Being Nicholas

Here are some exerpts from a book my son is writing, called How to be an Effective Nicholas. Nicky is generally in one of two moods — Joking and Upset, which the book describes as follows:

Joking Mood

When you're in a joking mood, everything is funny. Mommy or daddy (or Ryan) saying "No" is funny. Squealing at the top of your lungs or punching your brother (or anyone else) is funny. Getting told not to squeal or hit people is funny. Inventing a meaningless word and then immediately asking what that word means is funny. Sitting or standing in the same place for longer than 3 seconds is not funny, so don't do it. When someone asks you a question, it's funny not to answer, or if you do, it's funny to give a meaningless answer or one that isn't true — here's an example:

Daddy: "Nicky, what do you want for a snack?"
Nicky: "Grapes"
Daddy, approximately 15 seconds later: "Here are your grapes"
Nicky: (yelling,crying) "I didn't want grapes!"

Note the immediate switchover to the upset mood. Also, having something taken away ("No, you can't watch Scooby Doo because you've been hitting Ryan"), or being given something that you didn't want (even if nobody knew that you didn't want it) instantly switches to the upset mood. This is particularly important for critical decisions like what colour of straw to drink your apple juice with, or whether to put your shirt or shorts on first when getting dressed.

Upset Mood

When you're upset, you can either ignore questions or simply answer "I don't know" — make sure you don't move your lips when you say anything, so that your voice is unintelligible. You must always pout and hang your head as low as possible (should you be sitting at the table, make sure your head actually hits the table, and ignore any pain). If standing up, you should immediately sit down, lie down, or walk dejectedly out of the room. Crying is not required, but encouraged. If your brother is nearby, hit him, even if he had nothing to do with the reason for your upset-ness. Nothing is funny, unless you're being physically tickled (as an attempt to get you out of the upset mood) — in that case, you may laugh during the tickling, but the pouting must return upon cessation of said tickling.

Of course, every now and again, Nicky is looking at a book or playing with a toy and is having fun without jumping around and squealing, so there do exist other moods; we just don't see them often.

Let me give you some good advice, young man, you better learn to play guitar

It's been almost a year since I started my weekly guitar lessons. Still no Grammy award, but I'm certainly better than I was a year ago. Favourite songs to play: Blackbird by The Beatles and The Rain Song by Led Zeppelin (though you have to retune the guitar for that one, which is kind of a pain). The lessons have certainly been helpful, but more because I'm forced to get the guitar out at least once a week and play it. I'm getting some instruction in my technique, but according to my teacher, that's good enough that I don't need much instruction there, just practice. My problem is music theory, and while my teacher does go over it, I'm not retaining much of it. At one point, he was explaining relative chords and stuff, and suddenly a bunch of stuff made sense — I even understood why the guitar strings are tuned the way they are, and not simply to a chord. Of course, a couple of months later, I don't remember any of that now. It's not my teacher's fault, though, I just have to get off my ass and put more time into learning that stuff.

It's my son's birthday! Nicky turns the big '4' today. I can't believe he'll be starting school (JK) in the fall. We got a package from the school just yesterday about it - his teacher will be Mrs. Tilton, who is new at Greenleaf. We were hoping Ms. Urfey would be his teacher - she's taught JK at Greenleaf for at least the past 4 years, and is really good. She, however, wanted to move over to teaching grade 2, so they had to bring in another JK teacher. Nicky is looking forward to school, though I don't think he has any clue what's in store for him; then again, does any kid starting JK? Probably not. I think the teacher might have her hands full with him, until she can (hopefully) tone down his joking moods, when he loses control of himself, and "no, Nicky" doesn't really mean anything. Hopefully Mrs. Tilton will have more luck doing that than we have, since she presumably has more experience in dealing with small children than we do. He's also got three full months before he starts, so maybe he'll grow out of it by then.

Update: Nicky's teacher will not be Mrs. Tilton. We requested that he be moved to the A stream (i.e. Wednesday, Friday, and every other Monday rather then Tuesday, Thursday and every other Monday), and they have already done this for us (Gail being chair of the school council may have had a hand in this), so his teacher will be Mrs. Tyrosvoutis. I think that's the right spelling, anyway - the kids call her Mrs. T. I pity da fool who pronounces her name wrong.

Technorati tags: guitar kindergarten

Killing time

I have some time to kill before I play baseball at 9:30 (!) tonight. Since I live so far from work (~70 km one way), there's no point in my going home and then coming back — best case, that's an hour and a half of driving — so I'm hanging out at work. What better way to spend that time than blogging?

We'll start with 24, which Gail and I have been addicted to for the last 5 seasons. The season finale was this past Monday, and it did a pretty good job of wrapping up what was actually a rather boring season, by 24's standards. Oh sure, several main characters died (Michelle, Tony, Edgar), so that was exciting, but the whole gas cannister plot went on too long, and I didn't like the way the writers handled the traitorous President — I think it would have been better if he was a strong man acting indecisive and weak, rather than actually having him be indecisive and weak and manipulated by some bald guy (who they never explained, now that I think of it). The only thing that we know about him is that his name is Graham. (I'm just assuming that it's spelled that way, not Graeme. Call me pessimistic.) Maybe they're keeping him as next year's villain, though one thing on this show that you can never do is figure out who the real bad guy is — as soon as you think you do, they bring out another guy who's giving the first guy orders. They also kind of abandoned the whole "real-time" thing at the end, where Jack is is knocked unconscious and abducted (in LA) by the Chinese, and five minutes later wakes up in the middle of the Pacific on (quite literally) a slow boat to China.

Let's move on to baseball now. Barry Bonds hit home run number 714 in his career the other night, tying Babe Ruth for 2nd on the all-time list. Big freakin' deal. Well, I suppose it is, but I just can't get too excited about it, firstly because it's not a record anymore (Hank Aaron surpassed it over 30 years ago), and secondly because we all know that a good number of those home runs (at least all the ones hit in the last 5 years) were done while Bonds was juiced up on steroids. The evidence is painfully clear. Bonds played 14 seasons with the Pirates and Giants, and averaged 32 homers a year in that time — he hit over 45 home runs only once. He also averaged 33 steals per season. Then 2000 rolls around — the year Bonds turned 36, and for the next 5 seasons, he averages 52 homers (over 45 every year, maxing out at a major league record 73) and only 9 steals per season. His batting average over those 5 years was .339, while his career average before that was only .288. Then MLB announces that they will begin steroid testing in 2005, and lo and behold, Bonds sits out almost the entire season with an injury. But he's not on steroids. <Dr.Evil>Rrrrrrriiiiiiight.</Dr.Evil>

On an unrelated baseball note, the Jays finally demoted Josh Towers to AAA Syracuse yesterday after yet another dismal outing. He didn't lose the game because the Jays came back to tie it (and then lost it later), but he didn't even last 2 innings. It's about damn time. I have nothing against Towers — he pitched really well last year — but he's 1-and-freakin'-8. For a second-year player, that's at least 2 losses too many. It's not like he was going 7 innings and losing 3-2 games either — he was getting shelled almost every time out. His one win was very impressive though - he went 8 innings in that one, so maybe John Gibbons figured he'd found his groove or something. Obviously he hadn't, so they've sent him down to try and pick things up there. In 2001, Roy Halladay was sent down all the way to single-A ball to "re-build his delivery" — essentially learning how to pitch again. By the end of that year he was back in the majors, and look how that turned out — a Cy Young award in 2003, and he might have won another one last year if he hadn't broken his leg in July and missed the rest of the season. I don't know if single-A ball is the answer for Towers (heard someone on the radio this morning refer to him as "Fawlty" Towers), but staying in the majors isn't working for him at this point, and it's certainly not helping the Jays out either.

Well, I think that's all I have to say for now, and I still have an hour before my game. Well, since I'm at work, maybe I should, oh I don't know, do some work.

