Netcord's done a good job overall, and they're obviously filling a need, but Netcord needs to take some time to think about how a web app should work, and how to make the user's experience better. The typical Netcord user isn't going to be that sophisticated in their surfing, if nothing else. I think the fundamental problem with Netcord (as with a LOT LOT LOT of software) is that the application doesn't anticipate what the user probably wants to do. Joel talks about this in his first book, and probably on his site. You have to be careful adding in heuristics, but Netcord has some no-brainer places that will pay off in spades. The A numero uno first top ten priority is figure out what match I want to look at based on the date!!! After week 1, is it likely that I'll ever want to look at week 1 again? Newsflash: No.

I venture that a year from now, I'll be able to see all these bugs still in Netcord. Prove me wrong, and the world will be a better place!

In the second set, I stepped up my pace and tried to play as hard as I could. It must have worked: we won that set 6-0. In the third set, we were up 2-0 and let them come back 4-4. I won my serve to get it to 5-4, and then he double-faulted to lose the match (ouch!).

Overall, the worst parts of my game were (as usual) at the net and my first serve. I couldn't get a first serve in for the life of me! One thing I did adjust on, was not hitting a spin serve to the woman. She had a difficult time with most serves, so I could serve and volley, or move in on a groundstroke. Sue and I played well together, with good communication. We're lifetime undefeated so far (knock on wood)!

So a good win, for the only point of the week (doh!). Shout-outs go to Jean and Wayne, who easily won their makeup match on Sunday against Chestnut Grove in brutal heat 6-1, 6-0.

They definitely won, but we made too many mistakes, and just got too intimidated by their guy. He was about 6-2, and really filled up the net. They did a great job of rushing the net, and we did a crappy job of lobbing over their heads, and they took advantage of it.

Phooey. This was a makeup match, and we'd already lost 2 on Saturday.

I do think my legs were still tired from Monday, but still. I really don't know what else we could have done, other than maybe bear down when it counted. I didn't even realize until after I got home last night that we'd lost 5 straight games to lose.

Yesterday was Eagle Watch's usual holiday weekend mixer. We had 8 courts, and about 34-36 people. I got to play six sets of mixed doubles with six different partners, and I won every set except the first and the last. For the most part I thought I played pretty well. The weakest part of my game was definitely my overhead. I only got one out of about four, and I think it was because I just didn't get set up well. My net game was OK, which was good because everyone I played with had a great net game!

The format was different than I've seen (in my vast experience with mixer-type events). We would play a six-game set with a nine-point tiebreaker if needed. The winnering team would move up to the next court number and split up, and the losing team would move down to the next court number and split up. Low-court losers would stay and split, and high-court winners would stay and split. I was pretty worried I'd stay on 10 all day, but I worked my way up from 10 to 6, had one blowout win and three tiebreakers, and only one definitive loss.

My first set (the definitive loss) was against James and Angela Thomkins. We lost 1-4 (that was a 5-game set since we started late). They are really strong players, but I think I could have done better if I had hit better to James's forehand more. He's got an unreal backhand, but he uses a two-handed forehand when he can, and it looks very awkward. Maybe he's had an injury that doesn't let him use that side well; he's the only player I've seen that will run around his forehand to get to his backhand! Angela's just a really solid player, and they both play well together (not too common for a team of spouses).

My second set was the first tiebreaker win. My partner Tracy is on one of the B6 Wyndam Hills teams in our division, but I don't think I'll see her at that match since she said they were going to miss the last two.

My third set was a good 3-1 win (we had to shorten that set up since the previous teams had taken too long on that court). I played with Betsy, who I've seen a lot at the Tuesday drills, and who's a really strong player. Plus, the other guy was looking to join a team, so we've got another one!

My fourth set was another tiebreaker win, and was very satisfying. Roxanne and I beat Betsy and Bobby Filiberto, who's a young-gun player with lots of hard topspin. Bobby hit some good smart shots early, but lost it a little later on trying to overpower it. His serve wasn't working well, and that probably helped too. I'm certainly not a stronger player, but I think I might be a better one, especially at doubles.

I thought Roxanne and I played well together, but the next set against her and Gregg Olson was the blowout win (6-0). I will say my partner Terry was at least as good as Betsy. We did a good job of keeping it away from Gregg, and Roxanne just had troubles.

My last set was against Mike Welch and Terry. Mike plays a solid B3, and apparently played as high as A7 recently. Marisha and I managed to take them to a tiebreaker, which we lost 5-4 on my missed overhead. Overall a moral victory, though!

I was lucky to have some very good partners, and I played some good, smart tennis. Lots of fun!

I have been visualizing poaching like hell all day.

Update, July 3: Rainout. Woo hoo! This is like snow on test day! I play the makeup with Ginny sometime this week.

I played with Peggy for the first time. We held tight to them in the first set, but we couldn't break at 4-5 (we'd broken him twice already). It was all downhill from there, and we lost the second set 1-6.

What I did wrong:
- My net play was far too tentative. I have got to do something about that, especially in mixed. They'd hit balls that would whistle by my ear, and I'd just stand there. Our second set especially would have been much closer had I just hit the balls I should have. Peggy hit great serves, and I had all kinds of missed opportunities at great poaches.
- I didn't get enough first serves in.
- I stopped moving in the second set.

What I did right:
- We had a good strategy of lobbing over her head when she was at the net.
- I hit a lot to both their backhands, especially on serves. That helped amazingly well.

What we tried to do right, and didn't always succeed:
- Keep her at the net, so she didn't have time to wind up on us.
- Peggy's serve was inconsistent.

