More Fastball Frustrations

As captain of my team in the Glen Cairn Men's Fastball League, I have to find spares if we will be short of players for a game.  We were down to six players one night.  I spent the whole day trying to find three spare players.  I emailed and phoned everyone on the team lists before I finally found three players for the 6:30 game.  Then when I got to the diamond at 6 o'clock, I found out the other team wasn’t going to show up.  What a drag!

Radar Chick

As the scheduler for my two fastball leagues, I have to be close to my computer on any days which might have rain.  Barb and I spend a lot of time looking at the radar on the computer trying to predict whether it will rain at game time.  If we think it will rain at 6:30, I have to call the captains and the umpires to cancel the game by 5 pm so that the league doesn’t have to pay for the umpires and the field.

I call Barb "radar chick" and always ask her opinion on the radar information.

One day Roger, a captain in the Trend Arlington league, called me around 4 pm suggesting the game that night should be cancelled because of rain.  Barb thought he was crazy.  She thought the rain would stop and the field would be fine by game time.  I drove to the diamond to check it out.  It wasn’t bad.  However, he convinced me to cancel the game.

The rest of the players in the league thought I had made a terrible mistake.  The rain did stop and the sun came out and dried the field.  I realized later why Roger wanted to cancel the game so bad was because he couldn’t field a team and didn’t want to default.

Emails from the Pickleball Ambassador

Barb and I get a laugh out of the emails the pickleball Ambassador sends out to everyone in the pickleball community.  They are very long and detailed.  She tries to micromanage things to the greatest extent we have ever seen.  She treats the pickleballers like children.

She organized a pickleball meeting at a church in Westboro.  She included a detailed description of the neighbourhood.  She told everyone where they could buy a cup of coffee and a snack (there were two or three places) and where they could have lunch if they wanted to (there were different places depending on what you wanted to eat and how much you wanted to spend).  Then she said you can either eat before the meeting or bring your lunch or snacks to the meeting.  There will be tables set up in the meeting room. 

Barb was laughing at first.  Later, she was just annoyed.

Barb went to the meeting and got roped into being on executive committee of the Pickleball Association.  So now she will get more emails like this one.

Barb’s Pickleball Frustrations

Barb played in a few pickleball tournaments this summer in Southern Ontario.  She was particularly frustrated with her partners.  In one tournament, her women’s doubles partner took some Benadryl before the finals because of a small injury.  When the game started, her partner was too spaced out to play.  Barb didn’t know what was wrong with her.  She thought her partner was nervous and choked.  When she found out her partner had taken Benadryl before the finals, she was very frustrated.

In another tournament, her mixed doubles partner took the first game of the round robin to warm up.  They lost and since only the first place team in the round robin advanced, they were eliminated from the playoffs.  Barb didn’t know if she was more frustrated with her partner or with the tournament format.

Barb in the Garden of Eden

I like to take afternoon walks.  Usually I walk somewhere such as the library or a store or the bank.  But if I have no place specifically to go, I walk on the bike path along the railway tracks.

Barb and Julia decided to go for a walk today.  Julia liked to walk along the trail in the Jack Pine conservation area.  Barb and Julia went out at around 4 pm.  They drove to the trail.  I was surprised when they were back after a few minutes.  Barb said the mosquitoes on the trail ate her and Julia alive.

So they decided to walk on the bike path along the railway tracks.  Barb was really impressed that such a nice walking area was so close to home.  It was shady from all the trees and there were lots of people out walking their dogs.  Barb said it was like the Garden of Eden.

Julia Garage Sale Finds

Julia found a shelf, table, cupboard and filing cabinet at a garage sale.  We had them in the garage for most of the summer.  Then we cleaned up and threw out the cupboard, the table and the filing cabinet.

Barb found the shelf unit to be very useful for her fabric.  So she kept it.

Julia also found a free lawnmower at a garage sale.  Barb thought it was great.  She threw out our lawnmower even though the used lawnmower, Julia got at the garage sale, was older than the one we had.  The newer old lawnmower had broken wheels that Julia and the next door neighbour tried to fix but couldn’t.  So Barb was very happy to get a new older lawnmower and Julia was very proud of her find.

Sarah Comes Back to Life

Sarah’s iPhone was broken.  So she borrowed an iPad from a roommate.  Unfortunately, it slipped out her hand one of the first days she had it.  The iPad landed on the kitchen floor and the screen broke.  That made her life even worse.