Technorati tags: 24 Baseball Barry Bonds Blue Jays Josh Towers

The Incredible Shrinking Me

Over Easter, we went to Gail's dad's place for a couple of days and my parents' place for a couple of days. As always, there was lots of food at both places, and being Easter, there was also lots of chocolate. I ate like a pig the whole weekend, and felt like crap on the drive back home. Part of it was physical (I just ate too much), but mostly I was just disgusted with myself. I told Gail when we got home that I was going to start doing Weight Watchers with her - she's been doing it for a couple of years. I haven't officially joined WW, and I'm not going to the meetings or anything (Gail does), I'm just keeping track of what I eat.

The program is fairly simple - every item of food has a number of points associated with it, based on the amount of fiber, calories, and fat in the item. For example, an apple is 1 point, vegetables are generally 0 points (i.e. you can eat as much as you want, within reason), two slices of bread are about 3 points, a Coke is 3 points (though Diet Coke is 0), a cup of milk is 2 points, and a Big Mac at McDonald's is 11 points. You write down everything you eat every day, and count up the number of points for each thing. For my weight, I get 24 points per day, plus you also have 35 "flex points" that you can use per week - you can either split them up (i.e. give yourself an extra 5 points per day), or use them all in one day, or some combination. Here's an average day's food for me before I started doing this:

Breakfast:
Two English muffins with peanut butter (at least 8 points)
Cup of apple juice (3 points)
Lunch:
Michelena's entree or leftovers (anywhere from 8-13 points)
Yogurt (1 point)
Granola bar (3 points)
Dinner:
Anywhere between 8 and 15 points
Ice cream (3-5 points)

So we're looking at somewhere between 38 and 45 points per day. Sometimes we'd try to be healthy and serve raw veggies with dinner, but I'd always take a big dollop of some kind of dip - the veggies are 0 points, but some dips are 4 points per tablespoon. Since I've been watching what I eat, I've made the following types of changes:

• bowl of cereal instead of english muffins (saved 3 points)
• no juice (saved 3)
• Lean Cuisine entrees or soup or smaller portion of leftovers (saved 3-12)
• an apple instead of a granola bar (saved 2)
• a smaller dinner (saved 2-6)
• no ice cream (save 3-5)

Some days I have enough points left over to have the ice cream after dinner, or a snack later on, and I've only max'ed out my flex points once - most weeks I barely touch them. I've been hungry a lot more lately, but I figure that's a small price to pay to look and feel better.

The program isn't designed for rapid weight loss, but I lost about 7 pounds in the first 4 weeks. We went to Ottawa last weekend, and I didn't count any points while there, so I went up a pound last week. But it's summer, so I'll be getting lots of excercise with baseball and hikes and stuff - Gail and I bought bikes recently, so we'll hopefully get out biking now and again too. I'm still working out two or three days a week, so combined with the exercise and better eating, I'm hoping to be in great shape by the end of the summer.

Technorati tags: fitness weight loss Weight Watchers

Technorati

I signed up with Technorati the other day, and I found a way to set up a posting template that includes the technorati tag links, so some of my postings will have these links at the bottom. I'll put relevant tags on an article, and if you're interested in that topic, you can click on a link and technorati will search for other entries in the blogosphere that use that tag as well. I'm not going to go back and update a year's worth of entries to add these tags though, so this will likely only affect new postings. I may add some tags to a couple of recent entries, just to see how it works.

Technorati tags: technorati

More on blogging (or moron blogging?)

A guy at work wrote on his "relaxed slow-moving, occasionally-updated weblog" that bloggers who update their blog multiple times a day are "some combination of (a) well-organized, (b) brilliant, or (c) egotistical". I can't say I disagree with that. (I also know that he's not really referring to me, since I only update my blog once or twice a week.) He then goes on to say that bloggers are "presumptious, almost distasteful" because they publish their thoughts with the implied assumption that they are "worthy" of publication. (Note that he also says that he's decided that "this impression of presumptiousness is wrong".) I certainly don't think that my thoughts as published in my blog are "worthy" of anything. They're my thoughts, and if you want to read them, great. If you think this blog is a pile of crap, well, there are one or two other blogs on the internet, feel free to check them out. I won't be offended. I'm certainly not doing this because I think anything I've written is particularly profound or meaningful - I am quite sure that nobody gives a rat's ass about my trip to Wonderland the other day, or what concerts I've been to, or my thoughts on the important social or political issues of the day (ummm... I couldn't find any such links on this blog) and yet I wrote about them anyway. Why?

I don't know if I have an audience. I know that one or two people at work (JP, MC) have read my blog in the past and have even commented on an article or two, but I don't know if they read every article. I've sent links to single articles to a couple of my friends, but I don't know if they've read any others. Even my wife knows about my blog, but I don't think she reads it. My kids are too young to know what a blog is (but I'm sure they'll be LOL'ing and OMG'ing on myspace.com before I know it). So: I don't think my thoughts are particularly meaningful to anyone else, and other than myself and the occasional google searcher, I don't know if anyone is reading this stuff anyway. So again we arrive at this question that I tried to answer before - why the hell am I doing this?

Going back to Tom's description - am I well-organized? Not especially. Brilliant? That's a stretch, though I'm fairly well-educated. Egotistical? Generally no, but I think there has to be a certain amount of that involved - logically, I must want people to read it, otherwise why publish it? If the writing part of it is why I do it, then I could just write it down and leave it on my own computer, but I don't.

I enjoy reading other people's blogs. When I went to DC in January for the CC testing, the validator was a guy named Daniel. I'd never met nor even heard of him before then, I haven't talked to him since (and likely won't ever again), and he probably doesn't remember who I am. Yet I still read his blog, even though he generally talks about his friends who I don't know, and places he goes in LA, where I've never been, as well as his interest in the Jewish faith, about which I know very little. It's certainly not one of my favourite blogs, but I still find it interesting now and again. I've occasionally found blogs from people I've never met nor heard of, and sometimes they can be enjoyable too.

Perhaps it's egotistical of me to think that someone, somewhere, occasionally enjoys reading my blog. I guess the end result is that I find it fun to publish this stuff, and if nobody reads it, then no big deal. I'm too well-organized and brilliant to care about that.

Keep your arms and legs inside the car at all times

We spent Mother's Day at Canada's Wonderland (oops, sorry, Paramount Canada's Wonderland - can't forget the sponsor!). We got season passes last year, and went a number of times. Unless you know you are only going once, the season pass is too good a deal to pass up. It costs a whopping $51 for a single-day pass, but only $69 for a season pass (until today, anyway, then the price goes up), so if you go twice, you've already saved money. The only difference is that the kids' season passes cost the same as ours, although the entry fee for the kids is $30. As a result, they have to go three times before we start saving, but that shouldn't be a problem. We certainly got our money's worth last year, so we got season passes again this year.

The major advantage for us isn't even the cost savings, it's the fact that we can come and go as we please -- if you spend $51 for each of 2 adults and $30 for each of 2 kids, that's $162 in admission -- for that price, you're going to want to get there first thing in the morning, and spend as long as you possibly can at the park. With the season passes, we can show up a little later or leave at 1pm if we want, and not feel like we're getting ripped off. Or, in the summer, we can spend the entire day at the water park and not do rides at all, and then go back another day and skip the water park. Plus we get to park in the special season-ticket-holder-only parking lot near the entrance, which is quite convenient. AND we get 20% off (overpriced) merchandise, and 30% (overpriced) food (at some restaurants). For example, while we were there, we needed another roll of film, so I just went to the conveniently located gift shop, and after the discount, I got a 24-print roll of 400 film for the bargain basement price of about seven bucks. Membership has its privileges!

I used to go to Wonderland all the time in high school - I knew the park like the back of my hand. We'd basically hit all the coasters (except the Ghoster Coaster - lame), and then hit them all again. The Mighty Canadian Minebuster was my favourite -- that was back when there were only five coasters - the Minebuster, the Dragon Fyre (which goes upside-down! Holy crap!), the Ghoster Coaster, the Sky Rider (which we just called "the stand-up one"), and the Wildebeest, which I always pronounced "WILL-de-beast", since a wildebeest is a real animal, and that's how the name is pronounced. Everyone else called it the Wild Beast. They have since renamed the ride as the Wild Beast, and they've also renamed Dragon Fyre "Dragon Fire". Catering to stupid people, I suppose.

