USA 3 - 0 Poland

All in all a good days work for our MNT! Set pieces was the theme of the day for our boys in Poland last week - Im late posting is all. Bob Bradley has done a good job with our team so far and establishing international friendlies with decent counterparts. If we can keep this kind of momentum going - then World Cup 2010 looks like it has a bright future for the US! At the very least -w e get to play England at Wembley in June - ah, if only I could be there........

I finally gave in......

I've been fighting it for about 8 months now. The urge to buy the iPhone. It's expensive! But with my birthday came some money and since I get an allowance from work for cell phone usage - it really is not costing me anything extra on my plan.

So I did it - I bought it. I cannot even explain to you how cool it is. I mean, it is so easy - I have everything set up - and I never even had to use a User Guide. How cool is it you ask?

Well, for starters, I can access the Internet.

I can consolidate all my contacts including everything I would ever have in a day planner.

I can access my CSS email automatically as well!

My iPod music is consolidated in here.

And when I go on vacation in a month - we can upload movies to it and watch movies on the airplane through the iPhone.

Oh and wait - I can take notes and store them.

AND I even have quick access to YouTube - AND because of that........I of course already have my Michael Bradley YouTube videos book marked. :) I am in heaven.

iPhone

My Venting Session

So I am going to start with the sugar before I say the spice.

Sugar #1
US U23's not only beat Canada 3-0 in the semi-final to advance to the final - they qualified for the Olympics in Beijing and they won in good fashion. GOOD JOB BOYS and GOOD LUCK THIS SUMMER! So the irony is they qualify for the Olympics without having to win the qualifying final. But they will play regardless. And Honduras is in the final as well. Looks like Mexico goes home - YEAH!!!

Sugar #2
We got another customer! And we got our developer moving forward with our database. Exciting stuff. So by the end of April - we should be ready to really rock and roll with our web site.

Spice #1

Tryouts happened last weekend. In some ways I love tryouts. It's an ego thing with me. I get a high knowing I can in 3 hours identify a player's mental, technical, tactical, and physical ability. And knowing I can do this evaluating a variety of players. And then knowing further, that over the course of the year - I am going to prove myself right. Yes, that's right.........I am a right fighter. I love to be right. I love to win. I love to prove someone wrong. Is it a flattery asset of mine - no, I know it is a behavioral flaw of mine. But I don't care. :)

So moving on to the good stuff. So we promoted 2 players - always a good thing! We dropped one player and we picked up 5 good players - including a keeper that WANTS to play for us. Oh I can't tell you how happy we are about that.

The bad stuff. SO one of the players we kept - failed to contact us within 24 hours of posting the results. Actually it was past 72 hours before the parent contacted us informing us that the player would like to play for us again.

Here is the problem. We stated to contact us within 24 hours to reserve a spot. We then followed up with the family 48 hours after - because we have to start notifying alternates. You know where this is going correct?

So 72 hours later - we contacted our first alternate to offer her a spot. About 8 hours later - we get an email from the other parent. So now I ask you....what do you think we should do? And before you answer that, keep in mind the following aspects:

Our team/club is not cheap. If you want to play on our team - which is less than if you are on the A team - you pay a minimum of $2000 a year.......to the club. This does not count the money spent on uniforms, travel costs, tournament fees, indoor fees, etc. So realistically it's about $3000.

So think about how one person's lack of organization, could impact YOUR child's playing time? How do you feel about that knowing how much you pay for your child to participate.

So do we eat crow and accept the girl - we like her - but the mom has been like this the past year. Apparently she has a lack of organizational skills. The excuse - they were moving and didn't have Internet connection. The problem with that is we also had one of our players send the player a text message. And the girl is 14 - she isn't 11. So we also feel that this should not be the sole responsibility of the parent. After all - the girl is not only old enough to to contact us, she had means to do so even if her home Internet was not available. And we had agreed that after last year's tryouts, we would never let parents hold us hostage again. it's just not fair to us, the team or to the alternates that otherwise would take a spot on our team. So with all that said....how do you feel about it?

Spice #2
Customers are obnoxious - this would be my day job. I find it amazing that i work in an industry where people think you should fix their errors and shortcomings, for free. That their ignorance is unimportant, and your customer service should make their problem right. Because it isn't their fault they screwed up. And because they don't want to have to explain how their lack of attention to detail caused a fracas. Ahh mortgage brokers. I hate them.

