We're heading to the UK this evening, so I will not likely be blogging much over the next couple of weeks. Maybe I'll get a chance to write from London or Scotland like I did from Paris, but I wouldn't count on it. If you find that you can't live without regular updates from my blog... well that's just sad, but here is another way to get the same amount of wisdom and insight as you'll generally find here.
In case you're curious, here's a map of where we're going to be. Cheerio!
Every year, baseball writers around North America vote on which retired ball players, coaches, and managers will be enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The voters have rules to follow, since you only want the best of the best in the Hall. But not all of the rules make sense, and there are some unwritten rules which are just ridiculous.
There seem to be some voters for whom precedent is extremely important. For example, no player has ever been inducted with more than 98% of the vote. When Cal Ripken became eligible, there was no doubt that he belonged in the Hall – every baseball fan (and writer) knew this. But some writers purposely did not vote for Ripken because they felt that if they did vote for him, the vote might have been more than 98%. The baffling logic is that if Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and George Brett didn't get 99%, then Cal Ripken shouldn't either.
One of the rules that has always confused me is that only a certain number of people can be inducted in a single year. Why? What is the point of limiting the number of inductees? Maybe there's a good reason for such a rule, but I don't see it. But that rule is responsible for this one: there have been people voted in after several years of eligibility because they didn't get enough votes in their first couple of years. This means that some voters did not vote for player X one year, but did the next. What changed? The player in question has been retired for years anyway, his numbers didn't change, the "intangibles" and "leadership" (and all those other weasel words that they use on players whose stats may not stack up as well as others) didn't change, so why was he not worthy last year but he is now? The voters' reasoning on this is a direct result of the rule limiting the number of inductees: player X does deserve to be in the Hall of Fame, but maybe he deserves it slightly less than some other potential inductees. So we'll vote for those other players (unless of course we think they might get more than 98% of the vote) this year, and then vote for player X next year.
I don't get it. The Hall of Fame is not an ordered list of players. If someone deserves to be there, vote for him. If he gets 100% of the vote, well good for him, but it doesn't mean that he's better than Ruth or Cobb. If there's no limit on how many can get inducted in one year, then whether someone gets in on the first ballot or the third is irrelevant, so just vote for who deserves to be there and be done with it. Who knows - maybe in another ten or twenty years when the dinosaur writers of the "old boys club" have all retired, some younger writers with less of an agenda might clean up the voting process a little bit and get rid of these insane unwritten rules.
I've written before about stability in the NLL, since teams relocate more often than a Waterloo co-op student. The trend continues. After five years of low attendance in San Jose, the Stealth are moving to Everett, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. As much as I want to see this succeed, I just can't.
The successful teams in the NLL are all downtown – Colorado, Philadelphia, Toronto, Calgary, Buffalo, even Rochester. Of course, New York proves that this isn't always going to work, but the last time the NLL tried to move a team into a suburb of a major city (Chicaco), that team folded after two seasons because of low attendance, and Seattle is smaller than Chicago and has no lacrosse history that I know of. It's fairly close to BC, which has lots of lacrosse history, so that could help.
I think the naming of the team could have a big effect. Having the team called the Everett whatevers will not help convince people that this is a big-time league (and quite honestly, having a team in Rochester doesn't help with that either). All the press releases I've seen about this move specifically say that the team is moving to Everett, not Seattle, so I doubt it will be called the Seattle whatevers. If it's called the Washington whatevers, I think that will help, but regardless of the name, unless tons of Vancouver people make the drive down, I don't see this team lasting more than a year, maybe two.
What is it about Sidney Crosby that he can't buy respect? Seems that either hockey fans love him or hate him. But those who hate him don't seem to be saying "I respect that he's a great player but I don't like him", or "I don't like this particular aspect of his game" or whatever, it's more like they think he's overrated and simply not that great a player. I don't understand this.
In his four NHL seasons, he's been named to the All-Star game three times, won the Art Ross (most points), Lester B. Pearson (best player as voted by his peers), and Hart (MVP) trophies, and he's only 21 years old. According to Wikipedia, he's the youngest player in NHL history to:
Most importantly, he took the Penguins from worst team in the league to Stanley Cup contenders in three years and Stanley Cup champs in four. Sure, he didn't do it alone, Messrs. Malkin and Fleury helped, among others, but the acquisition of Crosby by the Penguins turned that team around in a big hurry. He's been called a whiner, but so was Gretzky when he was young, and if that's the worst thing you can say about a hockey player, that's not bad.
