RFD: Request for Donations

Earlier this year, my sister Trudy was diagnosed (at age 36) with both ovarian and uterine cancer. Luckily, she was diagnosed early and is now cancer-free, thanks to the gynecological cancer team at Princess Margaret hospital in Toronto. But not everyone is so lucky. With these types of cancers, there are frequently no symptoms until the later stages, which means that early detection is critical.

On October 19, we are participating in "5K Your Way", a 5 km run/walk as part of the Toronto Marathon. Trudy has enjoyed running for years, and when she heard about this event, she made it her goal to be healthy enough to participate and help raise money for Princess Margaret hospital. She has achieved that goal and will be running, and I will be running with her (well, I'll be participating with her, though I may not be running the whole way with her!). All of the money that we raise will go to gynecological cancer research at Princess Margaret hospital.

Please help make a difference and help us raise money for life-saving cancer research. You can donate online here, and as a bonus, you get to see a very cute picture of me and Trudy when we were kids.

Thanks for your support!

It's all in the name

I was looking on amazon.com for a link to a book called "Fire in the Valley", which I once bought from a bargain bin for about $5. It's the history of the PC — starting with the Altair in the 70s and continuing with the emergence (and sometimes subsequent failure) of Apple, Microsoft, and various other tech companies. Very interesting book. I found the link here, but the amazon search also found another book with a similar title: "Fire in the Valley: Female Genital Massage". Not the same book.

Now you've done it

I mentioned my hard drive problem a little while ago, and after a couple of weeks of not getting anywhere, I finally bought a PCI IDE card that I thought would solve the problem. I cracked the case on the computer and installed the card. Gail had given the hard drive to her friend to see if he could salvage any of it (he hasn't had a chance to look at it yet), so I couldn't do much anyway, but I turned the machine back on, and it started to boot, so I figured I hadn't screwed it up too badly and turned it off again.

The next day, I was playing my guitar and realized that I hadn't discovered yet whether Windows could see the new card. I fired up the computer, and continued with whatever song I was playing. (Probably the guitar solo for Metallica's "One", and I was probably nailing it like I always do. No, really.) After a minute I realized that the computer was off. I reached down and hit the power button again and...

Nothing.

No power, no lights, no beeps, nothing. I put the guitar away and tried a few more times. I unplugged the power cord and plugged it back in. I put the cover on the computer, in case the fact that it was open was causing a problem (though I don't know why it would). I took the cover off again and removed the new card. Nothing. On a whim, I unplugged the computer from the UPS and plugged it directly into the power bar, and the power supply for the computer buzzed for a second. I thought "Yes! It's the UPS!", but then realized that (a) the monitor was also plugged into the UPS and was working, and (b) pressing the power button on the computer still didn't start it.

That's when I realized that the power bar was itself plugged into the UPS, so I unplugged the computer from that and plugged it directly into the wall. Again the fan buzzed and then stopped, but this time when I hit the power button, the computer started. I thought I was home free, but after a few seconds, the computer simply turned off again and hasn't come back on since.

Picture taken from flickr under Creative Commons.

I'm a software guy, and though I've done my share of card-swapping and hard drive / CD drive / DVD drive installation and such over the years, I can't say I'm a hardware guy. In particular, I have no freaking idea what the problem is. Could be the power supply. Could be the power switch. Could be a short on the motherboard. Could be any number of other things, and I don't even know enough to know what they might be.

As I said, this was a $10 computer that has done its job admirably. I have grown to like idea of turning it into a NAS, so now I'm looking for a cheap computer to do that with — Tiger Direct has a refurb PC for $200; I'd probably buy an extra gig of RAM but other than that, it should do nicely. Gail's not too excited about the idea of buying a refurb computer, but it's got a 3 months parts and labour warranty, and you can extend it to a year for $36. I don't generally like extended warranties, but in this case I might consider it. I'll happily pay $36 if it means that someone else will fix my computer if I screw it up again.

The Juice

Twenty years ago this week, Ben Johnson was stripped of his 100m gold medal because of a positive drug test, thus dragging society (Canadian society, anyway) kicking and screaming into the era of steroids. Steroids had already been used in sports for years, if not decades, at that point, but society generally ignored it. It wasn't until Johnson's disgrace that it became a topic that people actually talked about.

Johnson became a national hero by (a) winning the gold medal and thereby being informally named "Fastest man alive", and (b) beating the hated Carl Lewis on the biggest international stage possible. This was another one of those "I remember where I was when..." events — I was just starting second year at the University of Waterloo, and that particular Friday evening, I was at the student bar known as Fed Hall. When the race came on, they put it on the big screen and turned the dance music off, and everyone watched. 9.69 seconds later, we erupted into shouts of jubilation. The joy lasted three days.

The next Monday, we got the news. Johnson had tested positive for steroids and had been disqualified. The hated Carl Lewis was given the gold medal. Canada's heartbreak was as strong as its joy had been only three days earlier. Some Canadians felt not only embarrassed but ashamed, as if the entire country had failed the drug test. It was then that people started to take drugs seriously in sports, talking about a "level playing field" and all that. It turned out that a level playing field wasn't the problem — since everyone was on the juice anyway, you had to take the drugs in order for there to be a level playing field. Some even suggested that steroids in sports were no big deal for this reason. Never mind that the drugs made all the records artificial. Never mind that they were dangerous. Never mind that teenage athletes began taking steroids earlier than ever before, because they started to believe that without taking the drugs, they would never have a chance of success.

