Great lacrosse article in Tacoma paper

Here is a great article in the Tacoma News Tribune about the possibility of the NLL expanding to the Seattle/Tacoma area. The reporter admits that he knows zilch about lacrosse, but has obviously done research on the game and the league, and realistically evaluates whether this could be a good thing for the city. In previous years, when the NLL is considering expanding to a city, I've seen articles in that city's newspapers written by people who also know nothing about lacrosse, but who are less open to the possibility. Some sports writers seem to think "How can a sport be any good when I don't know anything about it?" Many times, I've seen similar articles that seem to be a long version of "Lacrosse? What's that?". Nice to see a reporter doing some real reporting for a change, and not just dismissing an idea out of hand because it's something they're unfamiliar with. Kudos to Mr. John McGrath.

Technorati tags:
lacrosse
NLL
National Lacrosse League

Rock 'n' Roll Family Tree

A number of years ago, I created a web page called "The Rock 'n' Roll Family Tree". It was a static page of bands and musicians that linked them all, i.e. a musician that was in two bands linked those two bands. If another musician in one of those bands was also in a third band, then that band was linked as well, and so on. A band was only considered linked if a member of that band was also a member of another band — things like guest appearances, one-off duets, session work, and things like that didn't count. Eventually, I had well over 100 bands linked, including everyone from Black Sabbath to Culture Club to Foreigner to Strawberry Alarm Clock.

Unfortunately, I've since lost the original list, but I've been toying with the idea of re-creating it. Of course, I'd do it in PHP now, with a backing database. I'd love to use SQL Anywhere (the database product I work on) as the backing store, but very few web hosting companies (if any) offer SQL Anywhere support (mine does not), and I am not willing to host the site myself on my own home machine. I'd also love to add a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon-type thing where you could enter two musicians or bands and display the links between them, but that's a lot more work. For example, to get from Whitesnake to Metallica, you could do this:

• Steve Vai was in Whitesnake
• Rudy Sarzo was in Whitesnake with Steve Vai
• Rudy Sarzo was also in Quiet Riot with Randy Rhoads
• Randy Rhoads played with Ozzy Osbourne
• Mike Trujillo also played with Ozzy Osbourne
• Mike Trujillo is now in Metallica

In many cases, there are multiple ways to get from one band to another — Steve Vai also played with David Lee Roth, as did a guitarist named Jason Becker. Becker was previously in a band called Cacophony with Marty Friedman, who later joined Megadeth with Dave Mustaine, and Mustaine used to be in Metallica.

Just for completeness, Steve Vai appeared in a movie in 2006 called Crazy, with Chris Ellis, who was also in Apollo 13 with Kevin Bacon. And Kevin Bacon is also a musician, having recorded an album or two with his brother, so maybe he'll make this list too.

Aw, crap. I just found bandtoband.com, which is exactly what I described above. They took my idea and ran with it. (Though I suppose it's possible that they simply had the same idea, and didn't steal it from me.) They have almost 7,000 bands in their database, so I suppose there's no reason for me to do it.

Technorati tags:
Music
Kevin Bacon

The Daily WTF

The Daily WTF is a blog site that lists everything from software architectures to actual pieces of source code that just make you shake your head and say "What the F**k?" (hence WTF). Most are overly complicated ways of doing something easy, like the function that determined if a number was negative by converting it to a string and then checking if the first character was '-'. I guess "num < 0" was just too obscure.

This might be the more frightening (and hilarious at the same time) piece I've ever seen on there. Thank God I don't have to deal with this kind of stuff. The managers where I work are all really good &mdash and I'm not just saying that because my manager reads my blog. Really.

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Software
Management

More on male oppression

John came by my office ("I'd comment, but that would require work") and mentioned that in Canadian divorce law, the mother will almost always be given custody of children unless (a) she is deemed an unfit mother, and (b) the father is considered "adequate". If both parents are considered adequate, then the woman will always win. A woman who doesn't give a rat's ass about her kids, but doesn't actively abuse them, will win custody over the most doting and caring of fathers. Basically, in the eyes of the courts, any woman who is not shooting up heroin and turning tricks in front of her kids must be a better parent than any man could possibly be. If anyone can give me an explanation of this one, I'd looooove to hear it.

