Ferrari have escaped further punishment at the World Motor Sport Council hearing in Paris on this Wednesday afternoon. Ferrari were already found guilty by the stewards at the German Grand Prix of issuing team orders allowing Fernando Alonso to win the German GP. On lap 49 of the race; Felipe Massa received a radio message from his engineer saying "Fernando is faster than you. Can you confirm you understand?", moments later Massa slowed down to allow Alonso to pass to take the lead of the race. Then a further message came from Massa's engineer saying "Good lad. Just stick with it now. Sorry." If that is not an open and shut case I don't know what is? Clearly Massa's engineer Rob Smedley was not happy with the decision given his second message to Massa. Ferrari's punishment for blatantly flouting the rules is a punitive fine of $100,000 which was dished out by the stewards on race day, $100,000 is a nothing amount of money for a team like Ferrari. Frankly the FIA have shown what a spineless organisation they are by failing to punish Ferrari for breaking the rules; what makes it worse is the cynical nature in which Ferrari broke the rules, frankly the Maranello based team are taking the piss out of the FIA! If Alonso wins the world title this year (unlikely I know) by two or less points, this years championship will be seen as a complete sham! I really hope that Ferrari get well and truly trampled at this weekends Italian GP by McLaren, Red Bull and Renault.. and Williams.. and Force India.. and Sauber, Lotus, Virgin and HRT! The FIA might as well just ditch the ban on team orders as they are clearly not going to enforce the rule; another shambolic day at the FIA HQ! Guess I shouldn't have expected better!

This next story concerns the height of idiocy! A small American church have announced they plan to burn a pile of Koran's on the anniversary of 9/11. This being America, despite the worldwide condemnation of the planned act, nothing will be done to stop this happening despite the fact it blatantly breaks US law, inciting racial violence. This act will simply inflame the situation, more and more Muslims will be inspired to become extremists against America, starting a holy war within the United States. And America wonders why they have such a bad image on the World stage! Not all Muslims are extremists, terrorists or suicide bombers, it's unfair to tar all Muslims with the same brush as those who committed the atrocious crimes of bombing the World Trade Center.

England sit top of Group G in the European Championship qualification tables after beating the Swiss 3 - 1 in Basle, Switzerland. Wayne Rooney opened the scoring 10 minutes into the game with a perfectly timed run into the box to fire England into the lead from 10 yards out. England looked threatening during the whole of the first half but were somehow denied by by the resolute Swiss defence. England continued their dominance in the first 15 minutes of the second half; then suddenly the Swiss were on the ascendency after a rare Joe Hart fumble. England soaked up the pressure from the Swiss even if the Englishmen looked a little uncomfortable with another handling mistake from keeper Hart. Stephan Lichtsteiner was sent off for a second bookable offence in the 65th minute; which was of his own making, his first yellow card was for descent; arguing with the referee. Suddenly England had the overlap although the Swiss were still pushing forward which allowed for an English counter-attack. Adam Johnson got his second goal in consecutive games picking up Gerrard's pass and running around the lone defender to defeat the Swiss keeper for a second time on the night. A moment later England were shocked by a wonder strike from 20 yards out from Xherdan Shaqiri bringing the home side back to a one goal deficit. Darren Bent sealed the game for England in the 88th minute with his maiden England goal. England could have won by a bigger margin but the English were wasteful, especially Jermain Defoe who was misfiring in front of goal tonight. A better performance from England against better opposition given that the Swiss did recently beat the World Champions Spain. One thing that did bug me tonight was Jamie Redknapp insisting that England should be looking for a draw; this was the same mentality of the FA before the World Cup; why aim for anything less than winning the game or tournament; why compete if you don't think you can win the game or tournament?

Probably should have added this little snippet of news in my last 'blog entry but non-the-less here it is now. Last Thursday I went over to my mother-in-laws to remove loads of junk that was installed by her late husband to make it run better with less user interaction. First thing I did was removed the Webroot SpySweeper application which was a huge resource hog and generally hindered operation of the computer, more than protected it. I replaced it with AVG Free Edition which is much less intrusive. I also removed a lot of software that my mother-in-law never uses including a trial version of M$ Office that had long expired. Upto this point everything is working just fine and a lot faster; but I elected to update the computer with the latest updates for Windows XP and that was my mistake. Suddenly the computer was taking much longer to boot and taking forever to open "My Computer" and "Internet Explorer". I eventually traced the problem back to .net Framework 4, uninstalled the M$ piece of shit software and suddenly it worked perfectly again. So a word of warning to all Windows XP SP3 users; don't install the .net Framework 4 updates as it will make your system run slower than a tortoise on acid!

