Vegas Part I

We've been back from our long weekend in Las Vegas for over a week now, and I'm just getting around to writing about it. That's mainly because I'm trying to catch up on the sleep that I missed. The rule is that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, and some of it will, but we had a lot of fun and did a lot of cool things, so I'm going to write about it anyway, but I'm going to break it up into a couple of parts. If you want the picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words version, pictures are posted here.

Gail and I went to Vegas once before, back in 2005 for our tenth wedding anniversary. We had a great time, so when some friends decided that they were going down on the long weekend in May, they mentioned it to us. Originally, we figured it would be too expensive so we decided not to go, but then they told us about the deal they had gotten at the MGM Grand – something like $350 for four nights. We priced the Venetian for the same time period: over $1350. We found flights for about $150 each (each way), so we decided to go. How often can you get four days in Vegas for under $1000? Well, obviously you need to add some for food. OK, plus tickets to any shows you want to see. And taxis. And the monorail. And service charges and airport taxes on the airfares. And gondola rides at the Venetian. And car rental to drive to Hoover Dam and the tours of Hoover Dam itself. And souvenirs and gifts for the kids. And of course gambling money. Considering we're going to the UK this summer, and my company has delayed our salary raises for at least three months (assuming there are raises at all this year), and Gail's income has dropped by 5% thanks to her company's salary cuts, well maybe this wasn't such a cheap vacation after all. But hey, it's only money, and we had a lot of fun, so I don't regret it for a second.

The MGM Grand is unbelievably big. There are over 5,000 rooms, a monster casino, sports book, a gift shop and several other shops, five pools and a lazy river, a TV studio, two spas, an arena for boxing and other sporting events and concerts, a monorail station, a theatre showing a Cirque du Soleil show, and countless restaurants and bars. Oh, and a lion enclosure. If you're hungry, you've got your standard Vegas buffet (required by law at all casino resorts, I believe) as well as the Rainforest Cafe, another cafe, a grill, a deli, a sandwich place, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Mexican, two French places, a steak house, a seafood place, and a "California cuisine" place owned by Wolfgang Puck. And if all that's not enough, there are two Starbuck's and a food court with five more places including McDonald's. We arrived on Thursday night, and by the time we left on Monday afternoon, we could usually find our way to where we needed to go without getting lost. But the sheer size of the place meant that it took forever to get anywhere. We stayed at the Mirage last time, and it was also big, but not outrageous. This place was just too big. In contrast, our room was actually quite small, but very nice. It was only the two of us and all we did there was sleep and shower, so we didn't really need any more space.

Since the hotels on the strip are so big (many of them take up a city block each), walking between them can take a long time. Combine that with the zillion-degree temperatures in the summer, and you have a fairly hefty need for a rapid transportation system. So the city has put in a monorail that runs behind the hotels on the east side of the Strip. MGM is the southern-most station, and there are also stops at Bally's, the Flamingo, Harrah's and the Sahara, as well as a couple of stops off the Strip. It's great if you're going, like we did, from MGM up to the Stratosphere, which is about a 6 km walk. It's not cheap – a single ride, regardless of distance, is $5 each, though you can get a day pass for as many rides as you want in a 24-hour period for $13. That turned out to be a better deal for us, and we ended up doing that twice. Apart from the cost, there is another problem with the monorail which involved, again, the size of the hotels. At one point we were headed to Paris, so we took the monorail from MGM to Bally's (right next door to Paris). The elevators to our room were at the front of the MGM, so we had to walk all the way to the back, which was at least five minutes. Then we took the monorail one stop (three or four minutes), then had to walk to the middle of Bally's and over to Paris, which took at least another five minutes. All told it took us about fifteen minutes to get there, at least ten minutes of which was walking. We probably could have walked all the way in that time, so the monorail only saved us a few minutes of walking. Now, we were there in May, so it was pretty hot outside but not unbearable. If it was 105 degrees outside, which is not unlikely in July and August, spending $10 to walk for 15 minutes inside rather than walking for 15 minutes outside might well be worth it.

Coming in our next installment: The Stratosphere and Hoover Dam.

Intro to field lacrosse

I attended my first-ever field lacrosse game tonight at BMO Field in Toronto, as the new Toronto Nationals took on the Chicago Machine. I have been to many box lacrosse* games over the last eight years, including every Toronto Rock home game but one, as well as a number of games in Buffalo and a couple in Rochester, and one or two OLA games too. But until tonight, I was a field virgin. In a nutshell, it was fun, but I wouldn't trade my Rock tickets for Nats tickets. The amount of scoring was about the same, but the pace of the game is slower and I found it less exciting than box lacrosse. It's really the same pace for the most part, but the field is much bigger so regardless of how fast you run, you can't make it from one end to the other in a few seconds and since three defensive players are required to stay on the defensive side, breakaways are just about impossible.

