My last encounter with Paul Weaver
Hank Youngerman
- my very very last, because I will not go within a mile of him again.
I went to the Charlotte backgammon tournament this year, Fri-Sun Jan
14-16. I arrived Friday evening and left Monday morning. Mostly I was
there at the request of a well-known player who has hired me to record
his matches.
The tournament ended Sunday afternoon. Around 6PM, Paul asked me to
come to his hotel room. He apparently had been bad-mouthing me all
weekend.
What would you have expected him to say? Here's what I would have
said:
"Hank, I have been telling everyone that you cheat, now I am saying it
to your face. I have a computer here, a Dell Inspiron that is almost
identical to yours. However, as you know, my computer has a problem
and will not run Snowie. Hank, you have been my friend for years, and
I very much appreciate the tens of thousands of hours of computer time
you have devoted to rollouts for me, your non-stop assistance with my
computer, editing of my book, and even the hard drive you sent me a few
weeks ago, without even asking me to reimburse you for the postage. I
issue you a challenge. I would like to put your computer in my hotel
room safe, and leave you with mine, your own mouse, and please log onto
the internet and, in the privacy of a hotel room, no pressure, no one
bearing down on you, but definitely with no outside aids, play some
online backgammon. I hope that you will put up a good error rate, and
then before I leave for Japan I can tell everyone how wrong I have been
to criticize you."
Instead, Paul asked me to reinstall Windows and Snowie on his computer.
Yes, the man who had been spreading rumors behind my back, wanted one
last session of computer help before he left the Western Hemisphere.
And guess what? I did it. I spent about four hours (with a dinner
break) fixing his computer. It was pretty complicated, and we never
did get it working quite right, but not because I didn't try.
I'm speechless, I hope everyone else is too.
There is one other thing worth reporting. In late January/early
February, I had an email exchange with Paul. He asked when I was
moving, and then asked again, needing to know the specific date. He
was aware of exactly when I was moving, well, that there was a one-week
window. On February 21 I wrote to Paul and asked if he was spreading
rumors about me. He told me that he "needed several days to reply."
He replied to me on February 27. In other words, Paul, knowing exactly
when I was moving, had the chance to reply to me immediately, before I
moved, but chose to wait. The week prior to my move was somewhat
stressful for me, but not remotely on a par with after I moved.
In other words, Paul had one sterling opportunity to settle this all on
clear and convincing terms, and a second chance to at least do it in a
time frame he might have liked. But he apparently felt it was better
to use me as tech support, then attack me when he knew I had major
other things going on in my life.
Anybody else have similar experiences being used by Paul?
ri...@notyahoo.com
<hankyou...@redtopbg.com> wrote:
>I would like everyone to know about my last encounter with Paul Weaver
>- my very very last, because I will not go within a mile of him again.
A mile? I guess that excludes Paul Weaver from monitoring Hank's
matches in the future:-))
Rich