I remember hearing a few years ago that the average man is only slightly less likely to die of prostate cancer than the average woman is to die of breast cancer. However, breast cancer research gets ten times the amount of federal funding (this was an American quote) that prostate cancer research does. Now, that was from Rush Limbaugh, so who knows how accurate it was, but still...

Well, my build is done now, so back to work...

A political rant

Look out, a rare political "rant" from me. Note that "rant" is in quotes, because it's probably too strong a word for what I'm going to write here; a rant is usually fuelled by some passionate belief in or against something, and I am just not that passionate about politics. But something I saw the other day did kind of piss me off, so I had to share it. Actually, I have two things to say; the first just a comment, the second is the rant.

Anyway, onto my thoughts. Whimsley and Yappa Ding Ding wrote a couple of weeks ago about Bob Rae becoming leader of the federal Liberal Party. Yappa likes the idea, while Whimsley doesn't; not because it's Bob Rae, but because the idea of someone joining a political party as leader bothers him, and I have to agree. When Jean Charest quit the federal Conservative Party to become the leader of the Quebec Liberal Party a few years ago, I was confused. I mean, political parties are built on beliefs and ideals about how to govern, they're not just distinct groups of people. It's not like Johnny Damon leaving the Red Sox to join the Yankees. I would have thought that changing parties would be akin to someone raised Catholic deciding to suddenly convert to Judaism, which I suppose is not that big a deal. However, in the case of a party leader quitting to join a different party as its leader, it would be like the Pope deciding to give up all this Catholic stuff and become a rabbi. I will be the first to admit that I'm less than knowledgeable about politics, so am I missing something?

Now, the rant. In the last federal budget, a new childcare credit was created, so that parents of kids under 4 can get $100 a month for childcare (or beer and popcorn if you so desire). I downloaded the necessary forms from the government website yesterday, and was dismayed to see this at the top:

For CCTB purposes, when both a male and a female parent live in the same home as the child, we presume that the female parent is primarily responsible and should apply, unless a note from the female parent is attached to this application that states that the male parent is primarily responsible for the child.

Once again, as a father, I am considered "less important" than Gail, simply because I am male and she is female. Gail gives the boys their baths more often than I do, just because I don't particularly like doing it and she doesn't mind. Gail cooks more often than I do because she's a better cook. And she gets the boys clothes ready more often because she is more concerned about what they wear, and if the shirt and shorts go together and stuff like that. But I make the boys breakfast and Ryan's lunch every day. I start dinner when I'm home before Gail. I do laundry as often as Gail does, and when it's done, I end up folding it more often because she hates doing that part. I'm not going to go through and list everything that each of us does for the kids, but suffice it to say that Gail and I are equally capable of caring for our children. The idea that I need a fucking note signed by my wife to say that is sexist and insulting.

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Politics
Childcare

Leafs after Pronger?

Whenever I hear of a big-name baseball player requesting a trade, or a rumour that some star player is being shopped around, I always immediately wonder if the Blue Jays can get him. I think about what position he plays and if the Jays could use some improvement there, can he be used as a DH and would that improve the team, that kind of thing. Sometimes I dismiss it pretty quickly; when the Rangers were shopping Alex Rodriguez and his $120 million dollar salary, I knew very quickly that he wouldn't end up in Toronto, since the Jays simply couldn't afford him, though I did think it would have been great it that were possible. Other times, it wouldn't really improve the team anyway - a couple of years ago, if some big-name first baseman was being shopped, it probably wouldn't have made much sense for the Jays to look at it, since we already had Carlos Delgado at first, and giving up a ton for a part-time first baseman and DH would have been too much. But in any case, the thought always came up.