Earlier today I watched England's first Euro 2012 qualifying game and it was a much better performance beating the Bulgarians 4 - 0 at Wembley. I am going to start with Joe Hart between the sticks who made himself big making some key saves including making a great reaction stop to save Glen Johnson the embarrassment of scoring an own goal. Jermain Defoe was the hero of the day scoring a hat-trick for the men in white giving England the perfect start in the third minute. Then things went a little flat and we didn't see another goal until the 61st minute; again Defoe getting the final touch for his second goal on a counter attack after Bulgaria was denied by a fine save by Hart. England were growing in confidence passing the ball around, putting pressure on the visitors and that pressure paid off in the 83rd minute with Adam Johnson, who had just replaced Theo Walcott got on the score sheet to make it 3 - 0. Defoe claimed his hat-trick  to make it 4 - 0 in 86th minute with a pin point shot from just inside the 18 yard box. It's a better performance than what we saw at the World Cup but I can't help but feel a better team would have punished England as they sat back and let the opposition come onto them after the first goal until half time. But this level of performance should see them through the group; the only team I would worry about is Switzerland who gave World Cup winners Spain a shock defeat in the World Cup.

Over the past week, my son Conner has been saying that he doesn't have time to eat his lunch at school; Erin and I thought that he was just using that as an excuse to not eat. But we had it confirmed that Conner's class doesn't always get their full 20 minutes allocation. What happens is that the older kids get to eat first and often their lunch overruns for whatever reason and then younger kids get less time to eat. Which I believe is completely unacceptable, if each group has a 20 minute allocation; then if they can't finish in time; they should be moved on so the next group can come in and eat. Sometimes Conner has as little as 10 minutes to eat his food because the previous groups have overrun. We have been advised by Conner's teacher to contact the USD259 school district to complain. It may not seem like a big issue but it's vital that Conner eats during school time as he is on medication which may make him sick if he does not eat enough!

Kevin Pietersen has been dropped from the England limited overs team after his piss poor performance in the last couple of series. The South African born batsman has only made 232 runs in nine competitive test innings which is poor for a player of his calibre. I would suggest that not playing much first class county cricket over the last couple of years has been the direct cause of Pietersen's slump in form. Pietersen has signed to play out the remainder of the season for Surrey after the selectors demanded that he find himself a county to play for after his departure from Hampshire, who he only played a handful of games this season! I also believe that players like Alistair Cook and Paul Collingwood need to be dropped and have to earn their place back as both players have been poor. These top order batsmen should not be getting themselves out for less than 20 runs on a consistent basis. England need top order batsmen that can knock up 50 - 100 runs each and every match to be able to compete with the likes of Australia down under.

Liverpool have finally completed the sale of Javier Mascherano. The Argentinian has moved to Barcelona for £17.25m so Liverpool recouped most of the £18m they spent getting him to Anfield, which is somewhat short of the £25m valuation. Hopefully that money can be used to get a player of a calibre of Xabi Alonso who departed Anfield at the end of the 2008/09 season. Alonso has been sorely missed in the middle of the field for Liverpool; he was a true play-maker which Liverpool are seemingly lacking even with Steven Gerrard who is more of an attacking midfielder. Liverpool have already made a number if signings, Raul Meireles has been signed for £11.5m from Porto; Christian Poulsen from Juventus for £4.5m and Paul Konchesky from Fulham for an undisclosed fee, I guess we'll find out soon enough if these new signings are good ones. One thing is for sure; Liverpool need to step up their game is they want to challenge for the Premiership title this season. As things stand, Liverpool need Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea to slip up to make any gains already being five points behind the league leader after just three games.

Spa Francorchamps delivers the goods in spades yet again, and Bernie Ecclestone wants to move away from traditional circuits in favour of Hermann Tilke designed snore-circuits. After today it's hard to imagine anyone but Mark Webber or Lewis Hamilton winning the World Drivers title unless Webber and Hamilton both finish a race out of the points. Jenson Button was taken out of the race by Sebastian Vettel getting his braking completely wrong ending up T-boning Button's McLaren when the Briton was running in second place. Fernando Alonso was hit by Rubens Barrichello misjudging the conditions and his braking into turn one. Alonso recovered but later got caught out by the conditions himself putting his Ferrari in the barrier. Sebastian Vettel had to serve a drive-through penalty for causing an avoidable accident and a series of tyre choice errors left the German finishing well out of the points. Mark Webber will be relieved to finish on the second step of the podium after his disastrous start; completely bogging down off the line falling back to seventh. Lewis Hamilton lead from the first corner to finish line, keeping mostly out of trouble to claim 25 points to retake the championship lead from Mark Webber. I think that it maybe time for McLaren and Red Bull to put their eggs in one basket now. I hate to say it (being a Jenson Button fan) but with the championship so tight at the top, McLaren and Red Bull may need to play the team game to win either championship! Renault's Robert Kubica finished in third place which could have easily have been second if the Pole didn't overshoot his pit box allowing Mark Webber to pass in the pit lane. Felipe Massa had a pretty anonymous race to finish in fourth place while Adrian Sutil brought his Force India home in fifth place overtaking both Mercedes in the closing stages after pitting for tyres. Despite being overtaken by Sutil, the Mercedes boys claimed their best finish for quite a few races in sixth and seventh. Kamui Kobayashi had another solid finish in 8th place, up 10 place from his starting position of 18th. Vitally Petrov and Tonio Luizzi round out the top 10 finishing positions. Again the unpredictability of Spa Francorchamps delivered another great race, now onto Monza which should be another good race, especially for McLaren and Force India who seem to have the best F Duct system to improve straight line speed!

