March 15, 2018

A Monstrous Week
Wow . . . the sheer amount of stuff that's gone on this week is beyond mindboggling. Here's a rundown.

  • Power Outage. Remember the planned power outage I wrote about that was supposed to happen on Wednesday, 7AM - 5PM? Rather than lose a day, I was up at 6AM, packed the computer, monitor, printer/scanner, and lots of other supplies, and Tim and I left to go to the club (MDTTC) to work in the back room there. I got everything set up there by 8AM, and we were set to go to work. Then we received an email at 8:07AM that due to freezing temperatures - 32 even - they were postponing the outage. (Don't they read weather reports?) So I packed everything up again and went back home. Roughly speaking, from 6:30-9:30AM all we did was pack up things, move them, and set them up again. One worrisome item - while setting up at the club, I plugged in a power cord, and then tossed the cord under a table so I could connect it to the computer. As I tossed it, I felt a sharp pang in my shoulder. Hopefully I didn't hurt it much. I have to be very careful with that arm.
  • History of Table Tennis: Volume 21. We really had hoped to finalize it yesterday, but there are lots and lots of complications. We finished the actual pages yesterday - 438 pages, 1677 graphics, covering 1994-1995. However, there are lots and lots of corrections - Tim goes over the pages with a magnifying glass - that's literally true, he really uses one - and on nearly every page finds something he wants changed. So I'm constantly changing and fixing up photos in Photoshop. Plus, Tim thinks of Photoshop as a word processor, so often I'm zooming in and doing graphical editing of text, where I'm literally copying and pasting letters or words to fix the text. (As I've noted before, the books are literally cut & pasted together, with Tim creating pages that Mal Anderson then scans, and then we fix them up - but each page is just one big graphic.)
         Anyway, we didn't finish yesterday, but we're hoping to finish today, hopefully by noon, though I suspect it'll take longer. (We've been working roughly 7AM-5PM since Sunday, March 4, and I've worked on it late into the night a few times.) After that's done I still have several hours of pre-press work to do to get the files ready for publication. (Copies should be available in a few weeks.) Meanwhile, why not buy a copy from Volumes 1-20?
  • Player in Hospital. One of our local players came down violently sick with internal bleeding. I was around when it happened, so guess who called 9-1-1, and spent four hours at the hospital with him? He's in stable condition now. Sorry, I'm not at liberty to divulge more. But there were a number of complications here, and we also lost a lot of work time.
  • Plumbing, Fence, Windows, and Car Door. I own a townhouse and rent out the first two floors to local players and coaches. One of the toilets stopped up, and it was a mess. I ended up paying $160 yesterday to get it fixed. Meanwhile, the front gate broke, and I also spent $166 yesterday getting it repaired. Also meanwhile, two windows in my townhouse have broken sidings (the parts that allow the window to move up and down), and the estimate I got for repairing each was . . . wait for it . . . here goes . . . $650!!! That's EACH - so $1300!!! I said no thanks, and will search around for more affordable window repair after Tim leaves. And then someone opened my car door too hard yesterday and broke the door handle. That's going to cost a bunch to repair. Maybe I should do an online "GoFundMe" campaign?
  • Shoulder. It's at least a little better, but I'm taking at least another two weeks off before starting private coaching again. I could start the week of March 26, except that's the week of our Spring Break Camp. So tentatively I'll start up after that, which means at the start of April. I will likely start only with beginners, who won't push me as hard. If that goes okay, then I'll try the more advanced ones. Meanwhile, I'm still doing regular group sessions. Hopefully that toss of a power cable didn't hurt it. (See power outage above.)
  • USATT Teleconference. The USATT Board of Directors had a teleconference on Monday. It was a rather memorable one in a bad way as the big topic was the Umpires and Referees Committee, and one member of it. By a unanimous vote - with the subject of interest on the phone with us - we were forced to remove him from the committee. More on this when the minutes of the meeting go up.

World Veterans Championships in Las Vegas
The deadline to enter the WVC is . . . TODAY!!! Yes, the Ides of March, and one day after Pi Day. As I write this on Wednesday night (and post it just before 5AM), there are 3988 listed online as entered, but I've been told there are more that haven't been listed yet, so the number is over 4000. I'll be there doing daily coverage. I'm also entered to play, but due to shoulder problems will likely drop out.

USATT, ITTF, and Butterfly News Items
I've been away for a few days, and they've been steadily putting up news items. So why not give them a browse? (Disclaimer: I'm sponsored by Butterfly.)

Does Coaching Improve a Coach’s Playing Skills?
Here's the article by Coach Jon.

2018 Qatar Open - Brazil Challenging China?!
Here's the article (with link to video) by Shashin Shodhan.

Polish Open
Here's the home page for the Polish Open, in Spala, POL, March 13-17.

Great Exhibition Rally
Here's the video (64 sec)!

Zombie Pong
Here's the picture!

***
Send us your own coaching news!