So it would seem logical that I'd do the same thing with the Maple Leafs, but for some reason, I don't. When it was announced the other day that Chris Pronger wanted to be traded from the Oilers for "personal reasons", it didn't even occur to me that the Leafs might be interested. I did not think "Wow, wouldn't it be great if he ended up with the Leafs?", even as a passing fantasy. I thought it interesting — I can't imagine why he'd want to be traded off of a team that he led to within one game of the Cup, but maybe there are people on the team (or in coaching or management positions) that he just cannot work with, or something like that. Anyway, it was rumoured this morning that the Leafs are offering Tomas Kaberle and Matt Stajan to Edmonton for Pronger, and that Edmonton wants Alex Steen instead of Stajan. The possibility of Pronger in a Leaf uniform came as a total shock to me, and I don't really know why. Is it because the Leafs GMs have a history of going after aging veterans past their prime, rather than trying to get a superstar player in his prime? When was the last time the best player in the league played for the Leafs? An awful long time ago, I assure you. Now, given the fact that the best player in the league has been named Gretzky, Lemieux, or Jagr for the vast majority of the last 25 years, that doesn't mean much, but still.

But more central to the Pronger thing, when was the last time the Leafs acquired someone who was, at the time he was acquired, one of the best in the league? You could argue for Mats Sundin in 1994. Other than that... well let just say it was before the Ballard years, and Ballard gained control of the team in 1971, according to Wikipedia.

In other Leafs news, they traded for Andrew Raycroft the other day. I have to say, I'll be more confident with him in net than with the 40+ oft-injured Ed Belfour. With Raycroft as the starting goalie and J.S. Aubin as his backup, the Leafs should buy Belfour out (as I've said before), and either trade (good luck) or release Mikael Tellqvist.

Technorati tags:
Hockey
Toronto Maple Leafs

Bomb scare

Last Friday, something happened at Ryan's school that I never figured would happen in the small quiet town of Waterdown: the school was evacuated because of a suspected bomb. One of the caretakers was on the roof of the school getting tennis balls and such that had been thrown up there, when he saw a pipe sealed up with tape, and a wire sticking out of it. He told the head caretaker, who told the vice-principal, who called the police, and they evacuated the school (all 700+ students, plus 50+ teachers and staff) into the gym of Waterdown District High School, which is right next door. The bomb squad was called, and they sent their robot up onto the roof, which knocked the bomb-like thing down onto the ground. When it didn't explode, they blasted it with a water cannon, which destroyed it. What they found inside was puzzling: two batteries taped together and an empty bottle of white-out. I believe they took the contents to their forensics lab, where they will hopefully pull some CSI-magic and find out what idiot (or idiots) made this fake bomb.

I am certainly no explosives expert, but I don't get this. White-out is almost certainly flammable, considering there's alcohol in it, but would it explode when connected to a couple of batteries? If it would, would the explosion be powerful enough to blow up the pipe that they were inside, let alone do any damage to anything around it? My guess is no, but even if that were true, what's the point of using an empty bottle? On the other hand, if the idea was to make something that just looked like a bomb, then why put anything inside it at all?

The discovery happened around 10:30, and I happened to find out about it earlier than most other parents. I was working at home (as I do every Friday), and had headed over to the school around 12:00 to do a couple of quick administrative things for Gail (school council chair, dontcha know), and that's when I saw all the police tape and stuff. I went back home, and then my neighbour came by a couple of hours later to say that they were asking parents to come and get their kids, so I went over and got Ryan. This was about 1:45, and he hadn't eaten since breakfast, since their lunches were all still in the school. I asked him what they had done while in the gym, and he simply said "we sat". They apparently put a movie up on the screen in the gym at one point, but he didn't know what movie it was. The principal sent a note home to all the parents on Monday explaning everything, and also saying that the police had told him repeatedly that this was the most orderly and speedy forced evacuation they had ever seen. I suppose it served as an emergency preparedness test, which they passed with flying colours, so something good came out of it.

Downloading music legally? You can do that?

I entered the world of legally-downloaded digital music a couple of weeks ago. I admit, I have downloaded some music illegally — from Napster several years ago, just some songs that I liked from bands that I didn't want a whole album of. In a few cases, I ended up buying the album anyway, and in the cases where I didn't, I generally don't listen to those songs anymore anyway. I have also downloaded some music from various torrent sites - mainly for guitar practice. Being in the software industry, I'm not a big fan of pirating stuff, so I feel kind of dirty (and not just a little bit hypocritical) doing it.