Meanwhile, I was busy researching how to break into an iPhone to get Ali’s sister’s iPhone transferred to Sarah.

Sarah came home for the weekend. 

Barb and Sarah spent some time talking to people at the Apple store about transferring Ali’s sister’s phone but found out that it was impossible unless Ali’s sister could remember her Apple password.  Ali’s sister somehow had a different password for that iPhone because the Apple people verified the password Ali’s sister was using worked.

I worked hard but wasn’t able to break into the iPhone because of the new security system that comes with the latest operating system.  There were instructions on how to break into the old operating system.  So I tried to re-install the old operating system. You needed a very old installation of iTunes and if you re-installed the old version of iTunes on your computer you would lose all your music and podcasts.  Since Barb’s computer didn’t have iTunes, I installed the old version of iTunes there but still had no luck.

That night Sarah’s iPhone mysteriously started working again. 

She was back in business.

Barb went to a computer repair shop in the morning and had the screen replaced on her roommate’s iPad.

So Sarah no longer wanted to kill herself.  It is amazing how technology now controls us.

Sarah’s iPhone Nightmare

Sarah drove from Deep River to Kitchener for Ali’s sister’s wedding.  She had a couple of other students with her who she dropped off in Toronto.   

There was a lot of last minute coordination required.  The wedding party used their iPhones so much that all their batteries died.  So Sarah let them use her iPhone.  Sarah had a good time at the wedding. But after the wedding, Sarah’s iPhone died too but it wasn’t the battery.  It was really dead.

Sarah was in a mess because she had to get hold of the people she was driving back to Deep River to tell them she was running late.  She had their phone numbers on her broken iPhone.  She eventually sent a Facebook message to her roommate in Deep River to get their phone numbers.

 

She was very upset because her whole life was on that phone.  Sarah borrowed Ali’s sister’s old iPhone but she couldn’t get it transferred over because Ali’s sister had forgotten her Apple password.

With a severe lack of sleep from the wedding and a disastrous broken iPhone, she told Barb when she got back to Deep River that her life was over.

Frustrations with Recreational Fastball

This year I am the captain of a team in the Glen Cairn Men’s Fastball League.  We have a mediocre team and it is a lot of work and frustration running the team.

One of the things that I had trouble with was running the team for the league tournament.  There were a few guys who couldn’t make the tournament that weekend.  So for the Friday night game we only had nine players.  We were winning 10-0 in the fifth inning and were up to bat.  Our shortstop struck out looking.  He drew a line on the ground indicating where he thought the pitch had been thrown.  The umpire gave him a warning.  As he was walking to the dugout, the umpire told him that, if he said one word, he would be thrown out the game.  He turned and smiled at the umpire and the umpire threw him out the game.

We tried to continue the game with eight players.  However, the captain of the opposing team said we must default the game because, if we start with nine players, we must end the game with nine players.  The umpires said that this was a gentleman’s league and that rule might not apply.  However, the captain went and got the league president, who came over to the diamond, and said the rule did apply.  So the game was over and we lost 10-0.

I was furious and Barb was fit to be tied when I told her later in the evening.

The next day we were playing a close game.  In the last inning with the score tied, our second baseman fielded a ground ball with a runner on third base and, instead of throwing home, threw to first and let the winning run score.  He said he didn’t know the score at the time.

In our final game of the round robin on Saturday afternoon, both of our pitchers couldn’t make it because they were in a wedding party.  So I started a fellow on the team who said he had pitched as a kid.  He allowed 10 runs in the first inning.  In the second inning, I went in to pitch.  I held the score down but we got mercied 13-0.   

Since we lost all of our round robin games, we didn’t make the playoffs.  If we had not lost the first game by default, we would have qualified for the B playoffs.

Sarah’s Birthday Present

Sarah needed a car.  So Barb got on the internet and started looking around Ottawa for Sarah.  Barb found a used Honda Civic being sold privately by a little Indian lady.  The lady was moving to the United States to be with her husband who had moved there for work.

Sarah paid for the car but Barb paid for the licence plates and the ownership transfer as a birthday present to Sarah.  Sarah got the car on Father’s Day.  She drove Barb and me to CORA’s to celebrate Father’s Day and the new car.

Then Sarah and I washed the car inside and out before she drove it back to Deep River.