* – Technically, the game played in the NLL is actually indoor lacrosse, not box lacrosse. Box is the form played in the OLA, which has minor differences from the NLL game. But for the most part, box and indoor lacrosse are interchangeable.

Biggest complaint: I found it harder to follow the ball. The fact that it was orange helped, but the field is so much bigger than the box floor that if you look away for a second, you lose track of the ball. Maybe what they need is a blue line to appear when the ball is passed and then when someone takes a shot... ah, never mind.

The midfielders have very long sticks, which I assumed were used primarily for long passes, but there were only a handful of those in this game. It didn't really seem to me that the long sticks were much of an advantage.

Cool stuff:

• The Nationals won! They are now 2-0.
• A bunch of fans behind us kept calling out to Colin Doyle. In the fourth quarter, Colin acknowledged them with big smiles and waves. It's unlikely San Jose would do it, but there isn't a player on the Rock roster that I wouldn't trade to get Doyle back in a Rock uniform.
• The Nationals team is a total powerhouse of NLL players. Gait, Iannucci, Dawson, Doyle, Zywicki, Williams, Grant, Thomson, Snider, Prout, Brodie Merrill, Point, Powless, Vyse... that's ten MVP awards, four rookie of the year awards, countless scoring titles, and along with Patrick Merrill and Jordan Hall, four first-overall draft picks. Not to mention that they have Ken Montour, the reigning NLL goalie of the year, as well as Matt Vinc, another standout NLL goalie, and neither of them is a goaltender for the Nats.
• Goalies don't look any different from any other player on the field apart from the big pool-skimmer stick, and they don't do the stick-head-between-the-legs stance that box goalies do. It always looks to me like a field goalie is just another player standing in the net, looking out-of-place. But those goalies really know what they're doing, and made some pretty impressive stops, including several "how the hell did he stop that?" saves. And in at least a couple of cases, they'd not only leave their crease to play the ball, they'd take it more than halfway upfield. Seems like a dumb idea to me, but hey, I'm the field virgin here, what do I know?

Not so cool stuff:

• Note to Nationals management: keep the "hosts" away from the booze. The "long pole dancing" thing was silly, and the bit with one of the hosts singing "Summer of '69" with whichever fans wanted to join him was just embarrassing. He may not have been, but it really did look like he was hammered.
• The one-page "program" that they gave out listed the roster of both teams on one side, and has a big picture of Nationals player Shawn Williams on the other side. But Williams didn't play in the game. He was told that of the twelve games in the season, he'd play six of them, because they have such a large roster. But he wasn't told this until after the first game last weekend, in which he did play. He said that if he'd known he'd be a scratch in this game, he wouldn't have played in the first one. Shawn has lots of family in and around Toronto, so I'm sure he would have liked to play in this game.
• I need to learn the game better. There were a number of times that the play was stopped, the ref went to talk to someone, and then play resumed, with the player who had the ball before retaining possession. I couldn't figure out why the play was stopped in the first place. And when the ball was thrown out of bounds, it seemed that the person nearest the ball when it went out was awarded the ball, regardless of who threw it. This doesn't make sense to me, but it explains why some players would go sprinting towards the line (not always towards the ball) when they had no chance of stopping the ball from going out.
• Looking at the scoreboard and seeing that it was the 4th half of the game just screamed "FAIL". Surely that word on the scoreboard can be changed from "Half" to "Quarter".

Chrome vs. Firefox

I have been a loyal Firefox user since version 0.8 or so, back in 2004 when it was still known as Firebird. When designing my web sites, I used Firefox exclusively, and before publishing them, I frequently forgot to make sure they worked properly in IE, which they usually didn't because I used CSS standards (parts of which are either ignored or implemented wrong by IE) as much as possible. I installed the Adblock add-on the moment I heard about it, and have seen very few internet ads since then. It's been great. There were only two major drawbacks to using Firefox:

1. Some websites didn't work properly in Firefox, either because they use evil ActiveX controls which only work on IE, or because they were simply developed using IE and other browsers were ignored. Notably, Sybase's internal vacation request and scheduling system uses ActiveX so I have to use IE for that. Both of these issues are becoming less and less prevalent as browsers such as Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Chrome gain market share.
2. Firefox uses a boatload of memory. I would sometimes have a Firefox window open with only one tab (usually showing my gmail inbox), and Task Manager would tell me it was using well over 200 MB of RAM.

Then Google Chrome was released, with the promise of much faster rendering and Javascript. I considered trying it out, but read a couple of reviews at the time saying that it was not bad, but not really "ready for prime time". In recent weeks, I've read more reviews from people who have made the switch and are quite impressed with Chrome. A few weeks ago, after hearing from yet another source that Chrome used much less memory than Firefox, I decided to give it a try. Since then, I have used Chrome almost exclusively. I've noticed a few differences, both pro and con.