To ease my guilty conscience, I have been looking for a place to buy digital music that (a) had a good selection of stuff (lots of sites have independent stuff, but I wanted big labels as well), (b) the ability to purchase single songs, not just entire albums, and (c) no restrictions on the downloaded files. Most of the sites I've found so far (like iTunes) have restrictions on the files — you can only listen to the songs so many times or for such-and-such a time limit, or you can only download the files to a particular device (or small set of devices), or stuff like that. I want the ability to make CDs, copy MP3s around anywhere I want, stuff like that. My guitar teacher told me about puretracks.com, so I checked it out. It has all three of the criteria I listed above, plus the prices are good, and best of all, the site is Canadian. The only minor caveat is that the files you download are compressed WMA files, not MP3, so they can only be played with Windows Media Player. However, the license you get allows you to burn CDs, and Media Player can do that. So, I downloaded a few albums, and for each one, burned a CD, then fired up my MP3 ripper and ripped the CD to MP3s, so now I have the unrestricted MP3 files that I wanted. I have no intention of illegally distributing these files, I just want to be able to copy them between my computers, use them on my MP3 player in the car, and on the MP3 player I bought for Gail for her birthday (which she has yet to open, 2 months later). It's annoying to have to burn a CD and then rip it (and then erase it, so I can use it again for the next album), rather than just convert from WMA to MP3 directly. The MP3 ripper I have (CDex) has that ability, but can't seem to handle these WMA files (possibly because they're licensed), so until I figure out how to do the conversion, I'll have to go through this extra step. Annoying and time-consuming, but not that big a deal.

The first things I downloaded were the song "River Below" by Billy Talent, and the first album from Godsmack. I had heard good things about Godsmack, but I didn't know any of their stuff. I did read in the Wikipedia entry on them that they are often compared to Alice In Chains (and are, in fact, named after an Alice in Chains song), and I like Alice in Chains, so I figured what the hell. It only took about three Godsmack songs before I decided I should probably just go ahead and buy the other three Godsmack albums too. I asked my friend Steve, who's into lots of really heavy stuff, and he said that all the Godsmack albums are really good. A week after my first download, I downloaded the entire Billy Talent album, as well as the third (Faceless) and fourth (IV) Godsmack albums — for some reason, the second one (Awake) is only available on physical CD. I haven't gotten to the IV album yet, but from the first two, I'm not hearing much of a similarity to Alice in Chains. So far, it seems more like Metallica's James Hetfield singing with Stone Temple Pilots. A couple of songs even sound kind of like Creed, though I have thought in the past that Creed sounded like STP anyway. I like the Billy Talent stuff as well — the guitarist has an interesting style, though the singer is a little screechy sometimes.

Maybe I should go all out and ease my guilty mind by going through the songs that I downloaded illegally and either (a) erasing them, or (b) buying them through puretracks. Of course, if I do that, then I'd have to go and actually buy the first season of Family Guy too...

Technorati tags: Godsmack Alice in Chains Billy Talent puretracks.com

A story about each of my kids

Ryan

Ryan made a Father's Day card for me at school this week, and presented it to me today. It's got a drawing of me wearing a Toronto Rock jersey, and there's a little survey inside called "Meet My Father". Here are the questions and answers:

• My father's name is Grame
• His eyes are green
• His hair is black
• He is 38 years old
• My favourite food that my father makes is Kraft dinner
• My father works hard at mowing the lawn
• I like it when Dad and I play baseball
• I love my father because he loves me

Well, my name is spelled wrong, I'm 36, and my hair is brown, but apart from that, the rest are right. Especially the last one.

Nicholas

This evening, about 20 minutes after I put Nicholas to bed, he came downstairs to tell me that he thought there was a bear in his room. He's never been afraid of bears before, so I think this came from the movie Over the Hedge, which we saw last weekend, and which featured a large scary bear, voiced by the large scary Nick Nolte. Anyway, I took him back upstairs and told him that there were no bears in there. I told him "Mommy and I don't allow bears in the house. If one comes to the door, we tell him to go back to the forest where he's supposed to live, and he goes away." Nicky, who incidentally just turned four, continued along those lines — for a second. He said "If a bear is in my room, I'll tell him 'Go away bear, go back to the forest'. Then I'll whack him in the nuts."

