It is September and I only broke 40 once this past season.  And that was a 39 (+7) on a par 32, as difficult as that back-9 was, it still does not count in my book.  And, oh, I shot more than two handfuls at 40 (some were +3 on a par-37), and coupled a few of those near misses with 41′s to make for really nice rounds of 81.  But, with no legitimate rounds under 40 translates to probably another year gone by without breaking 80.

Today, I had a sound round of 86 on a par 71 at Norton Country Club.  46 on the front with another near-miss of 40 on the back.  I had 9 pars, 5 bogeys, 2 double, and 2 triple.  I made only 1 par save and 1 three-putt bogey (which occurred on the 10th hole, so if I had made good on the 2nd putt, it would have at least been that allusive 39); but it also means that I hit 9 greens in regulation.  While a 50% GIR is an acceptable ratio, it places a premium on the chipping game for the other 9 holes, heh, which clearly needs a lot of work.  And hitting 9 greens and making 0 birdies and chipping / short approaches for another 6 greens with only 1 par save means my putting did not help improve upon my score either.  And then there are the “unforced” errors (two three-putts and two lost balls), which also translated to 4-strokes I could have done without, but that typically comes to any course you play only once a year.

I am a realist.  Breaking 80 might never happen, but it is still good to have goals.  And while a goal with a plan is not a dream, it does not necessarily mean it will translate to success either.  I will continue my pursuit and I am certain I will have to continue to tweak the plan.  Golf can be self-defeating, as it is a game that you can never win at.  But you cannot achieve those personal bests without putting in the time to practice and play, so you must take each defeat as another step in the process.

Cool.

Despite having some fantastic clones of classic coin-operated games, the VIC 20 has a remarkably small list of straight arcade conversions to its name, so a version of something loud and shooty like Berzerk was almost guaranteed to be popular here at Retro Gamer.  And since the developer is Robert Hurst, the man behind the excellent unexpanded Pac-Man clone Quikman 2008, we were pretty eager to get our hands on Berzerk MMX.

The VIC graphics are, unsurprisingly, chunkier than the original version’s but serve their purpose well, in-game sound effects are simple but again appropriate, and the action rapidly becomes frantic as the poor player-controlled humanoid fights for his life.  And while Berzerk MMX runs on an 8K expanded VIC 20, for the users blessed with 16K expansion there’s a second version, which ships with most of the speech from the original in place and goes even further towards replicating the arcade experience.

87%

I could not be more pleased with that — cool!

Now what to do with the 80+ cartridges I own?

The combination of the temperature and easier course slope rating was welcomed on both fronts.  And it translated favorably on the scorecard, too.  I played the South with a pair of 43s for an 86 total, with a sand-save birdie.  The West went even better with a 41-40 for 81, with a tap-in birdie and only 28 total putts.

I didn’t fare any better at TPC Myrtle Beach.  We played their back nine first, and I continued lackluster play with a 59(!), but finished the last two holes strong with two bogeys.  With the afternoon heat dissipated and an aspirin later, I found my second wind and completed the first nine with a 46 for 105.  The heat affected everyone’s play, and there were many complaints of heat rash from the excessive sweating and chaffing.  But the complimentary minty cold towels handed to us at the end of the round were most welcome — whew!

I played a fairly typical 46 on the front-nine, 3 pars with 4 double bogeys.  The back nine played better: the highlights was a birdie putt made after tough sand shot out of a potted green-side bunker leaving a 20-foot putt; and I had a chance to break 40 when my approach shot on the 18th landed within 7-feet of the cup, but the putt lipped out.

It was a good day to play golf and I was pleased with my scorecard that recorded no triple bogeys (or worse), no penalties, and no three-putts (31 putts for the round).  Now I need to get through tonight’s sleep tuning out my older brother’s snoring if I am going to survive two rounds tomorrow.

But instead of crafting new scripts to compile it, I headed instead to a Gnome-based programming tool, Anjuta IDE.  What attracted to me most outside of the expected C source and header file management was its integrated ability to work with autogen and subversion.  Autogen produces configure and makefile for multiple targets, which is useful since rpgd (aka Hack & Slash) is made up of three binaries: rpgd (the service daemon), rpgclient (the user interface), and rpgweb (cgi to display player stats).

Now that I have the project under new IDE and version control, it should make for improved coding and debugging while maintaining the ability to compile, link, and go on multiple architectures.