Advantages of Chrome

1. Everything is faster. In particular, Javascript is much faster. Gmail is very snappy, and other sites that are heavy on the Javascript (like Stack Overflow) are also faster.
2. Chrome uses much less memory. Right now, I have one Chrome window open, with one tab showing my gmail inbox. There are four (?) Chrome processes running, using a total of 43 MB of RAM. I've seen other times where I have a couple of tabs open, and there are seven or eight Chrome processes running. But the total amount of memory they're using is still less than one Firefox.
3. A problem in one tab that causes a crash will only cause that tab to vanish, not the whole application. I've only seen this happen once, and actually the tab didn't vanish at all – the video that was supposed to play in it never did, but Chrome kept right on truckin' along. Firefox doesn't crash that often for me either, but when it does, the whole thing goes away.
4. Some sites (like Google Reader or, again, Stack Overflow) have "tooltips" that don't seem to work in Firefox, but do in Chrome and IE.
5. Text areas are always resizable. Very nice.
6. Chrome detects known malware sites and prevents you from going there and even from loading third-party javascript from them, though you can bypass the protection if you really want to. Firefox, without NoScript, will happily serve you up any nasty Javascript it's told to.

Advantages of Firefox

1. Firefox has a rich community of add-ons. For Chrome it's already begun with user scripts, but there aren't many of them and it's a lot more manual work to install them, and you also have to use the less-stable beta branch version of Chrome. I'm sure that in future versions there will be automated installation and lots more to choose from, but for now Firefox wins. Some of the ones I love that have no equivalent in Chrome (yet):
   • NoScript disables Javascript entirely unless you manually enable it for the particular site you are on. I have it set so that sites I frequently visit have Javascript enabled just enough for the site to work. If a site uses its own stuff plus something from doubleclick.net, the doubleclick stuff is disabled. AFAIK, there's no way to do this in Chrome, so I probably have doubleclick cookies on my machine now. Damn those doubleclick people, damn them all to hell. (Yes I know they're now Google people)
   • AdBlock for Firefox rocks. So much so that I've linked to it twice in this article. With Chrome, I am seeing ads on pages that I never knew had ads. After a while I discovered a similar thing for Chrome called AdSweep, which worked pretty well, though I saw more ads than I did with Firefox. Unfortunately, AdSweep requires the beta branch, as I mentioned above.
   • XMarks (formerly FoxMarks) synchronizes your bookmarks and saved passwords between instances of Firefox (i.e. work and home). It doesn't yet exist for Chrome.
2. Firefox can re-open tabs that have been accidentally closed. I haven't found a way to do that with Chrome. It is possible in Chrome, though not exactly intuitive. When you open a new tab, it shows you some frequently-viewed and recently-viewed pages, and there's also a list of "recently closed" pages.
3. Firefox supports keymarks in their bookmarks, which are just shortcuts. For example, I can enter "<Ctrl-L>fb<enter>" to go to facebook.com. Chrome doesn't support these directly, but does a very fast search (hey, it's Google) on your bookmarks and brings up bookmarks that match what you've typed in the bar. However, Firefox keymarks supports parameters, so I can do a search on IMDB by saving a bookmark like "http://imdb.com/find?q=%s;s=all". The %s is replaced with the parameter you enter, so if I enter "imdb glitter" in the address bar, it does an IMDB search on the Mariah Carey movie "Glitter", if for some reason I wanted to. Chrome seems to understand "imdb" and immediately does an IMDB search, so that's fine, but I have another one that accesses our internal bug tracking web site (called iReport). If I enter "ir 12345" in the Firefox address bar, the bookmark will create the proper URL to take me to the web page for iReport issue #12345. Doing the same on the Chrome address bar ignores the ir bookmark and does a Google search, which obviously doesn't do what I want.
4. In Firefox, there is a separate downloads window which lists what's being (and has been) downloaded. If you're downloading something large, you can minimize the actual browser window and just leave the downloads window open and watch the progress that way. You can even minimize the downloads window and watch the title of the button in the taskbar, since the title of the window contains the percentage complete. Very handy. In Chrome, it seems to be associated with the tab that started the download. I downloaded a fairly large file earlier today using Chrome, and the only way to see the progress of the download was to have the browser open to the page where I started the download. You can create a tab that shows the download progress, but you still need the entire browser window open.
5. Firefox allows you to select some text on the web page and "View selection source", which is easier when debugging problems then downloading the entire source for the page and searching through it. No such option on Chrome.
6. Firefox has the "Manage bookmarks" window which makes dealing with bookmarks easy. With Chrome, you have to do it one at a time, and there's no way to sort bookmarks. However, I use delicious.com a lot, so that's where the majority of my bookmarks are anyway.
7. On at least one message board site, the keyboard shortcuts to add italic and bold indicators to text don't work on Chrome.

The result

I'm sticking with Chrome. There seem to be more advantages to Firefox but the only one that was really significant to me is NoScript, and many of the rest are fairly simple things that will likely be fixed before long (I know the sorting bookmarks one is already fixed, just not released yet). I'm generally pretty careful about what web sites I visit – if a site is in any way questionable, I don't visit it at work, and at home I'm protected by OpenDNS, which I have configured to completely block all porn sites as well as known phishing and adware sites. Chrome's built-in protection is nice too.