Anyway, there are lots more coasters now - they've added Thunder Run (goes around and inside the mountain), the Vortex (suspended), The Fly (tiny little cars on a windy track), Tomb Raider (you lie down on your stomach for that one), the Bat (goes forwards and backwards), Top Gun (suspended) and The Italian Job (awesome ride - you ride in these little Minis which are blazingly fast), not to mention a bunch of other thrill rides like Psyclone, Shockwave, Cliffhanger, and Drop Zone.

We, of course, don't do any of those rides. We did hit Chopper Chase, Swing Time, the Rugrats bumper cars, Kidsville Station, Jumpin' Jet, and Taxi Jam, which is a little roller coaster that the kids love. Nicholas is also big enough this year to do the Ghoster Coaster, and he loved it too. The boys had a great time, and we had a lot of fun watching them. We also saw the School of Rock show, which is basically a 25-minute live concert with some scenes from the movie, and the kids liked that too. Ryan turned to me in the middle and said "Daddy, this rocks!". Knowing Ryan, he might have just said that because he knew it would get a laugh out of me, but I think he really did enjoy the show.

Unfortunately, their security hasn't gotten any better since last year. Actually, it was even worse this year - I pulled the wagon through the metal detectors and they beeped - probably because of the keys in my pocket and my cell phone. The guy just waved me ahead without even asking anything.

The Fab Three and the other guy

An old guitarist's joke:

What do you call a guy who hangs around with musicians?
The drummer.

I've been playing an MP3 CD on shuffle in the car for the past few days. It's got both the Blue and Red Beatles Greatest Hits albums, as well as some Aerosmith, all five Max Webster albums, and the Eagles - I guess it's my classic rock mix. Anyway, whenever I listen to the Beatles for any length of time, I am constantly amazed at Ringo Starr. I can think of no band to which the joke above applies more than the Beatles.

Obviously John and Paul were the chief songwriters, and were also great singers and musicians. George was a great guitar player, and while he didn't write many songs for the Beatles, the ones he did write (Here Comes The Sun, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Something) are really good, and he wasn't a half-bad singer either. And then there's Ringo. A pretty good drummer, but a lousy singer, and what songs did he write of any significance? Here's the list: Octopus's Garden. The other day I hit Octopus's Garden during my shuffle, and halfway through the song I had to skip to the next track; I just couldn't listen to it anymore. It's the kind of song I would expect from The Wiggles, not from one of the best rock bands ever. The next track that came up was Yesterday, an absolute classic, and one of my favourite Beatles songs. The juxtaposition (what a great word!) was just painful. I also thought that the segue from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (sung by John and Paul) and With a Little Help From My Friends (sung by Ringo) was a little weird, especially given the lyrics at the end of Sgt. Pepper:

I don't really want to stop the show
But I thought you might like to know
That the singer's gonna sing a song
And he wants you all to sing along
So let me introduce to you
The one and only Billy Shears

It's like they're saying "Here's the moment you've all been waiting for, our singer, the one, the only, Billy Shears!" (big buildup) and then Ringo starts singing (big letdown). This is what we've been waiting for? Ironic, too, that the first line of the song is "What would you think if I sang out of tune".

OK, I guess that's enough Ringo-bashing for one day.

What a drag it is getting old

Our second baseball game of the season was last night, and I'm feeling it today. My throwing arm isn't as sore as I expected, in fact it feels pretty good. My legs are killing me though. Getting out of the car after the hour drive into work was a bit of a chore - since my job involves a fair amount of sitting, I plan on forcing myself to get up every hour or so and just walking around the building to try and keep my leg muscles from tightening up completely. I'm going to have to hit the treadmill a lot more in the future.

It ocurred to me yesterday that although I was one of the younger people in the Stelco league, I'm probably one of the oldest on my team this year. I really need to join a volleyball league or something during the winter to keep in shape so that the first few baseball games of the spring aren't like this. Working out in the basement is great, but there's just no substitute for actually playing a sport.

What else is going on? The Rock fired coach Terry Sanderson the other day. I'm not sure why - he was there for 2 full seasons and most of a third, and here's what he did:

• 2004: Take over a team that was 2-4 and lead them to the playoffs
• 2005: Won championship
• 2006: Start 0-4 and still get them into the playoffs

Sure, one championship win in 3 seasons is a lower average than his predecessor, the late Les Bartley, who won 4 in 5 seasons, but Les is widely regarded as one of the best box lacrosse coaches ever, so you can't honestly expect every coach to have that kind of record. Personally, I don't quite understand the move.

Update: Former Toronto Rock defender Glenn Clark, who played last year with the Philadelphia Wings, was announced this morning as the new Rock head coach. Clark is an experienced player, who was apparently an unofficial assistant coach with the Rock a couple of years ago while he was injured for half a season. He obviously knows the game very well, but other than his unofficial stint with the Rock, I don't think he has any high-level coaching experience. We'll see how that works out...

It's baseball season again!

All winter I look forward to baseball season, but never as much as this past winter. I've played in a Stelco league in Hamilton for the past 10 or 12 years, but this year, I'm playing in a hi-tech league in Waterloo, as a member of the iAnywhere Mobilizers. We played our first game tonight. We had fun, even though we got slaughtered. The other team singled and doubled us to death (with a couple of homers in there for good measure), while we couldn't get much going offensively. I had a couple of singles, one ground out to second, and one line out to second. Actually, my two singles were just to the right of second base as well, so I hit the ball 4 times to exactly the same place. I played OK in right field - blew my first play in the first inning when the ball took a weird bounce right in front of me and skipped by my glove, and I overthrew the shortstop once. Not much was hit to me though, so I just ran around a lot.

This league is a little different from the Stelco league:

• The field is completely fenced in, and not in a public park. No more delaying the game because some old lady decides to walk across our field as a shortcut home from the grocery store.
• You're allowed to slide into 2nd and 3rd. Doubt I ever will though.
• There are five outfielders, though there were still times where it would have been nice to have another one.
• The field has lights! No more playing the last couple of innings quickly so we can beat the darkness, or losing the ball because it's too dark to see it.

One slight drawback of this league is that there are a lot more teams and therefore players, and you don't always know people on the other teams, so there ends up being less camaraderie between teams. In the Stelco league, most players have been playing for years, so everyone knows everyone on all the teams. Not too big a deal though - the people on my team are nice. I already knew most of the team, but there were a couple of co-ops I didn't know, and the twin sister (Teesha) of one of the team captains (Caryn) is on the team as well. I don't know Caryn all that well, so telling them apart will be a challenge, but they're both very friendly, and made me feel very welcome on the team - Caryn actually said that they were glad that I came out for the team. Now, she said that before I blew the play in the outfield, not after... but then again, I think everyone blew at least one play, so I was in good company.

One other difference between this league and the Stelco one is that in the Stelco league, all games were 6:00 on Wednesday. In this league, games start anywhere from 5:30 to 9:30, and any day from Monday to Thursday - some weeks there are two games, other weeks we don't play at all. That throws a wrench into our weekly schedule somewhat, since a lot of our games are Thursday nights, and so I may have to move my guitar lessons to Friday afternoons. Not a big deal though. This league is also much better organized than the Stelco one (it even has its own web site), so that is a major plus. I've officially dumped the stelcoball.com site I was running for the Stelco league - very few people went to the site, and the commissioner wasn't interested in sending me results, so the standings and game results were always out of date. I've even cancelled the domain name - I believe I still own it until August sometime, after which it vanishes.

My arm is going to hurt tomorrow...