However, these discussions didn't really start south of the border until until it was discovered that Mark McGwire was using andro and then José Canseco wrote his book. Not until it became obvious that their sacred game of baseball had been tainted did the Americans become interested. At this point, however, they went nuts, launching investigations and bringing players in front of Congress. MLB had buried its head in the sand for years, never admitting that there was any kind of problem and even now, they administer all the drug tests themselves, refusing to have an impartial third party do the testing (as the Mitchell Report recommended). And since they started "policing" themselves, guess what? No major positive tests. Sure, they nailed Rafael Palmeiro, but his career was over anyway. They do throw the odd minor leaguer under the bus now and again, but since there's no accountability for the tests, you're never going to see a significant player get caught, even if they walk around the clubhouse with needles hanging out of their ass. The NFL is just as bad — we all know that there are steroids all over the NFL, but their testing procedures are such that very few get caught and the ones that do are suspended for all of four games. Ridiculous.

These sports leagues say that they want to get rid of the steroids for good, but that it's just not possible. Well, they're probably right that it's not possible to completely get rid of them, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't bother trying. If they really want to, here's how it can be done:

1. Test each player at least once per season, but possibly more. Have no limit on the number of times a player can be tested in a season.
2. Players are chosen at random and given no advance notice of when they will be tested.
3. Tests will be administered by a company that's not under the control of the league. The number of positive results should have no bearing on how much the company gets paid. The cost should be borne equally by the league and the players union.
4. Players that test positive for the first time are suspended for half a season. Players that test positive a second time are banned for life. All positive tests will be publicly announced.

The goals are (a) to make it impossible for a player to know when he will next be tested, and (b) to make the risk of getting caught far outweigh the potential gains from using the drugs. Once that's done, will the game be completely clean? No, but only the stupid players will still be using. Stupid players, by definition, will not be smart enough to avoid getting caught, and so will be tossed from the game in short order. Hopefully, this will allow the game to return to the days where you could watch someone hit 50 home runs in a season and marvel at his athleticism rather than wondering if he's on the juice.

The Unthinkable

The unthinkable happened yesterday.

Yankee Stadium, the baseball shrine that has been home to some of the best baseball players, teams, and moments for eighty-five years, is now closed. The Yankees and Orioles played the last-ever Major League Baseball game at The House that Ruth Built yesterday, and that's the end for this building. The Yankees will play in the new Yankee Stadium next season, across the street from the old one, thus beginning a new era in Yankees baseball. Just thinking of all the great ball players who called that stadium home over the years is mind-boggling: everyone from Ruth, Gehrig, Mantle, and DiMaggio to Goose Gossage, Reggie Jackson, Don Mattingly, and Dave Winfield, and now the new order: A-Rod, Derek Jeter, and Mariano Rivera.

I am a huge baseball fan. I have seen countless games at both Exhibition Stadium and SkyDome the Rogers Centre, and I've also seen games at Fenway Park in Boston, the now-destroyed Kingdome in Seattle, New Comiskey Park U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago, Alameda County Coliseum in Oakland, and even one pre-season game in Fort Myers, Florida. But unfortunately I never made it to a game at Yankee Stadium, which I now regret immensely. I even looked into arranging a weekend away for me and Gail sometime this summer, but with our trip to France, we were so busy that it was hard to find time to do it. (It was also hard to find the money to do it, also because of our trip to France.)

I have the utmost respect for the Yankees as a franchise. The logo and pinstriped uniform is probably the most recognizable sports logo in North America, even among people who don't watch baseball. They are to baseball what the Leafs are to hockey and what the Dallas Cowboys are to football, but to a much greater extent. Having said all that, I've grown up a Jays fan, and have even found myself a bit of a Red Sox fan in recent years, and so I've always hated the Yankees. Which is why the fact that I was actually rooting for the Yankees to win in their last game in Yankee Stadium is unthinkable.

This fence isn't very comfortable

So the Jays are out of the postseason again, for the umpteenth year in a row. After their 10-game win streak, they did have a small-but-legitimate shot at making the playoffs, so it could be argued that they played meaningful baseball in September for the first time since J.P. Ricciardi took the helm. I wrote back in August that Ricciardi should be fired, and now I'm not sure. It's true that he's ultimately responsible for putting together the team, but it really isn't his fault that Marcum will miss next year, that McGowan missed half of this year, that Accardo and Janssen missed all of this year, that Ryan missed all of last year, and on and on. Ricciardi has put together one of the best pitching staffs in baseball, even with all the injuries. Injuries to Wells and Aaron Hill are also not Ricciardi's fault. Also on the upside, this Travis Snider kid (drafted by Ricciardi) looks like the real deal as well. If he can keep it up, an outfield of Snider, Wells, and Rios might be the best Jays outfield since Bell, Moseby, and Barfield.

On the flipside, it is Ricciardi's fault that Reed Johnson is a Chicago Cub (I still shake my head over that move). The Shannon Stewart experiment was a total failure. The David Eckstein experiment didn't work out either. Is Scott Rolen really much of an improvement over Troy Glaus? The bottom line is that the Jays missed the playoffs again and despite the late-season winning streak, we knew that they never really had much of a chance. From that point of view, after seven seasons of not having a chance, Ricciardi should be fired. I heard the other day that of all the GMs that were in place when Ricciardi was hired, he's the only one left who hasn't made the post-season. Every other team that hasn't made the playoffs in that time has fired their GM. But not the Jays.