Other than that, the Firefox advantages are either no big deal or easily worked around. The speed of Chrome (not just browsing speed, but the overall speed of my machine is faster without Firefox using 1/4 of my RAM) is just too big of a win.

Update: I revisited this comparison six months later and posted a updated review.

NLL Playoff Picks: Championship Game

I'm now 5-for-6 in playoff game predictions, having missed the Buffalo-New York game last weekend but getting the Calgary-San Jose game right. Luckily I didn't post score predictions because I would have been way wrong. Who could have predicted 5 goals for San Jose (who scored 20 last week) and only 3 for Buffalo, including 0 for Steenhuis and Tavares? Who could have predicted Matt King shutting out San Jose for three periods and outscoring Colin Doyle and his goal being the game-winner?

New York vs. Calgary

Given the goaltending performances last week, we might be looking at a 3-2 game, which is unheard of in lacrosse. Then again, 17-5 and 9-3 scores are pretty unheard of anyway, and we had both of those last week. Even as good as Vinc was last week and as strong an offensive team as the Titans are, I don't think they're a match for Calgary. As long as Calgary doesn't get too cocky after last weekend's blowout, the Championship is theirs to lose.

Prediction: Calgary

Unfortunately, I will be vacationing in Las Vegas this weekend, so I won't be able to watch the game. Well, perhaps "unfortunately" is the wrong word to use here.

NLL Playoff Picks – Round 2

Since I was four out of four in my first round picks (did I mention that already?), I will stick with the picks I already made for the second round as well.

East

Buffalo vs. New York

Second verse, same as the first. The Bandits are hungry to repeat as champions, and I just don't see New York being able to stop them (though I think Calgary has a good chance). It won't be a blowout, but I don't think it'll be that close either.

Prediction: Buffalo

West

San Jose vs. Calgary

I said in the first round picks that I don't like betting against Colin Doyle in the playoffs, but this Calgary team is just too strong. The Stealth have too many rookies to go all the way this year, but if they can get off to a good start next year, the Stealth could be the team to beat next year.

Prediction: Calgary

Dirty old man

When I got up this morning, I weighed myself. 174.5. Then I had a shower and right afterwards (my hair was still wet), I weighed myself again. 173.5.

The logical conclusion? The shower removed one pound of dirt from my body. Maybe morning breath isn't my biggest problem.

Published again

My letter to the editor was published in today's Spectator. I've had one other letter published in the Spec, and one in the Flamborough Review a few years ago too.

NLL First Round Results

So... let's see how accurate my first round predictions were:

Game	Prediction	Actual result
Rochester – New York	"New York in a close one"	New York won in overtime
Boston – Buffalo	Buffalo	Buffalo won
Colorado – Calgary	Calgary	Calgary won
San Jose – Portland	San Jose	San Jose won

So that would be, let's see here... carry the one... four for four. A perfect record. I even called the overtime game.

Just sayin'.

Soccer doesn't always suck

I'm not a big soccer fan. I enjoy watching my kids' games, but other than that, I just don't watch it. I've tried to get into it when the World Cup is on, figuring that if I'm ever going to watch soccer, I may as well watch these guys since they're the best in the world. But I just can't. Maybe it's because I don't have a rooting interest – neither Canada (my home country) nor Scotland (that of my parents), are ever in the running so I generally don't care who wins. I also find that soccer just isn't that exciting a game to watch on TV, and the fact that soccer players are the worst divers I've seen in any sport doesn't help. But when I got the opportunity to get some tickets to last weekend's Toronto FC game match, I took advantage of it and got tickets for me and the boys – Gail was away for the weekend or she would have come too.

I've seen a number of musical groups live that I really enjoyed, but I don't listen to them otherwise. Leahy is a good example – they are fantastically talented musicians and I really enjoyed watching them play, even though it's not generally my kind of music. At the show I got all excited and I bought a CD of theirs, but I almost never listen to it. Similarly, I rarely listen to the soundtrack of Les Misérables, which is one of my favourite musicals. It seems universally true that live music is better than recorded music, and it's similarly true of sports. I can't think of too many sporting events that wouldn't be better to see live than on TV so I figured the same might be true of soccer, and I was right. Maybe it was the rooting interest in the home team, or maybe it was the atmosphere (much louder than a Rock, Jays, or even Leafs game despite being outdoors), or maybe it was surprise at the fact that a sporting event can be exciting despite a single goal over the course of 90+ minutes. Most likely it was a combination of all of these but whatever the reason, I enjoyed the game.

Watching soccer live gives you a better overall view of the plays and how things are set up. It's not just "kick the ball towards the opposing net and hope that either (a) you get a clear shot or (b) one of your teammates randomly ends up in a good spot and he gets a clear shot". Now I'm no idiot, I know that professional soccer isn't like that at all, but on TV, you just don't (or at least I don't) see that as well.

