Question for TDs: SwissSys8 Problem

[David Steer]

Anyone else experiencing difficulties retrieving saved *.tms and *.ctr files from the "Events" folder of the SwissSys software? SwissSys swears that I have saved these files (from a recent tournament I organized and TDed) but when I go to retrieve them...nothing. Only the Demo tournaments etc. that come preloaded with the software.

I have repeated the process multiple times, to no avail.

If anyone has advice, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

[Kerry Liles]

I wish I could help you out...

I presume you searched for the files? They may not be saved in the same (default) location where it thinks you may want to read them from...

I must say that software is peculiar to say the least (the GUI is confusing and the folksy-narrative help file is a drag to use). If you poke around enough I find you can muddle through it. It *does* generate useful reports and html files etc - that I am certainly glad to have. The interface is odd.

( I realize some of that might be translating it from some other native language, but overall it is better than nothing which is what I was using!)

By the way, if you run Windows and you want an unobtrusive tray-resident file indexer, install "Everything" from http://www.voidtools.com/

It is lightning fast, maintains an up-to-date index of ALL files on your machine (you can exclude drives/folders/etc you dont care about) and lets you instantly FIND that xxxxx.yyy file you stashed somewhere. It is slick and FREE.

[David Steer]

Thanks Kerry. I finally found them, but more by blind luck than anything else. Repeatedly searched for them on my hard drive using Windows Explorer but found nothing. Nary a *.tms nor a *.ctr to be seen. Spent several hours trying one tepidly inspired solution after another. By the end of this process I was practically a gibbering idiot, frustrated beyond comprehension, reduced to clicking tabs and folder files almost at random. As I wrote in my tournament report at the Saskatoon Chess Club site:

"I was beginning to think I would have to do things -- gulp! -- the old-fashioned way. Take my lumps. Admit my defeat at the hands of the gods of technology. Submit myself, a modern day Sisyphus, to the daily torture of knowing that I just couldn't cope with the demands of being a TD in this whirling, ever-faster, technologically driven time.

And then...

Eureka!

There they were. Those two elusive little files, hidden for so long and yet whispering to me siren-like across the lonely expanse of my hard drive, those two little *.ctr and *.tms files, each less than a kilobyte, the mildest of exhalations in the drangonsfire of my computer, suddenly appeared. As if by magic."

So my story has a happy ending. Thank you very much for your words of advice and for your attempt to guide me through this -- much appreciated. I agree that the SwissSys8 interface is slightly goofy, and I strongly agree that the software itself is, all things considered, pretty frickin' awesome. Better than nothing, to say the least! Cheers and good chess.