Éirinn go Brách

I'll take the news that Guinness is actually good for you as the best of the day.

Ubuntu Redux

I liked Ubuntu 10.04 so much on my old desktop, that I decided to install it on an old Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop that was gathering dust. It's probably about to give up the ghost (it recently rejected one of its two memory sticks which is usually a sign that the motherboard is getting warped and the DVD drive makes horrible noises) but I can get a little more use out of it yet. I'm getting the hang of having the close button on the left hand side...

Hotels

I had some very divergent hotel experiences on my trip last week. I started out in a semi-basement room that should have had a round door in Moses Lake. From that I moved on to an insanely expensive Sheraton in Palo Alto that was huge and had a little patio area (pic from patio at left). To get a little closer to the airport, I moved to a cheaper room at The Palace in San Francisco (shows how ridiculous Palo Alto is).

Delivery

We got our NCAA Lacrosse Final Four tickets in the mail this week and I'm getting pretty excited for the tournament. Although it isn't quite official yet, it looks like Virginia will at least get to the second round. It doesn't exactly seem fair that they have to play at Stony Brook next weekend. Shouldn't the lower seed be at home?

Ubuntu 10.04

I've got an old Ideq 210V that wasn't being used for much, so I decided to install Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic for those who like the Ubuntu lingo) on it a month or so ago. Everything was going swimmingly. I had configured it to connect to my VPN for work and had even set up the SAP GUI on it. It was actually quite useful.

Then I read some reviews of Ubuntu 10.04 which sounded like the bee's knees. Upgrading seemed a cinch, so I gave it a whirl. Unfortuately, I was only able load up the failsafe GNOME mode, which seemed to limit some of my options (for example, I couldn't find the network manager icon anywhere). I thought it might have had something to do with a botched upgrade, so I did a complete reinstall. Same thing.

I was quite vexed and just set it aside for a couple of days. Then I started wondering if it was the amount of memory dedicated to the IGP in the BIOS. I fired it up, set the shared memory to 64M (the maximum) from 16M (the minimum) and it works!Now I just need to get back to where I was a week ago...

Upset

The Canadiens do it again. It wasn't even as close as the score. They just might be good enough to win the whole thing. Halak sure is.

700

That's the current odo reading on Ruby after my lunchtime ride today with Hans. It was a nice day for a ride and fun to have company. I'm now over one third of the way to the 2000 mile goal for the year and 200 miles in a little over 3 weeks (23 days).

Last Game

We had our last RVLLA game on a cloudy and cool Tuesday night at Salem. Overall, a really well played back-and-forth game by both teams. We really got after the ground balls and many, many players contributed. We had better spacing on offense and solid defense. An overall solid team effort. Once again, we had a nice save in the last two minutes to remain down one goal and got the ball up the field. We couldn't quite corral the ground ball after a strong run up the field was met with solid defense which got the ball loose and time expired with the ball in their defender's stick and we lost 10-9.

We fell short on draws (they have a girl who is very good at it who took almost every draw and we only beat her a few times) and shooting right at their goalie (she's big and very solid in the cage, but it doesn't help to shoot right at her).

I'm biased but it seemed most of the calls went their way (I believe the officials were Salem HS girls) and they weren't calling the three second checkable position rule. We'd play great defense and keep them out but they were allowed to retain the ball in a checkable position in our arc for long periods of time and finally get a shot off. By the end, we were just mobbing the ball on defense and giving them the open pass. This isn't the way we want to play, but the girls adapted to the game situation. By contrast, most of our scores were drives straight to the goal with a shot (which we worked on in practice) or at least we would attempt to pass when heavily covered (doesn't always work at this level, but it's good to see the effort). 

The season is way too short. I'm ready to play a couple more, but we've played everyone around a couple of times (except Lexington who we just couldn't get scheduled for a second round). By the end, we are playing much better as a team on offense and defense. I'm very proud of everyone who came out and played this year. We had some experienced players improve their game considerably and all of the first year players were contributors in some way by the end of the year. I'm really looking forward to next year!

Last Practice

We had our last lacrosse practice of the year tonight. It was a fairly nice evening but a unremarkable practice. Some ground balls, some catch and shoot, some scrimmage. Last game tomorrow!

p.s. my legs are pretty sore from that hike yesterday.

Knob

We took a Mother's Day/L10 Birthday family hike up McAfee Knob Sunday. It was a very cool day for this time of the year (low 60s) and quite windy. This is the first time both kids have done this fairly tough hike on their own two feet. They did fine. I won't say there was no "are we there yet" whining, but it was minimal. I think Kate and I were more tired at the end than they were. L10 was also very tired at the end but gets around very well for a 13 year old dog.

Saturday

Big day yesterday. We kicked if off with a 9:00 AM lacrosse game in Shawsville for the U7 boys. It really wasn't much of a game and I don't think the other team scored a goal. But, it was fun for them to get out there and get a game in. There were a couple of funny things in the game. My favorite was when the ball was down at our offensive end for a while and a breakout emerged going the other way. On the other end, all of the attack and defense were sitting in the crease having a chat. Jack scored a Hat Trick and actually tried to switch to his left hand with the ball. He tripped and fell down while trying that move, but he played well.

When we got back, I went for a ride up on Yellow Mountain Road and down along the Greenway. They've opened the bridge to Wasena park, so we have the full five or so miles along the river available again. It's good to have a spot to take a flat, easy ride once in a while.