In cricket; England won the final test to claim the series win but the series has been tarnished by yet another corruption scandal. England claimed the final test in emphatic style after a first innings where the top batsmen hopelessly failed with the bat. The margin of the victory was an innings and 225 runs. Pakistan failed to avoid the follow on being bowled out in their first innings for only 74 runs and were bowled out again in the second innings for 147, 225 runs short of England's first innings total. Although a convincing victory, this series will forever be be tarnished by the spot betting allegations, basically bowlers bowling no balls according to big money bets made during the game; at this time three Pakistan players are being questioned by police!

Liverpool managed their first win of the Premiership season against West Brom. It was a win, but hardly convincing for a team at home against a team that aren't in the same league of quality, no disrespect meant to West Brom or their fans. The only goal of the game came from the foot of Fernando Torres who converted Dirk Kuyt's pass in the 65th minute. This win takes Liverpool upto the heights of 13th. Conclusion: better but more work is needed especially in a league where the top teams are hitting four or more goals against lower ranked opposition. Of course Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United all won to keep themselves in the top three of the table!

HOW HARD IS IT TO PARK IN A 7ft WIDE SPACE? Apparently very hard for many Kansans; the amount of times I can not get into a parking space because some fool has parked diagonally across into the next parking space and in some cases even manage to get two wheels into the next parking space. I can get into these tight spaces with the car but no-one is getting out. I'm astonished that people can not get a 4.5 to 5ft wide car into a seven foot parking space without getting at least one wheel in the next parking space. Suffice to say these people wouldn't be able to park at all in the UK where space is much more limited! OK, rant over! [ for the time being... ]

Plymouth Argyle are still to claim a single victory in three home games, the Pilgrims faced fellow relegated team Peterborough and lost 0 - 3, three second half goals sealed it for the visitors. Craig Noone went close in the first half skimming the crossbar but that was about the extent of Plymouth's attack on the Peterborough goal. It's hard to see Plymouth bouncing straight back to the Championship if they can't even win their home games. Two losses and a draw doesn't make for promotion chasing form. There really isn't much more to say, the figures speak for themselves, Peterborough had 58% of the possession and seven attempts on target, scoring three compared to Plymouth's three and no goals, makes me wonder who was supposed to be the home team!

Mark Webber claimed his fifth pole position of the season with team mate Sebastian Vettel managing a relatively lowly fourth place. Lewis Hamilton will line up alongside Webber on the front row with Robert Kubica starting from third spot alongside Vettel. Jenson Button lines up in fifth place improving one spot in the dying moments; a better qualifying performance than recent races but still too far away from Hamilton. Felipe Massa lines up alongside the Briton with fellow Brazilian Rubens Barrichello behind. Germans Adrian Sutil and Nico Hulkenberg occupy spots eight and nine while surprise of the session was Fernando Alonso only managing starting on row five in 10th place. Michael Schumacher will start in 21st place after being demoting 10 places for dangerous driving at the German Grand Prix. Kamui Kobayashi will start from 18th place after spinning out in Q1 when the rain came down; so I expect Schumacher and Kobayashi to be scything through the field during the race, which should add some excitement in the midfield!

I got my new multi region DVD player today and it works just fine although it wasn't region unlocked when I got it. But the seller did enclose instructions on how to make the DVD player region free; a dozen key-presses later and I could play my Region 2 DVD's. The DVD player itself is very good; picture is sharp and the upscaling works fantastically, although the "original" aspect ratio seems not to work, it stretches out 4:3 DVD's to fill the screen. I'm one of these people that prefers to watch the DVD in it's intended aspect ratio. But it's a relatively small issue as 98% of my DVD's are in 16:9 ratio. Right now I am watching Daylight and earlier I watched Iron Maiden's "Death on the Road" concert so I am a happy camper. Over the weekend Erin and I plan to have a Star Trek movie marathon as I have all 10 movies (Original cast and The Next Generation). If you happen to have a Toshiba XDE-500 DVD player; the below directions will make it region free:

All the below actions need to be completed using the remote control.

