Home Mike Cathy Photos Places Games Soccer

Intro Journal Work Play Cars Music SK

Intro 1998 1999 2000 2001

I forgot to mention last week that I finally bit the bullet and splashed some cash to buy a memory upgrade for my PC. For just short of $200 I installed a 128Mb module, so I'm now flying along, swapping apps with nary a murmur from the hard drive. Fabby.

Colin has been haviing a problem with the other PC in that it won't run Civ2. Every time it comes up with the dreaded red spot of death box. I think that they've installed and deleted too many programs and things are really screwed up. Soooo.... this past weekend Colin suggested that we totally wipe the hard drive and start again. I'd just done it for the Olivetti notebook, so it seemed like a good idea. First of all, I remembered to create a Windows startup disk with all the drivers etc., then we proceeded to reformat the hard drive. It was only when we tried to boot from the floppy and re-install Windows that we found that the stupid WWindows system hadn't added the drivers for the CD-Rom to the startup disk, and of course we hadn't checked that it worked fully. So now we have a dead PC until we can get some drivers. Huh, Windows! It's almost enough to make me consider buying a Mac. Nah, nothing's that bad!

On the soccer front, Colin and Graham have been playing some more. I was watching Colin and it's good to see that the private lesson with the coach has had a big effect on his game. He's including some of the touches he was shown and hiis confidence has improved. On Tuesday I saw him control the ball with his back to goal, a defender at his back, flick the ball up and over his head and run round. He then got to the header first, as everyone waited for it to come down off the bounce, and almost got a shot on goal (another defender got a foot in first). Ok, it didn't come off, but the point is that the Colin of a couple of weeks back wouldn't have tried it. He did get one good goal, made another for Timmy, and did some good covering.

Graham and his team are still trampling all the opposition in front of them. One thing that has concerned me is that several of the coaches are ignoring the rule that all kids have to wer shin guards. This is a huge safety issue, and I've pointed this out to the coaches, which of course ticks them off. I don't like pulling rank, i.e. using my board position, but these rules are there to protect the players (and the club from any law suits!) and I'm not going to have any half-assed idiot parent ruin _my_ soccer club. Anyway, Graham is doing well, scoring goals, making goals and generally playing well. His positional play is far superior to any of the other kids, let's face it they don't have any, and he continually takes up a position instead of just heading straight for the ball. He also tries to control the ball instead of just blootering it up the park (or, in some cases, whichever way they're facing).

As for my own soccer, well, it was a rather inauspicious start to the session. At the start of the game we had seven players. Seven. The absolute minimum. The other team had a full squad and more. In the end we borrowed one of their players and another two people turned up just after the start. Three people had called up that morning to cancel. Did the fact hat it was a superbly beautiful, sunny day have anything to do with it? What is wrong with these people? As fas as I'm concerned if you sign up you are committing the next several weeks to appear to play soccer for the team. If this sort of shambles happens this next week I'm going to move to a new team. It was the exact same last year, one minute to kick off and we were always short several players. Unacceptable.

The other problem was the state of the field. It was more brown than green, with two to three inches of oozing mud in places. The goalkeeper needed rubber boots not soccer shoes. If I had been refereeing I would have called it off. As it turns out we all agreed to abandon it at half time. The sccore was several to nothing, partly due to a goalkeeper who didn't want to get down in the mud, partly the man short we were playing and mostly that we're just a crap team, so most people were happy to give up.

It looks like I'm not going to get a chance to referee for PYSA. They want to contact the INS to check about the rules, and until then it looks like they're not going to roster me. By the time the INS ever do anything the season will be over. I'll try the local LO league - at least I won't have so far to travel! :)

Finally, spotted in the Electronic Herald, re Scots in Paris for the recent France vs. Scotland rugby match: Peter from Inverness is not faring well. He had told his pals what a great time he had in Paris at the game two years ago and they decided to join him this year, making him their official guide. But as Pete says shaking his head: "Last time I was drunk on the Friday, drunk on the Saturday, and drunk on the Sunday. I can't remember where a single bar or club I went to actually is." That couldn't be our Peter, aka Mess, they're talking about....

That's enough for just now, I'll try to increase the frequency of these entries. All I need to do is find the time...