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.

More great pitching, more sucky hitting

All season long, the Jays have pitched well, but just can't get any hits. Halladay and Burnett have 16 wins each. Shaun Marcum was sent down to Syracuse recently, supposedly to work through his control issues. They decided to send him down because the Jays "couldn't afford" to keep him in the rotation if they want to make the post season. This is silly — the Jays have so little hope of getting to the postseason this season that this move really makes no sense. Dustin McGowan wasn't having a great season before getting injured, and what happens? Two more pitchers step up, just as McGowan and Marcum did last year. Jesse Litch is 9-7 with an ERA around 4.00, and tonight David Purcey pitched a complete game 5-hitter and struck out 11, and lost 1-0. Absolutely brutal.

I really hope that the Jays hitters do some serious batting practice during the off-season, cause this is ridiculous.

Gettin' it right

Major League Baseball is preparing to introduce video replay, so that the umpires can look at a replay to determine if a ball actually cleared the fence for a home run, or whether a ball that did clear the fence was fair or foul. This stems from a couple of issues they had earlier this season where the umpires clearly got the calls wrong. I think these are the only kinds of plays that they will be using replay for — not safe or out on the bases, not strikes and balls, and not whether a batter who checked his swing went around or not.

The best thing about this idea is that it will take away the whining by players, coaches, and fans about how they would have won the game were it not for that bad call by the ump. With video replay, the umpires bad call can be reversed if it truly was a bad call, meaning that if you lose the game it's not because of the umpires, it's just because you didn't score as many runs as the other team, so quitcher whining.

I was going to make disparaging comments about baseball purists who probably won't like this. I won't because while I like the idea of using video replay, I don't think it should be used for balls and strikes at all. That needs to be decided by a human. I can't explain why, it just does. I guess this means that the whiners can still say that they lost a game because of a bad call. Oh well.

I wouldn't have a problem if they also used video replay on things like whether a runner was safe or out. The only problem there is that they'd need to limit how often they did this, or managers would be calling for a replay ten times a game, which would slow the game down. Maybe only for plays at the plate, or maybe managers could not call for a review more than twice per nine-inning game. Maybe give 'em one more if the game goes into extra innings, and then another every five innings after that.

Some are concerned that this will slow the game down too much. As long as it's not abused by managers wanting a replay of every other play, I don't think this will be a problem. As Dan Shulman said the other day on the radio, either we wait while the umpires spend a few minutes talking and hope that they get the call right, or we wait while the umpires spend a few minutes looking at the replay and actually get the call right.

There is one thing that concerns me and one thing that confuses me. The thing that concerns me is that umpires will have a safety net. If there's a bang-bang play at the plate, the umpire has to make a split-second decision on whether the running was safe or out. That decision, 99.99% of the time, is final. But if the ump knows that if he gets the call wrong, the replay will bail him out, he may not worry as much about whether he gets it right. OK, hang on.... before I even finished writing that previous sentence, I realized how ridiculous it was. If anything, it's completely backwards. It's more likely that umpires will not want to be shown to be wrong by the video replay, so they're probably more likely to try to get the call right the first time.

The thing that confuses me is that they will start using this system on Thursday. Shouldn't they be testing the crap out of it in the minor leagues first before implementing it at the major league level? You just know that there are going to be problems with the system for a while after it goes live for the first time — especially if it's been implemented quickly. Do you want those glitches and mistakes to be made in September, when the most important games of the season are being played? Or worse, during a playoff game? I'd put it in place in the minor leagues now, and use that plus spring training next year to iron out the kinks before using it for real next season. Changes like this just should not be made mid-season.

The Olympics

I love the Olympics. I can't explain why, but I'm one of those people who doesn't give a crap about most of these sports at any other time, but will happily watch them during the Olympics. On Monday night, Gail and I watched women's 100m hurdles, 200m sprint, and gymnastics. The other morning while working out, I put the Australia-Japan women's softball game on and kept watching for another half-hour after my workout because it was such a great game. I eventually had leave the game in the 9th inning to go have a shower and get ready for work, so I missed Japan scoring the winning run in the 12th.

Olympic sports I love watching:

• gymnastics — gymnasts have to be graceful and artistic, but very strong as well. I particularly love the rings, high and uneven bars, and vault, and the balance beam is brutally difficult. We watched American Shawn Johnson (who looks like she's 4'6" and 75 pounds soaking wet) win a well-deserved gold medal the other day by nailing her routine on the beam. Even rhythmic gymnastics isn't bad.
• swimming — Not sure if it's the swimming itself that I enjoy watching, or just watching how far ahead of everyone else Michael Phelps can get.
• men's 100m sprint — truly the fastest men on the planet. This Bolt guy is unbelievable — he put his arms up (which has got to slow you down) with 20m left in the race (i.e. he'd only completed 80% of it), and still set a world record. The Canadian in the race said that Bolt could probably do a cartwheel at the end of the race and still win.
• beach volleyball — if you had asked me before it was added to the Olympics whether it should be there, I would have said unequivocally no. But I enjoy watching it. And not only because the women's event consists of very fit women jumping around in bikinis.
• diving and synchronized diving — synchronized diving is another sport that I questioned when I heard of it being added, but I still like watching it.

Olympic sports I don't:

• water polo — I watched part of a match last week, and it was more boring than soccer, if that's possible.
• BMX racing — Are you kidding? If this is in, where's skateboarding? Or hacky sack? How seriously can you take a sport whose athletes include someone whose legal name is Kamikaze?
• synchronized swimming — The first time I ever saw this, I thought it was a joke someone made up, like something you'd see on The Onion. I'm still laughing. Yes it's difficult, and no I couldn't do it, but come on.
• equestrian events — the horses should be getting the medals here. Not that getting the horse to do these things is easy, but it's the horse doing the real physical work (i.e. the thing that makes it a sport), not the rider. These events should be testing an athlete's physical abilities (i.e. strength, agility, stamina, etc.), not the ability to control a horse.
• race walking — I find it hard to watch these people with their butts wiggling back and forth and not giggle.

