Everyone likes to feel wanted right?

I mean as a Web Developer I get emails all the time and the occasional call on my cell phone from a recruiter about a job opening. Web Developers seem to be up there with Nurses or other high demand careers which is one of the many reasons I love my job. 

Sometimes though recruiters cross the line, like calling me at my workplace about a new position. This is very unprofessional to say the least. Most of these calls are easily intercepted by the receptionist here. Today it was taken up a notch...

Dan calls my place of work today and says he is my room-mate and needs to speak with me. Now the receptionist has met my wife and kids at company parties so she is pretty sure I don't have a room-mate named Dan. Also the caller id says "Tek Systems". To top it off Dan has called before and previously announced himself as an employee of Tek Systems.

I never speak with Dan because as soon as he is on hold for more than 30 seconds he hangs up. He knows the gig is up and he is about to be sent to voicemail. I guess he has enough morals and dignity to not leave a recruiter message on my work voicemail but not enough to keep him from lying to the receptionist.  

I won't be doing any business with Tek Systems and will ensure any organization I am involved with does the same. By the way Dan, I am the perfect guy for that position and I do make the hiring decisions for this company, which uses recruiting firms, just not yours.

Good Day. 

She winked at me and I smiled back.

We met on a Tuesday, she sat in the corner with her tea, I had a latte while she got a good look at me.

We talked for hours about work, family, and friends. Text messages were sent back and forth and seemed to never end.

She had doubts about the spark but it was soon removed with a motorcycle ride after dark.

We took each step with care, our love grew stronger, but so did a fear.

See there were little ones at home and if things continued they would someday learn....

Meetings were arranged, there were long stares, and many questions for this new boy, but with time, nervous feelings were replaced with laughter and joy.

Children became more than friends and played each day. This made our love grow in a new special way.

The feeling was right, I knew what needed to be done. I asked for her hand so our families could be one.

So today we got married, we have made the plan. My heart is filled with love because I get to be forever, with my Beth-Ann.

 

* Written for my lovely wife Beth-Ann and read to her at our reception on 11/27/2010. 

There seems to be alot of haters out their for this concept. Everyone claims that LINQ to Entities is the way to go in the future. I don't have enough experience with LINQ to Entities to make a solid argument at this time.

What I do know is I have been using LINQ in both MVC and Web Form projects for the past 18 months and do not want to go back to ADO. Using a ORM tool like LINQ makes starting up projects super fast. Most projects these days are small in size anyway starting out and LINQ just makes those so easy. If the software is a success and grows then we can look at something else. That something else might still be LINQ for me though. Tools like PLINQO from Code Smith show hope for LINQ as a true DAL in big projects. I am evaluating it now for my next big project.

 

I went looking for a drop down list for Countries in ASP.NET MVC. I found this article http://helios.ca/2009/05/30/aspnet-mvc-cascading-dropdownlist-with-jquery/ which was pretty much what I needed. 

I did not need the state drop down for my application at this time though.  Also his sample did not actually provide the countries so some extra work was needed.

I thought I would share here as I beleive other people might be looking for those countries also. I am not going over the implementation here, if you want that then go read Mike's Blog

Here is a zip with the Countries defined in it.

CountryCSharpClass.zip

 

Enjoy! and thanks to Mike for sharing.

 

Chris

Did you know you can help my son Spencer earn his own way in Scouting? Just click and place an order on his behalf.  There are new products offered online, like flavored almonds and a limited edition BSA tote. The popcorn is expensive but 70% of your purchase will be returned to me, my unit and my council. Online purchases help us fund fun, educational activities and help more kids experience all the things that make Scouting great.

 If you do not like popcorn you can also send a donation to our troops :)

Thanks for your support,

So I did not play this summer in the tennis league and subsequently made no posts to my blog. My last season ended during the 1st round of the play offs. I took the summer off because of lots of personal problems going on that I am not going to go into on my blog.

 I am beginning the season this week and will be posting more.

 Wanted to share link to my sisters fundraising site which supports Lymphoma Research. Our mother has Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and she is doing it in her honor. If you can donate something small please do so through her site.

 

Chris

 

After the previous weekend of back to back 3 set battles I was definitely feeling discourged with the beginning of my season. The shadow of those matches loomed over me as I approached this new opponent. This week I assurred that I was well rested and prepared for the match at hand. I played Justin at the St. Pete Tennis Club. I had not played there before and it was nice to play somewhere new. Of course on Sunday most of the courts were full and there were lots of younger people playing some competitve tennis. I felt old.