   1. Power the unit ON.
   2. Make sure there is no disc present and press the open/close tray button.
   3. Key in 2, 4, 0, 3, 9, 6, 0 in a quick and sequential manner.
   4. Press 9.
   5. Close the tray by pressing the open/close tray button.
   6. Turn the unit off and back on again, your DVD player should now be region free.

Also earlier in the week I elected to reformat my computer and reinstall Windows 7 as I somehow managed to pick up a virus which spawned a process called "dllhost.exe" which hogged 50% of my CPU making the whole system feel sluggish. After researching the issue, it appeared that I had been infected by the W32.Welchia worm but I could find no evidence of the worm following the removal instructions, I ran a full anti-virus scan with AVG and full Spyware scan with Spybot Search & Destroy, neither application found any nasties. So I decided to go it alone and deleted the dllhost.exe file, rebooted and it switched to explorer.exe, again running the CPU at 50% with no other applications running. At this point I decided to back up my files to the external HDD and reinstalled Windows. I could have spent days chasing my own tail trying to resolve this issue, the reinstall (including applications) only took half a day thanks to my shiny new 12Mb net connection!

Now for something a little less technical, cricket! What the hell is going on with England's batsmen in the last two games? Strauss, Cook, Pietersen, Collingwood and Morgan made a total of 23 runs with the later three going for a duck. Jonathan Trott scored an unbeaten 149 from 302 balls while Stuart Broad batting at no.9 hit a unbeaten 125 from 220 deliveries. England finished day two on a reasonably healthy 346 for 7 thanks to Trott and Broad. Time for a change of batsmen; there are plenty of excellent county players out there, draft some of them in and get rid of the useless centrally contracted players. Make them work for their place instead of being gifted places regardless of form; hell Pietersen doesn't even play for a county right now! When five of the countries so-called top batsmen are embarrassed by a no.9 batsmen, it's a damn disgrace!

Liverpool are currently only point away from the bottom three of the Premier League after their massively disappointing performance against Manchester City. I actually watched this game on the Sky Player and frankly I wish that I didn't; Liverpool looked like they weren't even at the game, comprehensively outplayed and the 3 - 0 scoreline reflected that. It has hardly been an auspicious start to Roy Hodgson's Liverpool managerial career. It doesn't help that the team's financial future is in flux with the sale of the club progressing slowly. And a certain ungrateful Argentinian player wanting to leave Anfield all the sudden. These players have contracts and I believe they should honour that contract. Anyway, that's besides the points, one point from two fixtures is hardly good for a team that has been part of the big four teams for some time, Liverpool seems to have taken a step backwards again this year; this is looking more like mid table obscurity form than challenging for any silverware form. It's been a tough start to the season, Arsenal and Manchester City in the first two games is tough going, but that's no excuse for their form! The next game is a must win for Liverpool; the Reds host West Brom at Anfield next weekend; three points are essential if Liverpool hope to hold onto the tails of Chelsea, Manchester United, City and Arsenal.

Of course more chaos on the school run this morning, As usual I can not find a parking space near the school, dropped Conner off making sure he went into the school building and drove off around the block as usual. But this time, there is a huge tailback because of the school's stupid drop-off procedure. I decided that I would just drive around them; of course because of the drop off system, people are pulling out in front of me from the drop off lane without looking of course and I end up on the wrong side of the road because no-one would let me back in after being pushed out by idiotic drivers not looking where they are going. At this point I see the red mist and decide to speed off down a side street (hoping is was a through road) as I was blocking traffic myself at this point. The local authority need to do better to create a better traffic management system for the school, there's a huge patch of grass that is completely unused, why don't they make that into a parking lot for parents with younger children to park while they drop off their kids? It's seems that local authority members don't have one working brain cell between them!!!