I have wondered for several years now why lacrosse is not in the Olympics. It was, back in 1908, and was then a demonstration sport in 1928, 1932, and 1948, but not since. Apparently to be considered, a sport has to be widely practiced in at least 75 countries (50 for women's sports) over at least four continents. OK, this is probably not true for lacrosse. But I have a hard time believing that it's true for beach volleyball, water polo, table tennis, handball, rhythmic gymnastics, trampoline, synchronized swimming or synchronized diving. When was the last time some roads were closed in your town for a big race walking event?

Movie review: The Clone Wars

We saw the new Star Wars movie The Clone Wars last night. Before I write about this movie, let me say that I loved the original trilogy. I have watched the movies countless times and can quote whole passages from all three. When The Phantom Menace came out in 1999, Gail and I were there on opening day, even though Gail was six months pregnant at the time. I remember not liking the movie as much as I hoped I would (curse yousa, Jar Jar Binks), but almost feeling like I was betraying George Lucas and the original trilogy if I stated my displeasure. Others were not so concerned, and felt that Lucas betrayed them with the prequel trilogy. I think that's a little strong, but either way, I liked the prequel trilogy less than the original one. The movies were good, but not up to the standard of the first three (though Revenge of the Sith was close).

Now, onto The Clone Wars. I knew that this was animated and that most of the voices were not done by the actors from the live action movies, so my expectations weren't all that high. But I do not feel the slightest bit like I'm betraying anyone by saying that this movie sucked. The animation of the space scenes and robots was good, but the animation of people was really bad. The movement was really jerky, the lip syncing was terrible, and it looked like the animation hadn't been finished yet — Obi-Wan's beard consisted of a series of rectangles. Given the level of human animation in Beowulf, the animation in this movie should have been a lot better.

Now, in all fairness, there is a reason that the animation was so bad. This movie is essentially a pilot for a new cartoon series that will be appearing on TV next year. I guess they can't spend zillions of dollars in animation for that, so they decided not to spend zillions on the pilot.

Anyway, back to the movie. The basic problem I had with it, aside from the animation, was that it was aimed at a younger crowd. Revenge of the Sith was violent, dark, and disturbing. It was so not aimed at kids that my kids have yet to see it, and I will not let them see it for a number of years. This one had lots of jokes, slapstick humour and even forgetful battle droids (though I never liked the battle droids in any of the prequel movies — either make them emotionless robots with no personality or don't, they seem to be a bit of both). In this movie, one forgets a series of numbers told to him by another one. When I was six I would have complained about that — these are robots, they don't forget stuff! There were too many attempts at humour, some funny, some not. I know that in a lot of action movies, people are making jokes while fighting for their lives, but it seemed like it was happening too often here.

As for the plot, weak. In The Phantom Menace, they mentioned that Tatooine is way out on the outer rim — so far away that Qui-Gon cannot use Republic credits as currency. Now, the Hutts control the critical shipping lanes around Tatooine, and getting them on the side of the Republic is crucial. Where do these critical shipping lanes go if the planet is on the outer rim? Anakin takes a padawan who calls him Master, but he complains in Revenge of the Sith because they won't make him a master. And in Revenge of the Sith, he doesn't have a padawan. Where did she go?

Also, if Anakin was on Tatooine, why didn't he go and find his mother then, even for a visit? It would have been lovely — they could have barbecued up some womprat and had some blue milk. Ani, why don't you call your mother more often?

Finally, Frank Oz didn't voice Yoda. Nobody said "I have a bad feeling about this". John Williams didn't do the score. George Lucas didn't even write it. Given all that, can it really be called a Star Wars movie?

Less than five minutes into the movie, Gail asked me "George Lucas sanctioned this?" and I have to assume he did. Maybe he didn't actually watch it first. (Then again, this is the guy who created Jar Jar Binks.) My kids will love it, but we'll wait until it's out on video and then rent it for them. Neither of us can stand the thought of bringing them to the theatre to see it and having to sit through it again.

Fern 2008

Last week was our annual trip to Fern Resort. It seemed a little different this year compared to last year:

• The guys didn't go golfing this year. Mike wasn't there and Jerry is recovering from surgery, so me and Jeff decided to stick to the 5-hole course at Fern. I played once with Nicky and once with both Nicky and Ryan.
• We didn't go into the woods at all. There are several kilometers of trails in the woods, and you can rent bikes and pedal carts or just walk, but we just never made it there
• Gail didn't do any archery, which is something she loves doing at Fern. It just didn't work out with the schedule.
• Gail missed a day thanks to a migraine. Between lunch and dinner she stayed in the room with the blinds closed and a pillow over her head.
• I played tennis four times, rather than the usual one, and entered two tournaments — one doubles (with Jeff) and one singles. Jeff and I won our first round match in the doubles tournament and then got beat in the second round. In the singles tournament, I got beat in the first round by some teenager (who was good enough that he didn't even bother attending the clinic beforehand) and then lost again in the second round. Jeff made it to the finals but lost 3 games to 2.
• the pool was amazingly warm — I just walked in, with no need to "get used to the water", even for a few seconds. Ahhhh.

Some things were similar to previous years — I had fun playing four-way beach volleyball and water volleyball, the food was excellent as always (they had peanut butter pie twice this year), and Nicky got on stage again. Last year he helped out a magician, and this year he was called up to play Deal or No Deal for "Fern dollars". He's only six, so he didn't really understand what the game was all about, so when they opened a briefcase and showed him $50 (the maximum prize), he put his hands up and said "Yay!" He was a little disappointed when they told him it meant that he didn't win $50. The first deal offered by the "banker" was $15, and despite everyone in the audience yelling "No deal! No deal!", Nicky took the deal. The "briefcase" he chose contained $15 anyway, so it probably wouldn't have mattered, but he's happy with the T-shirt we bought with his winnings.

We saw Jamie Williams perform again (man, he's good), but this year he had a bit of a surprise — a couple of friends of his were in the audience, so he brought them up on stage and the three of them did a few songs together. This wouldn't have been a big deal, except for the fact that one of them was NHL Hall-of-Famer Brian Trottier. The guy won six Stanley Cups, the Conn Smythe, Hart, Art Ross, Calder, and King Clancy trophies, and is considered one of the best ever to play the game — who knew he could sing, play the guitar, and write songs too?