Book Review: IPv6 Network Programming

I bought a book on IPv6 from amazon.com recently, and received it today. (I actually bought two, but the second hasn't shipped yet.) IPv6 is still fairly new technology, and the one book I have that mentions is doesn't have enough details -- If I'm going to be the IPv6 expert at work (which I suppose I already am - scary), I think I need to have a better knowledge than I currently do.

Anyway, I looked over this book, and the first thing I noticed was the typeface - it looked like the book was written on a typewriter. I quickly discovered that this was because I was looking at an appendix - an RFC describing some aspect of IPv6. RFCs (Request for Comments) are written by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and are used to decide on standards, like the "official" definitions of various network protocols and stuff like that. Four different RFCs relating to IPv6 were included in the book, and it looks like they took the RFC text directly from the web site with no reformatting. There are five other articles included as well, all of which are also freely available on the web. Once I got to the actual meat of the book (i.e. stuff the author actually wrote himself, I was very disappointed. There are only 80 pages of actual content in this 361-page book, for which I paid (OK, Sybase paid) $50 US. Actually, in the end, nobody will have paid for it, since I'm returning it.

It looks like the content itself is fairly useful, so I wouldn't mind ripping out the first 80 pages, sending the rest back, and asking amazon.com to refund 78% of my purchase price (80 pages out of 361 is 78%). I doubt they'd go for that. I did write a review on amazon.com, giving the book only 2 stars out of 5. We'll see if they post my review.

The other book I ordered is from O'Reilly Press, which has produced a lot of good computer books in the past, so I'm a little more hopeful that it will be a keeper. According to amazon, it's expected to ship sometime in June (the order was placed on March 17), so I'll post a review of that book when I get it.

Update: My review has already appeared on the amazon page for the book.

Do you feel the way you hate? Do you hate the way you feel?

I used to hate the Montreal Canadiens. Just hated 'em. There were two teams that I always wanted to lose — no matter who they were playing, no matter whether it was playoffs or early in the season, I wanted them to lose — the New York Yankees and the Montreal Canadiens. I still hate the Yankees (watching Boston take them out in four straight after being down 3 games to none two years ago was just awesome), but for whatever reason, my dislike for the Habs has waned in recent years.

I can't tell you why this has happened. There isn't a particular player on the Habs that I like, nor any that I really dislike (other than Mike Ribeiro, after his exceptional acting performance during the playoffs 2 years ago). Maybe it's because of Saku Koivu's battle with cancer. Maybe it's the fact that they really sucked for a few years, while the Leafs were making the playoffs every year, though that's what I used to wish for, so I don't see why that would be the case. Or maybe it's just because I'm older and more mature, and so hating a team for no other reason than because I always have just doesn't make sense to me.

But I still hate the Yankees.

More lists

Making lists is fun! Here is a list of all the airports I've ever flown into or out of:

Pearson (Toronto)
Prestwick (Scotland)
Heathrow (London)
Ottawa
Vancouver
Seattle
San Francisco
Logan (Boston)
O'Hare (Chicago)
Miami/Ft. Lauderdale
Orlando
Reagon National (Washington DC)
Newark (NJ)
La Guardia (NYC)
Pittsburgh (stopover on way to Orlando)
San Juan (Puerto Rico)
Edmonton
Montego Bay (Jamaica)
Kitchener
Baltimore/Washington

And all the countries (and provinces/states) I've visted:

Canada (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, BC)
U.S.A.(Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands)
Scotland
England
Jamaica
St. Lucia
Curaçao
Aruba

Note that Curaçao belongs to the Netherlands Antilles, while Aruba is a State of the Netherlands. Both technically belong to the Netherlands, so neither is really a country by itself.

Performancing

I'm trying out a new blog posting extension to Firefox called Performancing. It lets you compose blog entries right inside Firefox, drag and drop text and images and stuff into the compose window, things like that. I'll see how this entry turns out and let you know.

Update: Seems to work rather nicely!

Another Update: Or not. I tried to add the above update through the extension, but rather than updating the existing entry, it added a second one. Seems convenient for new entries, but maybe I'll stil with the blogger.com interface for editing existing ones.

Ryan the math whiz

Ryan seems to be turning out to be quite the little mathie, just like mommy and daddy. The other day he got in trouble at school for throwing his shoe or something like that, and he and another boy (grade 3 - Ryan's in grade 1) were told by the teacher on duty to stand against the wall and count to 100 before they could go play again. Ryan decided to count by 5's rather then 1's, and had left the wall long before the other kid had. Not what the teacher meant, to be sure, but hey, she didn't specify!

Then this morning he was putting together an alphabet puzzle he has - each letter other than A and Z has 2 puzzle pieces, and A and Z have one each. He noticed that the box said '50 piece puzzle', and came to me and said 'daddy, 26 plus 24 equals 50'. I asked him how he figured that out, and he told me that he knew that there were 26 letters in the alphabet, but that only 24 of them had 2 pieces in the puzzle, and since there are 50 pieces in the puzzle, 26+24 must be 50.

It ain't rocket science, but he's only 6 1/2, so I think (totally unbiased proud poppa) he's doing very well.

On the work front, ASA finally got its Common Criteria certification today. This has been in the works for over three years, and I've been the engineering point person for the project. I've referred to it as "The project that wouldn't die", but I guess it's now officially dead! As long as we don't decide to do the whole thing again for Jasper...

P.S. A very happy birthday to my wonderful wife Gail, who turns <mumble> today!

Concerts I've seen

Here is a list of bands I have seen live. A number in brackets indicates the number of times I've seen that band. They are listed in the order in which I remembered them while making the list, not the order in which they occurred.

The Captain and Tennille	CNE Grandstand - hey, I was only 6
Rush (3)	All Maple Leaf Gardens, I think
Triumph (3)	MLG twice, and their last-ever show at Kingswood the day before Rik Emmett left the band
Rik Emmett	Opened for Kim Mitchell at the CNE
Kim Mitchell (2)	CNE and the Village Green at U of Waterloo during frosh week
Bob Seger	MLG
Bruce Springsteen	CNE
The Eagles	CNE
Don Henley	Kingswood
Honeymoon Suite (6)	Kingswood a couple of times, Ontario Place forum, The Diamond.
Whitesnake	CNE
Iron Maiden	MLG?
Anthrax	MLG? Opened for Maiden
Bruce Dickinson	Rock 'n Roll Heaven
Metallica (2)	Copps Colliseum and Olympic Stadium in Montreal. In Montreal, they played for about an hour before James Hetfield got burned by some pyrotechnics (during Fade To Black, ironically), and they had to cut the show short to take him to the hospital. See Guns 'n Roses below - this was the same show.
Faith No More	Olympic Stadium - opened for Metallica and GNR
Guns 'n Roses	Olympic Stadium - left the stage after 45 minutes, causing a riot. Gail and I didn't notice, because we had left 20 minutes before that to go see Blue Rodeo, who were playing a free show down the street.
Blue Rodeo (3)	A bar in Montreal, The Diamond, and the Village Green at U of W
Corrosion of Conformity	Opened for Metallica at Copps
Voivod	Opened for Rush at MLG. They sucked.
Saga	MLG
Styx	CNE
Heart	Kingswood
Haywire	Kingswood
The Rolling Stones	CNE
The Who	CNE - Very disappointed. No band that was that popular, with that much material, that has been around for 30+ years should be allowed to play a 90-minute show. The Stones played over 3 hours.
Paul McCartney	SkyDome - fantastic show
Red Rider	Opening for Rush at MLG
Tom Cochrane (2)	Some place in Ottawa (New Years Eve 1992), and The Twist in Waterloo
Chalk Circle	The Twist
Ray Lyell and the Storm	The Twist
The Tragically Hip	Fed Hall (!) at U of Waterloo
Jeff Healey	Fed Hall
Bryan Adams	Molson Park
Sass Jordan	Molson Park
The Steve Miller Band	Molson Park
Moxy Fruvous	Molson Park
Extreme	Molson Park
Barenaked Ladies	Kingswood
Def Leppard	CNE
The Wallflowers	ACC, opening for John Mellencamp
John Mellencamp (3)	CNE, Molson Amphitheater (when Gail was 8 months pregnant), and ACC. The one at the CNE was probably the loudest concert I've even been to.
Crowded House	Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle
The Posies	Bumbershoot - opened for Crowded House
Van Halen	CNE, but sadly, never with David Lee Roth
Aldo Nova	MLG, opened for Saga
Prism	Entex
Sheryl Crow	CNE, opened for the Eagles
BTO	CNE, opened for Van Halen

Update: Added third Blue Rodeo show, Moxy Fruvous, and Extreme - thanks Fais! Also remembered Barenaked Ladies and Aldo Nova

Update: Added Prism

Update: Added Sheryl Crow

Update: Added BTO opening for Van Halen. There was a third band on the bill, but I can't remember who it was.

