I was Fingerprinted by the Police

Me.  Little old me.  Who has never had so much as a parking ticket.  (Thanks to the wonderful people of Charlottetown, PEI - a post for another day).  It was nerve-wracking, being escorted into the back of the police station by an OPP officer to be fingerprinted like a criminal.  Ten years ago I would have said screw you, I'm standing up for my Charter rights and there is no way on earth I'll agree to be printed.  Who knows what nefarious planting of evidence might happen.  What a drag to have fingerprints on file if I decide to become a serial killer down the road (I ♥ Dexter).  Most importantly what happens when littering becomes a death penalty offence and the fingerprints they found on that carelessly discarded wrapper are now on file? 

Even five years ago I would have refused - I guess I'm getting old and beaten down by the man.  I certainly never expected Leaf to have more reservations about me getting fingerprinted than I did.  We talked about it a fair bit, both being somewhat libertarian at heart (with framed Charter of Rights and Freedoms at our house).  I was a little annoyed to discover that a few months ago, I wouldn't have needed to be fingerprinted at all, but the RCMP has made changes to the way they do Criminal Record checks for Vulnerable Sector Screening.  I certainly didn't need fingerprints the last time I did a Check to be a supply teacher.  Apparently, some naughty person either has a similar name or the same birthdate as I do, so my identity needed to be confirmed.

Are we a less trusting society?  Is there reason to be less trustful, or are we so often manipulated by manufactured fear as a method of control that we now believe there are perverts and murderers among the parents of every kindergarten class?  I'm pretty sure my mum didn't need a criminal record check when she used to volunteer in my classes.  Don't get me wrong, I know there are bad people out there, but is fingerprinting the answer?  It seems to me that in almost every case of child molestation you hear of, someone was suspicious or raised concerns but nothing was done.

Whatever.  I want to be able to volunteer in Mars' class, I offered to help out with the school chess club, and as a board member of our local soccer club we're talking about requiring them for soccer eventually as well.  So I submitted to the Police State with some reservations.  There was quite a delay in getting the results, but "A Search of the Pardoned Sex Offender Data Base has been checked with negative results".  Yay, I'm not a pardoned perv, but it makes me wonder why a perv would be able to get a pardon in the first place.

Soccer Coaching Books

Bob Wilson: Soccer
Bob Wilson
ISBN 0-7207-0793-5
1975
61 pages
Chapter on Goalkeeping, defence, midfield, strikers/wingers skills with teaching points.  Briefly talks about set plays.  Full of vintage photos.  Somewhat useful for a beginning player or coach.

Michael Owen's Soccer Skills: How to become the complete player
Michael Owen with Dave Harrison
ISBN 0-00-218935-6
1999
128 pages
Two pages on stretching.  Covers basic skills, restarts, and defending with simple drills and teaching points for each.  Lots of information on Michael Owen.  Somewhat useful for a beginning player or someone who has a crush on Michael Owen.

Soccer for Dummies
Michael Lewis
ISBN 0-7645-5229-5
2000
375 pages
Typical for Dummies book.  The 5 Ws of soccer, with plenty of factoids thrown in.  As with all dummies books, only rudimentary, more for entertainment than real knowledge.  Useful for bathroom reading.


Soccer with Gary Bailey - An easy manual for coaches and players
Hans Kirsten Publishers
ISBN 0958305587
1989
101 pages
A simple book with basic tips on individual skills with a couple of drills for each skill.  A chapter on goalkeeping.  Extremely brief chapters on restarts and formations.  A summation of out of date Laws of the Game.  Most useful for individual beginning player.

Soccer Fundamentals - Basic skills, drills, and strategy for beginning players
John Learmouth
ISBN 0312115326
1979
133 pages
Introduces the practice grid.  Chapters on Passing and Dribbling, Kicking, Ball Control, Heading, Tackling, and Goalkeeping.  Each chapter has basic tips on technique plus a few practice exercises and drills.  Most useful for individual beginning player.


Youth League Soccer Coaching and Playing
The Athletic Institute
ISBN 0876700261
1988
168 pages
Covers Coaching.  Role and influence of the coach.  Chapter on injuries and first aid.  A brief but good chapter on theory of practice/practice planning.  Tips and techniques for basic soccer skills with essential teaching points for each skill.  Chapter on drills with good diagrams (pics of little soccer guys rather than X and O).  Chapter on basic tactics, chapter on basic formations.  A summation of out of date Laws of the Game.  Most useful for a novice coach.

Soccer Playbook
Robert Matero
ISBN 158865088X
2002
32 pages
A booklet.  Doesn't get more basic than this.  Names various soccer skills, formations, and restarts, but does very little (pretty much nothing) in the way of instruction, tips, or drills.