Sarah Snubbed

One night during a rained out fastball game, I went out for coffee with David Waller.  I had just finished reading a book from the library called “The Neutrino Hunters”.  So I wanted to talk to him about all that I had learned.  He is a neutrino physicist by the way.

While we were talking, I mentioned that Sarah was working in Chalk River at the Atomic Energy lab.  I knew David’s work project had moved there from Carleton University.  David said he was going to Chalk River the next day to show his new summer research assistant the project.

I told him to call Sarah when he got there and Sarah would meet him to say hi.  He never did.  Sarah had been waiting for his call.  So Sarah felt snubbed and no longer likes David Waller.

Barb and the Nationals

Barb and her female pickleball partner were last year’s Senior Games Eastern Ontario Champions.  So they qualified for the National Senior Games which were held in Edmonton this summer.  Barb thought her partner wanted to go and her partner thought Barb wanted to go.  It turned out the neither of them particularly wanted to go.  It was going to be very expensive to fly to Edmonton and stay in a hotel for a few days.  Also, she didn’t think there was going to be any competition.  Barb is not into just playing tournaments for the prestige of winning.  She wants to play good games.  She finds that her group in Ottawa is so good that she doesn’t need to travel to get good competition.  So in the end, they didn’t go to the Nationals in Edmonton.

Router with a Mind of Its Own

When I got back from Florida, I disconnected the desktop computer in the basement because it had a Windows XP operating system.  Microsoft was no longer supporting Windows XP.  I had read that there were hackers waiting to attack the XP computers.

The old XP computer had a printer hooked to it that the other computers in the house could access through the home network.  So I decided to buy a new router with a USB port to hook up the printer to the router.  Then we wouldn’t have to bring our computers downstairs and hook them up to the printer directly if we wanted to print something.

I plugged the printer into the new router.  I made sure all of the computers in the house could access the printer.  I thought everything was good.  So I stacked the printer with paper before I went to bed.  The next morning while I was sleeping, Barb decided to use the printer.  She wanted to print one page.  When she went downstairs to get her page, the printer was printing the page over and over again.  She turned off the printer and turned it back on. It started printing the page again.  So she took all the paper out of the printer and it stopped because it ran out of paper.

When I got up, the first thing I had to do was figure out why the printer wouldn’t stop printing.  There was an obscure checkbox that needed to be clicked off on the setup screen of the printer.  When I clicked it off, the printer worked properly.

A few weeks later, Barb couldn’t access her live.ca email on her laptop.  She could access it on her iPod.  I couldn’t access her email on my laptop either.  I tried my hotmail account on her computer and didn’t have the problem.  So I thought it was something wrong with live.ca.  I tried to get help from Microsoft but they only support the hotmail accounts that you pay for. 

I phoned Rogers to see if they could help.  The first person I talked to couldn’t help me.  Then I got on a Rogers help desk chat line.  The lady took control of my computer.  She found the problem was the router.  When I hooked the computer directly to the Rogers box, I had no problem accessing live.ca.  Fortunately, I still had my old router and was able to hook it up again.  It worked fine for live.ca.

I tried to take the router back to the store where I bought it.  They wouldn’t believe me that the router could have a problem with just one website and not with any others.  They also said that my 30 day return policy had just run out and they wouldn’t refund my money. 

So I brought the router home.  I decided to try to hook it up again.  This time it had no trouble with live.ca.  But now I couldn’t seem to get the printer working through the router.  So we have the new router again but have to bring our computers downstairs and hook them up to the printer directly to print things out.  Maybe next year, I will try to get it all working properly with the new router.

Too Many Starbucks

I meet with my friend, Tony, for coffee about once a month.  We usually meet at a Starbucks on the corner of Hunt Club and Merivale in the parking lot of Rona.

When I arranged to meet with Tony this month, he said he would meet me at the Starbucks on Hunt Club in the Lowe’s parking lot.  I didn’t realize this wasn’t the same place we usually meet.

I drove to the old Starbucks at the right time and waited there for a half hour.  Tony didn’t show up.  So I walked around the parking lot to check that this was the right place.

Then I got in my car and was going to drive home.  Instead, I drove around the area to see if there was another Starbucks anywhere.  I drove around and around making U-turns all over the place; up and down Hunt Club and up and down Merivale. 

Finally, I drove further East down Hunt Club and found the Lowe’s with the Starbucks in the parking lot.  I couldn’t believe that there was another Starbucks so close to the other one that we used to go to.  Fortunately, Tony was still there and we had an abbreviated coffee.