But it's not like the team sucks and has no chance next year — if they manage to resign Burnett (for a zillion dollars, since that's what it will likely take) and McGowan returns OK and they pick up a big bat in the off season, then the Jays could seriously contend next year. Maybe we should give him one more year. Of course, that's what I thought last year too.

My ass is getting sore from this fence-sitting.

Must have

Memo to management: each of our developers needs a new chair. The ones we have are fine, but think of how much more productive we'd be!

Note: photo stolen from gizmodo.com since the novelquest.com site is all flash.

 

This chair workstation is unbelievable, Specs:

• 3 19" monitors, up to 3840x1024 resolution
• Touch screen to control the chair, including lighting, sound, air flow, positions, and password protection
• Leather seat with lumbar support, headrest, electronic height and recline adjustment
• HEPA air purification system
• Built-in UPS
• 360° rotation. programmable to rotate automatically over 8 hours
• Built-in webcam, wireless headset
• Dual core 2.6 GHz Intel, 4 GB RAM, 1 TB hard disk, top of the line video and audio cards, TV tuner, Blu-ray player / DVD writer, wireless networking, mouse, and keyboard

Minor drawback: $40,000 each. US. Plus shipping.

Sluggers season is over

My annual baseball tournament was this past weekend. We played three games on Saturday (won two and tied one), and then one more game Sunday morning, which we lost. The 2-1-1 record put us third in our group, and our first playoff game was Sunday at 11:30. It was a close game, but we didn't get the bats going enough and we lost by a couple of runs, so we were done. I'm in some pain today, but I managed to get up on time and after my 50-minute commute, even managed to get out of the car without falling on the ground. And I took the stairs up to the third floor; I didn't wimp out and go to the elevator. And I didn't even take any Tylenol today (though I did a couple of times yesterday and Saturday). Go me.

Personally, I played OK in the tournament. I hit pretty decent in the first and second games, not so much in the third, and pretty crappy in the last two. Defensively, I did pretty well, except for one play which is still haunting me. (More on that later.) In the second game, I made a pretty awesome over-the-shoulder off-balance catch followed by a fall and roll, though the runner on second tagged and went to third because it took me a second to get up again. In the playoff game, I was part of two separate double plays. (I play right field and right rover, so I'm not involved in double plays all that often.) Early in the game, someone hit one way over my head, I went to get it and threw it in to Gerald who heaved a bullet home, beating the runner by a step. (Edit: Duh, this wasn't a double play.) Later in the game, another fly came out to shallow right field, and I guess the runner on first didn't expect me to get to it, but I did. He was halfway between first and second, and I fired it into first and doubled him off.

I caught at least one other fly ball in that game, but the play that is haunting me was a fly ball that I missed. The batter was left-handed, and had hit very deep to right field before, so I was playing pretty deep. He hit one a mile in the air, and I originally thought it was going deep again. I told myself "This ball is not going over my head", so I backed up a couple of steps. Then I realized that it wasn't going deep at all and I was way too far back. I sprinted in to get to it, but those first few steps backwards cost me and I missed it by a foot. I was fully outstretched when I reached for it, so I fell and rolled again, but immediately got up and went for the ball. Luckily, Matt the centre fielder (who has unbelievable range) was right there and backed me up. The batter got to either second or third, and when the next batter hit a single up the middle, he scored, so I put that run squarely on my own shoulders. That was the only run they scored that inning, and we lost by more than one run, so it's not like that play singlehandedly cost us the game, but I am still angry at myself for blowing what should have been a completely routine pop fly.

So baseball is over for another year, and now I'm in full Mats Sundin mode about baseball next year. Do I continue playing ball next year, or do I "retire" from softball and do something else athletic once a week (eg. hit the driving range, or maybe even go to an actual golf course) or maybe dedicate one night a week to two hours of uninterrupted guitar playing? Or do I just stop playing ball and have some extra free time which will likely be eaten up by common household things like laundry? Lemme tell ya, the laundry thing is pretty tempting, but I think I'm gonna need some more time to decide.

Email interruptions

I have read in a number of different places (here's one) that you should not have your email client notify you as soon as email arrives — check once every hour or half hour or even less often because it takes your brain more than a minute to get back into its train of thought after being interrupted. Hogwash.

Let me clarify — if an email arrives that requires your attention (i.e. you need to respond right away or immediately take some action), then yes, I can see it taking a minute or so to get back into what you were doing before. If handling the email takes an hour or more, it may take even longer. But speaking for myself, I get emails all day long, and the majority of them are either not relevant (i.e. another developer notifying me (as part of the entire development team) of a bug he fixed in a module that I never use) or not important enough to stop and deal with immediately. In those cases, it might take me five seconds to get back into what I was doing. Given the number of 5 second interruptions I get, I'd have to be sitting at my desk in a daze for many minutes at a time to get my average interruption time up to 65 seconds. While this may be true on some days, it's not related to email.

Irony: While writing this blog entry, I received an email. I stopped, read it, decided that I could deal with it later, and then came back to this. My first thought was "Now, what was I saying? Oh yes, something about email." It still only took me a few seconds to remember what I was in the middle of saying, but it did strike me as kind of funny.