I doubt he even knows what "nuts" refers to. I'm sure he got it from Ryan, who may or may not know what it means himself, and probably got it from some older kid at school.

You can never have too much pitching

We went to the Blue Jays game on Saturday - part of a group deal with the Waterdown Minor Baseball Association, where Ryan plays. It was Nicholas' first ever baseball game, Ryan's third, and Gail's first in about 6 years. I've gone to a couple of games with my dad since the kids were born - before that, Gail and I would go to at least 7 or 8 games a year, sometimes more, and usually including the home opener. Ah, how times change.

Anyway, Nicholas had no interest in the game whatsoever. He was interested in his grilled cheese sandwich, ketchup flavoured chips ("they spice my tongue!"), popcorn, and the books we brought, but mainly he was interested in the flip-down chairs. Ryan watched a bit of the game here and there, but was fascinated by the Jumbotron. Later in the game, he also found the books we brought and was so enthralled by one of them that when Troy Glaus hit a home run, Ryan didn't even look up. Gail watched the game but didn't really pay attention to it; she was focussed on making sure the boys kept themselves occupied. I actually watched the game, which the Jays lost 5-3. Ted Lilly, who I've never been a big fan of, pitched a great game. He only allowed three hits in 8 2/3 innings, and struck out 12. Two of those three hits, however, were home runs - the first with 2 walks aboard, and the second right after a Shea Hillenbrand error, so it was 5-0 after 4 innings. Lyle Overbay and Troy Glaus both homered to make it close, but the Jays offence just couldn't get anything going. I think Vernon Wells and Alex Rios each grounded to third base three or four times.

The Jays are doing pretty well this year - I read today that they are leading the league in batting average, slugging percentage, and on-base percentage, and are one of only two teams since 1969 to have a team batting average over .300 more than 60 games into the season. They're only a couple of games out of first in the East, but they've had an amazing nine opportunities this year to sweep a series, and have yet to do so. They could really use one of those 10 or 12 game winning streaks to boost their confidence.

You wouldn't have thought this going into the season, but I guess pitching is their weakness this year. Their starting pitching has been decent, but not great. Lilly has been fine, but not the all-star he was a couple of years ago. Chacin and Towers are all performing below where they were last year; Towers has been just dreadful for all but one start, and the mighty expensive A.J. Burnett has pitched all of a game and a half. On the upside, Roy Halladay has been his usual amazing self, and rookie Casey Janssen has been a welcome addition - an ERA of just over 3.00 and 5 wins in 9 starts. The bullpen has been… well, let's just say that calling them "spotty" is being kind. B.J. Ryan, who was also expensive, has been worth every penny so far (15 saves in 16 opportunities, an ERA of 0.61, and a WHIP of 0.67), but looking down the rest of the pitching stats, Justin Speier is the only reliever with an ERA under 5.00. That's nasty.

Technorati tags: Blue Jays baseball

Movie Review: Firewall

We rented the movie Firewall last night. It was pretty good - we're both big fans of Harrison Ford (Hollywood Homicide notwithstanding), and as usual, he gave a pretty good performance. Having said that, it must kind of get old for Ford, since he's played the same "Don't screw with my family" kind of guy in lots of movies (The Devil's Own, Air Force One, Patriot Games, The Fugitive (kinda)). Anyway, there were a couple of "yeah, right" moments, but overall, it was quite believable, and very entertaining. The ending was kind of disappointing though — it was almost as if they realized "Hey, we're out of time, let's end this now". Some other comments:

