The Last Tournament

This weekend is Keavy's last club soccer tournament. We're doing a road trip from Madison to St. Louis for two days and then driving up to the Twin Cities to visit Maccalester. The last tournament is a little bittersweet because, after many, many years, Keavy will not be playing competitive soccer. Her career has included a stint in the Olympic Development Program, two major surgeries on each leg, and a state championship. Last week she scored the game-winning goal in her last Regional League game.

This tournament was originally supposed to be a college showcase, but by now the girls know whether or not they want to play in college. Keavy's team has three girls going away to play in Division 1 soccer – a relatively small number for a team in this division. Keavy is definitely not one of them. She intends to have fun at college and not go through the rigors of being a college athlete.

Can't say that I blame her in any way. As much as I might have wanted to see her play at the college level, I also understand the desire to have a well-rounded life in college. Being a college athlete isn't an avenue that leads toward that.

So, it's off to St. Louis for The Last Tournament.

Ribbit SMS Widget

Blogs on Windows Home Server

Host Your Own Blog on Windows Home Server We Got Served is a useful post on We Got Served that shows how to set up a WordPress Blog on a Windows Home Server machine. It involves PHP, MySQL and WordPress and looks like it might be fun to do if I would ever move away from the very free Blogger!

Twitterholic

Twitterholic now reports that I am the 1,055,653rd most popular person on Twitter. That means that "millions are more popular than you." That seems like hyperbole come true.

Waterstone's in Amsterdam

Sunday afternoon in Spui means a visit to the Amsterdam version of Waterstone's -- the premier English-language bookstore in Amsterdam. It was crowded and so was the street outside. That didn't stop me from getting a present for Keavy there.

Chrysler Into Bankruptcy

It can’t be anything like a surprise, but the announcement that Chrysler is being forced to file for Chapter 11 protection is still overwhelming in scope and scale.  It is, of course, the product of unimaginable mismanagement in the face of obvious trends in the energy and consumer space.  But the effect on people’s jobs, lives and retirement is so profound that I can hardly get my head around the fact.

Nokia's profits drop 90% in Q1 2009

Nokia's profits drop 90% in Q1 2009 is a story at Engadget. I'd comment on it in a sympathetic and helpful way -- except I'm a shareholder (* sigh *).

Ian’s Shoelace Site

I know that there is a place for everything on the Internet, but occasionally I find something that is so amusing that it deserves mention.  That’s the case with Ian’s shoelace site which Ian points out is the Number One Shoelace site on the Internet.  Except for the secret ones, I suppose.  I mean, how many can there be?

Making Dinner and Telling No Lies

Just a couple of pictures of Keavy and friends making dinner last night.  There was pasta for thousands and Heidi and I left the premises before the assembled masses took to the table to celebrate the power of the pot.  Here are a couple of more pictures:

 

An Infuriating Problem - Part 1

It's with an iPhone (if you aren't interested, I don't blame you).

The problem is that, after an upgrade to the most recent version of iTunes, I can no longer sync my iPhone and one of my iPods. When I connect the iPhone to the computer, iTunes reports that it is "Verifying Mark McFadden's iPhone" and then iTunes freezes and nothing happens.

Remarkably, the same thing happens with my iPod classic 120Gb.

Looking online I discovered I wasn't alone. One solution was to deauthorize the iTunes program and restore the iPhone on another computer. Tried that. Same problem.

Another possibility was to do a clean installation of iTunes on the machine that I was trying to sync with. Tried that. Same problem.

I took the iPhone to a completely different machine and restored it to its facotry defaults. Then I reunited it with the machine running iTunes. Basically, I tired to have iTunes pretend that it was a brand new iPhone. Tried that. Same problem.

I actually called Apple technical support where a nice lady called Amanda -- I suspect that all the Apple Technical Support people are named Amanda -- suggested that I uninstall everything I have from Apple and do a complete reinstallation. Even though it broke my copy of MobileMe and left me without iTunes, I did it. Tried that. Same problem.

So Amanda suggested that I completely delete iTunes and all Apple products from my machine and erase my copy of my media library (180Gbytes of media). I really wanted the iPhone to sync and, even though it seemed the option of last resort, I went ahead and did it. Tried that too. Same problem.

The amazing thing is that -- what should have happened -- apparently didn't. I got the machine to a state where there was no Apple software on it and no media of any kind. The "iTunes" folder was completely deleted. And, when I reinstalled iTunes it still didn't work. I can take a blank restored iPhone to a machine that is running a fresh copy of iTunes and still get the same problems.

Amanda and Apple haven't helped.

I'll reflect on this further as I try Apple again.