People can have whatever opinion about Crosby that they want. Is he the best player in the league? Probably not, I think Ovechkin has him beat there. It could be argued that given Evgeni Malkin, he's not even the best player on his own team. But given the stats above, I don't understand how anyone can question that he's one of the top five.
Note: the picture was stolen from nhLOL.blogspot.com.
I got an email from Jim Balsillie's MakeItSeven.ca group today, asking me to send an email to Gary Bettman asking him why he's against having another NHL team in Southern Ontario. While I applaud the content of the message, did anyone from the MakeItSeven camp really think this through? Great idea guys, let's show Mr. Bettman the error of his ways by flooding his inbox with tens of thousands of identical form emails. That's bound to convince him to think about the issue objectively.
I disagree with Gary Bettman on this issue, but he's no idiot. Trust me, Bettman knows about the MakeItSeven thing and he knows that there are many thousands of people in Southern Ontario signed up for it. Spamming him is going to do nothing but piss him off.
I came up with the idea for this chart today at lunch, when I suggested that Nicky have a nap in the afternoon and he looked at me like I had three heads. My friend Lynda, on the other hand, thought it was a great idea. The whole chart idea comes from a very funny blog called GraphJam.
In order to renew my license plate sticker, I needed to get a Drive Clean test. The car in question is a 2004 Sunfire, which I bought brand new in July of 2004 and now has about 152,000 km on it. Here are the results:
| ASM 2525* | ||
| Test | Limit | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| HC ppm | 66 | 6 |
| CO % | 0.37 | 0.00 |
| NO ppm | 505 | 0 |
| Curb Idle | ||
| Test | Limit | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| HC ppm | 150 | 5 |
| CO % | 0.70 | 0.00 |
* – whatever that means
If these numbers were ten times worse than they are, my car still would have passed the test. And yet thousands of busses and trucks that spew out vast quantities of thick black smoke (and travel more kilometers in a day than I do in a week, even with my 165 km/day commute) don't need this test. I wrote about this once before, and unfortunately, the questions raised in that post remain unanswered.
Gary Bettman says that the fact that he's opposing Jim Balsillie's attempt to purchase the Phoenix Coyotes is not in any way personal. Seeing as this is the third time that Balsillie has attempted to buy an NHL franchise and Bettman has prevented it every time, this is a little hard to believe. Jim Kelley wrote the other day about the number of NHL franchise owners that have been in prison over the last few years, including "Boots" Del Biaggio, who borrowed money from Nashville Predators owner Craig Leipold to buy the Predators. Let me say that another way – Del Biaggio borrowed money from Leipold to buy a team owned by Leipold. Then it turned out that the remainder of the money Boots claimed to have didn't exist. Even after Del Biaggio declared bankruptcy (and headed to prison for fraud), Bettman blocked Balsillie's attempt to buy him out. And Bettman himself chose Del Biaggio over Balsillie. Balsillie has zillions of dollars, loves hockey, and most importantly he wants to be an NHL owner. Is he not the kind of guy that Bettman should be trying to get as an owner? Why is there even a question here?
Having said that, I do understand the NHL's position on the movement thing. If an owner can up and move a franchise without the league's permission, this sets a dangerous precedent for other leagues. What if Balsillie's wife was from Timmins? What if Joe Zillionaire buys the Detroit Red Wings or the Dallas Cowboys and decides to move them to Butte, Montana? Or northern Saskatchewan? The league needs to have a say in where its teams are and if they can be moved.
Having said that, I don't understand why Bettman refuses to take a team that has lost money every year for fourteen years (some say they've lost over $350 million in that time) and move it to a hotbed of hockey. He says it's not a Canada vs. U.S. thing, but he certainly didn't try this hard to keep a team in Winnipeg or Quebec City. Perhaps it could negatively impact the Buffalo Sabres, but anyone who thinks it would reduce the Leafs' profits by one penny is delusional. To my knowledge, Bettman hasn't even investigated the possibility to see how, or if, Buffalo would be impacted.