Third league game of the season and Plymouth have the complete set; one win, one draw and one loss. Plymouth lost 2 - 1 away at the Bescot Stadium to Walsall despite scoring first. Joe Mason found the back of the Wallsall net from just outside the penalty area from Kari Arnason's pass just before the half hour mark. Walsall brought on Paul Marshall just before half time and after the interval that decision was decisive as Marshall's headed goal in the 53rd minute brought the home team level. Marshall was instrumental in the Walsall second goal as well, providing the pass for former Argyle player Reuben Reid to put the Saddlers in the lead in the 69th minute. Plymouth had a few opportunities to equalise but the Walsall keeper for more than equal to the shots. Kari Arnason was shown a straight red four minutes into added time which is inconsequential for this game. Yet again Plymouth were beaten despite going a goal up and even more frustrating was the fact that the winning goal was scored by a former Pilgrim. How many great players have Plymouth let slip through their fingers over the last five years? Maybe if Argyle held onto these players instead of selling them on for a profit; they would be playing Championship football or even Premiership football. Argyle are down to 12th in the league from 7th after today's defeat, Peter Reid really needs to find some players that can find the back of the net and needs to tighten up the defence if Argyle are to have any hope of an immediate return to the Championship.

In the Premiership; Liverpool play Manchester City on Monday and Manchester United play Fulham on Sunday. United certainly have an easier game than my team Liverpool, so I expect the Manc's to claim another three points. It's vital for Liverpool to beat City on Monday as the Red's first game of the season ended in a disappointing draw. Chelsea have cemented their position at the head of the Premiership table with a 0 - 6 win over Wigan, that's 12 goals in two games for the Londoners. Ian Holloway and Blackpool got their belated welcome to the Premiership being hammered 6 - 0 by Arsenal, seven days ago Holloway's men beat Wigan 4 - 0, what a difference a week makes!

England lost the third test against Pakistan by four wickets. England didn't look the team they were in the previous tests. I don't believe Pakistan played better, it was England playing sub par in my opinion. England's batsmen were poor in their first innings, the top six scored a total of 61 runs. The only shining lights of the innings were Matt Prior and Stuart Broad who scored 84 and 48 respectively bringing the English first innings total to 233. The tourists posted a total of 308 with Azhar top scoring with 92 runs giving Pakistan a 75 run lead. England's second innings was even worse; scoring 222 runs all out, Alistair Cook was the only shining light of the whole innings, hitting 110 runs from 173 balls, Jonathan Trott was the next highest scoring with 36. Pakistan only had 148 runs to chase and they made that target with four wickets to spare on day four. Let's hope England can seal the deal and win the final test to claim a 3 - 1 win over Pakistan next week.

Back in Wichita; Conner has just completed his first week of 1st Grade and that went reasonably well, Conner's teacher Miss Sander seems very nice and supportive of Conner and his autism. Again, my big issue is with the parking and access to the school. Unless you arrive 5 - 10 minutes early there is no chance of getting a parking space near the school building, which is highly annoying when you have a 9 month old baby and a autistic six year old to get to the door. And to make matters worse there are police cars hovering everywhere around the school primed to ticket anyone that parks in one of the multiple no parking zones, which are poorly sign posted. I tried walking to the school as we don't live far away but that its next to impossible as the sidewalk to the school is so broken up that it's very difficult to push a stroller to the school. The infrastructure in this city sucks big time, unless you happen to live in a 'richer' area of town, maintenance of sidewalks and roads is piss poor, which would be unacceptable back home!

Oh yes, I totally forgot all about this; my father shipped over all of my 130 DVDs, which of course... I can not play on US DVD players (stupid region encoding). It's nice to have my DVD's but I can only play them on my laptop and frankly the upscaling capabilities of the laptop's HDMI port is laughable. So I have just ordered an upscaling region free DVD player from eBay to play my DVD's on, which hopefully will arrive by the end of next week. Also I ordered a 15ft HDMI cable to use with my laptop to connect to the living room TV as the cable I already have is only 1.2 metres long which means my laptop teeters on the edge of the TV cabinet to hook it up, which is not ideal!

My three year old HP Pavilion DV9820EA laptop is failing on me one piece of hardware at a time. About four months ago my Quicktouch buttons failed after months of intermittent failures. Now my touchpad has decided to stop functioning, device manager sees the Synaptics touchpad driver but reports that it can not start (code 10). I have followed the usual troubleshooting routine, reboot to see if it reinitialises, uninstaled and reinstalled drivers, updated drivers, reverted to the default Windows 7 driver, all without success. Luckily I do have a wireless mouse that I have been using for a while. But I read that installing a wireless mouse can sometimes cause Synaptics touchpad drivers to fail, but they were working in harmony for more than six months and I haven't updated either driver before the failure. This second failure does make me wonder what's going to break next. About a week ago, the keyboard failed to initialise on boot-up, rebooting fixed that issue but it's worrying non-the-less. I am now really looking for a new laptop, sadly I can not afford one at this time so hopefully this one will hold out for a while longer. But I won't be buying another HP laptop, not after the experience I have had with this one; not to mention HP's poor customer service. I like the specifications and price of the Toshiba Satellite laptops but dislike the keyboard and the touchpad feels strange to the touch, so looking towards Asus or Dell, I would love an Alienware but they are too pricey and I'm not much of a gamer these days!!!