I arrived on time and began warming up. I always suck at first and during the warm up Justin was hitting very well. He hit nice ground strokes that were landing deep in the court. They had lots of spin and bounced high. I was concerned. I noticed he was a lefty and made a point to mention it to him during the practice. I like to do this so my opponent knows I am thinking about it. I took control of the practice session though and worked on some vollies and then serves. 

The first set we started by winning on each others serve. I was winning on his because his service game was really off. I do not know the count on double faults but it was pretty high. On my side I was getting my serves in early but my strokes were not good initially. I kept falling away from shots and seemed to land a lot of balls in the net. At one point during the first set he was up 3-2, I knew this was a critical time in the match and pushed myself to tighen up.  I started putting some more pace on my serve and changing between a flat and spin serve. This seemed to work. Also I noticed that he had the most trouble with serves hit right at him. This realization was an important one during the match and I did not lose on serve after noticing this point. Even if this theory was not entirely true the fact that I was focused on this new aiming point seemed to imporve my overall server percentage. I managed to crawl out of the 3-2 deficit and win the first set 6-4. 

The 2nd set I was able to control the points fairly well. I got a lot more approach shots in this time then last weekend and I would charge the middle of the court. This seemed to work most of the time. The more deliberate my move to the middle the better as he seemed to look up and hit an error in many of these situations. He pointed it out to himself a few times saying "I took my eye off the ball...", of course I was listening and kept doing this. The times it did not work seemed to be when the approach was poor and/or I moved too close to the net. I also was not getting my racquet squared up at the service line and a few times and missed because the ball just bounced off the angled racquet face. I did not do this in practice but it seems to come up in the match. The points I lost during this set were close for the most part. I know the last game I was up 40-0, all from serve points which were not returned in, then I lost 2 straight points and was at 40-30. I psyched myself up to get a good first serve in that was directly at his body and the match ended on an error into the net. I won the 2nd set 6-3.

Final was 6-4, 6-3. Hopefully Justin will call sometime and we can practice. I think he had an off day and I had an on day which sometimes happens in tennis. I think if we were both having an on day then we would have played 3 sets...not sure of the result though, guess we will have to wait and see.

I really hate that I am so competitive sometimes. It takes some years off my life I think. I obsess over it and when I do not perform I just lose it. The image of this racquet is not distorted, this is what it actually looks like now after the final point.

Today I played Mike S. This is the 2nd time I played him. The 1st time, which I blogged about, was last season. I won that match 6-1, 6-3. The match was his first K-Swiss match, it was at night, was very windy, and I played very well. I was prepared for that match and came to it with an open mind ready for any opponent. I played aggressively and won.

This match I was 20 minutes late to start (my fault time change and other stupid reasons). I did not prepare for it as I should have. I played 3.5 hours of tennis the day before and the day before that I moved my office. I expected to win as I did before. What I got was a 3 set battle in which I came out the loser. The images here tell's the tale, I made lots of errors.

Mike's weapon is that he returns most shots. He does not hit hard or play extreme angles or anything like that. He moves well and gets the ball in. There are lots of opportunities to hit approach shots and then close with winners. For me this is a problem right now it seems. First I was missing my approach shots, I knew this was and issue going into the match and struggled with it. Then when I did get the approach in or hit a shot to get him off balance I would not finish the point. There were many shots hit long and quite a few overheads in the net. I cannot count the number of relatively easy winners I missed in the middle of the court.

This was my match to lose and I lost it. I kept falling into his game which is to just get it in. Not the game you want to play against this opponent. Putting pressure on him worked when I was able to execute. Next time I play him it will not be 3 sets, I will go down swinging for winners at the net or win quickly.

 Final Score: 7-6, 6-4, 4-6

 

P.S. I also seem to have an affinity for jamming toes, this is the second time this has happened. This is the 2nd toe over on my right foot. I jammed on Saturday during the 1st match with no blood and then during the 3rd set I jammed it again chasing an overhead which made it bleed. Only a matter of time before the nail falls off, good times.

Ok so only my coach and Mom likely read this blog so keep this in mind when reading if your not one of these people by chance.

 This past 2-3 months since the end of the last season have been a real busy time for me. I tried to train for the season and I lost 25 lbs to help my game. The problem is I have not been able to get lots of match time in. I had a buy the first week of the season and had to travel last week so I am behind on matches. This means playing 2 matches this weekend.