The other day, we had a $732 charge we assessed to a customer's credit card for rescore charges he incurred. A rescore is when a broker takes data from the individual and their creditors and passes it on to the three credit bureaus in an attempt to clean up their credit file - so they can get a better FICO score so they can fund a loan or get a better loan term for the borrower. the consumer can do this for free to the repositories directly - but it takes about 60 days to go through this process. The broker can do it within a week - but for a hefty price tag.

So the guy signs off on the order form - one inch below where it discussed the pricing. We got billed, therefore he gets billed. Well of course he called. he was pissed. His problem? He didn't understand how much the total bill was going to be. But he has been doing loans for 10 years. his rescores have been partially comped at other CRA's because he had bundled service packages. So the bottom line was, he said he was only going to pay $200 and that he was going to charge it back. Go ahead buckaroo - you won't win the charge back cause your signature signed off on the pricing. So he failed to read the pricing and if he had a question on it, he didn't ask anyone for a total amount either - even though he was the one who checked what services to perform on what bureaus, etc. His gripe - no one told him the total before the services were performed.

And how is that our fault when you were responsible for doing the math - we gave you the prices. Ah but the CS person spoke with him twice about the services - why didn't she tell me? First off - it wasn't our CS, it was our credit agency's CS person. He didn't care. And he tried to tell me that good customer service to retain him as a customer would be to basically eat it on his behalf. Cause....he knows lots of originators and he can tell people not to use us...........oh no, a little bad press - alert the media!

I told him - that' ok, our CEO is friends with your CEO. And then I told him - it would take us over a year or 2 before we began to see any profit from his account if we ate the fee - only in the hopes that he didn't get upset at anything else and remained our customer.

We have people scream at us all the time because we won't fix the name information on the credit report they pulled - when they were the retards that typoed it in the first place and we even gave them a review screen. The reason we don't.....we just can't pull the report back in our system is all if we do fix it. But it pisses them off that we won't fix their mistake.

Do you see my woes?

I gotta lot to say today

Actually - it's been building up for a few days now. But I'll have to come back to this cause my boss is sitting in front of me - and i know he is going to look at my computer screen in a minute.

update on the U23's - they scraped through the group phase and managed to squeak out a win in the 95th minute against Honduras. Boys - you need to find your groove or else you won't make it past Canada today! Canada vs US update will be coming later.

Colorado

A friend sent this to me and I gotta say - it is SOOO true!

You're from Colorado if----

You'll eat ice cream in the winter.

When the weather report says it's going to be 65 degrees, you shave your legs and wear a skirt.

It snows 5 inches and you don't expect school to be canceled.

You'll wear flip flops every day of the year, regardless of temperature.

You have no accent at all, but can hear other people's. And then you make fun of them.

'Humid' is over 25%.

Your sense of direction is: Toward the mountains and Away from the mountains.

You say 'the interstate' and everybody knows which one.

You think that May is a totally normal month for a blizzard.

You grew up planning your Halloween costumes around your coat.

You know what the Continental Divide is.

You don't think Coors beer is that big a deal.

You went to Casa Bonita as a kid.

You've gone off-roading in a vehicle that was never intended for such activities.

You always know the elevation of where you are.

You wake up to a beautiful, 80 degree day and you wonder if it's going to snow tomorrow.

You don't care that some company renamed it, the Broncos still play at Mile High.

Every movie theater has military and student discounts.

Everybody wears jeans to church.

You actually know that South Park is a real place not just a show on TV.

You know what a 'trust fund hippy' is, and you know its natural habitat is Boulder.

You know you're talking to a fellow Coloradoan when they call it Elitches, not Six Flags.

A bear on your front porch doesn't bother you.

Your two favorite teams are the Broncos and whoever is beating the crap out of the Raiders.

You've been to the original Chipotle near the DU campus on Evans.

When people out East tell you they have mountains in their state too, you just laugh.

You go anywhere else on the planet and the air feels 'sticky' and you notice the sky is no longer blue.

US Women

Won the Algarve Cup - again. No surprise. It was their warm up to their own Olympic qualifying tournament. And no - I haven't checked the score.

