Club mix in, another book and a rant

Club mix in today. That usually means doubles and people with widely varying levels of ability but usually not so good, including me. I guess the better club players wouldn't break sweat in the mix-in or get frustrated with all the slow no-pace no-spin balls. Today, I would say I was probably the strongest player there, and didn't break sweat until the end when I played singles against another guy who was at a similar level to me. I just edged it :-).

That leads me to ponder: why is it so difficult to play these weaker players who don't hit the ball hard or predictably? There's no question of losing, but after playing them I need to get to a practise wall to re-groove my strokes and timing.

I discovered another possibly useful book that I am considering buying in my quest to becoming a better player, or at least get to the next standard in the club. Insider Tennis Strategies an ebook (means a pdf I guess). Is this a rip-off or a real offer? If I do get it to add to my collection, I will have to start thinking of employing a librarian, and with all the potential reading I'm gonna have to miss some tennis practise!

DRM rant
OK it's nothing to do with tennis. Bought some CD's from CD Wow and was dismayed to find they had copy control. One is from EMI and one is from BMG. Tried to copy some of the tracks onto my mp3 player and found I couldn't. The CD's don't play on my PC using either WMP or WinAMP. I did not yet try Linux (Fedora) which I also have because of logistical problems with swapping disks around, but I will give it a go soon. Anyway, Googled the problem and ended up trying 4 different audio grab/rip programs. Most can 'see' the audio (pun) but can't read it. My initial conclusion is that the difficulty is actually my CD/RW drive. However, here's the rub, had I known the CD's were copy protected I would not have bought them! So much for protecting sales of CD's. My plan is, try Linux to rip to mp3, and try a colleagues CD/DVD copier to see if I can copy it, just for the sake of it. The latter may not get me an unprotected CD but if it works would show the stupidity in copy protecting the CD's in the first place.

Related but not the same, amongst the CD's I bought was Eminem's Encore. Copies fine onto my mp3 player. However the Toy Soldiers track sounds strange.I'm pretty sure it has some crackles and pops as if there were glitches on the CD. Sounds as if it was done on vinyl. Really puzzled by this as an mp3 download of Toy Soldiers I already had sounds fine.