And what is your business in the United States, Mr. bin Laden?

A Canadian man whose name got on the US no-fly list has legally changed it to avoid hassles whenever he flies. Because of identity theft, every time he went through customs in the US, he'd be pulled aside and questioned, sometimes for hours. So after enduring this for years as well as complaining to the TSA who said that they couldn't (or wouldn't) remove his name, he legally changed it, and now he's fine. Good thing the terrorists don't know about this idea.

This no-fly rule that's based solely on someone's name is just ludicrous in the first place. Names are not globally unique and can be easily faked. There have been stories of seven-year-old children being stopped and questioned because their names show up on a no-fly list. Senator Edward Kennedy's name made it onto a watch list at one point, and a couple of times he was told he couldn't board the plane. In all cases he eventually did get on the plane thanks to the fact that the supervisor recognized him. He managed to get his name removed after a couple of weeks, but the average person can't just call up the DHS chief and say "Hi Tom, Ted here. Get my name off of your f**king list. Thanks."

Terrorists may be misguided, brainwashed, or just plain evil, but you can't say that they're all stupid. What terrorist is going to be flying under his real name? The well-funded terrorists can probably get fake passports made in hours with any name they want and if they're smart, they never fly under the same name twice.

Yet another example of how the US government is turning the "war on terror" into a complete joke. I'm not talking about the actual fighting in Afghanistan, more the silly restrictions that keep popping up everywhere. You can't bring more than 100 mL of shampoo in your carry-on, but a bottle of water or contact lens solution (even more than 100 mL!) is OK. Do they check the contents of the bottle of water or contact lens solution? If you're going to bring liquid explosives onboard, just put it into a contact lens solution bottle and you're fine. You can't bring a nail file because it could be used as a weapon, but a sharpened pencil is fine. Now they can confiscate any electronic device like a laptop and even an iPod without reasonable suspicion of anything, and without even explaining why they're doing it.

How does any of this make people safer when flying? These are silly rules that do nothing but inconvenience innocent civilians. The actual terrorists can easily get around them and thus they provide no security.

As I said once before, "The terrorists may not have succeeded in significantly affecting the Western economies or changing government policies on anything (which, presumably, is at least one of their goals), but I'm sure they're all having a good laugh at the stupid policies that have resulted from their activities." I read a comment on Bruce Schneier's blog that sums it up perfectly:

The purpose of terrorism is to create terror.

Mission accomplished.

You suck, Halladay

Well, OK, he doesn't really suck. He had an off night is all. But if he'd had an on night, the Jays would have tied the team record for the longest winning streak in team history at 11 games! Who'd have guessed that Doc would be the pitcher to end the streak? And even with Halladay sucking not pitching his best, they came this close to doing it anyway.

I only saw the last three or four innings of the game, but the Jays were down 5-0 and simply weren't in the game at all. Then in the 8th inning, Mark Buehrle walked Bautista and Ozzie Guillen inexplicably took Buehrle out. Buehrle looked kind of amused by this, but then Octavio Dotel gave up a 2-run homer to Alex Rios, which I'm sure took some of Buehrle's fun away. Dotel got out of that inning, and then Chicago scored what turned out to be a critical run in the bottom of the 8th. Toronto came up in the top of the 9th, down 6-2, and facing one of the tougher closers in the AL in Bobby Jenks. Zaun struck out, then Inglett singled, Rolen walked, and Overbay singled Inglett in. Scutaro (what an awesome pick-up he was) then doubled in Rolen, and Bautista grounded out scoring Overbay. Now it's 6-5 with 2 out and the tying run at 3rd base, and your best hitters coming up in Rios and Wells. Rios struck out (on a third strike that I'm not convinced was a strike) to end the game, but if you can ever be happy about a loss, especially one that ends a 10-game winning streak, this is one of those times. The Jays went from not being in the game at all to needing a base hit to tie it in less than two innings. That says something about this team.

There's been a lot of talk about this streak and whether is means anything at all. I'm not sure that it does, since the Jays are basically out of the playoff race anyway. They're 7½ games back of Boston for the wild card with less than three weeks left in the season, so unless they go on another phenomenal streak and Boston loses a bunch and Minnesota loses a bunch too, it ain't happening. It looks like the end of any one of the last few Leafs' seasons -- wait until there's no chance of making the playoffs and then start playing really well. Can the Jays simply not perform under pressure, or was it just bad timing that they all got healthy and hot at the wrong time?

Worst of all, does the streak mean that J.P. Ricciardi will still have his GM job next season? After all, if you put together a team that is good enough to win 10 straight games, all against very good teams, you shouldn't be getting fired, should you? Or is it more fair to say that if you put together a team that good and yet they aren't contending for a playoff spot, that you should be fired?

Is this streak an anomaly, or are the Jays really this good? Hard to say. We found out this year thanks to Tampa that a team not expected to do anything can be a serious contender, so there's always hope.

Looking for a fix

I've got the shakes. I'm shivering and sweating at the same time. I feel hungry but the thought of eating turns my stomach. I'm terribly thirsty and I feel like there isn't enough water in the world. That's right — I'm going through podcast withdrawal. The second hard drive on my home computer, the one labeled "Multimedia" that has hundreds of documents and home videos, thousands of digital pictures, and my entire iTunes library on it, simply stopped working the other day. I assumed it was a hard disk failure and attempted to run Spinrite on it, only to find that Spinrite refused to do anything with it because the BIOS thought it was a different size than it actually was. I went into the BIOS setup and sure enough, the BIOS thought that my 250 GB disk was 137 GB. Windows XP, however, seemed to know the right size.