The next time the World Cup rolls around I will, in all likelihood, ignore it again. But if I get another opportunity to see a Toronto FC game, I might just go.

La la la la la

My letter was not published. But there were two other letters published, one who agreed with me and one who did not. In case the links don't survive for long, here are the letters in their entirety. First, the guy who agreed with me:

Thousands of biologists have confirmed on the micro scale that organisms change over generations.

On the macro scale, these observations have been confirmed in the fossil record, which shows both diversity and similarities among species that indicate a common ancestor. This has led to the theory of evolution.

Other scientific theories include the germ theory of disease and the theory of electromagnetism.

Creationism is not a scientific theory. It is philosophical speculation that an intelligent being created the universe. It cannot be tested and has no data to support it. As such, it has no place in science classes.

The other guy's letter is not available online (though the above letter is there twice) but it said:

Another left-brain-thinking scientist tries to tell us to look at the beauty of creation as one big accident.

I really hope that second guy is not a teacher. Yes, life itself is a truly remarkable thing, and intelligent life even more so. But you can't just ignore the overwhelming scientific evidence that evolution has happened and is continuing to happen. Doing this in favour of a belief that cannot be proven (or even, as the first letter writer suggests, tested) is the scientific equivalent of closing your eyes and covering your ears and yelling "God did it! La la la la la I'm not listening to the evidence! La la la la la"

(Aside: The really ironic part of the second letter is that according to a Wikipedia article on brain function, the whole left-brain-vs.-right-brain thing isn't real science either.)

Maybe the building blocks of life were created by God. Since we don't know for sure how that happened, I have to admit that the idea is at least plausible even if I personally don't believe it. Maybe God created the first seeds of life and then allowed evolution to take it from there. Look at that, we're both right! Everybody wins!

Teach all theories? Yes, if it's actually a theory

There was an article in the Hamilton Spectator a few days ago about how evolution not being taught in Ontario schools until Grade 12 biology, a course which is not mandatory. As a result, we have students in Ontario universities that have never learned about evolution or natural selection and think that it means "people came from monkeys". In today's Spec, there is a letter to the editor in response to this article, which states:

Evolution may be a valuable lesson but it is still a theory. The title seems to imply that Darwinian theory equals truth.

The teaching of 'intelligent design' and 'creationism' are theoretically just as valid.

The teaching of all three in a science curriculum would help students to learn, analyze, discern and decide for themselves what data is relevant and to find their own truth.

Isn't that the best education?

I just finished writing a response and emailed it to the Spec. My response:

The writer is confused about the use of the word "theory" with respect to the theory of evolution. Evolution is a fact -- scientists have observed it happening. The theory of evolution describes why and how it happens, not whether it happens.

A scientific theory is not just a guess. The theory of evolution is no more a guess than the theory of gravity. We may not understand all the details of how evolution works, but there is no question that it is happening.

Intelligent design, on the other hand, is pseudo-science that is not supported by any facts, only religious faith.

We'll see if it gets published.

Burning question of the morning

Why do they put ProActive acne medication and Olay "regenerist" (or whatever) cream commercials on during The Smurfs?

NLL Playoff Picks – Round 1

East

Rochester vs. New York

Rochester started the season 0-4 and just looked really bad, but they fought hard to recover and beat Philadelphia in a must-win game to make the playoffs, which is a testament to rookie coach Paul Gait. They have survived the loss of John Grant and Scott Evans, plus Pat O'Toole for a few games. On the negative side, we all knew Gary Gait wouldn't be the multiple-MVP-winning Gary Gait from years gone by, but I think he was even less impactful than expected. Gait didn't even make the top 50 in scoring. He missed five games, but even if you extrapolate out to 16 games, he'd only be tied for 35th. After Williams (#6) and Evans (T12), the third top scorer on the Knighthawks was Jason Henhawk, tied for 57th. The Titans have six scorers in the top 37.

New York was in second place all year, but ended up tied with both Buffalo and Boston and won the East on tie-breakers. Matt Vinc is one of the best goaltenders in the league, and Casey Powell ended up 8th in the league in scoring despite only playing 13 games. Extrapolating his point total to 16 games you end up with 104, which would have tied him with Dan Dawson for second. The Titans took two of three from the Knighthawks during the regular season, but the first win was early in the season when a struggling Hawks team only allowed them 8 goals, so you could almost call the season series even.

Prediction: New York in a close one

Boston vs. Buffalo

Another toughie. Two strong offensive teams, two outstanding goalies. Boston has nothing to prove – nobody though they'd make it this far – but Buffalo lost their last two games (their last to these same Blazers) and with that, their lock on first place. The days of Buffalo losing games because they took too many stupid penalties are long gone, and I think the Bandits will be back with a vengeance.