Liverpool's premiership campaign got off to a bad start drawing 1 -  1 with Arsenal at Anfield. Joe Cole got sent off on his Liverpool debut for lunging at Laurent Koscielny seconds before the end of the first half. Despite being a man down, Liverpool took the lead one minute after the restart; David Ngog firing Javier Mascherano's neat little pass into the back of the Arsenal net. The scoreline stayed 1- 0 until the 91st minute, after the goal, the Gunners looked more like the home team with the player overlap and that pressure resulted in Reds keeper Pepe Reina fumbling Marouane Chamakh's shot  into the back of his own net off the post to gift the visitors a valuable point. This one will have to go down to a goal keeping mistake by Reina, Liverpool should have claimed all three points. Makes me wonder if this is going to be another season of missed opportunities at home, too many draws at what used to be Fortress Anfield. Liverpool currently occupy ninth position in the league with only five on the nine games so far ending in a win, Manchester United Play Newcastle United on Monday evening, I fully expect that to be three points to the Mancs, so Liverpool will drop to 10th should my prediction become reality.

Plymouth Argyle have drawn their first home league game of the season against Carlisle. Like last season Argyle concede first and then have to chase the game to claim a draw. Carlisle's Ian Harte found space amongst the Argyle defence to score a headed goal from six yards in the 68th minute followed by 25 minutes of frantic Argyle attack looking for an equaliser. The Pilgrims found the required equaliser deep in added time, Rory Patterson brought things level in the 94th minute of the game placing the ball in the bottom right of the Carlisle net from 8 yards out. Patterson almost equalised for Argyle earlier in the game with an angled shot that he pulled slightly wide of the post. I am worried for the rest of the season as Argyle did this last season, conceding first at home and having to chase the game, often equalising but not the way the game should be played at Home Park. This is one of the reasons why Argyle went down last season, throwing away too many points at home. Despite this draw Argyle have moved upto seventh place in the league because three other games ended in a draw. Hopefully Plymouth can up their home form to challenge for promotion this season, it's early days so far but it's worrying non-the-less.

Liverpool start their Premiership campaign tomorrow facing Arsenal at Anfield. Definitely not an easy game to start the season with especially given that Chelsea thumped newly promoted West Brom 6 - 0 at Stamford Bridge. Surprise of the day was Premier League new arrivals Blackpool, managed by former Argyle manager Ian Holloway, thumping Wigan 4 - 0. Manchester United also play tomorrow but have an easier game facing Newcastle United who are likely to be a little rusty playing in the Championship last season. The question is; are big spenders Manchester United and Chelsea too strong for anyone else to be able to win the Premiership title this season.

Back to life here in Kansas, it seems that my autistic son Conner is unable to perceive people in distress often finding people getting hurt funny, this has gotten progressively worse as he has gotten older which worries me for his future, will he be living with us indefinitely? Today I was on the phone with my Dad while my daughter Alya crawled into Conner's room, picked up a piece of lint on the floor and choked on it, Conner was just sat there completely impassive to his sister being is distress, it was lucky I was wandering around the apartment and noticed her choking. From now on I won't be allowing her to play in Conner's room for the above reason and he has no concept of other people, often barging through people, I'm worried he might kick her as he's running around like a lunatic! Conner has no concept of hurting other people; often he will run and jump on Erin or I hurting us as he isn't small anymore having just turned six. He shows no remorse for his actions, obvious this is an issue with the baby, he may unintentionally hurt his sister. Erin wants to move Alya into Conner's room, a move that I am opposed to because Conner doesn't have the ability to empathise with others, bottom line is I don't trust him to not unintentionally hurt Alya especially as he does have a temper and has shouted at Alya before.

I discovered that I can watch Sky TV online through the SkyPlayer website, because my father is a subscriber I can watch online but that is only in effect until the end of this year. When my father will have to pay an additional £10 for a multi-room subscription, which I will not be asking him to do, I don't see why it should be £10 for a 30 channel line-up online when it's the same for a second box in another room with the full line-up of channels. I mainly wanted the Sky online streaming because of the Premiership football and the England cricket, mainly The Ashes tour which starts in December! It's not like I will be able to watch the Ashes on TV here in the US, most Americans haven't even heard of cricket, let alone know anything about the game!