So since the drive died, I have not been able to sync my iPod or download any new podcasts. I might have to (gasp) listen to music on my way to work tomorrow! Oh no, wait — a while ago, I downloaded seven or eight older episodes of Security Now, so I will be able to listen to descriptions of how VPNs work or WEP vs. WPA encryption, or stuff like that. Whew.

Anyway, back to the hard drive. The machine is an old IBM NetVista that we bought for the bargain basement price of $10. Gail's company was getting rid of a whole bunch of these machines, so we picked one up. Shortly thereafter, our last computer died and we replaced it with this one, and it's been great ever since. I guess I never checked the BIOS when I installed the new disk, or maybe because Windows could see all 250 GB of it, I didn't worry about the fact that the BIOS couldn't. Once I downloaded some more pictures from the camera, the disk went over the 137 GB mark, and then everything went all to hell.

I upgraded the BIOS to the most recent one available on the IBM support web site, which is dated 2003. No change. A former co-worker of Gail's, who bought one of the NetVista machines at the same time, is currently using his as a NAS, with a terabyte of storage, so he must have figured this out at some point. Gail said he bought a $30 PCI SATA card and that's it, but my drive is an IDE. (He's away on business or vacation or something right now so I can't ask him.) I went to a computer parts place in Burlington called Tiger Direct (wow, is that place ever cool) and asked the guy there, and he said that if the BIOS won't recognize drives that big, then buying a new IDE controller card will not help, so perhaps Bill replaced the motherboard on his machine before adding the SATA card. He did say that if I bought an external drive enclosure and then attached the drive via USB, that should work regardless of the BIOS, so I did that. The machine recognized that there was a drive there, but described it as "offline", and simply refused to bring it online.

I'm sure that if I kept the disk in the enclosure and reformatted it, life would be rosy, but then I lose the data on the disk. The majority of it is backed up online thanks to Jungle Disk, but not all of it. For example, my iTunes library is not backed up. I decided not to back that up because it's re-creatable; my iTunes purchases are backed up to a CD, I can re-download any puretracks.ca purchases, and of course I can re-rip all of my CDs. That only took six weeks the first time around.

Feel free to post any suggestions here in the comments!

The Trade III?

Weird — I just finished writing about two different blockbuster trades that the Rock made with the San Jose Stealth, and they go and make another one. This time, they threw the Rochester Knighthawks into the mix.

The Rock traded Aaron Wilson and a draft pick for next year to Rochester in return for Stephen Hoar. Rochester sent their draft pick for this year to San Jose, who sent Luke Wiles to Toronto. So Toronto gives up Aaron Wilson and a draft pick for Luke Wiles and Stephen Hoar, Rochester gives up a draft pick and Stephen Hoar for Aaron Wilson, and San Jose gives up Luke Wiles for a draft pick. Got all that?

As much as I like Aaron Wilson, I think this looks like a good deal for the Rock. I don't know much about Luke Wiles (since the Stealth have never played in Toronto), but from the numbers, he looks like a similar player to Wilson anyway. Hoar, who has one of the best names in the NLL (he's heard "Hey Steve, your mama's a Hoar!" all his life, and now replies with "Not until she married my dad!"), is a solid defender and transition guy. It kind of sucks to have traded an offensive star like Wilson to a division rival, but it may not matter. The Knighthawks lost John Grant, Jr. for the season today, so I guess the K-Hawks are hoping that Wilson will make up for that loss to some extent. You simply can't replace a talent like Grant, but if you have to try, Wilson will do as good a job as just about anyone.

Paul Tutka wrote a piece in NLLInsider.com today about the moves the Rock have made this off-season, and when you put them all together, it does look pretty good:

In: Luke Wiles, Stephen Hoar, Craig Conn, Jason Crosbie, Chad Thompson (injured last year), Lewis Ratcliff

Out: Josh Sanderson, Aaron Wilson, Jim Veltman, Mike Poulin, Dan Ladouceur

The goaltending situation is a little dicey. Watson is coming off a Goaltender of the Year award, so no real worries there but if he gets hurt, the backup will be Mike Attwood (not sure if he's ever seen action in an NLL game) or one of the two goalies they drafted the other day, neither of which has ever played in the NLL either. Poulin didn't see a lot of floor time last year, but he was the goaltender of the year in the OLA this past season, in a league featuring Cosmo, O'Toole, and Brandon Miller. Might have been good to protect Poulin instead of Watson, but then make Watson a franchise player so Boston would be unlikely to draft him.

The Trade II

In July of 2004, the Rock made a blockbuster deal with the San Jose Stealth which came to be known to Rock fans as The Trade. Two and a half years later, the Rock made another trade that is still being talked about, but not in the same way. These were the two biggest trades in Rock history, and while the first directly contributed to the Rock's 2005 NLL championship, the second was not-quite-but-pretty-close directly responsible for the two worst seasons in Rock history.