Jeff brought his Jet-ski again this year, and Ryan and I had fun being pulled around on an inner tube at 25 mph. Nicky went for one ride and then was perfectly happy to spend the rest of the afternoon digging in the sand on the beach, so Ryan and I just kept going out for more Jet-ski rides. After Ryan was done, we untied the inner tube and Jeff took me out for a faster ride. I guess it's been a while since I rode on a Jet-ski rather than behind one (several years), so I didn't lean as much as I should have, so when Jeff took one corner particularly tight, I was launched. Jeff apologized profusely, but believe it or not, I thought that hitting the water at 30 mph was kind of fun. Having said that, I did lean a lot more into the corners after that...

Just like last year, when we left Fern we went north, and dropped the boys off at their grandparents' places for the week. Another week of no lunches (well, just mine), no fighting at bedtime, no drop-off or pick-up... This is our second such week this year — the previous one was our movie week, but for this one, we want to get some more stuff done around the house. The kids are old enough now that we can get a lot of it done with them here anyway, but it'll still be easier not having to stop for bedtime or be quiet after 8:00 or whatever. I would also like to get the forest grass cut at some point, but it just keeps raining...

The most overrated rock artists

1. The Ramones. I simply do not understand the fascination with this band. Sure, Blitzkrieg Bop is a decent song, but that's about it. The singer has a lousy voice, and all of their songs sound the same. People seem all excited about the fact that they only know three chords and aren't great musicians, and this somehow makes them one of the classic American bands. I don't see why. There are other punk bands who are actually decent musicians, and there are thousands of other bands out there that have no musical talent. What makes the Ramones different from them?

2. Queen. I like Queen. They're good musicians, they have some great songs (Bohemian Rhapsody is a true classic), and I like the Greatest Hits album that I have. But I've listened to many of their other albums as well, and the songs that aren't the hits (and even a few that are) just aren't that good. Freddie Mercury was a great singer; in fact thinking about it now, he might be one of the best rock singers ever. Brian May is a very good guitar player, but there are better guitarists out there. Overall, Queen was a very good band, no question. But in 2007, a BBC poll declared them to be "the best British band of all time", ahead of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin. This is ridiculous.

3. Radiohead. I've heard them described as the best band in the world right now. Again, I just don't get it. "OK Computer" is supposed to be their best album and according to Wikipedia, "a landmark album of its time". Rolling Stone and Time magazines both listed it among their greatest albums of all time — Spin magazine says it's the number one album of the past 20 years. I listened to it a few years ago and just found it boring. Maybe it's one of those albums that you hate when you first hear it but grow on you after a while, so perhaps I'll give it another listen.

4. Rod Stewart. Sang a couple of decent songs in the 70's, but ehhh.

5. Aerosmith. Tyler is a decent singer with a unique voice. The rest of the band are good musicians. They've got some good songs but as with Queen, I find that the non-hits are just filler. I got kind of tired of them in the 90's when they did a bunch of "power-ballads", culminating in the completely awful "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing". And listening to someone as ugly as Steven Tyler singing about sex as often as he does is just creepy.

And the blind shall, like, totally see

There's a lot of talk around the world, especially at Christmas time, about the baby Jesus. We know about his parents, when and where he was born (though the "when" is a subject of some debate), and who his early friends were (cows, sheep, drummer boy, wise men). We also know a lot about the adult Jesus — his teachings, miracles, and of course his death (and beyond). But there's twenty-odd years in between that we don't hear much about.

Jesus must have been a toddler as one point, and he likely had tantrums like any other toddler, though my kids' tantrums never caused plagues or rivers to turn to blood or anything. How do you give him a bath when he can walk on the bathwater? Gail and I have enough trouble with Nicholas thinking the world revolves around him; what if everyone else believed it did too? I'm guessing he'd win every game of "my dad is better than your dad".

Here's a scary thought — what about the teenager Jesus? Turning water into wine would make him popular at high school parties. Did he ever say "I don't have to listen to you Joseph, you're not even my real father"?

On the other hand, it would make grocery shopping a lot easier: "We're out of loaves and fishes. Jesus honey, would you mind... that's great, thanks."

Thank you, thank you very much. You've been great. I'm here all week.

Fire Ricciardi and see ya Mats

I haven't written much about sports in a while, partially because lacrosse, hockey, and basketball are all over and not much is happening there. I missed a couple of weeks of baseball while on vacation, and returned to find (gasp) the Jays are pretty much out of the playoff picture. Not really surprising, and this just fuels the talk about whether J.P. Ricciardi should be fired as GM at the end of the season. I've been firmly in Ricciardi's corner during most of his tenure as GM, but I think that experiment is over. We're over 6½ years into Ricciardi's "five year plan" that would see the Jays contending, and they have still yet to play a meaningful game in September (and it won't happen this year). The pitching certainly isn't the problem — AJ Burnett is finally healthy and pitching the way they hoped he would when they signed him (and it only took two and a half years to get there!), Halladay is Halladay, Litch, McGowan, and Marcum are pitching pretty well (when they're not on the DL), and only four pitchers on the whole team have ERAs over 5.00, and none of those four has pitched more than 18 innings.

And then there are the hitters. Alex Rios is having a pretty bad year, and he's leading the team in RBIs (49). Matt Stairs leads the team in homers with a measly 11. Nobody is hitting over .300. They are dead last in the AL in HRs, third last in RBIs, and fourth last in batting average. Compare that to the pitching stats: team ERA is second in the AL, they have the most complete games and the second-most strikeouts. They say good pitching will beat good hitting and I believe that, but to win a 1-0 game, you need to be able to score that one run. A team with good pitching and dismal hitting isn't going anywhere in the post-season.

Is all of this Ricciardi's fault? Is it his fault that half the team has spent time on the DL? Is it his fault that the hitters have forgotten how to hit? I suppose not, but he's still responsible. He's been running the team for almost seven years, and he's got a far bigger budget than any of his predecessors, and the team hasn't had a sniff of the playoffs the entire time.

I'm not sure what should be done with Cito. He came in mid-season and took over a team that wasn't likely to make the playoffs, and led that team to probably their worst finish in four years. But if Cito had managed to fire up the hitters to the point where the Jays even hinted at contending this year, he deserved the coach of the year award. Just because he couldn't do that doesn't mean he's no good — I'm not sure anyone could have. Given the team he had, I think Cito did OK. But if Ricciardi is fired, then whoever the new GM is will want to bring in his own guy, so Cito is likely to be fired too.