Soccer for Juniors: A Guide for Players, Parents, and Coaches
Robert Pollock
ISBN 0-684-18369-2
1980
190 pages
Formations is the first thing covered in "Basic Skills".  Then covers the actual basic skills but not well.
Has a chapter on tactics - creating space, through ball, marking, zonal defence.  A summation of out of date Laws of the Game.  A chapter on the Referee.  Not very useful.

The Ultimate Soccer Almanac
Dan Woog
ISBN 0-7373-9981-3
1998
96 pages
A brief history and background of soccer, major teams, and famous players.  The basic skills with 1 or two drills for each, a handful of practice games, and a summation of out of date Laws of the Game.  Not very useful.

One-on-One For Self Training
Walter Chyzowych and Ole Anderson
ISBN 0-9604588
1980
96 pages
"The skills book of the United States Soccer Federation".  20 solo moves for one-on-one.  A bio of a retro pro player with each.  Cartoony pictures, confusing sequences of arrows and numbers.  Marginally useful for individual player.  If you're looking for 1 on 1 moves, the Coerver videos are better. 

Getting Started in Soccer
Gordon Strachan
ISBN 0-8069-0834-3
1994
80 pages
Covers a broad range of basic and intermediate skills with some teaching points for each.  Most useful for individual beginning player.

Soccer Skills for Young Players
Ted Buxton
ISBN 1-55209-329-8
2000
128 pages
Short chapter on warmups and cooldowns, off season training, diet.  Covers basic skills with teaching points and drills for each.  Most useful for individual intermediate player.

The Everything Kids Soccer Book
Deborah W. Crisfield
ISBN 1-58062-642-4
2002
134 pages
Very basic, in the style of soccer for dummies with lots of little cartoony pictures and fluffed up with "Fun facts", "words to know", mazes, other crap.  Avoid.

The Three Insults of Online Gaming

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It seems there are only three.  More than 95% of online gaming insults fall into one of the following (in order of frequency):

1. Fag (variants - gay, "your gay", "your a fag" (never "you're"), "thats gay", homo, suck my d***)
Surprisingly, this covers at least two thirds of the insults in the online gaming world.  I find it funny, considering this groundbreaking study about homophobia the abstract of which says:  "Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies."  My standard reply to any kind of homophobic insult is "Keep your homoerotic fantasies to yourself please."

2. Noob (variants - newb, scrub)
About a quarter of the time "noob" is the insult of choice.  Usually "noob" comes out after they lose to a very rudimentary tactic, cheese, or a rush.  Most of the time it is irony, because in general, cheap cheesy tactics only work vs noobs.  Also, many online games you can check an opponents profile, very often the first people to cry noob are, well, noob.


3. Kid (variants - "son")
This one is pretty infrequent, maybe 5% of the time.  I wonder if "son" is a derogatory comment from popular culture that I don't get as an insult.  I am above the average age for gamers, so I find it a little amusing.  A player's profile generally doesn't indicate how old they are in real life, but pretty sure "kid" and "son" insults come mostly from pimply teenagers.

It makes me sad a little to hear such unimaginative people.  What I wouldn't give for one "Your mother was a hampster and your father smelled of elderberries!"  Just a barrage of "fag", "noob", and "kid".  I would even be mollified by the trifecta, but despite a couple "fag noob" and "noob kid" I've never actually seen "fag noob kid".


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Parental Panic #3 of Infinity

If you have kids you know the heart dropping moment you realize they are about to get hurt.  Not the hurt that causes tears and can be cured with a hug and a feel-better bandaid wasted on unbroken skin, but the "oh $#!%" kind that taps into a parent's primal fear.

The boys were playing on the back deck by themselves after Leaf had come in to feed a screaming Ares.  I was watching them through the picture window while they played on the slide and threw snow.  Mars was playing with a rope he had tied to a deck post at the top of the slide.

You see where this is going?  The paranoid parent in me wanted to go out and say stop.  They love playing with rope, sting, wire, extension cords.  Tying up dad's feet, playing fishing, tied up tag...  It makes me a little nervous and we've had the "never around necks" talk what seems like dozens of times.  I wanted to go out and say "No!", but I feel like I've been saying no an awful lot lately.

I think he is playing Indiana Jones or something, using the rope to climb up the slide.  I'm glad I had noticed and been concerned about the rope because otherwise I wouldn't have even heard his little whimpering cry after he disappeared down the slide.  I ran out into the snow in my socks and scoop him up - he had gone down the slide with the rope around his neck and got hung up halfway down.  Luckily the rope also went under one armpit, but hurt him enough to scare the crap out of everyone.

