plays, which cost him the game.

So in the end I got the 4th place, which is quite ok.

And btw, you can download all the games (the page is in czech but if you search for my name, you’ll find my games easily).

Seriously, what would you think about a language that is weakly typed and uses the same operator for concatenation and addition?

I think it’s insane.

Well, so much for my first encounter with JavaScript. And although I encountered way more problems (most of which were caused by my own stupidity, as usual), the fact that the plus sign (aka +) either adds or concatenates (based possibly on the current mood of the interpreter) struck me as the ultimate wtf.

Luckily, parseInt() comes to save the day. But still, why not rather use some other operator? I don’t really care which… just anything else, mmkay?

I am getting pretty sick of KGS. It’s been bothering me for several months already.

Most admins don’t care about the users at all. What’s worse, I’m starting to be like that too. I simply follow the rules: “leave me alone, we don’t deal with escapers, the system does it automatically”. Which is true only partially. As of now, the escaper system is still fucked up. Sometimes people forfeit after getting disconnected from just one game. Also, the escaper system is inherently flawed because it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do — it doesn’t protect users with bad connection from losing games. Au contraire — after they reach the critical amount of escapes (quite a lot of people will not continue the game because they are assholes and know that their opponent was marked as escaper), they lose every single game as soon as they get disconnected. If there was a simple five or ten minute limit for them to return, sometimes they would lose, but not nearly as often. Come on, they lose on time very often anyway! Plus the limit would take care of all the escapers.

But wms thinks that people should not be forced to finish their games (like when you are playing against someone who is obnoxious). This is in contradiction with the “rated games are supposed to be serious” policy. I’ll be much more angry when someone refuses to finish the game than when they are obnoxious (what does that mean, anyway? if they break the ToS, the should get banned, if they don’t, someone is just oversensitive here).
Many users complain about escapers, yet most of the admins think that there is no problem (there’s reasonable amount of freedom on kgs, but you are not allowed to talk about escapers in EGR, for example).

Look at the rating system, it is mathematically sound, but it sucks. And users know this. Still, the administration is unable to accept it. Now it sucks a bit less then it used to, but it still does: when people play too many games, they get stuck. Then they can win as much as they want and will not improve their rank. Or it will take half a year. A simple Elo-based system would perform much better. It would make it easier to change your rank, you wouldn’t get stuck, and it would be much more transparent. Users want transparency, not some insane maximum statistical likelihood function over last half a year of your performance.

The KGS server manager is rarely on with admin nick, usually just uses an alternate (secret) account. You know why? … Doesn’t want to be bothered by users… (did I mention that admins don’t care?)

Few months ago, a user reported someone heavily abusing him. No senior admin was online at the time. So I decided to use a senior admin account which I got access to because of some KGS+ lectures. I snooped the chat and wrote a reason “tasuki snooping based on user complaint”, so as to make it all transparent. I just tried to help. But I was scolded and told not to do that again under any circumstances.

Recently I (ab)used a bug which enables all admins to make permanent rooms. Yes, I know the rules for room creation, and it was a reasonable room (co-owned by Fan Hui). As no senior admin was online (only the server manager with alternate account, not to be bothered, as usual), I used the trick to make the room permanent. I was told not to do it again.

I haven’t done anything wrong, I was using tricks (which I am not officially supposed to do to) to help users and do the work of senior admins (while they keep hiding behind their alternate accouts, not to be bothered). Yet I get scolded for trying to help. And when some other admins seriously fuck up, nothing happens. Sure, we all make mistakes, but it is necessary to accept and correct them, if possible.

Unfair banning happens, but I think it’s not such a serious issue. It’s at most 48 hours, which doesn’t really harm the user too much. Still it sucks when people get banned for “offtopic chatting” or just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Much worse thing is unfair deranking. That is very harming to the user, he practically loses the account. Users often get emotionally attached to their account, so this is perhaps the hardest punishment. However, these fuckups (usually caused by someone deranking just based on same ip or without checking the games at all) usually get corrected after a complaint. Not always, though.

There is one more thing, unnecessary deranking. The official policy (aka wms) says “deranking is not a punishment, deranking serves to protect the rating system”. Well, if one established user plays against himself to get 9d to be able to brag to friends, sure, the 9d needs to be deranked to preserve consistency of the ranking system. But deranking the other account might not be necessary. This was not a repeat offender, he did not lie, he admitted it and said he’s done it just for fun, and added that he didn’t want to use that account to play against other players so as not to damage the rating system. I see no reason to keep both accounts deranked, yet that seems to be what most admins support (or they just don’t care, as usual).

And there has been at least one occasion when an admin was unable to accept his mistake and very persistently and repeatedly kept on harming an obviously innocent user, although he was told by other admins not to do it. Punishment for this admin? None.

There are more skeletons in the KGS closet, I think I could write a book on the topic…

KGS has one very important thing though — amazing user community. Users who care and who try to help (although most are ignored ;)).

Still, currently there is no overally better server than KGS, so we somehow have to live with it. And if you avoid EGR and play no serious games, you will probably be able to avoid most of the potential troubles.