I emailed a TLA at the end of last week for the August issue of Chess Life, and I haven’t heard anything back. I also sent a follow-up email, but didn’t hear anything back on that, either. Is there anything more I can do? Also, has anyone else had this problem?
On a related note, I’m going to be directing a closed round robin tournament as part of the Okie Chess Festival in September. Is there any point to setting up an online TLA for that tournament?
Alex Relyea
The internal mail server in the NY office failed in early June. Since the NY office is being closed at the end of the month we went with a temporary solution, setting the NY staff up with hotmail accounts.
Sara thinks she has all the TLAs from the e-mail during those days, but I don’t know how well her outbound e-mail is working, it may be coming from a hotmail account right now. If so, is it possible it is being spam-blocked at your end? (We also have experienced some problems with spam blocking of mail through the new mail gateway in TN, we’re trying to get as many of them resolved as possible.)
I’m going to be working with the TN office over the next few days to get the integration between the online TLA system and the Chess Life TLAs finished, so that interface will be the way that all TLAs (online-only and print) will be entered.
If it’s a closed event, there probably isn’t much point to having an online TLA for it, except perhaps so that your players can look up the details in case they forget them.
However, if it is a FIDE rated event, I would recommend you get in the habit of notifying the USCF of it in advance, even if it is an invitational event, so that we can get it registered with FIDE. The online TLA system may not include quite all the information needed to register an event with FIDE yet, I’m working on that, too.
Should we have received our tla confirmations? Usually they go out around the 20th of the month. Any good way to check if our tla was received or to resend it?
I don’t know the answer to those questions, and I’m not sure who else would know the answer, either. I have been told that Sara got all her e-mail from those few days.
It’s too late to call the NY office to ask Sara.
I forwarded the original emails from June 10th on Friday June 23rd, but haven’t heard anything about them or the originals. I also saw something about further email problems since Thursday. Any way to check on the receipt of tlas?
Best suggestion: Call Sara in the NY office, 1-845-565-8687.
However, this is the last week the NY office will be open, and the equipment there will be packed up starting on Thursday and will shipped to Tennessee on Friday or Saturday.
The announcement on the website about where to mail TLAs for future issues should be changed, I’ll remind people of that. (I assume that the e-mail address tla@uschess.org will remain available.)
The email problem we were experiencing late last week appears to have been cleared up. It was probably some kind of virus/spam attack, but I don’t know if it just went away or if the changes we implemented in the mail server were effective in detecting and shutting down the attack. (At one point we were getting 20,000 new e-mails an hours, virtually all of them spam.)
I’m still having problems with TLAs. I emailed one last Monday, but I haven’t heard anything back. I don’t know if there is still the problem getting the email out or not, but I would really like to know if my TLAs will be in Chess Life, or if there is some way to fix the problem.
On the same day I submitted this TLA in the online TLA section, and I haven’t heard anything about that either.
Can anyone help?
Alex Relyea
TLAs are now being handled by Joe Wright in the TN office, extension 130.
Joe should also be getting the tla@uschess.org email.
Wouldn’t it be better if he had an autoreply that your tla had been received rather than have everybody call him. I also haven’t received anything back from the tlas sent in July and neither has the other local organizer. If the USCF is having trouble getting the work done, then us calling isn’t going to get them done faster but will instead slow him down further.
Yep, I also sent in a TLA that I never got back for a “proof” read. I called Joe. I left a message. So far I have heard nothing.
Tim
It took several days longer than anticipated getting the equipment from NY transported to TN and set up properly, and that put them behind schedule, and in danger of missing the deadline for the August issue to go on press.
One of the things I’m working on while in TN (I came down for the election count and will be here until Friday) is moving TLAs over from the current Access program (it has crashed several times in the last year) to the same interface that the Online TLA Service uses.
That has several advantages, the most visible one for organizers and members being that if an event has a TLA in the magazine it automatically has one in the Online TLA Service, too. It also means TDs have a means of communication with the TLA person (Joe), viewing something approximating a proof BEFORE they’re ready for review by the office, etc.
It means setting up a linkage between the Online TLA form and Quark, plus all the stuff for billing TLAs, tracking payments, etc.
It will probably take a month or so to get all that working, with the US Open taking up a week in the middle of that, but given the lead time for the magazine (September TLAs are being worked on right now) that probably means we’re looking at the October or November issue being the first one under the new programming.
Joe got back to me today. I suspect he is like any person doing a new job for the same company; i.e., until he gets a routine down there will be periods of slow progress.
Tim