The Rock won the NLL championship in 2005, but struggled in 2006, beginning the season 0-4 and ending up with a worst-ever 8-8 record. The Rock management adopted a "What have you done for us lately" attitude with head coach and GM Terry Sanderson, and fired him within weeks of the end of the season. Former player Glenn Clark was hired as head coach, and Mike Kloepfer got the job as "Director of Player Personnel" (don't know why that's different from "General Manager" as it's called for every other team, and for the Rock prior to this). A couple of weeks before the start of the 2007 season, Kloepfer made his mark on the team by making The Trade II. Kloepfer traded Colin Doyle and Darren Halls to the San Jose Stealth for Ryan Benesch, Kevin Fines, Chad Thompson, and two draft picks.

Doyle had played his entire career with the Rock organization; one year in Hamilton when they were the Ontario Raiders, and then eight years with the Rock. He won five championships with the Rock, and finished either first or second on the Rock in scoring every year from 1999 to 2005. In 2005, he actually led the league in scoring — the first player not named Gait or Tavares to do so since 1990 — and was named league MVP. Doyle was also named MVP of the Championship game three times, something nobody else has ever done more than once. Needless to say, Doyle was the offensive heart and soul of the Rock. He was also a fan favourite who gave his all whenever he hit the floor, and from all accounts, he was also a popular guy in the locker room. The trade shocked the lacrosse community, and even Doyle himself did not see it coming. Many Rock fans were absolutely incensed, and some even cancelled season tickets because of it. Management never really gave a good reason for the trade, other than the typical "going in a different direction" crap. When you've won five championships in seven years and then have one bad season, you don't need to go in a different direction; you want to get back to the direction you were going in the previous year, and trading your best player away is not the way to do that.

Of course, Doyle wasn't the only player involved in the trade. Darren Halls was a rookie who was traded to the Rock from Arizona only the previous month. Ryan Benesch was the first overall pick in that year's draft, and was touted as a very exciting young player. I had never heard of Fines or Thompson, but despite the others involved in the trade, it essentially came down to Doyle for Benesch — the current superstar for the up-and-coming rookie. Perhaps the Rock was hoping that Doyle was on the downside of his career and Benesch would turn into another, well, Colin Doyle. But in 2006, Doyle was only a year removed from his MVP season, he made the All-Star and All-Pro teams, and finished third in league scoring. In short, he was not showing any signs of being on the downside of his career.

Doyle only scored four points in his first game in San Jose, but got nine assists in his second game and seven in his third (plus a goal). He ended the 2007 season with 81 points, fifteen less than his total with the Rock the previous year. Rather than attempt to be the goal leader, he seemed to take a page from Josh Sanderson's book, and let Jeff Zywicki, Gary Rosyski, and Luke Wiles score all the goals. Doyle led the team in assists, and the Stealth made the post season for the first time in three years. In only the second playoff game in Stealth history, Doyle, who thrives in the post-season (did I mention his three Championship game MVP awards?), scored a goal and added ten assists to help the Stealth beat the defending champion Colorado Mammoth 15-14 in OT. The next week, however, the Stealth were bumped from the playoffs by the Arizona Sting. Last year, Doyle scored 88 points, and the Stealth won the west division, though they lost in the opening round of the playoffs to the LumberJax.

As for the Rock, Ryan Benesch lived up to most expectations, finishing with 58 points and was named NLL Rookie of the Year. In total, Benesch, Fines, and Thompson finished with a total of 104 points, even more than Doyle could have been expected to get. But Doyle, Josh Sanderson, and Blaine Manning made up a very potent offensive threesome, and losing part of that group really hurt the team. Call it team chemistry or whatever. Sanderson's points total dropped by thirteen, and Manning, whose point total had already dropped by twenty five the previous year, saw his total drop by another three. The Rock finished the season 6-10, their worst record ever. They managed to back into the playoffs thanks to tiebreakers, but were soundly defeated in the first round by the eventual-champion Rochester Knighthawks. Last year, the Rock finished 7-9 and out of the playoffs for the first time ever.

It's hard to say that the Rock's decline from dynasty to also-ran was caused by the Doyle trade, since they were no better than mediocre the year before the trade. But things got quite a bit worse after the trade. Fines was traded away the next year, and then Sanderson near the end of last season. Benesch was benched for the last two games of the 2008 season, and there were rumours that he'd played his last game as a Rock. Nothing ever came of it, and Mike Kloepfer has since gone on the record saying that Benesch was never on the trading block and is a big part of the Rock's future. However, no explanation was ever given for the benching.

While it could be argued (and I did) that the Stealth basically lost the Sanderson/Cosmo deal, there's no argument that they ended up on the winning end of the Doyle/Benesch trade.

Quite honestly, I was not a very big fan of Colin Doyle during the first few years that I watched the Rock (i.e. starting in the the 2001 season). There was no question that he was talented, but he seemed like too much of a hothead to me. It always seemed like he wanted to get out there and fight someone (and my opinions on fighting in sports are very well documented), and the only reason that he didn't was because his coach refused to let him, deciding (correctly) that he was too valuable on the floor to be spending time in the penalty box.

Over the years, however, he matured and became a superstar. The hothead thing vanished, and he now seems perfectly happy to let others do the fighting while he just goes out and scores goals. Something else that impressed me about Doyle was unrelated to lacrosse — during the national anthems, he stands perfectly still and even sings along to O Canada. I don't understand why players have to keep shifting around during the anthems. Do they think it helps them stay loose? Then why do they sit down on the bench when they're not playing? Why not stand behind the bench, shifting from foot to foot? And players who take off and continue their warm-up before the anthems are over really annoy me. Anyway, kudos to Doyle for showing respect.