Lastly, we had the Gallop for the Greenways in the late afternoon. It was a very windy day which kept it cool. I helped pace Sophie and she ran her personal best 5k and Kate got on the podium as well and we took home a bunch of glasses as our prize. Since we have about a dozen Gallop glasses in the cupboard, hopefully they will change the prize next year.

Close One

A great game tonight at Reserve Ave vs. Salem. It was a pretty close affair all the way with the teams being within a goal or two of each other for the entire 40 minutes. I was the roster guy tonight, but I was using my new spreadsheet system that takes all of the guess work out of the substitutions so I was able to watch a little bit more of the game than I have been able to in the past.

We played ground balls much better tonight than we did on Monday. I think they may have had a slight edge in total, but it was much closer and it showed on the offense. We got a lot of scoring off of good ground ball work. One goal in particular was impressive. Two of our better players hooked up on a 30 yard pass over the defense for an easy tally after a great ground ball grab near our restraining line. Many of the others were the usual solo drives to the cage, but I could see that the light bulb has gone on and they were actually looking for each other when moving the ball up the field - even setting the ball up behind the goal a couple of times. Even better than that, they were clearing out of the front of the goal and opening up some space for shooting and passing. It didn't always work and was uneven, but you could see the beginnings of a team offense.

We played tenacious defense as well. Many of the girls don't like to go in on defense but they did a very good job for the most part. There were a couple of breakdowns leading to Salem goals but it wasn't for lack of effort. One thing that really helped us was that the ref was properly calling the three second rule for the turnover if the defender was in good position. We got a number of these calls in some crucial spots.*

The goal tending was solid and we had a handful of saves. The one I remember most was towards the end of the game to preserve our one goal lead with maybe 30 seconds left. Right after that save, we got the ground ball and started to advance the ball up the field. However, one of their best players was in great defensive position and she got the three second turn over with maybe 10 seconds left right at our restraining line. The horn blew just as she was closing into shooting range and we won 8-7.

My favorite thing about this game was that we got some solid contributions from many of the first year players. The first year of lacrosse is tough and it's great to see players progress over the course of the year. Too bad there is only one more game to go...

* As an aside, there are two different "three second rules". The first is that no defensive player can be within the 8m arc for longer than 3 seconds unless she is within a stick's length from an offensive player. The other "three second rule", which is specifically for youth players (who aren't allowed stick checking) states that if an offensive player holds her stick in a 'checkable position' as defined by full checking rules for longer than 3 seconds, she will lose possession of the ball. This is designed to reward defensive players for their play

Practice

Tough practice tonight. It was hot and the girls just weren't focused tonight. Lots of weak passing and catching. On the plus side, they did a much better job running through ground balls. I'll take any positive I can get. We've got another game vs. Salem tomorrow so we are going to need all hands on deck to keep our record clean.

Detente

The scene in my office last night. No fighting, just reading. Very nice.

Purple vs. Maroon

We had a great game with Salem tonight down at Reserve Ave. It ended in a 9-9 tie and was a well played, back and forth game the whole time. I don't think either team led by more than 2 goals at any point. We got killed on the ground balls (their team knew how to pick 'em) and played very uneven defense, but had enough offense to keep it close. Not to say our offense was clicking, but we seemed to be able to muster a goal when it was needed.

The last 3 minutes were a lot of fun. We were down by one and lost the draw. But, some good defense got the ball back and we scored a fast break goal to knot the score.  Salem called a timeout with about 2 minutes left to talk it over and give their players a break (we had numbers and it was a hot night). Again, they won the draw (gotta get those ground balls) and took it down the field. We played really great defense and kept on the ball tight when it got in close. They had a few opportunities but couldn't convert. Finally, our goalie stuffed a shot from just outside the crease and we got a clear with maybe 20 seconds left. We started moving the ball down the field on foot and with the clock headed towards zero, heaved the ball down the field towards our attacking end. One of our players had a good run at it but the ground ball was contested by their defenders and we couldn't come up with it. The horn blew and that was that. No OT tonight.

A couple of observations of things we need to improve: throwing and catching (you can't pass the ball if people don't make accurate passes that are caught by the other person), ground balls (too many misses on wide open opportunities that then went the other way) and proper defense (there were too many people floating around the arc, we got called for one or two three second calls - it could have been half a dozen).

Summer

It is warm and humid now. I think there is a 10 degree difference between my office temperature (70ish) and the temperature upstairs (80ish). We went to the outdoor pool yesterday for the first time after a hot hike on the trail. It's not quite here all the way, but summer is coming.

Mulehell

I took the 90 minute drive down to Whytheville for the annual Mulehell ride. It was a blast! I got to share nice rolling terrain and beautiful rural scenery with 90 fellow cyclists (all of whom were very friendly) . Most of the roads were in pretty good shape (for rural Virginia roads) and there was very little traffic. The unpaved sections of the course added to the challenge and interest. Luckily, most of the unpaved stuff was flat to slightly uphill so you didn't have to worry too much about crashing but the thought of a flat loomed large. Ruby handled it all well.

I was pleased with my 16.1 MPH average over the course. Some of that was with various groups and some by myself (I tended to climb faster than the groups I was with so I'd leapfrog up to the next group on a long incline - thanks Granny gear!). I felt that the overall terrain was easier than a typical ride for me on the Parkway but it had some steeps. 

I'll plan on being back next year and I'd like to try some of the other events in the Southwest Virginia Cycling Series, but this might be the only one that fits in my calendar.