Prediction: Buffalo

West

Colorado vs. Calgary

Calgary only lost four games all season, but one of them was to the Mammoth. (Another one, inexplicably, was to the lowly Toronto Rock.) King and Campbell have been the best one-two goalie combo in the league this year, and Josh Sanderson has made Calgary fans forget Lewis Ratcliff. Colorado, on the other hand, finished the season with a win over Edmonton but lost seven of nine before that and as any Star Trek fan will tell you, losing Seven of Nine is a very bad thing indeed. Leyshon and Palidwor played admirably, but the loss of Gee Nash was just too much. Calgary shouldn't have a problem getting to the west final again.

Prediction: Calgary

San Jose vs. Portland

I find it difficult to go against Colin Doyle's team in the playoffs. I've seen him step his game up a notch (or more) when the games matter the most too many times to think he might fold under pressure. His unprecendented three Championship game MVP awards are a testament to that. San Jose didn't have a great season, but they won four of five near the end of the season, at the same time that Colorado was losing five of six. I think San Jose will take it, but having said all that, they'll have trouble getting by Calgary.

Prediction: San Jose

If I was forced to make predictions on round two, I'd have to take Buffalo over New York and Calgary over San Jose, resulting in a rematch of the 2004 Championship – Buffalo in Calgary. I'll have to give Calgary the edge in another close one. Ladies and gentlemen, your 2009 NLL Champions, the Calgary Roughnecks.

Top ten reasons why being a Rock fan is better than being a Bandits fan

1. Getting tickets to a Rock game is getting easier, while getting tickets to a Bandits game is getting harder
2. No annoying cheering and yelling during games – much quieter while you are sending email on your Blackberry
3. Orange shoes are distracting
4. Same coach and GM for seven years? Where's the fun in that?
5. No counting lessons ("1, 2, 3, ..., n, WE WANT n+1!") or spelling lessons ("B O X") during Rock games
6. Rock fans can look back at the early years when Les Bartley and Jim Veltman led them to multiple championships
7. Mark Steenhuis is greedy – keeps hogging All-Star game MVP and player of the week awards
8. A Bandits player has the same last name as the coach/GM... suspicious. That would never happen in Toronto.
9. Rock coach arrested for beating up an opposing player. Boring Bandits coach could beat up just about anyone on the planet, but doesn't.
10. Weekends free in late April and May

Eight of Five

I have posted a couple of times in the past about J.P. Ricciardi and whether he should be fired. First I complained about a couple of stupid moves that he made. Then I decided that he definitely should be fired. The last time, I was questioning my previous decision. Then when they let Burnett go and did nothing else in the off-season, I decided (though I guess I didn't post anything to this effect) that Ricciardi's time was over. Now they've started the season (a season with zero expectations) at 10-4 and have looked seriously awesome. Lind, Hill and Rolen are all hitting above .325, while Overbay, Wells, Snider, and Scutaro are all above .280. Everybody listed above has at least two homers after 15 games, and everybody listed above except Wells was acquired or drafted by Ricciardi. Ricky Romero, another Ricciardi draftee, is 2-0 with a outstanding 1.71 ERA and 1.10 WHIP. Shaun Marcum (also drafted by Ricciardi) and Dustin McGowan are out for the season because of injuries, but injuries aren't J.P.'s fault and if those two were healthy, the Jays would have a pretty impressive rotation. So maybe Ricciardi does know what he's doing.

Obviously this is really early in the season, and for Romero at least, very early in the career, so it may not mean anything. The Jays are on pace to win 115 games. Do I think that will happen? Not a chance, but I'm certainly enjoying watching them right now.

Then again, the only team with more wins than the Jays are the 11-1 Florida Marlins, and the World Series Champion Phillies are under .500.  Last year, Tampa Bay won the East and the Yankees didn't make the playoffs. All of these put together make a compelling argument that the end of the world is very close at hand. Sinners repent.

There's been a lot of talk over the last year or two among Jays fans, many of whom think that Ricciardi has had his chance and deserves to be fired, since the Jays are no closer to the pennant now than they were when he took over. J.P. originally said that he had a plan to make the Jays contenders in five years, and we're now into year eight. But has Ricciardi really done a bad job, or does it seem like that because he gave us a hard deadline that he didn't meet? What would we think had J.P. not said anything about how long it might take? Well, as I posted before, he's currently the longest-serving GM that hasn't seen the playoffs. And it's not like we've been close – the Jays haven't had a sniff of the playoffs since 1994. So I think that even if J.P. hadn't given any time deadline, we'd still be calling for his head. But given the awesome start to this season, I'm willing to give him just a little more rope. But unless the Jays get to the post-season this year, he's done. In fact, if the team isn't still in it by the All-Star break – and by "in it" I mean within 2 or 3 games of first place in the East – then that should be it for J.P., and the Jays should start looking for a new GM, preferably someone named Brian.