The Doyle trade is one of those "I remember when I heard about..." moments for me. I am an occasional Wikipedia editor (OK, more than occasional, I have made over 7,000 edits to Wikipedia pages), and the day after the trade, I went to Wikipedia to look at my watchlist (a list of changes to pages I'm interested in), and one of the changes was to the Colin Doyle page, which I created. The only thing that was changed on the page was the first line:

Colin "Popeye" Doyle (b. September 8, 1977 in Kitchener, Ontario) is a lacrosse player for the San Jose Stealth of the National Lacrosse League.

"San Jose Stealth?" I thought, "Stupid vandals." Vandalism is something that happens all too often on Wikipedia, so I was all ready to revert the change, but then I noticed a new paragraph that described a trade in more detail (i.e. who was involved). The next thought I had was not "vandalism", but more something along the lines of "no fucking way!" and went screaming over to NLL.com to see if it was really true. It was.

In the two seasons since he was traded, while watching the Rock struggle to score goals, I came to realize just how valuable Colin Doyle was to the team. This coming season, the Stealth are playing in Toronto for the first time since the trade, so I'm looking forward to seeing Doyle play again, even if it is against the Rock rather than for them.

Bill and Jerry buy shoes

I don't post links or videos that often, but I had to throw this one up. This is the first in a series of Microsoft commercials featuring Jerry Seinfeld, and while not as good as the "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" ones from Apple, it's pretty funny. Bill Gates actually does a pretty decent job, and his Platinum Shoe Circus Clown Club card is hilarious.

The Trade I

As I wrote about the other day, Anthony Cosmo was traded from San Jose to Chicago. Cosmo is a former Toronto Rock goaltender, and was traded to San Jose in the summer of 2004, essentially for Josh Sanderson (at least, they were the two biggest names in the trade). This was the biggest trade in Rock history, up until the Doyle trade of two years later, and was known to Rock fans simply as The Trade (just as Jays fans used to think of the Alomar and Carter for Fernandez and McGriff deal).

Though excited about having Josh Sanderson on the Rock, I remember thinking at the time that trading Cosmo would come back to bite the Rock later on. Despite the fact that Cosmo has blossomed into one of the best goalies in the league, I was wrong on this one. This turned out to be a fabulous trade for the Rock.

For four seasons, Cosmo was the Rock's backup goaltender, behind the legendary Bob "Whipper" Watson. During most of that time, Whipper was the definite #1 goalie and Cosmo was the backup. Beginning in 2003, Cosmo began playing more often, and when Whipper got injured, Cosmo took over. He played in nine of sixteen games in 2004, as he and Whipper more or less shared the goalie job. Whipper was in his mid 30's at the time while Cosmo was more than seven years younger. I distinctly remember one game where Whipper started but didn't play very well and was pulled in the first quarter. Cosmo finished the game, and played amazing. I remember wondering if we had just seen the unofficial transition from the Watson era of Rock history to the Cosmo era. Beginning that night, I assumed that Cosmo would be the starting Rock goaltender the next season, with Watson serving as the backup, if he didn't retire. Never happened. The Cosmo era, if it ever truly began, ended a couple of months after the 2004 season ended.

In a blockbuster deal, Toronto traded fan favourite Steve Toll, defenseman Darryl Gibson (later to become an all-star), two draft picks and a player to be named later to the San Jose Stealth for the single-season assist record holder and master playmaker Josh Sanderson, his cousin Phil Sanderson (another soon-to-be all star defenseman), and Rusty Kruger (who happened to be a good friend of Josh). It wasn't officially part of the trade announcement, but it was widely known that the Rock "player to be named later" was Anthony Cosmo. It was weird that someone as good as Cosmo was a "player to be named later" in a trade, but that wasn't the weirdest thing about The Trade.

The league was about to hold an expansion draft for the new Minnesota Swarm. Each team was allowed to protect a certain number of players and the Swarm would be allowed to pick one unprotected player from each team. As part of the deal with the Stealth, the Rock were obligated to protect Cosmo. Not only was this weird because it meant that they had to leave someone else unprotected, but the Stealth already had two very good goalies (Brandon Miller and Rob Blasdell), both of whom were protected. So the Stealth, essentially, forced the Rock to protect one of their goalies, allowing them to end up with three. This made little sense, as Cosmo started the majority of games for the Stealth the next season, with Miller and Blasdell seeing little floor time. Blasdell was left unprotected in the next season's expansion draft, and was selected by Edmonton (who immediately traded him to Arizona).

Many lacrosse fans raised a Spockian eyebrow at The Trade announcement since Josh's father Terry Sanderson was the GM and head coach of the Rock at the time. Some wondered if he gave up too much to acquire his son, his nephew, and his son's best friend. But nepotism aside, The Trade turned the Rock into an offensive powerhouse. Josh Sanderson combined with Colin Doyle and Blaine Manning to make the Rock one of the most potent offensive lineups in NLL history. In 2005, Doyle led the league in scoring, Manning was tied for second, and Sanderson was tied for fourth. Josh set a new single-season record for assists. Doyle, Manning and Josh were named to the All-Star and All-Pro teams, and Doyle was named league MVP as the Rock won their fifth championship in seven years. In 2006, all three were again All-Stars, as was Phil Sanderson, Josh led the league in both assists and points, and Doyle and Josh made the All-Pro team again.