Over in the hockey world, Mats Sundin has still not decided what he's doing next year. He's an unrestricted free agent, and so he is under no obligation to anyone to decide quickly, but I'm kind of getting tired of the whole thing. The Leafs aren't likely to do anything other than suck next season with or without Sundin, so I'm not sure why they are still pursuing him. They made him an offer, he hasn't taken it, so just let him go. Thanks for all your contributions in the past, good luck wherever you go, buh-bye. He doesn't owe the Leafs anything, and if he decides to sign with Montreal or Vancouver or New York or anyone else, best of luck to him. If he eventually calls up the Leafs and decides to take their offer, and they still have enough cap room left, great. I'm not against having Sundin back next year, but it'll just make the team suck slightly less. It won't make any difference in the long run.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Everyone is talking about Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, and how fantastic it is and what a genius Joss Whedon is. I like a good funny as much as the next guy, so I checked it out last week and honestly, I just don't get it. It was pretty funny ("Wow, sarcasm! That's original!"), and Neil Patrick Harris was really good, but genius? I wouldn't go that far.

Maybe I need to see more of Whedon's stuff. I've never seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, or Firefly. We did rent the Firefly movie "Serenity" and it was OK, but I thought the same thing at the time: "It was OK, but what's the big deal?" I didn't worry too much about Serenity since I figured you had to know something about the TV show in order to fully appreciate the movie. But Dr. Horrible is a standalone thing and while I enjoyed it, I still didn't get the "genius".

Movie week 2008

Just like last year, the boys spent last week at their grandparents houses (Nicky at Gail's dad's place and Ryan with my parents), and Gail and I had the week to ourselves. One of the things Gail and I miss most about life pre-kids is going out to movies — we do get babysitters now and again so we can go, but it's a hassle and we just don't do it very often, so on our kid-free weeks, we tend to go to a bunch of movies. I think we saw three in the week last year, plus went to the CNE and went to see We Will Rock You as well. This past week, I think I set a personal record for a single week — we saw four movies in five days (plus we rented The Da Vinci Code, the first Hellboy (to prepare ourselves for Hellboy II which we didn't end up seeing anyway), and another movie called Untraceable, which was not bad. It had some techno-babble in it but it seemed like they actually talked to someone who knows technical stuff, since it at least approached making sense, unlike CSI: NY.

This year, we actually have two kid-free weeks, since the boys are doing the grandparents thing again the week after Fern, though they're swapping grandparents. We decided to go to a bunch of movies during the first week, and if we get nothing done around the house, so be it. Then we'll get more stuff done during the second week, though I'm sure a movie or two will still be involved. This past week, we've seen Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on Monday, The X Files: I Want To Believe on Tuesday, The Dark Knight on Wednesday, and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor on Friday (I had a baseball game on Thursday). We were going to see a double feature on Friday with The Mummy and Hellboy II, but many theatres stopped playing Hellboy II on Thursday and started playing The Mummy instead. At the one or two theatres still playing it, we couldn't get the showtimes to match up.

Here are some mini-reviews:

Indiana Jones: Entertaining and fun. Harrison Ford is great, and I liked the fact that they made him older (meaning they didn't try to ignore the fact that he's not 45 anymore) and a little more vulnerable. The story wasn't bad, but if you're expecting another Raiders or Last Crusade, you might be disappointed. The swordfight between the Russian soldier from hell and the teenager was a little silly, made even sillier by the fact that he was standing on a Jeep driven by his mother. She sees her son in a fight to the death and does not stop the Jeep. Still better than the awful Temple of Doom, though.

X Files: I liked it, Gail not so much. It was basically a long episode (which the first X Files movie was not) with a bit of a love story in there too. Billy Connolly was very good, though it's odd that a creepy pedophile turns out to be kind of a good guy. The climax of the film was a little weak, but overall it was pretty good. Gail was worried it would be too scary (a few X-Files episodes creeped her out a little much, and more than one did the same to me — more on this below), but it wasn't that scary. The trailer for the upcoming Mirrors — now that was scary.

The Dark Knight: Wow. Just, wow. I read Roger Ebert's review of this movie after I saw it, and I really shouldn't do that before writing my own review, since I frequently agree with him and now I just want to quote what he said. The acting was outstanding — Christian Bale, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhart (who I don't usually like) and Michael Caine (I can't get used to the Cockney accent, though I believe that's his real accent) were all great, and Heath Ledger was amazing as the very creepy and psychotic Joker. I was wondering if Ledger could "out-Jack" Jack, but to his credit he didn't even try; his Joker was a different kind of crazy than Jack's. I'm surprised I haven't heard any outrage from women's groups over this one — there's all of one significant female character in this whole movie. The only other women who speak are the corrupt cop and a couple of crying wives. Anyway, Ebert's right — this and Batman Begins are a new kind of comic book movie, which is good because until they started over with Batman Begins, the Batman movies were getting steadily worse. Drawback: the Joker's "one of you will die, but you choose which one" schemes reminded me of the movie "Saw".

The Mummy: Another fun-but-silly one. I really liked the first one, though I don't remember the second one much. I do remember that The Rock played the evil Scorpion King, who subsequently got his own movie and somehow became the good guy in that. Anyway, the third one wasn't bad, it had some funny bits and lots of action. The one thing that annoyed me was that they kept saying that they had to prevent the Emperor from doing something as if failing to do that would mean instant doom for everyone. Then he did it anyway, and they decided that they now had to stop him from doing something else. "We have to stop the Emperor from getting the diamond! Oh, he got the diamond. OK, we have to stop the Emperor from putting it at the top of the magic tower! Oh, he did that too. OK, we have to stop the Emperor from getting to Shangri-La! Oh, he's there now. OK..." I guess it's important to set goals for yourself.

