High-fiving, hug-giving, dog-piling, and chest-bumping good time!!!

PQ Cup

The Vipers entered the end of season tournament with an undefeated record, but stepped on the field a little flat through the first morning of tournament play.  They dug a pretty deep hole with a 2-3 loss (Orange Crushers) and 2-2 tie (Red Rockets) in the first 2 games.  

In the first game, the goalie from the Crushers, Beaux, had an MVP performance when he stuffed a rapid succession of a dozen shots from the Vipers in the last 5 minutes of the 2nd half and then punted over the entire Viper team to setup the winning goal and close the game.  Beaux completely controlled the outcome of that game.  

It's tough to watch your son and his team lose, but it's awesome to watch a young kid step up, demonstrate excellence, and dominate on the pitch.  I tip my hat to Beaux for such an inspiring performance.

Vipers Game #8: Good Guys Win 5-1!!!

Game Summary

The Vipers were tested for the 2nd time (see Game #5) when they faced the Great White Sharks in the 8th game of the season.  The game was tight in the 1st half as the Vipers spent a lot more time on defense than they are used to.  It was back and forth with a lot of action, but no goals for 14 minutes.  Drew changed the game when he was deep in Bad Guy territory and found an opportunity to pass the ball up and across the field to Zach despite a field crowded with Bad Guys. Zach took the pass, made 2 quick moves and then punched the ball in to put the Vipers on the board 1-0, with the first goal of the game!

The rest of the 1st half was tight, with lots of back and forth, up and down the pitch, but no goals. 

Sliding Window Partition Strategy with Integrated Logging

This post outlines, details, and provides the scripts for a  "Sliding Window Partition" scheme in SQL Server.  I explored this solution because of an issue we had at work with read/write contention on high-volume (250M records/day) log tables.  This post focuses on the mechanics and best practices of the "Sliding Window".  My work is based on Brent Ozar's, which is GREAT, but I stratified his scripts into smaller pieces and augmented the functionality to include logging to support better troubleshooting.  This solution also includes some widgets that we use as a standard in our ETL to log and greatly enhance monitoring/reporting for the ETL process.  The solution also has a spin-off logging element that is specific to the Partitioning element.

Vipers Game #6: Good Guys Win 10-1!!!

Game Summary

The Vipers were undefeated entering the 6th game of the season and faced the orange Crushers.  Brody missed last week, but he got back into it like white on rice.  Brody opened the game with a goal in the 4th minute and followed it with 3 more in the first half.

The Crushers had two players that created a lot of action, #6 (Zach) and #9 (Beaux).  Those guys peppered us hard on offense and proved to be very tough when in the goal too.  The Crushers were as active as the Red Rockets, our closest game yet (4-2), on offense (with 6 shots), but our defense and goal keepers proved too strong for Crushers to really overcome our line of defense.

The Vipers led 4-0 going into halftime.

Vipers Game #5: Good Guys Win 4-2!!!

Game Summary

The bad guys jumped on us early and got a quick 2-0 lead in the first 10 min of play. They were fast, coordinated, big, and they out hustled us during the opening part of the first half. We could tell that this was going to be our toughest test so far this year. We picked up our defense and goalie play and started to strike on offense. The first goal was scored by Zach on a beautiful cross from Gavin. Ethan followed that up with a break away goal on another good pass, this time from Connor.

Trey, Drew, and Connor were a force on defense not letting the bad guys get any other goals in the second half. The play of the game came from Gavin who took a rebound and kicked the ball so hard that it almost ripped through the back of the net for his first goal of the year. The post goal victory dance that followed was absolutely classic! (Hope someone got that on film) Ethan followed that up with another goal and shut down the bad guys with his great goalie play during their frantic push to catch up.

Vipers Game #4: Good Guys Win 10-0!!!

Game Summary

The Vipers went head to head with the Golden Ninjas, a strong team with a lot of speed, in Game #4. The Ninjas played the game much closer than the score indicates, but in the end the Vipers prevailed 10-0.  The victory maintains the Vipers perfect record.

The Vipers are improving with each game, but they demonstrated a whole new level of passing and field awareness in the battle against the Ninjas.  Half of the goals were setup from assists, that's a season-high for the Vipers and very strong for a U7 league.

Trey scored his first goal of the season.  He also had an assist.  Gavin had a stand-out game and produced his first 3 shots on goal for the season.  Drew, Zach, Ethan, Conner, and Brody also contributed to the season-high 10 goals.

Put this in the books as another "W" and another great performance for the Vipers.

Vipers Game #3: Good Guys Win 7-1!!!

Game Summary

The Vipers carried in a strong 2-0 record into the third game, with 15 goals on the season.  The Silver Strikers were NOT intimidated and came in ready to play.  The Silver Strikers didn't waste any time.  In just the 3rd minute of the game, the Strikers broke through the Viper defense and put the first points on the board!  

The Vipers had to play from behind for the first time in the season...and they handled the pressure like champs.  Brody tied the game at 1-1 in the 8th minute.  Ethan and Brody teamed up for two more goals and the Vipers entered half time leading 3-1.

Brody and Ethan continued to shine in the 2nd half, combining for 3 more goals through the 45th minute.  In the 49th minute, Drew had the sweetest goal of the day, to finish the game.  The goal was set up by an absolutely beautiful cross from Conner.  Drew handled the pass quickly and drove the ball deep into the back of the net and brought the entire crowd to their feet!  If I remember correctly, Drew even scored that goal with his left foot!!!  That's U10 stuff!!!  Rumors are abound that Drew might be ambidextrous.  

Vipers Game #2: Good Guys Win 8-1!!

Game #2 Summary

The Vipers entered Game #2 of the 2014 season after a strong 7-0 win in the season opener.  Game #2 was very similar to Game #1 with the Vipers demonstrating a relentless barrage of offense on the unsuspecting opponents. 

Zach opened the attack and scored the first goal for the Vipers in the 6th minute of the game.  Ethan and Brody followed with goals in the 8th and 12th minutes, respectively.  Ethan and Zach each put a a ball past the goalie in the closing minutes of the 1st half.  The Vipers entered halftime with a 5-0 lead over the Bad Guys.

Conner and Brody dominated the scoring in the 2nd half.  We also saw strong performances from Trey with 4 shots.  Three of those shots would have been goals if it wasn't for the heroic efforts of the goalie on the opposing team.  Gavin showed the sweetest ball-handling move of the day using a backwards kick to pass to his teammate and open up the scrum for a drive up the pitch.  Drew had another strong performance with 2 shots and a handful of key passes that help initiate the Vipers moving the ball up the field.  Once again, strong contribution for each and every one of the Viper players.  

Long time coming

Life is an ever-evolving thing...so is my approach to capturing life's moments and sharing those moments with people that are interested in what's going on with my family or professional interests.

This has to be my 4th attempt at blogging (if not my 10th)...not sure if it will take off, but it seems like a good approach for streamlining the processing of l-i-v-i-n' life and have a great times and sharing that with people who care now that I've moved to an Android device and am working to consolidate all of our family photos.

Peace Out,
Marc