England put the misery of the World Cup behind them with a 2 - 1 win over Hungary at Wembley Stadium. Despite England having the better of the play, passing the ball much more fluidly than seen in the World Cup, the home team went behind in the 63rd minute. A defensive error allowed Zoltan Gera to get a cross into the box which was deflected goalbound by England defender Phil Jagielka. Although England have reason to be upset by the goal as Michael Dawson appeared to clear the shot off the line, but the referee saw it differently awarding the goal to the Hungarians. It was Steven Gerrard that came to the rescue again; equalizing with one of his trademark strikes from 20 yards out in the 73rd minute. Four minutes later Gerrard struck again with a great turn and shoot effort to put the English in the lead. Hungary went close to equalizing as the game closed in but Joe Hart was equal to Gera's stinging shot. Overall a much better performance compared to the World Cup and lots of younger talent on show which proves that coach Fabio Capello is looking towards the 2012 World Cup. The so called "golden generation" have had their chance, time for fresh blood to take England forward! Let's face it; they can't do too much worse!

In other bizarre news from around the World; US court denies parents custody of Hitler and sister. My wife and I disagree on this story; I fully support the court taking the children away from clearly mentally disturbed parents. The Story concerns the parents naming their children, Adolf Hitler Cambell (4), JoyceLynn Aryan Nation (3), Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie (2). Honszlynn Hinler is the feminine version of Heinrich Himler. My wife believes that just because they have been given Nazi names; the court have no right to take away the children without proof of abuse. I simply believe that those children will be subject to abuse give the names Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himler are synonymous with the murder of millions of Jews and political prisoners.

Plymouth Argyle have been knocked out of the Carling Cup for the third year in a row by a solitary goal by Notts County. Plymouth came closest to scoring in the first half with Bradley Wright-Phillips firing narrowly wide. But Notts took their chance when it came, John Spicer picking up on a loose ball to fire past Romain Larrieu to give the visitors the lead. The Notts goal has to be blamed on poor Argyle defending allowing Spicer to get to the loose ball in the danger zone. This was a common problem last season and it seems to be continuing this season. Hopefully Peter Reid and his coaching staff can stop the rot early unlike last season. Steve MacLean has an excellent opportunity near the end of the game but fired straight at Stuart Nelson and the Notts keeper was equal to  the effort! This is hardly a surprise result as Argyle have gone out at the first round stage of this competition 15 out of the last 18 attempts. So I find myself saying the same thing as I have done for the last three years; now Argyle can concentrate on their league performance without the worry of additional games, with the exception of the FA cup of course.

The English cricket team have continued to show good form beating Pakistan by nine wickets in the second test at Edgbaston. Pakistan won the toss and elected to bat first and were bowled out for a measly 72 runs, James Anderson and Stuart Broad claimed four wickets each while Steven Finn claimed two. England went on to set a total of 251 all out with Kevin Pietersen top scoring with 80 runs backed up by Jonathan Trott who hit 55 for the cause. In their second innings the tourists put up much more resistance with Z Haider hitting 88 runs and Saeed Ajmal scoring 50 runs to help post a total of 296 from 117.5 overs. England started their second innings needing 117 runs with more than a days play and 10 wickets remaining! The Englishmen hit their total in less than 37 overs, the only wicket to fall was that of Alistair Cook who was cleaned bowled on four runs. Andrew Strauss and Trott both ended the innings on 53 runs not out to give the home team a 2 - 0 lead in the test series with two tests left to play. England are looking good going into the Ashes tour with Australia this winter, let's hope this good form continues; it's been many years since England won the Ashes down under! Or at least not get humiliated like last time out!

The football season started in earnest this afternoon for Championship, League 1 and League 2 clubs. And Plymouth Argyle got off to a winning start away at St Mary's beating the home team 0 - 1. Southampton had the majority of the play in the first half but couldn't make the breakthough with Dean Hammond heading wide twice from David Connolly crosses. Plymouth got their reward at the start of the season half; Luke Summerfield prodding home Rory Fallon's headed pass. Not exactly the most convincing performance but given the run of form at the end of last season it's a great start and will give the team great confidence going into the next game. This win puts Plymouth in 10th place in the league; that being said after one game, league positions are meaningless! Of course there is a big grudge match coming up on December 11th when Plymouth host local rivals Exeter City, the last time the two clubs met was in 2002 in the old third division!