The X Files thing I mentioned before: after a particularly creepy X Files episode (no idea which one), Gail said that she couldn't possibly go to bed right away, so we needed to stay up a little later and watch something else to take her mind off of it. I said sure, so we chose something to watch. Gail then said she wanted a Coke, but we didn't have any upstairs, only in the cold room in the basement. Gail opened the door to the basement, looked down the dark staircase, and then turned to me and sweetly asked if I wouldn't mind going to get her one. I didn't quite puff out my chest and deepen my voice, but I gallantly told her that it would be no problem, and I really thought it wouldn't be. I stepped through the open door and flicked on the light switch. As I did, the light bulb in the fixture at the bottom of the basement stairs blew out with a bang. I quickly turned off the light, closed the basement door, and said "Sorry, no Coke tonight". Gail, who was standing next to me, agreed, and we went to get glasses of water.

The VIP Treatment

For my birthday yesterday, Gail took me on a "date" to see The Dark Knight. I'll post a review of the movie itself later (in a word: wow), but right now I want to review the experience. We went to the new Silver City Oakville, which has two "VIP auditoriums". For an extra $5 on top of your regular ticket price, you get some perks:

• access to a licensed bar before your show
• a smaller "more intimate" theatre (though with the same size screen)
• digital picture and sound
• assigned seating
• leather seats that are very comfy
• wider armrests between seats (convenient because the guy sitting next to me must have been at least 350 lbs)
• in-seat service before the movie starts
• nobody under 19 allowed in (because it's licensed), so you don't get those noisy teenagers who won't stay off my lawn

Gail was sure that she saw a description of this service somewhere and it said that there were no ads before the movie, but there were. I couldn't find a description of the VIP thing anywhere on the cineplex.com website, which I thought was rather odd — you'd think they'd want to promote the hell out of this.

This is a brand new service, I think — the Oakville theatre only opened within the last few months, and there's only one other theatre in Canada that does it (downtown Toronto), so they haven't worked out all the kinks. The assigned seating thing was weird because you can't choose your seats when you order the tickets, or even change them once they've been assigned. So if you want to sit in the middle but it assigns you seats 1 and 2, too bad. If you like to sit near the back and it assigns you row A, too bad. However, if it's busy and you need several seats, it's good to know beforehand that you have them all together. Another drawback is that you can't bring alcoholic drinks into the theatre itself, you need to finish them in the bar area. However, they do have a non-alcoholic key lime smoothie thing that was mighty good.

Overall, I was pretty happy with the whole VIP treatment. For an extra $5 each, I wouldn't do it for every movie (plus the theatre is further away from our house), but we do have VIP tickets for The Mummy on Friday.

Update (Aug 2): We saw the Mummy yesterday in the VIP theatre. This time, we didn't have time for dinner beforehand, so we tried out the in-seat ordering thing. I had nachos and Gail had mozzarella sticks and popcorn. It wasn't cheap (something like $27 for those things and a medium Coke), and then when using their fancy wireless technology to place the order, she marked down the wrong seat or wrong theatre or something. They took our order during the previews, and ten minutes into the movie Gail had to go out and ask where our food was. Because they couldn't find us, they just left it sitting on the counter for at least 20 minutes, so my nachos were lukewarm and the melted cheese had re-hardened. Not very appealing. They did upsize our drink and offered to upsize our popcorn as well. I suppose it was one mistake that could happen anywhere, but it'll probably be a while before we do that again.

France by the numbers

KM flown	about 6000 each way
KM driven	2050
Different hotels	5
Nights on plane	1
Nights in hotels	15
Pictures taken	1868
Size of pictures taken	5.265 GB
Videos taken	139
Size of videos taken	4.377 GB
Times we got rained on while visiting a chateau	3
Times we got rained on while not visiting a chateau	0
Times we walked into a restaurant in the middle of the day or evening only to be told they were closed	at least 3
Number of thousand-year-old buildings we drove by and didn't even bother looking at	countless
Number of thousand-year-old buildings in all of North America	0
Price for a litre of gas in France	about 1€45 (~$2.30)
Price for a litre of gas in Canada	about $1.35
Average price for a bottle of Coke in a restaurant in France	4€ (~$6.40)
Average price for a bottle of Coke in a restaurant in Canada	$2.50
Average difference in price between a Coke and a beer in a restaurant in France	0€50 (~$0.85)
Average difference in price between a Coke and a beer in a restaurant in Canada	$3

The Treasure Hunt

The Louvre is probably the most famous art museum in the world, containing the most famous painting in the world and some of the most famous sculptures as well. Jackie, Gail, and I knew that we could walk around there for hours, but we also knew that our boys (and most kids in general) would get pretty bored pretty quickly just looking at paintings and sculptures. So we had a clever plan to make it fun for them so we didn't have to listen to "Can we leave yet?" all day — We turned it into a treasure hunt. (We can't take credit for this plan, the former vice-principal at the boys' school told us that this is what they did.)

Once we bought our tickets, our first stop was the gift shop, where we asked each of the boys to choose two of the many postcards representing works contained in the Louvre. They each chose a couple, Gail and I each chose one (though I'm wondering if we never actually bought mine, because I can't find it), and we began our hunt. Of course, we walked slowly while searching so that we could look at the other works as well.

One of the first things we saw was Winged Victory, which is a 2200-year-old sculpture found in Greece. I'm not sure what it is about this piece, but I was really impressed with it, and Ryan really liked it as well. He couldn't get over the fact that it was over two thousand years old.

We spent a long time in the Grande Galerie, which is a huge hallway containing zillions of Italian paintings. The Mona Lisa is in a room just off of this hallway, and it was the second piece we found on our hunt. Mona is smaller than one might think, and because it's behind a big sheet of plexiglass, it's hard to take a good picture of it. I must have taken ten pictures from various different angles to try and minimize the glare from the plexiglass. I even took one with the flash on (a no-no according to the sign, but lots of other people were doing it too), but it turned out worse than the other ones.

At the end of the Grande Galerie were a few rooms containing Spanish paintings, and this is where we found the first postcard, one of Ryan's. All the rest of the paintings were by French artists, so we headed over to where the French paintings were. We wandered around there for a while and the only one we found was mine. We then found a section that contained more French paintings but was closed to the public that day. We were disappointed, since we figured that this room is probably where the rest of our postcards were, so we asked the security guard if they were indeed in the closed section. He looked at the pictures, and said no, these particular ones were in a gallery of larger paintings on a different floor. We made our way down there, and hit the jackpot. First off, we were amazed by the size of these pieces. There were paintings in there that must have been fifteen feet high and at least twice that wide. As we were admiring the biggest one, Nicky pointed out his picture of Napoleon, and then we noticed his other one just down from that one, then Gail's Jeanne d'Arc in one corner, and finally Ryan's tigers in another corner. Of the six postcards we chose at the gift shop, four of the corresponding paintings were in the same room. Considering how many paintings are in the Louvre, we were blown away by this. Of course, the vast majority of the works in the Louvre are not available on postcards in the gift shop, so it's not like we picked six out of 35,000 and four of them were together.

