AAU on Facebook

I took some pictures of my Ottawa friends who were playing in the AAU Fastball tournament in Disney’s Wide World of Sports this year.  Two of my friends from the Greater Ottawa Fastball League were playing on the Washington DC Positive Brothers and three of my friends from Trend Arlington were playing for The Braves from New York State.

One of my Trend Arlington friends asked me to take a picture of The Braves team picture for him on his smartphone.  I had never taken a picture on a smartphone before.  So I tried to take a picture and it didn’t click.  I kept pushing the button and pushing the button but it never clicked like my iPod does.  I gave him back his phone and told him it didn’t work. He looked at his smartphone and said no it did work and I had taken about 20 pictures.  I guess smartphones don’t click when you take a picture like iPods do.

I posted the pictures to facebook and got a lot of comments from my friends in Ottawa who liked the photos.  One of my friends asked me if I was coaching a team in the tournament.  I said no I was just a photographer.

Kodi Update

Barb was enjoying the British television series Downton Abbey on Kodi.  However, the last season was giving her trouble on Genesis.  So she asked our friend in the park here about it because he was the fellow who originally told us about Kodi.

He said that Phoenix had a new service where she could find other streams of television shows.  We use Phoenix to watch live sports and other live television.  Barb found the service he mentioned but when she clicked on an the episode of Downton Abbey that she wanted to watch, she got Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  I guess free services are not always worth it.

On the Coast

Barb didn’t win gold at the pickleball tournament today in Punta Gorta because of the weather conditions.  The wind coming off the Gulf of Mexico was so strong it was impossible to control the light whiffle ball.  Barb’s friend took a video of Barb in the wind and her sweat pants were being blown sideways.  The trees on the coast were practically lying down and the waves in the Gulf were roaring over the break water.

Barb’s friend posted the video on facebook.  So Barb wanted to share it with her friends.  After she shared it, she asked me if I saw it.  I said she didn’t share it with me.  So she posted it again and tagged me on it.  Still I couldn’t see it.  She said look on her home page and it is there.  Barb showed it to me on her computer on her home page but when I looked at her home page on my account it wasn’t there.

We discovered that only people who were both friends of Barb and her friend who posted the video could see it.  She couldn’t share it her own friends. So she got the friend to email it to her and she showed her friends on her iPod.

Sleepy

Every morning I have cereal for breakfast.  I like Special K with Red Berries.  I usually put on a pot of coffee to brew while I am eating my cereal.  I guess I was sleepy this morning because I filled the filter with coffee and then I pulled the milk jug out of the fridge and started pouring milk into the coffee maker where the water goes.

I had to take the full coffee filter out and empty the coffee maker over the sink.  Then I had to wipe the inside with the dish cloth to get all of the milk out.  It was not easy to get the milk out of the coffee maker.

I guess I shouldn’t stay up so late at night.

Roof Leak

It rained hard here today.  I like to sit out in the sunroom and watch the rain and listen to the rain on the tin roof.  Unfortunately, after we got the roof replaced on the house, we found out they created a leak in the roof of the sunroom.  So if I sit in my usual comfy chair, I will get dripped on.  Barb called the guy who replaced the roof to come back and look at the roof of the sunroom and do something.  He says he will try to get over sometime but he never comes over.  He is probably waiting for some time when he is in the park doing another job.

Today Barb went out to the storage room on the side of the house to get some paper towels and found there was water on the paper towels from the rain.  Fortunately, the paper towels were all separately wrapped but Barb was upset because she thought there was another leak in the room of the storage room.  Then she realized that she had left the window of the storage room open and the rain had come in through the window.

Stranded

When we were trying to fix our golf cart, Tom Moffat came over with an electric pump to pump our tires.  He wanted to hook the pump up to the battery of our car.  Barb started the car and Tom connected the cables from the pump and immediately the car stopped because it had drained the battery.  Barb couldn’t start the car.  So Tom attached the battery charger to the car battery and recharged the battery but he warned us that we might need a new battery.

Today Barb was shopping at the Sebring Mall and when she same out, the car wouldn’t start.  She asked the people around her if they had jumper cables.  She found a man in a truck with jumper cables and was able to start the car but she wanted to get a new battery and was afraid to turn off the car.  So she went around to the back of the Mall to the Sears Service Center to ask about getting a new battery.  The man came out and checked the car and said our car had a special battery that they didn’t keep in stock.  Barb asked him what she could do.  He said she should check the Auto Parts Store across the street from the Mall.

So Barb went over to the Auto Parts store and asked them if they had our kind of battery.  They did and so Barb was going to ask how long it would take to get a new battery installed.  The man said he would be able to do it right now.  Barb didn’t even have to bring her car into the shop.  The man just brought out a cart and a battery and installed a new battery right in the parking lot while Barb watched.  Barb asked him how many batteries he replaced in a week and he said about 100.  He said the humidity down here was terrible on car batteries and they only last about 2 or 3 years.  So Barb could only get a 3-year guarantee on the battery she bought but she was happy she didn’t have to worry for a while and that it was so easy to fix.

My Music

I was transferring music to my iPod this afternoon and somehow I pushed the wrong keys and accidently deleted my “My Music” file.  That is, I deleted all my music from my computer.  I suddenly had a sinking feeling in my stomach that this was bad.

I didn’t know what to do.  So I thought of getting on Barb’s computer and looking something up on the internet.

Unfortunately, all I had to do was right-click on Windows Explorer and click Undo to reverse the Delete command. So I got back all of my music.

Call from Barb Taylor

We have a land line telephone here in Florida.  We don’t have cell phones.  Barb is always complaining about how much it costs for the phone and we almost never use it.  Barb does all her communication with her Pickleball friends by email, iMessage, or facebook message.  It is the same with the girls back home in Canada even though we pay $5 a month for unlimited North American calling.  I get the occasional call from people in the park to come over and help them with their computers or from my softball coach about any changes to the schedule because of rainouts, etc.

Mostly we get crank calls or sales calls.  These calls can get Barb very angry.  Fortunately, for them, the callers are usually robots.  So they don’t hear her response to their messages.

I usually don’t answer the phone and let it go to the answering machine.  Then the robo calls usually don’t leave messages and if anyone really wants to get in touch with us they will leave a message.

We also have “call display” which Barb finds useful to some extent.  However, most of the time the only information it gives is the State the call is from.

Today, she got a call from Barb Taylor.  She found that a really novel way to get us to answer the phone but of course it was just a robo call.

Student of the Month

Barb gets a monthly newsletter from The Pickleball Guru.  She was reading the January issue today and as she scrolled down she found a picture of her and Debbie Yandell below the words Students of the Month.  This was strange because neither of them have taken a course from The Pickleball Guru.  Debbie uses The Pickleball Guru’s paddle and Barb has corresponded with him and has him as a friend on Facebook.  But it is kind of a stretch to say they are his students.  Barb took it as a compliment and sent copies to all her pickleball friends back in Canada.