However, it is listed on the FoxSoccer site that Hope Solo has been named as the face of Women's Soccer following her "World Cup fiasco" as some writers called it. Remember my lovely posts from last summer?

Ah...don't you just love irony.......

No mention of if or where Mr Ryan is now coaching...........I am sure he will show up as one of the 7 professional women coaches next year though - cause well that's how it works in our soccer industry - whatever......

Don't even get me started on our new 6 or 7 team professional women's league. At least it will not be called WUSA.......

US U-23

Beat Panama 1-0 yesterday to go 1-0-1 in their group. Now they need to win or tie Honduras to advance. Their performance yesterday was quite uninspiring and they won because they got a PK. Good job on the strike Freddy Adu! Personally I thought there was just a little too much flopping going on by our boys and not enough penetration into the box. But what do I know.......except if you can't put Cuba and Panama away - how they hell do you expect to compete with EUROPE when you get to the big dance!

And in case you haven't heard - 7 members of the Cuban U-23 team defected a few days ago. Since the teams are only allowed 18 players, and one was serving a suspension from the US game - that knocked the team down to playing with 10 men for the match.....they gave t a good effort but ultimately lost 2-0 to Honduras.

As to me...I played my first outdoor match in about 4 months. And I was awful. It was like I was back in 1st grade or something. Guess it was lucky for me I was not playing like that on a national team. LOL

The Funniest Thing

So the reality is - I think it is stupid the Heerenveen team were doing this in the middle of their season - they could have gotten seriously hurt. But my boy is in this video and he realy is the highlight of it so have a good laugh at his expense. He is at the very end - so watch it all - it's only a minute and a half long.

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Our Boys Didn't Get it Done

The US U-23 boys closed out their first game of Olympic qualifying with a tie to Cuba 1-1. Freddy Adu scored in the first half initially giving us the lead before the Cubans unfortunately - and luckily equalized in the second half.

Boys - you should have put this one away in the first 20 minutes when you had the Cubans up against the fence. Sadly my boy Bradley was not in the line up since Heerenveen would not release him. But I have a feeling we will see him in the summer.



And for those wondering - I am better now. Day 8 of antibiotics and still recovering - but I see the end of the tunnel - thank goodness!

Walking Wounded

Sunday afternoon I developed a flegmy cough out of nowhere. Weird I thought - must be that weird respiratory thing my coworker had. Monday came and the cough was about the same, just a little more frequent - but I felt fine. Tuesday came and the world started to not be such a great place by nightfall. Monday morning and I thought I was on the road to dying. So much that work was not an option and I actually found the local Urgent Care(which really happened to be a walk in clinic in a semi seedy part of town but whatever). Why didn't I just go to my primary care provider you say? LMFAO Uh that would be because I don't have one. As in why do I need one except in instances like this? I'm one of those people that goes to specialists for my problems, and since I don't have kids and Tony gets sick less often than me - it just never really makes sense to establish a relationship with one. Anywho, I digress.

I initially thought I might have gotten some form of Whooping cough since we just moved offices and the office I inherited was inhabited by a guy that just took his kids into the hospital for Whooping cough, but it appears that it is a little worse. Walking pneumonia is what the doctor thinks. So body aches, fever, congestion, cough, coughing up gross stuff, fatigue and a few others I won't mention have landed me in the current place I am - sick as a dog! I unfortunately have been here 12 years ago - only then it was worse. I really did think i was going to die and didn't have any antibiotics to help me. Luckily the doctor gave me some antibiotics so I will be on my way in a few days but it's one of those things where sometimes you feel comfortable enough and then sometimes you just can't find anything that makes you feel good - walking around for a minute fatigues you. Laying down makes your lungs junk up and a cough sequence occurs, sitting up means paying attention and then comes the slightly fatigued but awake feeling. Let's not forget the cough cough cough. Ironically there has been a little silver lining over the past two days.....

My furnace has been busted.

How is that positive you say? Well since it has been colder than green bay in my house.....ok so that was an exaggeration, it's been about 65 degrees - although today is was down to 60-62. So my fever hasn't really been playing too much of a factor cause I haven't been hot! LOL Although the furnace guy just came out and fixed the problem, so here we go. I'm not so sure I am excited by this new development. I may have been creating a false sense of feel good feelings because of it. I will let you know how I fare over the next few days

I didn't really have a point to this post - I was just bored.