One thing we found that was a little surprising was that the boys were not just looking for paintings that matched their postcards, they were actually looking at the paintings. There were a number of times that one or both of the boys would ask about who was in a painting, or why they painted whatever it was. There were a number of paintings of various people holding the head of John the Baptist. (Note that the link is to a painting that is supposed to be in the National Gallery in London, but I'm sure we saw it in the Louvre. Perhaps it was a copy.) I couldn't explain the significance of that, but Ryan thought it was cool. There was one of David fighting Goliath where the artist had painted the same scene from two different angles, and both boys enjoyed walking in circles around the two paintings comparing one with the other. And Ryan mentioned the other day that there were a lot of paintings with naked people. He's right.

We walked around the Louvre for at least three hours, and not once did either of the boys ask if we were done yet, or when we were leaving, or complain about being bored, or anything. Is this because of exceptional parenting — we've taught them not to whine when things aren't going exactly how they want? Well, we are trying to teach them that, but it doesn't always work. Is it because we've taught them to appreciate fine art and so they were simply fascinated the whole time? As I said, this was true to a larger extent than I expected, but for the most part, no. The simple truth is that we found a way to distract them for long enough that we got to see what we wanted. We've found that a good portion of parenting young children is the art of distraction.

BTW, some of our pictures are available at our family website.

Jungle Disk

Now that we have a digital camera, the collection of digital photos on our home computer is growing in leaps and bounds. And as I mentioned before, we have a bunch of home videos as well. If there were a disk crash or a fire or some other disaster, we'd lose everything, so I started looking into backup strategies. A friend of Gail's bought a big USB hard drive and backs everything up to that, but unless you store the drive somewhere else and bring it home occasionally for backups, a fire would destroy both the original and the backup, so that's no good. I could just burn DVDs and then take them to work or something (putting them in the safety deposit box would be the best solution, but I'm way too lazy to do that) but that's a lot of manual labour, and I'd need numerous DVDs to store everything. Too much work, and so I know that I wouldn't do it often enough. What I need is something that does automated backups online so that the files are stored offsite, and the backups can be done automatically so I don't need to remember to do it.

I think I've found the solution thanks to the Security Now! podcast. Steve Gibson talked about a tool called Jungle Disk, which uses Amazon's S3 storage service. It's very cheap — about 15 cents per gigabyte per month, you only pay for what you use, and there are no storage limits. You also pay 10 cents per gigabyte uploaded, and 18 cents per gigabyte downloaded. The Jungle Disk software itself is only $20, comes with free lifetime upgrades and you can install it on multiple machines. Once it's installed and you're hooked up to your Amazon account, Jungle Disk sets up a virtual drive on your Windows machine, so you can copy files to and from the "disk" at will, so if you want, you can essentially use it as a huge USB key (though remember the upload/download fees). It also has fully-functional automated backup software that has strong 256-bit AES encryption (which is why it was mentioned on a security podcast).

The one thing it doesn't do is compress the data. This is supposedly because of a feature they have called block-level updates, where they backup parts of a file individually, so that if your 2GB file changes now and again but only 50 MB of the data is actually changed, it will back up just the changed parts rather than the entire file each time, saving bandwidth. Compressing a file would break this, and it's probably true that the block-level updates save you money in the long run for large frequently-changing files, but for files that never change (like my home videos), compression would be way more useful. Plus, the block-level update feature is only available if you purchase the optional add-on service called "Jungle Disk Plus". Maybe I'll have to set up a cron job (or Windows equivalent) that runs once a week (the night before the backup, probably) and compresses the videos.

The ability to use the Jungle Disk service as a huge USB key is rather nice as well — if I want to transfer a file from work to home, I can just copy it up to my Jungle Disk drive at work, then copy it down at home. I'd have to pay the upload/download costs for that, but depending on the file, it may be worth it. When I'm at home, both my work and home machines use the same wireless router to connect to the internet, but neither can see the other's shares. I don't know why I can't connect them to each other, and neither Gail nor I have any idea how to fix it, though admittedly our research into the problem has been minimal. In the past when I wanted to transfer a file from one machine to the other, I either used a regular USB key or burned a DVD for larger files. This gives me another option.

I wrote this article several weeks ago but never got around to posting it. I just got my first bill from Amazon Web Services for all of $1.87. I don't quite understand it though — it says I'm using 5.305 GB of storage, but uploaded 9.217 GB of data. It backed up all of our France pictures this past weekend, so the next bill will be much higher, but we'll see how much more it is.

The Spaghetti Factory incident

I took Ryan to a Rock game back during the winter. It was a Saturday night game, so we went out for dinner (at The Old Spaghetti Factory) with the rest of the Rock gang before the game. Ryan and I got there quite early, so we sat in the lounge with a couple of drinks and watched the hockey game, which was on a TV in the corner. After a minute or two, Ryan stood up and walked over towards the TV. He walked more than half the distance to the TV, so by the time he stopped, he was closer to the TV than he was to me. He walked back, sat down, and told me "It's 4-3 for Detroit". I was stunned. Not because Detroit was winning, but because I could clearly see the score on the TV from where we were sitting.

Gail and I had talked a few times about taking the boys to get their eyes checked, but just never did it. After "The Spaghetti Factory Incident" (with apologies to Guns 'N Roses), I called the optometrist that same week and made appointments for all of us. Gail hadn't had one in a year or so, and I hadn't had one since about a year after my laser eye surgery, which was eight years ago. My eyesight wasn't terrible before my surgery (something like -4.75 to -5.00 in each eye), but Gail is almost blind without her glasses or contacts. She's in the -13.00 to -15.00 range and her grandfather was just as bad, so we kind of figured that the odds of both of our kids growing up with good vision were pretty slim. We were right — Ryan needed glasses. Nicky's vision was smack dab in the middle of the "normal" range for his age group, so that's good. Even after eight years, my overall vision is still better than 20:20, so I'm still very happy with the results of my surgery.