A nasty mark on his neck where the rope burned, me freaked out more than him because I understood how horrible it could have been.   Odin got upset by the flurry of activity and hid under the deck, causing another panic, because they are not supposed to go out of sight of the window, so Leaf rushed out to find him.

Mars ended up being most upset because he had wanted to stay outside. Settled him down with promise of hot chocolate from the new machine.  Odin calmed enough to come in as well, but my adrenaline kept going like mad.  Primal fear sucks.  Rope was removed.  Yet another rope/neck/dangerous talk, I can only hope some first hand knowledge makes it sink in.


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Cuisinart Keurig Review

Pros:
Fast - 2 minutes from off to heat the water from cold, around 40 seconds to make a cup.  Only 15 or 20 seconds to heat up again to make a second cup.  Then I turn it off so it isn't constantly heating.
Reservoir - it has a big honking tank on the side for water.  Fill and forget for a few days.
Hot - this was for Leaf.  The coffee comes out nice and hot like it is supposed to (and unlike our old machine).
Reusable Filter - cuts down the cost per cup significantly.

Cons:
Messy - the reusable filter is messy to use.  One thing about paper filters is that you scoop them out and toss them in the compost bin.  The grinds stick to the inside of the mesh filter, it needs to be scooped out then rinsed and no matter how carefully you do that there ends up being a scattering of coffee grinds.  Oh, and filter holder is shaped like a top - it won't stand by itself - so one-handed prep is needed.
Price - both per cup and for the machine.  It is the most expensive machine we looked at.  Got it on sale at Canadian Tire on a scratch and win promotion day for an extra 10% off in CT money, so not terrible.  I rationalize it as paying for itself by cutting out 100 XL Tim Horton double doubles.  I've mostly been using the filter, but the k-cups are more expensive than Tassimo discs.
Serving Size - my coffee/tea mugs are 500ml.  That is 16 oz, and the Keurig only goes up to 12.  I end up filling the reusable filter to the top and brewing two 8oz cycles through the same filter.  This doesn't work with purchased cups, which seem to be designed for 8oz.  The 12oz setting ends up with watery coffee when made from a k-cup.
Clutter - a bunch of K-cups take up a lot of volume and create clutter.  There are stands but they seem to take up an awful lot of space for how many cups they hold.  I imagine someone will produce something better eventually.


Review

Leaf wanted a single cup coffee maker.  She's been unhappy with ours for some time because it wasn't brewing hot enough.  I was confused by the variety.  K-cups, T-discs, DG-pods...  I spent a while on the google-fu trying to figure out which to get.

A caveat:  I am not a coffee snob.  I never drank coffee, ever, before I met Leaf.  I'm more of a tea person at home and I drink creamy sweet Tim Horton's double doubles when we are out and about.  We're budget minded people, so the thought of buying not only an expensive new machine but expensive single serve coffee seemed out of whack.

Justified that by the fact that at home, the bulk of a pot of coffee was being dumped at the end of the day.  Plus, despite our ongoing battle with Tim Hortons, we were still spending a crapload of money there.  Whatever the cost of a single serve coffee cup/disc/pod, it was going to be less than my $1.80 Tims fix.

The brand decision was difficult because I didn't want to end up with the Betamax of coffee makers.  Locally available is important, because I don't want to get stuff shipped or have to drive 100km each way to get coffee.  That narrowed it down to Keurig and Tassimo.

At first, I was leaning towards Tassimo because of the cheaper cost-per-cup.  I can get Tassimo discs locally for between 35¢ and 60¢, but Keurig cups are 70¢ to 80¢.  However, we ended up going with the Cuisinart Keurig brewer for several reasons.

The first is the three year warranty.  Sorry to say that pretty much anything you buy nowadays is cheap crap from China.  Not only will it break, but it is designed to break.  Every machine I researched had complaints about problems or breakage.  Most have a 1 year warranty and will be garbage at 13 months, the Cuisinart has a three year warranty and won't need to be garbaged until 37 months.

Next was the included reusable filter.  Not an option with Tassimo, we can still use our regular coffee in the Keurig for significant savings while still getting a quick single cup with no waste.  Hard to figure out the cost per cup because coffee is bought in grams but scooped in mls, and I already have a hard  time with Coffee Math.  Depending on variables (brand/quality of coffee/size of cup), about 25¢ per cup.

Variety of coffee was the last bit.  More manufacturers and coffee brands seem to make Keurig cups than Tassimo.  One advantage of Tassimo is the fancy coffees you can make - espressos, cappuccinos and lattes.  As I said early however, I am not a coffee snob, so those have no big appeal for me.  I had also read that Starbucks and Tassimo had parted ways and was concerned that Tassimo was the Betamax.