NLL season prediction results

The 2009 NLL regular season has come to a close, so it's time to look at the predictions I made at the beginning of the season and see how I did.

	Result	My predictions
East
1	New York	Buffalo
2	Buffalo	Philly
3	Boston	New York
4	Rochester	Toronto
5	Philly	Rochester
6	Toronto	Boston
West
1	Calgary	Minnesota
2	Portland	Calgary
3	San Jose	Colorado
4	Colorado	San Jose
5	Minnesota	Portland
6	Edmonton	Edmonton

End result: one correct out of twelve. Ouch. But really, you could argue that I wasn't that far off. Five teams – Buffalo, Rochester, Calgary, Colorado, and San Jose – were all off by only one. As with my mid-season predictions, if you make two swaps my predictions are very close. Swap Philly and Boston (who predicted that they would finish tied for first?) and four teams miss by one and the other two miss by two. In the west, swap Minnesota and Portland and I get four off-by-one's and two correct.

I have a copy of Inside Lacrosse magazine from the beginning of the season, and Brian Shanahan made his picks as well, so let's see how he did:

	Result	Brian Shanahan
East
1	New York	Buffalo
2	Buffalo	Rochester
3	Boston	Toronto
4	Rochester	Philly
5	Philly	New York
6	Toronto	Boston
West
1	Calgary	Minnesota
2	Portland	San Jose
3	San Jose	Colorado
4	Colorado	Edmonton
5	Minnesota	Calgary
6	Edmonton	Portland

Turns out that Shanny's ouch is worse than mine. None right and only four off by one. The best you can do with two swaps would be New York and Rochester in the east, giving him four off-by-ones and the other two off by three. In the west, you could swap Minnesota and Calgary and get two right, and you'd still have two off by one, but then Edmonton is off by two and Portland by four.

Shanny was more confident about Rochester and Toronto than I was and like me, he thought Minnesota would fare better than they did. But how he got Edmonton finishing ahead of Calgary I don't know. In fairness, Shanny's predictions were made before Chicago folded (he had them finishing 6th in the East, between New York and Boston) and therefore before Anthony Cosmo joined the Blazers. They were also made before Paul Gait was hired as Rochester head coach, and before it was announced that the Knighthawks would be missing Shawn Evans for the season.

Maybe Shanny should start reading my blog, instead of me reading his. <grin>

Wii Fit

Our "family present" this past Christmas was Wii Fit. The boys were kind of excited about it, but not thrilled. It wasn't like their reaction when we bought them Star Wars Lego for Wii – that game was a big hit. Since then, however, they've really started to enjoy Wii Fit. It's not their favourite game – that would be the aforementioned Star Wars Lego – but I'd say it's in the top three. Gail and I also enjoy it. There are basically three "modes" to Wii Fit. It can be:

1. a fun game
2. a workout that doesn't seem like a workout
3. a real workout

The balance games may help your overall balance, but they certainly just seem like fun. Or, you can combine the balance games with a couple of the aerobic ones for a bit of a workout. There's a boxing one that combines throwing punches with step aerobics, or there are regular step aerobics and some running ones as well. Or, if you are actually in the mood to work out, some of the strength training and yoga exercises are quite difficult (the "dance" yoga one is the hardest one I've done yet).

Does it compare to an actual weight bench or going for an actual run, whether outside or on a treadmill? Well, not really. But there have been times where the boys are asleep and Gail is either asleep as well or doing something else, and I have some time to myself. Sometimes I read, blog, work, play my guitar, but rarely do I decide to go and work out for half an hour. However, on some occasions I have decided to play Wii Fit for a while and before I knew it, I had worked out for half an hour or more.

People have been trying to making exercising fun for non-fitness buffs for years, so kudos to Nintendo for finally succeeding.

CD Review: Pearl Jam – Ten Redux

I originally bought Pearl Jam's Ten album in about 1991 and have loved it ever since. It's one of my all-time favourite albums, is simply great from start to finish, and even contains one of my favourite guitar solos (on "Alive"). This past week, Pearl Jam released a new version of Ten which contains two CDs – the first is simply the album I have, the second (called Ten Redux) contains remixed versions of every song on the album, as well as a few bonus tracks. This basically means that I just bought two copies of an album I already had.

I didn't plan on buying this new version, figuring it was only for serious die-hard Pearl Jam fans. But Alan Cross talked about it on the Explore Music podcast a couple of weeks ago, and said that the new remixed version is simply amazing, so I ordered it from amazon.ca.