One thing we're very happy about is the greater level of acceptance of kids with glasses than when we were kids. Gail first got glasses in grade two, and vividly remembers constant taunting from other kids; she was called "four-eyes" more often than she could count. I remember feeling sorry for kids that I knew who got glasses because other kids would tease them (I like to think that I didn't partake in the teasing, but I probably did). I didn't start wearing glasses until grade 10, so we were beyond that — at that point they were teasing me because I was a dweeb, not because I wore glasses. The glasses just completed the dweeb ensemble.

Anyway, a few kids in Ryan's class have gotten glasses in the last few years, and nobody gets made fun of. Ryan said that one girl was nervous about getting hers, and the whole class made a point of telling her how great they looked on her. When Ryan found out he had to get glasses, it didn't phase him at all. There was no complaining, no fear, no worries, no problem. He whined more the last time he had to get a haircut. We picked up his glasses a couple of days before we left for France, and he's been doing great with them.

Why Christians are like pickles

This is just too funny. What's the best way to show people what happens when they become Christian and take Jesus into their heart? Why, you electrocute a pickle, of course! Just try to watch this without laughing out loud. I certainly couldn't.

France: Kudos and complaints

Kudos where they are due:

Snaps to:

• my-apartment-in-paris.com — They have a bunch of apartments for rent all over Paris. The apartment had a dishwasher, a tiny little washing machine / dryer, fridge, stove and microwave. It was a nice little apartment in a fairly nice area, close to Notre Dame and the beautiful Luxembourg garden. All phone calls (including overseas!) were included in the price.
• Holiday Inn near Charles de Gaulle — I needed internet access to print boarding passes for the flight home, and the hotel we were staying at (Ibis, see below) had internet access but no printer, so they suggested I go across the street to the Holiday Inn. Internet access is only supposed to be for Holiday Inn guests, but the front desk guy let me in anyway. And the internet card was cheaper than the Ibis. And printing was free. And the lobby was nicer.
• The car we rented was an Opel Zafira, which is a small mini-van. It had a manual transmission (I'd forgotten how much fun it is to drive stick), and had A/C, cruise control, and rain-sensing windshield wipers. It drove nicely and was very comfortable. We had three travel days where we were in the car for between 6 and 8 hours and nobody complained about getting in the car again the next day.
• L'OpenTour is a bus line that runs four routes around Paris — buy a ticket, and you can get on and off any of these buses all day, though the two-day pass is an even better deal. The buses are double-decker, and the upper floor is open (i.e. no roof). You get headphones, and there are headphone jacks near every seat where you can hear pre-recorded tours in one of a bunch of languages. The tours were interesting, and the price was pretty good too. In addition to the tours, we ended up using it as public transport for the two days we had tickets. Kudos to the driver as well — he had to drive through an archway at the Louvre and I swear there was less than six inches of clearance on each side of the bus. Everyone on the bus held their breath as we went through.
• The people in charge of street signs in France. Can you imagine driving around a residential area of Waterloo and seeing signs on every other intersection directing you downtown or to Guelph or Cambridge? Not bloody likely. That's primarily how we got around France. We had a pretty detailed map, and used it to figure out the next semi-major town to look for, and then just followed the signs. We only got lost a couple of times, and then only for a short while. As an aside: roundabouts (traffic circles) are definitely the way to go. People in North America complain about them because they don't understand them, but I love 'em. That said, the six-lane twelve-street one (with no lane markers) around the Arc de Triomphe is frightening.
• Drivers in Europe (other than the psycho motorcyclists) are vastly superior to North American drivers. Not once in the 2050 km we drove did I get annoyed at the slow driver in front of me who wouldn't move over, because it never happened. (It happens every day during my commute.) Not once was I cut off. Not once did I have to honk at anyone. I was only honked at once and that was my fault.

This next part is what blogging is all about, for those of us who don't get paid for it, anyway: complaining about stuff!

No snaps to:

• my-apartment-in-paris.com — Before we rented the place we stayed in, we had booked a different place, and by "booked" I mean that we had signed a contract and paid for it. A few weeks before we left, we got an email saying that the person staying in that apartment before us needed to stay an extra day, so we couldn't have it the day we arrive in Paris. We could either stay somewhere else that night or rearrange our flights to arrive the next day. There was no apology, we were just out of luck, despite having signed a contract. We told them that we could not rearrange our flights, and they offered us another place at a bit of a discount (though not much of one). After looking around for other places (from other companies), we found that there was nothing else available, so we took the one they offered. Turned out that the place we got was in a better location anyway so it all worked out, but we were pretty annoyed that they changed our booking on us without even apologizing.
• Hotel Ibis Roissy — right next to Charles de Gaulle airport. One of the worst hotels I've ever stayed in. Company slogan: "You're near the fuckin' airport, what more do you want?" Have to say that the food in the restaurant was pretty good and not too overpriced, but the rooms were tiny and just awful. The front desk staff, except for the guy who helped me with the internet stuff, was generally unpleasant. Here is an actual conversation between myself and someone at the front desk:
  • Me: Do you know where I need to go to return my rental car?
  • Her: The airport.
  • Me: Well, the airport is a big place.
  • Her: Huh?
  • Me: Where exactly at the airport?
  • Her: Terminal 2.
  If she knew it was terminal 2, why didn't she say so in the first place? And where at terminal 2? Are there signs? At any Canadian hotel, she'd be pulling out a map and showing you precisely where to go.
• Renaissance Travel — we've dealt with the same travel agent (Tracy) since we booked our honeymoon in Jamaica in 1995, even following her when she moved from one agency to another. Tracy helped us with our trip to Britain in 2000, as well as Vegas in 2005, and a couple of others as well, and we've never paid her a red cent. For this trip, a friend recommended a company in Mississauga that she had dealt with before, and they were supposed to be experts on France. We decided to give them a try even though they charged a $189 fee for their services, but we figured for expert consultation, you have to pay. Colossally bad move on our part. They were certainly experts on being French — the woman we dealt with had an accent and was rude. (Actually, she wasn't rude, just not very helpful, but that doesn't go as well with the joke.) She booked our hotels (except for Paris) and rental car, and did precisely nothing else. We heard about a place called Sarlat near Bordeaux, and how they had some very cool prehistoric caves. I asked Renaissance if they had any information on hotels in Sarlat as well as more information on the caves and other things to do in the area, and received the following two-line email, reproduced here in its entirety:
  • B.W Hotel Le Renoir(Sarlat)
  • Around 105.00eur per night and per room
  ("B.W." means Best Western) This was the kind of extensive information she thought would help our decision making. We almost want to send Tracy an apology card.
• motorcycle, scooter and sometimes even bicycle riders. In France, two-wheeled vehicles drive anywhere they want, including between lanes and on the sidewalks and shoulder, and can weave among other vehicles at will. Luckily, other vehicles seem to agree with this, and just let them go. (Or perhaps they don't agree but just let them go because the alternative is too dangerous.) It's quite scary sometimes. An experienced French motorcycle rider would find himself honked at every few minutes in Toronto, if he survived that long.
• annoying beggars in Paris. They would ask if you spoke English, looking like they needed directions, and then hand you a note (in English) which explained how they had recently arrived in Paris from Bosnia, and had a brother with leukemia, and they couldn't afford to get treatment for him. If you waved them off, they would literally beg: "Please can't you help me?" Well, maybe I'd help you if you weren't the fifth Bosnian refugee with a sick brother who's stopped me in the past hour.