Let me begin by getting all the outside excuses out of the way:

1. Have not been playing matches
2. Moved my office the day before, very sore.
3. Courts were full of people, lots of distractions
4. Teenagers yelling obscenities during the match
5. Really hot girls playing tennis 1 court away from us
6. Played in the morning, I was tired
7. Stupid statistics coach told me, awful Approach shot stat in my head
8. This player is the reason for me being in 3.0 1 more season
9. He rubs it in between games telling me about how out of shape he is and all his injuries

Ok I think that is all the outside excuses, if any more come up during the blog I will let you know.

So 1st match was against Doug L. I played him at the end of the last season. He is an older guy (55+) who has lots of experience playing and if he was 10 years younger would likely be a 4.5 player. His weaknesses are his server, playing the baseline, and moving a lot. His strengths are ball placement, playing the angles, and drop shots.

As you can tell from the description above I had lots of running to do and many approach opportunities. He hits lots of drop shots and short balls and uses his placement ability to put the angle or passing shot by you. The best way to beat him is to hit good approaches and move him into the corner. The approaches cost me LOTS of points in this match. I do not know the stat but in my mind I would think it was 80% of them I missed. I come in fast, don't stop, and then go for a winner. This results in hitting long most of the time, over 10 shots I would likely break it down like this 7 long, 2 good, 1 in the net.

This was the come back match for me. It seemed I had to be down to get hungry enough to win. Set 1 I was down 0-4 at one point. I came back to force a tie break but lost it. Set 2 I was down 2-5 and came back to force the tie break and won it. I fought off 2-3 match points. Set 3 I got down 2-4, then 4-5 and fought off 2 match points. Finally over coming him to win 7-5 in the 3rd. I could tell it was over when I got him to 5-5, after he had so many chances to win.

When coming back and fighting off those points I focused on not swinging so hard and hitting everything deep and cross court regardless of what he did. Now I don't know why I can't do this the entire match knowing it was a winning formula but I just didn't. He would hit the short ball and I would come in for the kill, see red, and hit it to the fences. When playing baseline shots with him he would never last more than 2-3 shots before hitting it into the net.

Final score: 6-7, 7-6, 7-5. Match lasted approximately 2.5 hours.

I know I have not blogged about Week 6 yet, well I played this week before 6. The guy called me and wanted to play early so here I am. I play Week 6 tomorrow.

This week I played Jeremiah. He is new to the league but apparently played a lot when he was younger. First thing you need to know about him is he is 6'6" and in good physical condition. Even if he could not play tennis very well he would have been tough. That was not the case though, he was a player.

He knew how to come to the net and worked it often. When someone that size is at the net it seems nearly impossible to get something by them. During the 1st this seemed to get to me quite a bit. I normally do not play my best during the first set and if forced to make really good shots I tend to make errors. This was essentially the reason I lost the 1st set 4-6.

Throughout the match the thing that helped me most was his service game. He had a on/off style serve. It was either coming at you at 80+ mph or it was not going in. He doubled a lot. During the 2nd set I started to get a nice game going and at one point was up 3-1.

I started hitting my serves with a little more pace which also helped. I had noticed he was slicing my serves hitting sort of a drop shot return on them. Something you don't normally see but again because of his height he seemed to pull that shot off quite a bit. He would also follow this shot in so as your running up to hit this slice he is standing there casting a shadow over the ball. This made it even harder to hit a nice shot back, the angle made it impossible to hit an overhead so you were constantly forced to make some sort of passing shot. Hitting it harder on the serve seemed to foil this shot more often than not, also over time in the match I just started following my serve in a few steps as seemed to never hit a deep return. I won the 2nd set 6-3.

 During the 3rd it seemed like I was going to run away with it. I was up 3-1 again. Then out of no where his serve seemed to come back to him and he really began burning them in. This flustered me a bit and I ended up giving up a service game to him also. Finally though I managed to finish it off on serve and win the set 6-4.

Final 4-6, 6-3, 6-4. Nice 3 set battle, I am sure I will play him again if he stays in the league and he will be much tougher the next time.

The single biggest thing that I enjoyed about this match is that I adjusted to his slice return and over came it. Last season during the 1st round of the playoffs I faced an opponent who did the very same thing. I never seemed to adjust to it and lost in the first round. This time was different - woot!