Over recent weeks, Conner my son's behaviour has become atrocious. A bit a background before I go on, Conner has been attending the Happy Hearts day camp here in Wichita. He has shown a serious dislike for going to day camp after the first few weeks, I had to push him though the door on Tuesday morning. I have not been taking him to day camp since that day as we don't seem to be able to get any answers to why he is so resistant to going in. Something must have happened there as he was fine for the first couple of weeks. I mentioned all that above because he wasn't like this before attended day camp. Some of the things he does; Conner is very demanding; "I WANT" all the time and then throws a tantrum when he doesn't get his own way. He refuses to use manners unless we force him to say "please" or "thank you" and doesn't even acknowledge people talking to him when playing any sort of computer game, handheld or otherwise. Last night he got up after being sent to bed early for being rude and talking back after we spent the whole day trying to do something nice for him. Taking Conner to Exploration Place and buying him some new Speed Racer toys. He demanded that Erin give him water; and then snatched it out of her hand, no thank you, nothing. Personally I would have snatched it back and sent him straight back to bed. This morning Conner woke up the baby by screaming at the top of his lungs "It's my birthday" because he didn't get his own way. Right now he will be spending his entire birthday in his room, I will not be dictated to by a six year old; he is autistic but I don't believe that's the reason for his behaviour as this is a new behaviour in the past few weeks. I have made it clear that unless he can act right he won't have nice things happen to him! Obviously every child has a certain level of disobedience but it has been constant in the past three to four weeks!

Yesterday, my wife got a text message simply saying "Call us on 316-263-1051" - Personally I would have simply ignored it as I am not going to call a number in a text message without knowing who the text is from. But my wife did call the number and when the call was answered; the representative did not give her name or the company name when asked. She claimed that we owed almost $750 in medical co-pays which we know is bullshit as we pay all our co-pays because the doctor won't even see us unless it is paid at the appointment time. The representative from the debt collection agency did tell my wife after being asked several times what the company was called; and that name is "Midwest Service Bureau, Inc" - Basically the representative forced my wife into given out bank details to pay $75 per month on the debt, threatening court action. To say the least I was not happy; these people send a text message asking to call a number then fail to inform my wife of the company name or the representatives name. I would not pay them a penny until I can confirm what exactly the debt is for; with a itemised statement of charges. This is just another reason I really dislike the United States, as a consumer you have very few rights. I can't think of single reason why anyone from Europe (with the exception of Eastern block countries) would want to come the the US for a better life. With the exception of my family, my standard of life has gone down considerably especially as I can't get a damn job here for some unknown reason despite being highly qualified to do the jobs I am applying for!

Australian Mark Webber won the Hungarian Grand Prix with a huge piece of fortune. At the start of the race; pole sitter Sebastian Vettel stormed off into the lead and Fernando Alonso got the jump on Webber off the start to move into second. But all this changed when the safety car came out on lap 16 to clear some debris off the track, Vettel and the other front runners pitted for fresh tyres during the safety car period. Mark Webber stayed out to lead the race at the restart, Webber darted off into the distance as Vettel was caught napping falling more than 10 car lengths behind the lead driver; subsequently getting a drive through penalty for falling more than 10 car lengths behind. This gifted Mark Webber a golden opportunity to win the race and take the world championship lead which the Australian took pumping in fastest lap after fastest lap to build up a 20+ second lead which allowed him to pit for tyres and retain the lead. Vettel managed to catch upto Alonso in the closing stages but could do nothing to get past the Ferrari on a track that is notoriously difficult to overtake on. Alonso stood on the second step with Vettel on the third step. Personally I am very happy for Mark; I would like to see the straight talking Aussie take the drivers crown. The race was full of incident after the snorefest first 16 laps. As the rush to get drivers in and out during the safety car period ensued; Nico Rosberg's rear right wheel came flying off as he left his pit box, the Renault of Robert Kubica collided with the Force India of Adrian Sutil as the Renault team released Kubica as Sutil as coming into his pit box. Both Renault and Mercedes were fined $50,000 each for unsafe release in the pit lane. Later in the race; Michael Schumacher almost forced former Ferrari team mate Rubens Barrichello into the wall as the Brazilian passed the German. It was literally a matter of millimetres from disaster, it was lucky the pit lane wall ended when it did to allow Barrichello more room for manoeuvre. Schumacher was unrepentant in a post race interview but later apologised to Barrichello for his dangerous move after the German was handed a 10 place penalty for the Belgian GP grid. Honorable mentions go to Vitally Petrov who finished in a fantastic 5th place behind the second Ferrari of Felipe Massa and Kamui Kobayashi finished in an amazing 9th place after starting from 23rd, I am full of admiration for the Japanese driver, his attitude impresses, his driving impresses, I truly believe this young man can go far in F1. Jenson Button has a lacklustre race at best; dropping back several places from his starting position of 11th, finishing the race in 8th place; a net improvement of three places. Frankly Jenson should have done better, missing the opportunity to make big inroads into team mate Lewis Hamilton's lead in the championship, Hamilton retired on lap 23 with a gearbox issue. We now have a four week break before the best track on the calender; Spa!!!