Ivan and Barb in Retirement

Prayer

Barb is playing women's doubles with a very religious lady. She prays before and after every game win or lose. Barb and I are sure she thinks God helped them win the Gold Medal in Okeechobee.

Barb was playing in the Gold Medal game in Okeechobee and got a Charley Horse in her bum. She could barely move. So during a time out, she got her friend to punch in the bum over and over to try to remove the Charley Horse. Barb said it must have looked very funny seeing someone punching someone else in the bum during a pickleball game.

Gold

A player on my softball team used to play a lot of pickleball before he hurt his shoulder. He was a college baseball player in his younger days and is great athlete. I told him that Barb won Gold in mixed doubles in Okeechobee and he said oh she's the "Real Deal".

Cardinals in the Wash

Barb washed my Cardinals softball jersey and hung it up to dry in the shed with her pickleball shirts. She was leaving for Okeechobee on Wednesday afternoon for a tournament on Thursday and Friday and when she was preparing to leave she noticed my jersey in the shed. If she had left without telling me, I would never have found it for my game that Thursday.

False Starts

The reason it took me a month to write the scheduling program for Barb's pickleball ladies was because I had so many false starts. I would write my program and then print out the results and show them to Barb and she would find a problem with them. I was trying to schedule anywhere from 5 to 24 players on 4 courts with 4 players on a court at a time. When I was trying to find the best schedules Barb would only tell me what she wanted when she saw the results and noticed a problem. I tried to tell her that the computer has no idea what she is thinking. I have to tell it everything that she wants very specifically. Computers don't assume anything and they can't read minds.

Mixed Partner

Barb is booked to play in the US Open in Naples, Florida in May. She is playing women's and mixed. Her mixed partner messaged her telling her he would have to cancel. Then a minute later another man asked her to play mixed with him.

Scheduling

Barb comes home from pickleball every Friday afternoon complaining about the pickleball court assignments that are used to schedule her games with the ladies. She seems to always be playing with the same people and not getting to play at all with others. She was complaining to the organizer lady and the lady said she got her court assignment schedules from an internet bridge tournament scheduling site. I used to do schedules for my fastball leagues and Barb thought I could write better schedules. The lady said it was very difficult but then she thought about it and realized I could probably do it. Barb was telling me all this. So I said I could try it. So that is how I started writing a optimization program for Barb's pickleball court assignments that would take me all month. All the ladies were very excited to see the new schedules.