2009 News

11/30/09 Cook/Douglas League Up to 14 Players!
Still trying to squeeze a few more players into the League for January. Been able to get them some accounts and working on an area where they can "Fight Back." against my constant institgation.

11/30/09 New Article: Playing Without Excuses.
We all have them some times, they make coping with defeat easier, but if we constantly blame something else besides ourselves for our failures. Are we really learning anything? Read the article and feel free to comment.

11/30/09 Need to Update This Page More Often.
Sometimes forget to update this page while working on other pages. So people coming to the site probably think nothing is going on in the past two months. Well working to stop that bad habit and get ppl. links to new content.

10/01/09 It's Time to Play the Game!
Alright let's do this thing. Check out the Leagues page for details on my next Cook/Douglas Racquetball League! We just started signing people up, so get your spot early. Thanks for the push Matt.

10/01/09 Busch Racquetball Ladder Monday and Wednesday Nights 5:30 to 7:30 PM.
Rich Tedesco runs a Racquetball Ladder over on Busch Campus. Check out the Board for more details or if you need Directions. Non-Rutgers people should obtain parking passes before playing.

09/30/09 Bert McFarlane Retires from Rutgers
Got a chance on Monday to play with an old friend Bert and some of the Monday and Wednesday's Doubles Guys at Cook. The five of us from left to right (Frank Cai, One Lee, Bert, My Gut, and myself laughed it up like old times. Another Joe couldn't make it because he wasn't feeling well. So we'll try to get another picture with him later. I've known Bert since I started playing Racquetball like seven to eight years ago. Took me a while before I could start paying him back for all the beatings he gave me starting out. We all took turns playing with Bert and he did well all around.

Anyway we always had a great time playing doubles and all the trash talking emails that still make the rounds every Monday and Wednesday. Have a great retirement out in Vegas Bert and hope you keep in touch and playing racquetball. Think he's leaving mid October, so I'm early. Applications for a Monday and Wednesday Doubles person are now being accepted. <jk>

08/14/09 Women's Team Head Dri-Fit Shirts for Sale
Chuck Rousenberg from Chuck's Racquetball Equipment has a bunch of Women's Team Head Dri-Fit Shirts in Large (12-14) sizes for $18 each or save $3 when you buy 5 at $15 each. Check out his website for more information.

08/04/09 ELOCalc Lite Released
Believe the problem from this morning has been resolved. Please email [email protected] if you are having trouble downloading the application.

It gives me great pleasure to announce Enchanted Quill Press LLC's first sharware (try before you buy) application, ELOCalc Lite. It's a basic Windows application that expands upon the ranking system I've used for years in my leagues and offer online.

Hope you give it a shot and let me know what you think at [email protected]. We're offering a license for $5.00 which includes a 25% discount on future releases of ELOCalc Standard and Professional editions and a special member area account.

07/14/09 Old League Finished
Took about a year, but I closed off the 2007-08 League. Can see the final draw and some closing comments on the league. Looking to start another one to slowly rebuild the group of players we had. Might be a couple of leagues before everything is running smoothly again.

Planning on doing more online and getting players from different clubs together. We really need to grow the sport and get more people at Rutgers playing to keep the courts alive. I'm sure these needs are echoed in other clubs. So say posted for more news about the next league!

06/18/09 Club Player Boards Opened
It'd kind of a mixing of two things I wrote. Articles and Groups. The end result is a place to post comments about when people want to play, challenges, and maybe even a little trash talking. Anyway hope you can check it out. The first group is my home club, Rutgers C/D Rec Center.

06/14/09 Team Head Contract Renewed. Meanstreak 175 Picked!
Maybe it's my week long fever that made me shave off ten grams from my racquet. I know, I know been dead set on 185 for a long time, but during one of the demos at Rutgers I tried all the AMPs from 165 to 185 again. I'm very happy to report it was triple digits each and every time. Something like 102, 104, 102! So it'll be interesting to see what 175 will do to my game. Been pretty weak lately from the fever so a lighter racquet might help.

Anyway it was a pretty serious week and to still have a low-grade fever after a week is not something I'm glossing over. Going to force my Doctor to give me another blood culture test, since the last one was "contaiminated". Seems pretty stupid not to reschedule another one to see what's going on, but so far been ok and trying to rest. If it is a virus hopefully it's getting wiped out.

05/20/09 Seven Test Accounts Sent
Finished the database tables for groups this morning, but before I get a little too ahead of myself I wanted to make sure what I have done is working correctly. I asked seven people to go through the process of getting a password and to see what happens as they change their passwords, post comments, and just go through the process. Hopefully nothing is broken and I can continue full speed with groups. I think groups are going to be awesome!

If you had a member account from one of my past leagues then all you need is your email address and click on Forgot Password. Please feel free to help test the system, but please remember it's a live so please post appropriately.

05/05/09 NJ Racquetball Clubs Updated...Sorta
With more of the member area coming online soon, I needed to update how Racquetball Clubs are kept on the site. Basically want a lot more dynamic stuff for players, groups, and clubs and that couldn't happen the way it was.

Another project is to have people submit more clubs and give some feedback about them. I'm getting a little ahead of myself since the member area needs to be tightened up and tested heavily. I asked a couple of people to test it and I found and fixed a couple of problems. So I'll keep chipping at it.

Groups are the next tool to be developed for members and I already have a couple of people in mind for group leaders.