• These hackers are good enough to be able to hack the desktop computer of the VP of security of a bank, and yet can't just get the money out themselves? OK, so maybe getting to the desktop is one thing, but getting access to the real customer data is something else. That's certainly possible. But didn't they realize that the terminals in the server room (required for their plan to work) were just removed for security reasons? I would think that this would be the kind of thing that would show up in a recent email to the VP of security during the merger process. Haven't they been monitoring his email for awhile, watching for possible snags in their plans?
• I don't think you can use a scanner from a fax machine to scan a computer screen. Even if you could, the scrolling was way too fast for it to work as reliably as depicted.
• The phone rings and nobody does anything, so the kid goes to answer it. The bad guys completely freak out, and then afterwards, yell at the mom to do as she's told. But nobody told her anything! The bad guys should have given her instructions the second the phone started ringing, or simply said "nobody answer it". Bad guys is so stupid.
• Being a fan of "24", the appearance of Chloe was a little weird, especially since she worked for a technical guy but wasn't technical herself. Going into the church, asking Bobby to borrow his cell phone, and then just walking out with it was a classic Chloe move.
• SPOILER: Say you're the wife at the end of this movie. The nightmare is finally over. Your family is safe, the bad guys are all dead, and your husband is badly beaten and can barely stand up straight. So what do you do? Stand there and look at him from 50 feet away for a full 30 seconds, and then stroll slowly over to give him a hug? No, you'd run to him as fast as you can. Same for the kids, for that matter
• SPOILER: Why the hell did the bad guys bring the dog with them? Other than as a plot device, of course.

Despite these little nits (which I can find in about any movie), I enjoyed this one.

Technorati tags: Firewall Harrison Ford

I've seen everything... I've seen it all

OK, after saying that I don't generally post links, here's the second one in two days. It's a short video starring Patrick Stewart from Star Trek: TNG. It's a scene from a British show called Extras, and it's absolutely laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Technorati tags: Patrick Stewart

Fun with photoshopping

I don't just blog links all that often, but some of these photoshopped pictures are just amazing. Thanks to L for the link.

Actually, there are a few other pages on that site that are neat: Stars: then and now is good, as is the one with Celebrities' pictures as kids.

Kypreos is still a goon

While working out this morning, I was watching Sportsnet news. They had a hockey crew on there talking about the Cup finals, when former NHL goon and current Sportsnet hockey analyst Nick Kypreos started ranting about how the Edmonton players should warn the Hurricanes that their goalie is next and maybe after their goalie, someone like Erik Cole. (Cole is already out for the season, so perhaps he said or meant Eric Staal.) This kind of brain-dead comment just shows that while Kypreos may have changed from a player to a TV hockey analyst, he's still a goon at heart. The injury to Roloson was completely accidental; nobody ran their goalie, so Edmonton shouldn't be looking for revenge.

I'm not a fan of fighting in hockey (or lacrosse), but I will admit that there are some cases where it's… well, necessary is too strong; perhaps understandable, to some extent. If someone really runs your goalie, or hits your star player with a cheap shot, then I can see sending Tie Domi or your team's equivalent out to have a conversation with him. Note that "cheap shot" here is important — if someone hits your star player with a clean hit, no revenge is warranted, even if that hit ends his season. I also think that whatever revenge may be warranted should only apply to the current game - once that game is over, the opportunity has passed. This whole "so-and-so hit our star player last game, so the next time our teams play, we're going after him" is moronic and childish. For a prime example of how this is a bad idea, just reread the previous sentence as "Steve Moore hit Markus Naslund last game, so we're going after him". Todd Bertuzzi kept the promise that his team made, and ended Moore's career by breaking his neck. (Note for the record that Moore's hit on Naslund was clean.) For all Bertuzzi's apologizing and crying during press conferences and stuff, he meant it, and would do it again in a heartbeat, though perhaps not from behind next time. I was disappointed in Gary Bettman for lifting his suspension during the lockout, and embarrassed to have him on the ice for Team Canada at the Olympics. I think his suspension for such a blatant cheap shot should be as long as Moore's injury keeps him out - if Moore's career is over, then so should Bertuzzi's. He's a great player, but nobody should be allowed to get away with that kind of crap.

I'm thinking Nick Kypreos would disagree with that.

Technorati tags: hockey Nick Kypreos NHL Stanley Cup

I'm a real blogger now

I guess I'm really a part of the blogosphere now - not because I'm writing stuff on a blog, but because someone else's blog linked to an article in mine. Whimsley saw my response to his article on blogging. I had to smile at the sentence "Except he says it better" — Tom is a professional writer and published author, so this is quite the compliment to little ol' me.

Tom's blog is read by a number of other people (friends and family of his, and likely some people who have read his recently-published book), and if his book is a hit, that'll bump his readership numbers as well. Since there's a link to my blog on his, that might bump my numbers too. Woohoo!

Oh wait, I don't care about that. I forgot.

Technorati tags: blogging