Dave,

I wouldn’t worry about entering a chatbot next year, yet.  This year, replacing NTFS with Node.JS, is not even on the books yet!  That is good news for any contestant that did not make it into the final round. Places in the final round may start opening up last minute.

So these remarks are not intended to humiliate or criticize anyone.  Node.JS bills itself as lightweight.  Running message-mode simply may not work through ActiveX for the largest chatbot contestants designed to run on NTFS.

Microsoft has said, “Support for ancient protocols like ActiveX is being cut” and the hype that ActiveX is being sandboxed is false.  In any case, it will be technically interesting to watch this year.  The best of luck this year to all contestants, developers and contest officials!

Just thought I’d give you folks a heads up that the adventure continues! I’m packing up my things today (including my computer), and will be leaving tomorrow (barring any complications, of course) for Maryland. I expect to be offline for at least 2 days, but should be back in business by Tuesday evening. Everyone behave till then, and I’ll let you all know when I safely arrive.

You know, I really should be more circumspect when it comes to using the term “adventure”. Sometimes one inadvertently gets more than they bargained for.

Got to Maryland safely, though what was supposed to be a 12 hour trip turned into a 37 hour test of endurance. Nothing major or truly bad happened, but lots of little inconveniences and trials slowed me down at every turn, and let’s just say that while my little Toyota truck was up to the task of transporting me and my belongings, it was only just barely able to do so. The poor girl needs a well deserved rest, as do I. I’ll see about describing the journey once I’ve rested.