Shark-jumping

I've been a fan of The Tea Party since their first album Splendor Solis. I, like everyone else, noted Jeff Martin's striking similarity (in both looks and voice) to Jim Morrison, but by the time their second album The Edges of Twilight (one of my favourite albums) was released, I'd forgotten about that. Martin and the rest of the Tea Party definitely had their own unique musical style (though not dissimilar to that of Led Zeppelin), and he's a very talented guitarist.

The next album, Transmission, was also good - heavier, and without the Eastern musical influences that The Edges of Twilight had, but unmistakeably The Tea Party. Psychopomp is still my favourite Tea Party song ever, and Temptation, Gyroscope, Alarum, and Emerald are all great songs. (Hmmm...just noticed that Army Ants is the only song on that album that doesn't have a one-word title.) I guess Triptych was when they started to go downhill. It was a pretty good album - The Messenger and Chimera are really good songs, and Samsara was reminiscent of The Edges of Twilight. However, the first song I heard from this album was Heaven Coming Down, which was not quite a sappy love song, but close. It certainly didn't have the same Tea Party edge, and was much more radio-friendly than most of their stuff. When I first heard it, I thought "Uh-oh, sounds like Jeff Martin fell in love or got married or something between the last album and this one". I remember laughing when the radio DJ said basically the same thing once the song was over.

The Interzone Mantras had some great songs (Angels, Lullaby, Cathartik), but more not-so-great stuff, and the last album, Seven Circles, was not great at all. Writing's on the Wall was not bad, but was less than 3 minutes long. Wishing You Would Stay was pretty good, but Holly McNarland's backing vocals really made that song. I guess Martin realized that they'd jumped the shark, and he left the band. Since he was the guitarist, singer, chief songwriter, arranger, and producer, his leaving effectively killed the band. I don't know if the other two guys in the band even considered finding a replacement, but I really hope they didn't.

So the other day I'm in Future Shop, and I see a solo album from Jeff Martin called Exile and the Kingdom. I didn't know at the time that the Tea Party had broken up, so I just figured he'd put his own solo record together. I picked it up (only $9.99!), and I've listened to it at work a couple of times now. Unfortunately, it seems that either (a) he's continuing the downward trend, since this album isn't even as good as Seven Circles (the worst Tea Party album), or (b) the other members of the Tea Party contibuted a lot more than just bass, keyboards and drums to that band. Most of the album is just kind of boring and forgettable, but the last song, Good Time Song, is dreadful. Granted, I've only listened to the album twice now, so I'll try to keep an open mind and listen to it a few more times, in case it grows on me. I didn't like Dream Theater's Scenes from a Memory when I first heard it, and now it's my favourite Dream Theater album, so it could happen, I guess.

On a similar note, I also recently picked up Queensrÿche's new album Operation: Mindcrime II, the "sequel" to their amazing 1986 concept album Operation: Mindcrime. Can you have a sequel to an album? I suppose if it's a concept album, you can. Made a bunch of money for Meat Loaf. Anyway, this is another example, like Jeff Martin, of a band that's jumped the shark. Their first couple of albums were pretty good, Rage For Order was very good, and then came Mindcrime, which made Queensrÿche one of the biggest progressive rock bands around. After that came Empire, another great album, which contained the radio-friendly-but-still-cool hit Silent Lucidity. Promised Land was next, and it was good too, but then they dropped off big-time. Their next two albums, Hear in the Now Frontier and Q2K, weren't good at all, and then I lost interest. I'm not even sure if there was another album or two in there. (Somewhere after Empire they released Operation: LIVECrime, which was a live performance of the entire Mindcrime album.) MC II was released a couple of weeks ago, and I picked it up, just to see how they would continue the story. The result so far: meh. It's good, but as my sister might say, it's no screaming hell. There should have been more continuity (both musical and story-wise) from the first album (they should talk to Dream Theater about how to do this). In general, it doesn't sound like a sequel, it sounds like a completely different album containing a story that happens to involve people with the same names as the first album.

I hate to say it, since I'm a huge Hip fan, but I think The Tragically Hip have also jumped the shark. Their last three albums have been quite forgettable, though the live DVD "That Night In Toronto" released last fall was really good. Another shark-jumping band might be Audioslave — and after only 2 albums. Their second album was very disappointing, considering how good the first one was. Rush hasn't gotten to the point of producing really bad albums, but the last few are certainly not as good as their earlier stuff, so maybe they should call it a career. A couple of years ago, I thought U2 had jumped the shark as well, but they seemed to be off of whatever drugs caused the Zooropa and Pop albums, and the last couple have been really good.

Cool picture

Here is a cool image that looks like it's moving even though it's not. Like, totally far out, man.

Update Fixed the link. Must have done an extra paste in there. Thanks Mark!

Floppin', Turnin', and ... Riverin'?

Never been big on poker, mainly cause I'm not very good at it, but I've been interested in playing some Texas Hold 'Em recently. Don't know why, really, I wasn't looking to play, but I found a game online and played a bit there, just me against the computer. Then I tried one game (not real money!) against 7 real people, and dammit all if I didn't win the freakin' game.

So I guess that gave me a bit of an inflated ego, so I tried pokerstars.net, also not for real money, but against real people. I got smoked. I played a game this afternoon and lost $200 of play money in a very short time, and then this evening after everyone went to bed I played a little more - I played smarter than this afternoon, but still lost $1800. In my last hand, I was dealt a pair of freakin' aces and still lost. If this were real money, man would I have some 'splainin to do.

It was fun though, so I'll keep pluggin' away. It'll be a while until I play with real money, though, if ever.

On the lacrosse front, I saw the wildest freakin' (word of the day?) lacrosse game on Saturday night - Rock vs. Wings. The Rock were down 2 or 3 to nothing before they ever touched the ball. They were down 4-0 and then 7-1, then stormed back with a great second period to tie the game at 7. They were down 10-8 at halftime, then they didn't score at all in the third, and were down 14-8 early in the fourth. Again they stormed back to tie it at 14 with 43 seconds left, and then Colin Doyle won it 1:13 into overtime. They never had a lead in the game until they won it. They were down by 6 and came back to tie it, and then were down by 6 again and again came back to tie it. Gotta love lacrosse.

Go stick a candle in your ear

I read an article today about ear candling, and how it is ineffective and dangerous. I have three words on this subject: No. Shit. Sherlock.

I first heard about ear candling about 10 years ago. Whoever was telling me about it had to tell me a couple of times before I would believe that people actually did this. The idea is that you take a hollow candle and stick one end in your ear, and light the other end. The flame creates a very mild vacuum, which draws wax and other "impurities" out of your ear. This is another one of those things that should be obvious hogwash to anyone with an IQ over 7, but apparently is not.

My friend Jeff (also a skeptic) once did an experiment to see just how much suction is created by burning a hollow candle (note that it wasn't just any hollow candle, it was a candle made for ear candling). He lit the candle, then lit a match, blew the match out, and held the match below the bottom of the candle, which was held at the same angle as when doing ear candling. The wisps of smoke coming from the match drifted right by the end of the candle, completely unaffected. There was absolutely no vacuum sucking the smoke into the candle. If the vacuum created is so small that smoke is not affected, how is it going to pull wax out of your ear?