After 2006, the Rock went downhill quickly. Terry Sanderson was fired, and Colin Doyle was inexplicably traded to the Stealth. Without Terry to fight for him, Josh became unpopular with management, and he was traded to the Calgary Roughnecks during the 2008 season. The Rock finished below .500 in both 2007 and 2008 (their worst records ever), and they missed the playoffs in 2008 for the first time in team history.

But what about Cosmo? He became the starter in San Jose that Rock fans knew he would. He made the All-Star team in 2005 and 2006, was named Goaltender of the Year in 2007, and is now widely regarded as one of the best in the league. And yet the Rock traded him away — so why was this still a great trade? Because of Bob Watson. In the four seasons since The Trade, Watson has simply been outstanding. He made the All-Pro team in 2005 and 2008, and was named Goaltender of the Year in 2008 at the age of 38 — on a team that went 7-9. He's had a couple of different backups (Phil Wetherup and Mike Poulin), neither of whom has played often because Watson is a workhorse. Trading Cosmo didn't hurt the Rock because even if they hadn't, he wouldn't have gotten much playing time. The fact that the Rock pretty much sucked last year and the year before is irrelevant — their suckage was not Watson's fault, and having Cosmo in goal wouldn't have changed things.

The Rock had an excess of talent and traded some of it away for a championship. That's the quintessential example of a great trade.

My blogging legacy

Some actual searches that reached my blog in the last month:

• Google Search: circumcise waterpark
• Google Search: is clay buchholz uncircumcised
• Yahoo Search: "other words for penis"
• Google Search: is charlie sheen circumcised?
• Google Search: is wayne gretzky circumcised

Geez... I wrote one article on circumcision, and searches are still hitting it over two years later. It is also the current cutthechatter.com record-holder for comments, with twelve. I guess it was on the cutting edge (har).

As a comparison, an article on the circus that I wrote the same month has zero comments, and I've never seen a single search hit that one. I guess penises are big on the internet! Wait, that's not what I meant...

The Teat Crutch

Here is a link to an anagram server, where you enter some phrase and it will give you English anagrams for that phrase. I tried my name and got some good ones:

• Wee programer (OK, programmer is spelled wrong)
• Pregame rower
• Eager rep worm
• Grow 'em, reaper
• Re: Power gamer
• Ram ewe groper

Then I tried "Cut The Chatter" and got these:

• Chat the cutter (natch)
• Cut the ratchet
• Hatchet cutter
• The teat crutch
• That cute retch

My favourite anagram of all time (I remember seeing Johnny Carson interviewing Dick Cavett a zillion years ago; they were talking about anagrams and mentioned this one): Spiro Agnew → Grow a penis

Home Reno

We did some a little bit of home renovation this past weekend. Actually, it was more destruction than renovation.

One of the "features" of our house when we bought it in July, 1997 was the dry sauna in the basement. It was a nice little cedar room with a sauna heater in it. A few days after we moved in, we turned it on, found that it worked, and turned it off again a few minutes later. That was the last time it was used. We've used it primarily as storage ever since, but we're considering getting the basement finished sometime over the next year or two, and we knew that this room was going to be the first thing to go, so we did it ourselves.

On Sunday morning, we removed the door and the drywall from the outside of the right-hand wall and that was about it. Monday morning I took this "before" picture:
By about 2:00 on Monday afternoon, the room was gone, and we had piles of cedar and 2x4 studs piled in our garage. We moved a couple of bookshelves over as well as a loveseat, and now we have a nice little sitting area:

The only drawback is that you can now see the insulation in the walls, where it was hidden before. However, the rest of the basement isn't finished either, so there's insulation all over the place. Other than a couple of tiny cuts on my hand and a few slivers here and there, there were no injuries, and nothing got damaged that wasn't supposed to. The only downside to the day was that it was beautiful outside, possibly the last beautiful weekend of the summer, while we were in the basement all day.

A couple of trades

First: Former NLL Goalie of the Year Anthony Cosmo was traded from San Jose to Chicago for Matt Roik and a couple of draft picks. I originally thought that this was a strange trade for San Jose to make, since Cosmo is a much better goalie than Roik. But it's not as if Roik isn't any good at all, and San Jose now has two of the top three picks in this years draft, which is apparently quite deep, so this could turn out to be a good deal for San Jose. Chicago improved quite a lot at the trade deadline last year, and now having Cosmo between the pipes, they might pull a Minnesota and start contending earlier than anyone thought. It will be nice to see Cosmo play in Toronto again, since he hasn't played here since The Trade.

Second: The Jays traded Matt Stairs to the Phillies on the weekend. I guess the theory is that the Jays are out of it and Stairs is 40, so (a) having him this year won't make any difference, and (b) he's too old to be of much value next year. Part (a) is right, but part (b) is hogwash. That's what a number of other teams thought before last year, and he's played two outstanding years with the Jays. He's also a fan favourite and a good Canadian boy, so I don't really understand this move. Ricciardi has made some pretty good moves this year (the Rolen for Glaus trade was good, and Marco Scutaro has been awesome), but this is the second of two that I don't agree with.