Great albums I sometimes forget about II

Another great album I meant to mention before: New Miserable Experience by Gin Blossoms. "Lost Horizons", "Hey Jealousy", "Found Out About You", and "Mrs. Rita" are all great songs, and there isn't really a weak song anywhere. And "Cheatin'" contains one of my favourite lyrics ever: "You can't call it cheatin' 'cause she reminds me of you". The singer has a unique voice; not sure why they never did much after this album.

Nos vacances en France

We returned on Saturday from our wonderful vacation in France. I won't bore you with the day-by-day details, but here it is in a nutshell:

We stayed in an apartment in Paris for a week — saw the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, Versailles, Luxembourg garden, and Disneyland Paris. We did a lot of walking, and the metro system is very straightforward and can get you anywhere. Vastly superior to Toronto's public transit system. Paris is an amazing city — you can just feel the history everywhere. I have to say though, while the view from the Eiffel Tower is spectactular, it's also kind of boring, in that the vast majority of the buildings are the same colour (gray) and the same height (five or six stories).

After a week in Paris, we took the high speed train (kind of disappointing — didn't seem much faster than any other train) to Bordeaux where we picked up our rental van. Stayed a couple of days in Bordeaux, and took one day to drive to Perigueux, where Jackie's family originated (Jackie is Gail's stepmother, and she came with us on the trip). We then drove up to Amboise, near Tours. Stayed a couple of days there, mainly driving around various châteaux including the beautiful Château de Chenonceau.

Next we drove up to Saint Malo on the English Channel. Every restaurant in Saint Malo serves seafood of some kind, and the most popular dish seemed to be mussels and french fries. Don't get me wrong, I had them and they're very good (the boys liked them too), but fries seemed like an odd thing to serve with mussels. No vegetables or rice or anything, just a bowl of mussels and a plate of fries. We also drove to nearby Mont Saint Michel, one of the most amazing places I've ever seen. It's just your average monstrous church and abbey built on top of a huge rock on an island surrounded by quicksand. Must have been pretty trivial to build eight hundred years ago.

We also drove to a town (and a château) called Pirou, which is where, we think, my family name comes from. As it turns out, the Pirou family that lived here died out many hundreds of years ago, but one of them fought in the Battle of Hastings in 1066. He was subsequently given land in England, where there's now a town called Stoke-Pero. I'm planning on doing some more digging to see if that's where my line of the Perrow family came from. If so, the next time I'm in France, I can go back to Pirou and claim my castle.

Anyway, after three days in Saint Malo, we drove back to Paris and flew home the next day. I think splitting the trip up into two (a week in Paris and a week driving around the countryside) worked out very well — it almost seemed like two different vacations back to back.

Some North American beliefs about France:

• French people are rude — in general, yes. Of course, there are exceptions; we met a number of very friendly people, but in general, we found that people didn't say "excusez moi" or "pardon" nearly as often as we thought they should have. While waiting in lines, we had people walk through the middle of the lines without saying a word — sometimes physically pushing their way through, and other times pushing a stroller or shopping cart, all silently. Waitresses in Canada would be fired if they treated customers the way we were treated in a couple of places. Well, maybe not fired, but we left a couple of places without leaving a tip of any kind, and I didn't feel the slightest bit guilty.
• French people are dirty — I did not see any women with underarm hair (though quite honestly, I wasn't looking), but we did notice more B.O. per capita than we're used to here.
• the Mona Lisa is smaller than you'd expect — yup. I don't know what it is about that smile, but you just find yourself staring at it...
• France is expensive — yup. 6€ (over $9) for a Coke in a restaurant, gas is almost twice what it is in Canada, and the "American style" breakfast buffet in one of our hotels was 13€ (about $20) per person. Obviously the person who called that "American style" has never been to America. In one of the other hotels, breakfast was 16€50 — we passed on that one.
• French people eat baguettes — absolutely. We couldn't count the number of people we saw walking around Paris eating a baguette. Nothing on it, not even butter, just a big long hunk of dry bread.
• French wine is good — dunno, don't drink wine. None of us had even a sip of wine while in France. (Wine drinkers reading this are probably all angry that a French vacation was "wasted" on people who don't drink wine.) There was a beer called 1664 that was pretty good, though.

I have a couple of other postings in the works about our vacation, and I'll try to get some pictures up on our web site soon too.

Blogging fron Paris

In Paris...stop
Sitting in internet café near Notre Dame...stop
Having trouble figuring out this stupid French keyboard...stop
Our apartment is a five minute walk to Notre Dame...stop
Had lunch on Champs-Elysées the other day, 6€ ($9) for a Coke!...stop
Disneyland yesterday, Versailles tomorrow, then Bordeaux on Friday...stop
Must go now, time running out...stop

Not a word in the French press wondering about whether Mats is resigning with the Leafs! Unbelievable!