But here's the question that I haven't heard Bettman answer: even if Balsillie is wrong and the team doesn't succeed in Hamilton, would the franchise lose any more money than it would by staying in Phoenix?
I watched an episode of Star Trek: Voyager a little while ago, and wondered what happened to the actors on that show. After some investigation on Wikipedia and IMDB, I found that other than Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine), none of them had had significant roles in anything after Voyager ended. I did some more searching and found that to be true of just about every actor in every Star Trek series.
Note that when I say "nothing" below, I mean nothing of significance in terms of movie or TV acting. Many of these actors have gone on to do other things (directing, stage acting, music, etc.), and some have appeared in single episodes of shows or bit parts in movies, but I'm looking for significant roles.
William Shatner went on to to do T.J. Hooker and Boston Legal and some movie roles, but is mostly famous for being William Shatner.
Walter Koenig was on Babylon 5 for a while.
Leonard Nimoy, James Doohan, DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei: nothing.
Patrick Stewart : X-Men, lots of voice acting
Brent Spiner: A small part in Independence Day
Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Gates McFadden, LeVar Burton, Wil Wheaton: nothing.
Michael Dorn was on DS9 for a year or two.
Terry Farrell was on Becker for four years
Avery Brooks, Nana Visitor, Cirroc Lofton, Armin Shimerman, Colm Meaney: nothing.
Alexander Siddig was in a few episodes of 24
Rene Auberjonois was on Boston Legal for a couple of years
Jeri Ryan – Boston Public, Shark
Kate Mulgrew, Robert Beltran, Tim Russ, Roxann Dawson, Robert Duncan McNeill, Garrett Wang, Robert Picardo, Ethan Philips, Jennifer Lien : Nothing
Scott Bakula, Jolene Blalock, Linda Park, Anthony Montgomery, John Billingsley: nothing
Dominic Keating (Reed) was on Lost for four episodes and Connor Trinneer (Trip) was on Stargate Atlantis for 9 episodes.
So of all of the forty actors listed above, only Shatner and Stewart have had starring roles in anything else. Of the rest, only Jeri Ryan and Terry Farrell have had anything more than a recurring guest role on a TV show. That's four out of forty that have done anything significant since Star Trek. The other 90% have seen their acting careers wane or vanish completely.
Update: Just to be clear, I am not saying that these people are all washed-up has-beens, and I'm not suggesting that they are all sitting at home staring at the phone hoping someone will call them with a gig. Like I said, some are directing, some are acting on the stage, others may have moved on to other things. I know from reading his blog that Wil Wheaton is now a writer, blogger, and part-time actor, and is perfectly happy with that. I just figured that with the number of actors that had become successful through a Star Trek TV show, a greater percentage would stay with TV/movie acting and more would end up with starring or major supporting roles than actually did.
On Friday night, we went to the Stratosphere for dinner, which might well be the single most expensive meal I have ever had. Gail and I got the "dinner for two", which was one price for two appetizers, chateaubriand for two, and a dessert to split. We had a Caesar salad and the lobster bisque, both of which were excellent. Our chateaubriand was rarer than Gail likes, but Jeff and Kerri also got the dinner for two, and theirs was more well done than ours, so Jeff and I split the medium-rare one while the girls split the well-done one. The dessert was a Chocolate Stratosphere (see picture), which was basically a sculpture of the Stratosphere itself made out of chocolate on top of chocolate sauce, with vanilla sauce drizzled on top. Yum.
Our final bill only had three items on it:
Dinner for two: $170
Tea: $3.50
Tea: $3.50
The food was outstanding, and the view was pretty amazing as well. It's a fair ways from the rest of the big hotels on the Strip though. We took the monorail to the northernmost stop and then walked about ten minutes to get there, but it certainly wasn't the nicest part of town that we were walking through. I didn't think it was that bad, but some of our group were downright frightened. It's just too bad that they didn't build the Stratosphere a little further south, so it was more in the middle of the Strip instead of way at the north end. The views of the Strip would have been even better.