04/13/09 Team Head Demo for Friday April 17th at Rutgers Cook/Douglas 5 to 8:00 PM
Rutgers Recreation has been helping me get the word out on my Head Racquet Demo on Friday. Getting all the materials together to showcase the latest racquets. Planning on helping some of the newcomers learn a little about the game and will have a radar gun just for kicks. They also invited my students from the Dollar Menu Racquetball class to try out some of the stuff. Be cool to see how they are doing. There's still a back log of thirty students and we're planning more classes in September.

04/13/09 Sidebar Reorganized
Planning on expanding the member area this week, so wanted to get some more things organized. The menu bar needed some serious updates to group related items. I found it difficult to read and it didn't help me zero in on what I wanted. Some (ASP) pages have the old sidebar, since I wanted to make sure this one works first.

04/04/09 Comments are Live!
Well about four months of piecing things together paid off tonight when I uploaded all the code to my production server. Of course, that broke a lot of stuff. So I tightened some stuff, replaced others, and kicked it a few times to get it going. Overall it works using the framework I designed. There's more stuff left, but the core is done. Finally people who have member accounts can actually use them for something!

I had a major freakout when something in my code wasn't working on the production box. I had to comment out sections of code to track it down...Anyway it was something that PHP 5 accepted that PHP 4 did not. Will be inviting some users to add comments and see how it handles a multi-user load.

04/04/09 May 15-17, Hillsborough Tournament. Wipeout!
Before I get into a long winded account of last night at Hillsborough. There's a round robin tournament at Hillsbroough coming up on May 15-17. For details checkout the app at HRC's Web site. As I've written many times before you get to play a lot of games, meet some good people, and go for a trophy for only $35. No USAR membership required! Great tourney for racquetball newbies.

Anyway pulled a double...played at Rutgers and at Hillsborough to play some games, practice with Tina, my doubles partner, and just have fun. BTW, Tina won mixed B/C Doubles at State Singles without me. :-( Any very proud of her to win a couple of tough matches with minimal help from Pete Perez. There was some controversy with Pete being her partner since he's pretty much an A Player, but last year he played B/C with someone else. So why not now? Should be an interesting meeting at (you know where). Shouldn't get my partner fired up on or off the court. It's just bad news for the other party.

Anyway after playing, we went upstairs to socialize and Gloria asked me about the app being posted. I said sheepishly that I didn't scan it yet. Scott was quick to chime in, "That means no." So I was about to scan it this morning when I saw it already posted on her club's site...so easy enough to include a link. Gloria offered me some drills to do with Jason with balloons and sponge balls that I can't wait to do with him. Otherwise it was a great night with good friends and good racquetball. I need to print some pics of the boys for next time. Good luck on your shoulder procedure Joe! Hope your back on the courts soon!! More in Blog.

03/22/09 Lost a lot of Email!
In an effort to stop the amount of spam I get, I created a pretty dumb rule in my email web client that may have wiped out a lot of email. I'm also going to change my passwords for my accounts. This came at a very bad time just when I was growing my business and contacts. I really hate spam and it was a pretty dumb move. If I haven't responded to your emails please resend them. Sorry for the delay.

03/15/09 No Longer Offering Ashaway Monokill for Customers
Nothing against Ashaway, I think their Powerkill and Superkill brands are excellent strings, but I'm done with Monokill XL. At first, I thought a mono-filament 17g. would be a great addition to my house strings. It seemed strong, was a 17g., and was very affordable. Then Customers were breaking it left and right sometimes on the very first hit. It doesn't stretch well and installs like chicken-wire. I've tried much lower tensions to help, but I can't have stuff break on my customers on the first hit. It's just bad business. So it's gone.

03/12/09 Joe Camiolo Takes Over as New Jersey Head Rep
During the Hillsborough vs. Tara Travel League on Saturday. Joe Camiolo told me he's the new Head Rep of New Jersey after I asked about Aimee Ruiz's switch to Ektelon. I have a lot of respect for Joe both on and off the court and always seek his advice on my game. He can also be a pretty tough task master--I think--so safe to say all the Head Sponsored players will be working hard next Season.

He already asked me about doing a demo at Rutgers and Tina Davitt (my Doubles Partner) has been running around doing demos as well. So I personally welcome Joe Camiolo as Head Rep think he'll bring more communication and structure to the group.

03/12/09 RSS Feed Finally Archived
I downloaded an RSS Feed reader for Firefox and just kept watching a bunch of my old news swirl past. So I dumped the whole feed into an archive. Also added some new items to start things off. I admit, I've slacked off big time on my feed.

02/11/09 Dollar Menu Class at Rutgers...Successful!
Had about six out of eight students show up for an hour and half non-credit class at Rutgers on Sunday night. It's been a while since I presented in front of a group and trying to make the class interesting based on the group of students was challenging. Showed them how to grip the racquet, forehand/backhand stance, had them try to hit some of the shots and serves of the game, let them hit into the radar gun, and took two at a time to a court to play a five point game. Some electrical problems shut down three of the five courts, so I think overall it was a fun night.

Out of the six (five women, one guy), I thought three could really develop into pretty good players. Anyway the class was sold out with a waiting list, so more classes coming. It's great to give back to Rutgers Recreation and help the students learn racquetball. Bill Serafin always told me I was in a good place to grow the sport, shame it took so long for something to actually happen. Oh well, glad it did.