Newsletter April 2003
The
last year has seen enormous changes at the club. Inevitably some voices are
heard suggesting that the old ways were best or that the new ideas are the
wrong ones. The committee have the task of administering the club in the best
interests of all its members. Since this may mean that the result is not the
ideal of each (or perhaps any) individual it is not surprising that dissent
is heard. It is however disappointing if the members believe that the committee,
who donate a considerable amount of time and effort to the club, which can
involve disruption of their particular social activities, are not acting from
such altruistic motives.
The Flat saga
Members will be aware that the club has over the past year spent a considerable sum on the upstairs flat. While the income from the flat rental has substantially increased from that which the club received prior to the renovation, the club’s finances are still well below the necessary levels to meet the running expenses of the club, to repay the debts and loans and to rebuild a working surplus to allow for future repairs and renovations. Members have remarked on the less than perfect state of the furniture, fixtures and fittings; but the committee feels that it would be irresponsible to incur further heavy expenditure before the club has the ability to pay for it.
Following
the internal refurbishment program it was discovered that vital work needed
to be done to the roof, which required scaffolding to be used. This was expensive
and the end result is that the club owes nearly £7000 to two of the committee
who have paid for much of the external work on the garden and roof, as well
as £7600 to members as a result of the loan scheme, which enabled us to proceed
with the internal work. The club’s current account at the moment amounts to
a few hundred pounds. To repay these sums requires almost two years uninterrupted
income from the flat, assumes no further unplanned expenditure and requires
that the club’s every day expenses are covered by income from table money.
The committee have reluctantly therefore decided that the table money for the Duplicate sessions on Tuesday and Thursday evenings will be increased by 50 pence from 1st April 2003 to £2 for members and £2.50 for visitors. This will be reviewed once all the club’s debts are cleared.
Tony Parkinson, Secretary
Scoring Duplicate sessions
The other major change over the year has been the introduction of the new scoring program. The limitations of the previous DOS based scoring program were, that the name records could not all be contained within one file, so there were separate name directories for Tuesday and Thursday, and that we did not have the capability to score tournaments other than standard match pointed pairs. In particular we could not computer score Butler Pairs or Teams events.
A sub-committee, originally Martin Osborne and Michael Neuser, were asked to look into the various options. They concluded that the Fin-S system was the most promising. It was based on Excel spreadsheets, and could be enhanced to accommodate the club’s existing User Initials system and to provide a capability of calculating the Club’s competition results (which require understanding the concepts of some nights being “Cup” nights and others not, of all results counting for some competitions and only the best few for others, of counting numbers of partners etc). In addition it could be tailored to score Butler Pairs and Teams events. The snag was that the tailoring was going to be an enormous amount of work. Michael Neuser set to and created the Reading version of Fin-S almost single handed. Walter Zwieflhofer and Ann Lucy provided the “new” computer equipment and basic software.
For
some time the new scoring system existed as a prototype on Michael’s laptop
computer and was used on Thursdays to ensure that it performed in the correct
manner. Michael was understandably ambitious in his working life, so when
the opportunity to take a job in the USA came along, he jumped at the chance.
This meant that those of us left with the task of introducing the new system
needed to achieve a very quick learning curve. The fact that a few gremlins
have occasionally surfaced on Tuesdays probably means that we did not succeed
as well as we might have. Fortunately, thanks to email we can still contact
Michael and ask for advice, and there are now several of us who know more
or less how the system works. The documentation has recently been expanded
slightly to cover some of the possible problems that might occur. We do however
depend on users of the system to read the documentation, and, if it is not
clear or does not cover some point, to request that additional guidance be
included. Noticeably there have been few, if any, problems on Thursdays; they
must be better at following the guidelines.
Contacts are: Tony Parkinson, Mike Ribbins, Andy Fothergill or Walter Zwieflhofer.
Tuesday Results
For
some time the hand records for both the Tuesday and Thursday duplicate sessions
have been available on the club’s web site at:
Now you can see the results and travellers for the most recent Tuesday on a web site set up for the purpose at:
www.users.tinyonline.co.uk/toneparkinson/rbcresults
This
is engineered by Tony Parkinson and the timetable depends on whether he is
playing on Tuesday, and whether he is playing golf on Wednesday, but the intention
is for them to be available normally by midday on Wednesday.
League of 8
Congratulations
to the “D” Team, captained by Lee Duff who have won all their matches in Division
4 by a margin of at least 20 IMPs and have consequently clinched the championship.
Promotion beckons. Well done Lee, Graham Reid, John and Annette Chamberlain,
Cecile Pattison, Mike Tyas, Ray and Maureen Dawson, Dale Thomas, Les Mann,
Trudi Rehmann and Mary West. Walter Zwieflhofer’s “E” team have finished all
their matches and are mid table in Division 5. The “A”, “B” and “C” teams
in Division 1 have disappointed with the “A” and “B” in mid-table and the
“C” in a relegation spot.