Sucks.

So I lost the first round of the Coquitlam Open 3.5 yesterday 7-5 6-2, mostly due to some extremely dodgy calls on the part of my opponent. First up, I'm serving 30-40 down at 1-1, second serve, a ball from the next court rolls onto our court, he stops play to send it back, then doesn't call a let (this is a standard rule of courtesy in tournament play). I'd already done the same for him in a previous game. I stood there and looked at him for ten seconds, he didn't say a word. I promptly double fault. OK, so he just forgot, it happens. Fine. Then at 5-5, 40-30, I hit a point-winning first serve: good deep serve into his body, he parries it with a backhand that hits the net. I take a step towards the bench, and he calls a let. Uh...no. It wasn't a let, first of all. SECOND of all, you do *not* call a let AFTER you've hit your return and watched it hit the net. On the changeover he makes up some lame excuse about the floodlights not illuminating the net on our court (what the hell? They're exactly the same as the lights on every other court). Finally, in the next game (so he's serving at 6-5), 30-40, I hit a clean forehand passing shot that lands right on the baseline and he calls it long. I was standing at the net (I hit the shot after he hit a drop shot), so I saw it land very clearly; it's not possible to call the far baseline if you're standing on your own baseline, but from the net, you can see it easily. He goes on to win the game and the set. Three blatantly bad calls on game or break point: that's more than a coincidence. I don't know why people play like that, I really don't. I've never made even a *close* call in a tournament game, I follow the proper rule of always giving your opponent the benefit of the doubt. Does it make people feel like they've accomplished something to win like that? :\ I've got my first match in 3.0 today, I'm bloody well going to win that one at least. So, in other news - sorry I've not been posting lately - work has mostly been tied up with finishing off Inside #2. Also Helio is back and fixing Kiosk's KDE bugs, yay. I also received a box of 50 nice printed copies of Mandriva One to give away to reviewers, new users etc: cool stuff. Unfortunately they're pressed from the early version of the ISO (the one distributed to Club members), not the final updated version, but still cool. Yesterday I got my shipments from Amazon and YesAsia - the final series of Red Dwarf (which I remember mostly sucked, but you have to have the whole thing...), and a couple of albums, Salyu's Landmark and Mika Nakashima's Glamorous Sky. The Salyu album is gorgeous, just like the recordings she did as Lily Chou-Chou for the movie All About Lily Chou-Chou: she has such an intoxicating voice. The packaging is cute, too - the lyrics are included, not as one booklet, but as a set of individual picture cards. The Mets are still winning. What the hell is up with that? Of course, there's bad news too: Victor Zambrano did his usual trick; just as almost everyone was finally agreeing that once and for all, yes, definitively, he DOES suck, he pulled his one good start of the spring out of his top hat and thus secured his presence on the starting roster for another few months while the argument starts up again. Sigh. I'm amazed he manages to keep fooling people like this: it's been going on long enough that people should have worked out by now that a stinky pitcher who manages to reliably pull off one good game every two months is _still a stinky pitcher_, just a frustrating one. Dump him already.