This was a really strong team. Phil had good pace and placement, and Vickie loooved to wind up and hit hard (especially at a net player). That intimidated Peggy a lot, and made it difficult for me.

Could I have done better at line 5 with Becky (as first scheduled) or line 4 with Sue (as second scheduled)? Hard to say, Summerchase was that strong a team. Their line 4s especially were very good, with the guy being a tall, powerful kid. Their line 5s were very good for their line too. Becky and I could likely have held it close, but I don't know that I could have guaranteed a win.

A few notes too: No Summerchase team but the line 5s looked like they were having any fun at all. In fact, Bob (at line 1) apparently said to their guy at one point something like, "C'mon and smile! You're really killing us - loosen up!" To which he responded something like, "I'm not here to have fun". The couple we played against hardly ever spoke to each other, much less to us. They were very polite, but I definitely got the feeling that they were there to get a job done.

At least we didn't play at their courts. They apparently don't have beer.

End result for the team: we only took 1 point, and dropped to 5th place with 7 points total. We do get to play the last place team next week, some poor sots who only have 2 points.

Sue Filiberto and I played line 5, and the heat was absolutely brutal. We didn't get on the courts until about 12:45, since Willow Creek only had 2 courts, and lines 2 and 3 had long 3-setters. Sue and I worried some about our match, since it looked like the first four lines all had pretty strong players. But it turned out that their 5's were pretty weak! I did a good job of keeping my spin serve going on the woman, and won all my serves. I didn't do a good job of getting my first serve in, and I messed up almost every time I tried to hit a winner. The moral of that story is, if the other team is weaker, just hit it back and let them make the mistake.

I thought Sue was very patient with me, even though I let a lot of shots go by me at the net that were pretty poachable. Plus, every time I even faked a poach, they'd overhit the next one, and usually hit it wide. They never tried to go down the line on me; I should have cheated over (certainly on the ad side) until they did.

So the weakest points in this match were getting my first serve in, and not being aggressive enough at the net. My strongest points were getting my spin serve in to the woman, and keeping it away from the man.

Final score: 6-1, 6-2. Sue might have lost her serve once; I had one game where I really fell apart and lost a lot of points, and it might have been on her serve. Otherwise, we didn't get broken. Even though their woman was the weaker player, she won her serve twice (once when I tried to get too slick and hit winners). All in all, a good match, even if it was waaay too hot.

Other results:
* Line 1: Bob and Crystal won in two sets; a good match
* Line 2: Rocky and Robin won in a long, tough 3-setter. They were really on the ropes, but for whatever reason, the other team just fell apart in the third set and the Salets won 3-6, 6-4, 6-1.
* Line 3: Casey and Teri won their 3-setter 6-3, 1-6, 6-4 (after being up 5-1 in the third). This was a weird match: the guy was definitely a line 3, but the woman had the absolute ugliest playing style I may have ever seen. Grip sucked, swing sucked, lots of mishit... winners. Really odd to watch, where the means were awful but the results were on).
* Line 4: Chris and Becky lost a looong, hard-fought 3-setter 6-3, 3-6, 3-6. Very good match to watch.

/* position: absolute; */
float: right;
margin-left:20px;
width:75%;

The problem is that I suspect that I have to do some variant on the IE box model hack, and I'm not really comfortable with that (meaning, I don't really understand it yet). I do know that there's great examples at Stu's CSS Site, including a three-column layout example that doesn't use the hack. Perhaps I can modify it for my two-column layout. Regardless, expect to not have to scroll right-left to read this site on IE6 Real Soon Now.

The whole thing is kind of weird. It's really from the default MT stylesheet, and apparently nobody has worried about it. Moz/Fire* all display it like they're supposed to, even IE5 does it right, but IE6 doesn't. Weird.

In the meantime, I'm trying to hack up the crm-a.org site to have a similar look-and-feel to CRMA Northwest, but with stylesheets. I decided to go with something I read from The Daily Report a while back, which suggested that web sites should be designed with the most compliant browser first, and fixes and hacks be added later. Since Firefox is my primary browser that works fine for me, but most of the people who hit the site still use IE5/6.

The mockup uses menus styled á la A List Apart, but the rest I've actually managed to figure out myself. It looks great in Firefox, but I'm still struggling with IE6, particularly resizing issues.

My other project (for all the spare time I seem to have lying around) has the tentative working title of TTRM (TTRM: Tennis Roster Manager). Like any good OSS effort, it's intended to scratch itches that Tennis Captain and Netcord just don't seem to work on. More to come later, but my fondest hope is that I can use Python for a prototype, then (if I can't just keep using Python) switch it over to PHP. More to come (I hope, since the season starts in 4 weeks).

Wayne and I played line 4, against two guys that we shouldn't have had any trouble with. That was actually true in the first set (6-0), but not in the second: we were down 0-3 when we won our first game, and lost that set 4-6. There was major suckage going on in that set, let me tell you. We managed to win the third set 6-3, but it sure felt closer than that. We just totally fell apart in the second set, and didn't pull it together until we were down something like 1-5 or 2-5. Even for us, that's hard to come back from (and we've come back from being down long, let me tell you).

The second set, they lobbed us to death, and we just didn't handle it well until late. I wasn't watching the ball as well as I can, and I don't think I was doing a good job with racket preparation. On the plus side, I had some good volleys, and some good ground stroke battles, and I had several of my favorite patented down-the-alley shots. Man, I heart those shots big-time, mainly because it makes players who are better than me look stupid

I can really tell that weight, lack of strength training, and lack of tennis practice is hurting my game. I can do something about the first two for sure, and I think it's about time.