Strangely, Cross said that the changes are "subtle, but obvious – if you listen to it off CD and NOT off a compressed MP3". So on the way into work the other day, I brought the CD with me and listened to it directly, rather than plugging the iPod in. (Ironically, the CD wouldn't play in the player at first. I had to eject it and try it again before it would play. I think the first time I put the disk in, it got caught in the cobwebs inside.) I was a little sceptical that I would hear any difference, given what Cross had said – I figured that if the differences were so subtle that you couldn't hear them from an MP3, then the $69 stereo in my car wouldn't allow me to hear the differences anyway, but it did. I'm not sure I agree with Cross's assessment, since the differences I hear are obvious enough (to someone who's listened to the album enough times) that even with a compressed MP3, you can hear them. I listened to the MP3 version from my iPod as well, and sure enough you can hear the changes. I rip all my MP3's at a variable bit rate, which means that the compression isn't as good (i.e. the files are bigger) but you don't lose as much sound quality. Maybe Cross uses a higher compression rate.

The Difference

Despite sounding oxymoronic, Cross's description of "subtle, but obvious" is exactly right. This not a "director's cut" – there are no new verses, no new solos, and none of the songs are any longer or shorter than the originals. Nothing has been added or removed, and most importantly, Han still shoots first. Most of what they've done is modify the relative volumes of the instruments. In most songs, the rhythm guitar has been turned up during solos -- in a couple of cases, it's been turned up enough that it's harder to hear the solo guitar. There were a couple of relatively quiet sections (like the first time you hear "Why go home?" in "Why Go") where the drums and bass have been turned up a little. In some cases, the background vocals have been turned down. The most obvious specific difference I found was that the "hoo hoo hoo hoo" high-pitched vocals on "Jeremy" have been almost removed. There are a few other smaller changes:

• in "Even Flow" after the line "Where do I stand?", the echo of "stand" is gone
• the bass at the very end of "Why Go" is a little louder, and is sustained just a touch longer, causing the segue into the brilliant "Black" to be a little less smooth than the original.
• the opening guitar on "Garden" has a different tone

There are also six bonus songs included, some of which were previously unreleased. "Brother" and "Just A Girl both" sound like they could have been on Ten, and I might even have included "Brother" over "Deep". "Breath And A Scream" is kind of boring, and sounds like a bonus track, i.e. one that wasn't good enough to make the album. "State Of Love And Trust" isn't bad, and "2,000 Mile Blues" is cool - very Zeppelin-esque. "Evil Little Goat" is only a minute and a half long, but if Eddie Vedder ever sang for The Beach Boys, this might be what it would sound like.

Now if only Pearl Jam could remix their later albums (anything after Vs.) to make me care about them. I loved Ten and really liked Vs. as well but for some reason, I completely lost interest in Pearl Jam after that. No idea why. I have a couple of later albums (Riot Act and Pearl Jam) and I've listened to them a couple of times, but they seem kind of forgettable. But now that my interest in Ten has been rekindled, I'll give them another listen.

Mangled metaphors

Heard on a sports podcast today:

That's the golden slipper that Cinderella was looking for.

Um.... what?

First off, Cinderella had glass slippers, not gold. Secondly, Cinderella wasn't looking for a slipper. In fact, she wasn't looking for anything – it was the Prince looking for the person who fit the slipper.

<shakes head> Sports guys.

Boston 14 Toronto 13

Some comments on tonight's game:

• Watson was a little shaky at the beginning but settled down, and made some very nice stops in the second half. Cosmo was great all night. It seemed that Toronto kept trying to go five-hole on him all night, but there just wasn't a five-hole. That's probably why they asked for the goalie equipment check.
• Most games this season (the home games, anyway), the Rock have started out strong and then slowed down. They played a full 60 strong minutes in the last game, and tonight, the Rock's best quarter was the third, but the 4th was pretty strong too. Overall, other than refusing to shoot the damn ball at times, they played pretty well.
• Like Rochester's Mac Allen in the last game, another bad moustache. "Boston penalty to #12, Jon Durno, two minutes for unruly facial hair."
• After the last goal, I was reminded of the 2001 NLL Championship game in Toronto. The other team (Philadelphia in 2001, Boston tonight) is up by two goals, but the Rock is putting on great pressure. Toronto scores a goal to bring them within one, and I immediately look at the clock to see how much time is left. In 2001, about 1.3 seconds. Tonight, 0.9. Just not enough time and the Rock lose by one.
• Nice to see Cosmo come out and congratulate Dan Ladouceur.
• Jason Clark is new to the Rock, and obviously hasn't read the Rock 2009 playbook. A couple of times when he got the ball near the net, he turned and shot at the net. He doesn't yet know that the way Rock do things in 2009 is to pass the ball around ten or fifteen times, ignoring decent shooting opportunities, before (a) shooting directly at the goalie's chest, (b) dropping a pass, or (c) shooting and missing the net completely. I'm sure by the next game, he will have cleaned up his act a little and gotten with the program.
• There were a couple of goal reviews, all of which were quite obvious on the replay. I thought for sure that McGlone was in the crease on his goal, but replay showed clearly that he was still in the air when the ball went in.
• Rob Marshall is trying so hard to be Steve Toll, but he just can't score. I like him though, he works hard.
• Cosmo twice stopped play when his team needed it by having the trainer come out to look at his equipment. Another skill he learned from Whipper while he was in Toronto.