And another thing - ear wax is there for a reason. Unless you have a medical condition where you have too much of it, why pull it out?

I'm just here to blog

I heard an interview with Morris Peterson of the Raptors the other day. He was talking about the fact that Chris Bosh was injured, and how the rest of the team has to play better because of it. During the interview, it struck me -- why do basketball players always feel it necessary during interviews to remind you of what sport they play? Whenever you hear an interview, you get things like:

• Yes, our star player is injured, so the rest of the team needs to step up and just play basketball
• I'm not going to talk about that [some controversial issue], I just want to play basketball
• I don't know why I was traded, I'm just here to play basketball

You never hear hockey players talk about how they "just want to play hockey" or baseball players say they are "just here to play baseball". Come to think of it, I have heard football players say stuff like that too - This weekend's game is going to be tough, but we just have to be ready and play football. Thanks for the clarification, buddy, I thought perhaps we were going to have a spelling bee instead.

Public Service Announcements

You may notice some images down the right side of my blog page - these are for some web sites that gather sponsors who donate money to specific causes for each visitor to the site, in exchange for the right to advertise on the site. These sites support causes like breast cancer research, literacy, food for the hungry, and saving the rainforest.

I came across these sites a couple of years ago, and after some due diligence to make sure it wasn't a scam, added links to our home page. Then I rewrote our page when I registered the perrow.ca domain, and didn't put the links on the new page -- they just don't really fit in among the pictures of my kids. I've added them to the sidebar of my blog because I have looked into them a bit, and I think they're legit, and because they support causes that I believe in. My mother, Gail's mother, and Gail's late grandmother have all been touched by breast cancer, and they all survived it. Me, Gail, and the boys have also walked in the CIBC Run for the Cure for the last couple of years, in the hopes that surviving breast cancer will be the norm, not the exception.

Please, if you could do me a favour and every now and again when reading my blog, click on one or more of these images and then click on the "Click here" button in the middle of the page you get to, that would certainly help. Thanks.

Fly, Eagle, Fly

Ed Belfour is out for the rest of the year with a back injury. His backup, Mikael Tellqvist, has been playing pretty well as a starter in the meantime, and last night, his backup, Jean-Sebastien Aubin, played in his first game as a Leaf, and was named the first star. I only watched the last 4 minutes of the game, but the Devils had a two-man advantage for most of that time because of Leaf penalties plus pulling their goalie. They had all kinds of scoring chances, but Aubin kept them all out - other than one that he missed but Tomas Kaberle scooped away just before it went in.

I wonder if Leaf management will look at the performances of Aubin and Tellqvist and finally decide to buy out Belfour's contract and let him go. It makes fiscal sense too -- they'd need to pay Tellqvist either way, but Aubin doesn't make much, so the $1.5 million it will cost to buy out Belfour plus Aubin's salary is still way cheaper than the $4.5 million they'd have to pay Belfour. Given their play over the last couple of weeks plus Belfour's less-than-stellar play over the rest of this season, and the fact that Belfour is 41, it should be a no-brainer.

Leafs gain on Montreal

I went to the Leafs game last night. Great game - the Leafs played pretty well, and Mikael Tellqvist was great in net. Brendan Bell made his NHL debut in place of new daddy Wade Belak, and I thought he played very well - some nice hits, a couple of shots on net, he looked pretty comfortable out there. Jeff O'Neill had a pretty good game as well, with two assists, and Jason Allison scored the game winner, though I thought he made a lot of sloppy passes. Mats Sundin was a non-factor once again - in the new higher-scoring NHL, Mats has only 17 goals and 36 assists.

Montreal lost last night, so the Leafs gained 2 points on them and are now only 4 back. Their next 2 games are both against Montreal, so they could be tied by Sunday; however, we also have to hope that Atlanta starts losing as well. Beating Montreal for 9th place while Atlanta takes 8th doesn't help much.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that the worst thing to happen to the Leafs this year would be to make the playoffs, since it would give management the ability to claim that the team just needs a tweak here and there, rather than a complete overhaul. I still believe that, but as a lifelong Leafs fan, it's awfully hard to hope for them to lose.

IPv6 and Thunderbird

I've been using Microsoft Outlook at work for a few years. The company uses Lotus Notes for email, but Notes sucks rocks, so I chucked that a few years ago. Outlook is pretty good, but has one or two little things that annoy me, so I thought I'd give Mozilla Thunderbird a try, since I love Firefox so much. Well, everything was going along just swimmingly, and then I tried sending an email to someone who wasn't in my address book. It tried to connect to our LDAP server, and the whole program hung for about 5 seconds, and didn't find anything. I did some more tests, and still had no luck with LDAP. I tried to install Thunderbird a couple of years ago, and ran into the same problem, but I figured it was a bug in Thunderbird, since it was version 0.8 or something at the time. I assumed that since it's up to version 1.5 now, the bug would have been fixed.

I sent an email around to the department, asking if anyone else was using Thunderbird, and several people are, none of whom are having the same LDAP problems. Out of the blue, I suddenly wondered if IPv6 was related, since it seemed to be a networking issue, and I am probably one of the only people in engineering with IPv6 installed. I went to my second machine, which also had Thunderbird installed, and I saw the same problem. I uninstalled IPv6, rebooted the machine, and the problem vanished. I did another search on BugZilla, this time including IPv6 in the search criteria, and found the problem -- LDAP doesn't work if IPv6 is installed.

I briefly thought about downloading the Thunderbird source and development environment and attempting to find and fix the bug, but I don't know when the hell I'd have time to do it. I'll just have to stick with Outlook until the bug is fixed.

Ten-can-gamo

A few weeks ago, Ryan found a coupon on a box of Rice Krispies for a free Tengamo toy. And not just any Tengamo -- a Tengamo six-pack! I had no idea what it was, and I don't think he did either, but he figured it was a toy and it's free, so how can anything be better than that? He insisted we cut the coupon out and save it. So we cut it out, and stuck it on the fridge. At least once or twice a week since, Ryan has asked when we're going to go and get our free "Ten-can-gamo". (I have no idea where the extra "can" syllable came from, but that's what he and Nicholas have been calling it.)

Yesterday, we went to Wal-Mart to get the boys some new shoes, so we grabbed the coupon and told them we'd pick up their free toy. Naturally, they got all excited. When we got to the toy section, we started looking for Tengamo stuff, and when we found it, Gail and I had a good laugh. This toy, for which the boys had been waiting patiently for several weeks, cost all of $0.97. We decided that having only one would cause more problems than not having it at all, so we splurged and bought a second one for Nicholas. Then we got to the counter, and there was a problem with the coupon, so the cashier had to call the supervisor over, and everyone in our line had to wait for several minutes while they figured out how to enter the coupon. All this for a coupon that didn't even save us enough to buy a large tea at Tim Hortons, and gets our kids a toy that will make it into the junk drawer within a few days and will probably never been played with again.

Cool names

I found out today that one of the people I work with has the middle name "Quiet", which I've never heard of as a name before. I asked her where the name came from and she said simply "<shrug> child of the sixties." I also work with someone whose first name is Dove, which is also kind of neat.

The name "Graeme" is not nearly as uncommon in Britain as it is here. I know that because when I'm over there, I only have to spell my name once - to them, it's just another one of the spellings. Over here, I have to spell it slowly, and usually twice. I'm sure people have just assumed my parents were drunk when they filled out the birth certificate form. I've even had people ask me "Are you sure?" when I spell my name. Yes, I usually get it right. In high school, there were three of us in the same year - one Graeme, one Graham, and one Grahame. One year in math class, we all sat in the same corner of the room, which cause the teacher no end of confusion, but was fun for us.

When I was at Western, I knew a guy whose first name was "A" (he went by his middle name, Warren) -- his brother's first name was "B". Them some mean parents.

There was a Judy Garland at my high school, and my sister knew a guy named Todd Sweeney. A friend of mine whose last name is White swore he was going to call his daughter Vanna. Luckily, he had 2 sons.

