The Red Queen’s Race

This week, another case appeared on my docket of Amendments, giving me two. I have been working on the older amendment, and hope to get an Office Action on it out by Monday, with time to work on other things Monday. I still have a Board of Appeals decision in paused status on my Expedited docket.

I finished and posted an Office Action on my oldest Regular New application this week, and I did a Notice of Abandonment on a case that I rejected more than six months ago, after confirming with the patent attorney that no response had been filed.

There is one biweek left in the third quarter; I hope to work hard and be productive (not always quite the same thing), and complete the quarter well.

Donald Byrne, R.I.P.

I saw something online in Quora about how thirteen year old Bobby Fischer defeated an adult chess master, Donald Byrne, by sacrificing a queen, which led me to the Wikipedia article on Professor Byrne. I knew him when I was a child, my parents being great friends with him and Mrs. Byrne, and remember being told how he had a position as an English professor at Penn State partly because he was a great chess player (if I was ever told specifically that he coached the University chess team, I don’t recall it). I also remember the two Byrne offspring, both boys years older than I was; at one point, they, or one of them, gave me their Lego collection, which they didn’t want to play with any more, and I had fun with that. Those were the old days when a child could make his own constructions from general-purpose Lego bricks, and use his imagination.

I remember that at one point, my parents sent me over to the Byrnes’ house specifically for Professor Byrne to give me a chess lesson; one of his sons was also involved to some extent. I played chess as a child, and may have been the best player at Easterly Parkway Elementary School, but I never studied it systematically to become really good at it.

The article mentions Donald Byrne’s death from complications of lupus (and I remember that when he and his wife Madge came over, my mother was very careful to provide food for him without salt). I remember that he went to a hospital elsewhere for an operation, I think a kidney transplant, and at first we hoped that this would help. I definitely remember a cheery, humorous card from him at the hospital, but then came word that he had died.

He may not have been world-shakingly great and famous, but he was important enough to qualify for a Wikipedia article, and personally important to those who knew him. Rest in Peace.