After the Stratosphere, we visited Fremont Street, which Gail and I missed on our last trip. This is where the older casinos are, along with the famous neon sign with the cowboy. They've modernized it by adding this huge video display board that acts as a mile-long ceiling covering the entire street, and they have these cool video shows every hour or so. Apart from that, though, we didn't find Fremont St. all that interesting. Just more casinos and hotels, none of which are as interesting (or anywhere near as big) as anything on the Strip.
On Saturday night, we took a shuttle bus from Paris over to the Rio, which is just off the strip. We had dinner at an Irish pub before taking in the Penn and Teller show. If you've never seen Penn & Teller and you like magic or comedy or both, I highly recommend it. They seem an unlikely pair – Penn is exceptionally tall (his Wikipedia entry says he's 6' 6" but he said during the show that he was 6' 7") with a three-inch goatee (no moustache) and a long ponytail and never stops talking, while Teller is 5' 9" and clean-shaven with short hair and didn't say a single word while on stage (we sat close to the stage and I did hear him talk to one of the audience members who was helping out). As magicians, they are two of the best, but they're extremely funny as well. Unlike David Copperfield, who seems to want you to believe that what he's doing is real magic, these guys will be the first to tell you that there is no magic – everything they're doing is misdirection in one form or another. They stop short of telling you exactly how the tricks are done, but they do drop more hints than other magicians. At one point, Penn begins a trick by saying only "This next trick is done with a piece of thread" and then walking off-stage. Teller then appears to make a ball follow his hand around and jump on its own, but even "knowing" that a piece of thread is involved, we were still mystified as to how it worked. Another trick involved a light projecting a silhouette of a flower onto a piece of paper on an easel. Teller then took a knife and cut leaves and petals off of the silhouette, while the leaves and petals dropped off of the original flower. He then "cut" his hand and while no blood could be seen on his hand, the silhouette of his hand had blood dripping off of it. When he wiped his hand on the paper, bright red blood showed up on the paper while his hand was still undamaged.
Incidentally, if you get there early, check out the jazz duo opening the show. We were in the fourth row on the same side as them, and had a good view. Both the piano player and the stand-up bass player are excellent musicians, but the bass player seemed to be trying to hide his face (with the long goatee) from the audience. He was also exceptionally tall.
Sunday morning, Nicole and Steve took a cab to the airport to pick up two rental cars – both Dodge Chargers – and we drove out to Hoover Dam, about 45 minutes away (or, as it turns out, an hour and a half if you take the wrong highway). First off, I always thought that Chargers were so-called "muscle cars" but if that was a muscle car, then I'm the world's foremost tech blogger. Maybe there's a V8 version that's more powerful, but the 6-cylinder models we got were pretty gutless – and that comes from someone who drives a Sunfire. The dam itself is pretty impressive, as is the way they constructed it. They had to dig four mile-long tunnels to divert the water from the river, then build the dam itself, then plug the tunnels. The tunnels took almost as long to build as the dam, and there's enough concrete in the dam to pave Rhode Island. They poured concrete 24/7 for almost three years to build it. I could go on and on spouting off facts about the dam, but that's all available online. Similar to the Grand Canyon, reading about it and seeing pictures of it are interesting enough, but you can't really appreciate the size and scope of it until you actually see it. Suffice it to say that if you ever go there, the full tour is highly recommended.
A new City Centre complex is being built right on the Strip, between the Monte Carlo and the Bellagio, which consists of several hotels and (gasp!) casinos, as well as some buildings with apartments and condos (can you imagine living right on the Strip?) and even a grocery store. Right now the whole thing just looks like a big eyesore. There are a number of buildings all crammed together and they seem to employ different architectural styles (some buildings are, by design, not completely vertical), and the whole thing is just ugly. Hopefully, that's just because of the construction and when they're done it will be better, but I'm not hopeful.
Anyway, a good time was had by all in Sin City. Mental note: remember for the future that there's no such thing as a "cheap trip to Vegas".
In front of the main door of the building I work in, there are several handicapped parking spots, as there should be. To the west of the main door is the door I usually use. When you open that door, there is a step up (no ramp), and the hallway you enter leads directly to a stairwell and nothing else. There is no way to access the main floor using that door (well, there is a door into an unfinished storage area on the main floor, but that door is permanently locked).
So why are there five handicapped parking spots in front of that door?