Gail's stepmother's name is Jackie, short for Jacqueline. Her first husband's surname was Smith, making her Jacqueline Smith.

Update: Fixed link.

Let me tell you about my kids

The other day, Ryan wrote himself a couple of todo lists and posted them on the kitchen window. He wrote the whole thing himself without asking how to spell anything. This is exactly how he wrote it:

I have to bo this in the mornen

• breakfast
• get drest
• teeth
• hair
• then you can play

I have to do this in the evnen

• homework
• eat dinner
• then you can play
• have storys
• go to bed

Some other little things about my kids that I don't want to forget as they get older:

• When Ryan was just learning to speak, he said his own name "yaya". When Nicholas was learning to speak, he called himself "nick-is" and pronounced Ryan "I-yan".
• When Ryan was about 2, we got a babysitter for him so that Gail and I could go out. The girl next door, Lindsay, arrived as Ryan was finishing his dinner. She sat down beside him and said hi. He stopped eating, looked at her for a few seconds, and then told her matter-of-factly "You don't have a penis". Without blinking an eye, she confirmed his suspicions, and he continued with his dinner, apparently satisfied.
• When both the boys were babies, they would sit in their high chair with their legs crossed.
• When Gail was pregnant with Nicholas, we narrowed the list of boys names down to two - Eric and Nicholas. We asked Ryan to make the final decision, and he chose Nicholas. We picked Sean as a middle name just because we liked it. The girls name we had chosen (before Ryan was born) was Amy Catherine.
• When we first brought Nicholas home from the hospital, Ryan kept forgetting his name, and called him "that guy" for a day or two.
• The word that took the longest to say correctly was "garbage". Ryan always said "gar-jib", and when Nicholas was learning to talk, he learned to say "gar-jib" too. Ryan started saying it correctly just a few weeks later, but Nicholas kept saying it incorrectly for another year and a half.

Wil Wheaton Dot Net

Wil Wheaton* has one of the most widely-read blogs on the 'net. I've been reading it for about a year and a half - I started reading it because I'm a huge Star Trek: The Next Generation fan, and of course Wil played Wesley Crusher on that show for 5 years. After a while, however, I came to realize that he's a damn good writer, and now I read his blog because I enjoy what he writes, and the Star Trek angle is secondary, especially since he doesn't write about Star Trek all that often.

* - Wil's site was wilwheaton.net, but he started having problems with that site last fall, and so he temporarily moved his blog over to Typepad. Six months later, he's still on Typepad, but I think he plans on fixing up his own site and re-launching it sometime soon.

Recently he started podcasting - basically recording himself talking rather than just typing stuff, and then releasing the recording as episodes of "Radio Free Burrito". People started sending him questions that he would answer on his podcasts, and I sent him one asking about his least favourite episodes of ST:TNG. Today, he answered my question - a couple of episodes during the first season called Angel One and Code of Honor, which were, indeed, quite bad. He also mentioned a particular conversation that Wesley had with Tasha Yar talking about drugs, and how embarassing the lines were to say. Wesley asked Tasha why people did drugs, and Tasha told him it made them feel good. Wesley said that it was artificial, Tasha says that it doesn't feel artificial at the time, and Wesley says he still doesn't understand, to which Tasha replies "Wesley, I hope you never do". I wondered how Wil felt about that conversation - it was a very thinly-disguised attempt at a public service announcement. Luckily, they stopped short of having the characters turn directly to the camera and say "Kids! Don't do drugs! And stay in school!", but it wasn't far short.

Anyway, it was cool to have some famous person say my name (and not even mispronounce it!). Last year, I got on the radio, and now this. My big break is coming soon, I just know it...

I'm a star!

Thanks to my work on attempting to get CC certification for ASA, I was given an "iAnywhere Solutions Star Performer" award yesterday. I got a plastic star "trophy" thing (which actually looks cooler than it sounds), as well as a nice monetary bonus. Once we get this certification (should be later this month), it will allow us to sell ASA to various sectors within the US government, which requires this level of certification before they are allowed to purchase any software product. John yesterday congratulated me on my award and called me "a god among men", which I think might be a bit of a stretch, but it is certainly nice to have my efforts recognized.

On an unrelated note, the sports headlines yesterday read "Barry Bonds Steroid Shocker". Two guys in the know wrote a book stating that Barry Bonds used lots of steroids over the last few years. Question: "shocker"? Is anyone actually shocked?

Update: Fixed the CC link. Thanks Daniel!

Time to gut the Leafs

We need to blow up the Leafs. Now and again, every team has to go through the pain of "rebuilding", and I think it's the Leafs' time. A friend of mine said recently that the worst thing that could happen to the Leafs this season is to make the playoffs, and I agree. It might give management the false belief that the team is just fine as it is, and just needs a bit of tweaking - it doesn't. It needs a complete overhaul. The economics of the NHL has changed dramatically, and the Leafs old style of throwing money at over-the-hill veterans (and in some cases trading away draft picks and prospects to get them) simply will not work anymore. Look at Brian Leetch, Joe Nieuwendyk, Gary Roberts, Eric Lindros, Shane Corson, Ron Francis, even Ed Belfour. All veterans past their prime when they were acquired, and except for Roberts and (to some extent) Belfour, none really contributed much of anything.

I say we buy Belfour out and let him go, get rid of fan-favourite Tie Domi, who is a hard worker but is vastly overpaid, and get rid of Allison, O'Neill, Lindros, Czerkawski (who never plays anyway), Belak, Berg, and Antropov. We've already signed Kaberle (that's good), and if we can afford to sign McCabe do it, otherwise trade him now while his trade value is high. I'm not even averse to trading Sundin if we can get some good prospects in return. Start over with a core of Colaiacovo, Ponikarovsky, Stajan, Steen, Tellqvist, and Wellwood, and keep Darcy Tucker (who's playing really well this year), Sundin if not traded, and maybe Ken Klee cause we'll need some veterans. Yes, the team will suck for four or five years, but if we get some good prospects and early draft picks in return for the old guys listed above, the Leafs might win a Cup before my kids hit university. If they keep trying to use the old Leafs style, my grandkids will be blogging about "no Leafs Cup wins in 75 years".

Update: Oh yeah, and fire Pat Quinn.

Who does that?

I saw the weirdest thing this morning. I was looking out of my office window (3rd floor, facing the parking lot), while talking to Gail on the phone. I saw a black car drive in and park in the far corner of the parking lot. The driver got out of the car, went around to the other side (so the car was between him and the building), and peed into the snowbank. Then he got back in his car and drove off. I immediately called reception, though we don't have any security people here, and by the time I called, he was already driving away, so it's not like they could have done anything anyway. I'm not entirely sure why I called reception - I felt like it was my civic duty to tell someone, as if I had witnessed a robbery or something. I sent an email to the people in my department with offices facing the parking lot, but I'm sure this was an isolated incident - it's not like the guy's thinking "Hey, it's Thursday! Better run over to iAnywhere and pee in the parking lot!" He didn't even wash his hands! Eeeewwwwwwwwww....

Attempting to be the squeaky wheel

I mentioned in a previous post that I wrote a letter (email, actually) to Brad Watters, the President of the Toronto Rock, regarding the announcers at the skills competition last Friday, and I got a response today. Here's my original letter, and his reply:

Hi Mr. Watters... this is my sixth year as a Rock season ticket holder - in that time I've missed only one home game. For most of that time, we've had to put up with Two for the Show as the "hosts". They were OK musicians, but as announcers, they're simply annoying. But they only show up on the Jumbotron or PA now and again, so I can put up with that.

However, at the skills competition tonight, they were an embarrassment to this city, the Rock organization, and the NLL. These guys treated the skills competition, which featured the best lacrosse players in the world, like it was the Pizza Pizza relay or scooter race or something. Kaleb Toth has been a star in the NLL for years - he even played for the Rock - and they didn't pronounce his name properly. Tracey Kelusky has also been an NLL star for several years, and one of the guys had to check the sheet to see what team he played for. It was painfully obvious that these guys do not follow the game, and other than Steve Toll, had no idea who any of these people were.

I think it would have been far better if Bruce Barker was brought down from the broadcast booth at halftime to call the skills competition from the floor. There's a guy who knows a thing or two about announcing, and even more importantly, he follows the game. He knows who the players are, he knows what teams they play for, he knows what teams they used to play for -- hell, he could probably tell you what teams half of them play for in the summer leagues.

I have been looking forward to the All-Star Game all season - I just hope that these two guys don't make a mockery of it like they did the skills competition tonight. These guys have always given me the impression that they are out there because they are paid to be out there, but don't give a crap about lacrosse. Please do us all a favour and get rid of them.

Graeme Perrow
graeme@perrow.ca

P.S. In case it wasn't obvious from my comments above, I also wanted to say how happy I am that Bruce Barker is back in the booth for the Rock. Good job in getting him back.

Here's Mr. Watters' response:

Thanks for your feedback. It was a confusing and complicated game for us to run. I would let you know that Bruce Barker wasnt available to do it.

All the best

Brad Watters

Pretty lame-ass reply, if you ask me.

Coincidences

The Dilbert Blog today contained an article on coincidences, and numerous people have written in comments containins some pretty amazing ones. I've got one too:

Gail and I got married in October of 1995, and honeymooned in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. One of the day trips we took was a bus trip from Ocho Rios to the Blue Mountains, approximately four hours away. Once there, we took a bus to the top of a mountain, then biked down. Halfway down the mountain, the tour stopped at a little place for lunch. Gail went to the washroom while I sat at a picnic table - another couple from the tour was already sitting there. When Gail came back, she and the woman already at the table recognized each other - they had gone to high school together in Woodstock. Not only that, but they were on their honeymoon too - they got married the same day that we did, and they were staying in Ocho Rios, in the resort right next to ours. So not only did we get married on the same day, but we chose adjacent resorts in Ocho Rios, and then chose the same bus tour on the same day, but after all that, we didn't run into each other until I chose to share their table for lunch.

I love stuff like that.

All-Star Weekend

This was the All-Star weekend in the NLL. Friday night was the inaugural "Hall of Fame Game", where 5 people were inducted into the newly-formed indoor lacrosse hall of fame, which is currently an entity but not a building. The inductees were Russ Cline and Chris Fritz, the founders of the league that eventually morphed into the NLL, the legendary players Paul and Gary Gait, and the late Les Bartley, who was coach and GM of the Rock for 4 of their 5 championships (and coached Buffalo to 3 championships as well). The induction ceremony (which I missed because of crappy traffic on the QEW) was followed by the Toronto-Philadelphia game, which the Rock won in their second straight home overtime thriller. Very streaky game - with the Rock up 3-1, Philly scored 5 in a row, then Toronto scored 6 in a row, then Philly scored another 5 in a row, then Toronto got 2 to tie it up, and then Aaron Wilson scored the winner a few minutes into OT. The Rock, after an 0-4 start, are now 5-4 and are no longer last in the East!

At halftime, they had the skills competition, which featured four players for each of three events. The accuracy competition had players shooting four balls on Rock backup goalie John Preece from maybe 30 feet out - Gavin Prout was the only one to score (twice), and won that one. Then they had the hardest shot competition, won by John Grant with a shot at 151 km/h, although at least half of the shots weren't registered on the radar gun. The players were moving forwards at the time, so the gun kept picking up the players movement - the player would fire a bullet into the net, and the gun would register "8". Then they'd fire another shot, and the gun would say "145".

The third competition was for the most creative breakaway, which the players had a lot of fun with. Jonas Derks (the eventual winner) started off by throwing his stick into the air a couple of times, then scored. Mark Steenhuis just kind of spun his stick around, and was kind of boring. John Tavares attempted a shot over the net, off the back board, and then tried to score on the rebound, but he missed the net. John Grant tried a neat one - throw the stick in the air, take his jersey off, catch the stick and score, although he didn't throw the stick high enough, and had to catch the stick on a bounce.

The skills competition was pretty cool, but it could have (and should have) been much better - the problem was the announcers. It was the same Two for the Show guys that have been the Rock announcers for a few years, but it was painfully obvious that they don't follow lacrosse at all. They pronounced a couple of names wrong, they had to check their sheet to see what team some of them played for, and generally treated this event like the silly little events they normally run at halftime - the Pizza Pizza relay, the Mazda scooter competition, or whatever. These are the best fucking lacrosse players in the world - they deserve an announcer that actually cares about their sport, and has at least done some research. Bruce Barker, who fits that bill very well, was sitting upstairs during the halftime show - I think he should have been on the floor for this competition, and I actually wrote a letter to Brad Watters, President of the Toronto Rock, telling him this.

Then yesterday was the All-Star Game, won by the West, 14-13. I expected the East to dominate, but Anthony Cosmo and Dallas Eliuk both played very well in goal for the West. Only 2 penalties in the entire game (not unexpected), and a rather low intensity level (also not unexpected), but there were some pretty hard hits and scrambles for loose balls. There were also a few things you wouldn't see in a regular game - Mark Steenhuis spun the stick around like in the trick shot competition from the previous day, but did an even better job during the game. Twice, a player from the east would get the ball, then toss his entire stick (with the ball) to another player who would shoot. I think the first time it was Tavares tossing to Doyle, and the second was Grant tossing to Tavares, but the plan didn't work either time. It looked like the players were having fun, and we all enjoyed the game.

Spaghetti dinner

Gail's spaghetti dinner and silent auction was held last night at Ryan's school. I say "Gail's" because she's the chair of the school council that ran the event, and has thought about little else for a couple of weeks. It was kind of a one-woman show last year -- Gail's council co-chair, Paul, did all the stuff for the auction, and Gail pretty much did everything else. It wasn't like that so much this year -- the council divvied up the responsibilities a little more evenly, so Gail was kind of the fore-person and was in charge of communications, and Paul did the auction again, but other people were responsible for the catering, desserts, decorations, entertainment, raffles, and other stuff. They had about 440 tickets sold, and something like 160 items at the auction, and ended up raising between $8000 and $9000, all of which will go towards music programs and instruments and stuff for the school.

A rousing success, as was last year's event, which allowed them to purchase a scoreboard for the gym. The scoreboard also has some advertising panels on it, so local businesses pay to have signs there, which brings in even more money going forward.

A good time was had by, well, most. They had comment cards available (which Gail collected), and I took a look at two of them this morning - one gave the event a 5/5, saying that the food was good and hot (which was a problem last year), and everything was great. The other one (obviously written by a student) gave a 1/5, and said that the waiter got their drink order wrong, took too long, tried to steal their bread, and some other negative comment I can't remember. Oh well, you can't please everyone. We all had fun, anyway. My sister came as well, and was very helpful in keeping me from throttling Nicholas, who decided numerous times that a crowded gymnasium with over 400 people in it (plus tables, chairs and lots of food and breakable auction items), was a good place to spin around, dance, swing your coat around and generally play. As I've said before, whoever invented the phrase "the terrible twos" didn't have a three-year-old.

I bid on a few items -- Raptors tickets, a nice pair of sunglasses, gift certificates for green fees at local golf courses, and one or two other things I don't remember, but just ended up with 2 sets of green fees, so I'll take my dad golfing in the spring. Ryan purchased the opportunity to be "secretary for a 1/2 day", so he gets to sit in the office and talk on the PA, do morning announcements, stuff like that. He'll love it.

The Race Card

The other day, Bryant Gumbel said this on his HBO sports show:

Finally, tonight, the Winter Games. Count me among those who don’t care about them and won’t watch them... Because they’re so trying, maybe over the next three weeks we should all try too. Like, try not to be incredulous when someone attempts to link these games to those of the ancient Greeks who never heard of skating or skiing. So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world’s greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the winter games look like a GOP convention... So if only to hasten the arrival of the day they’re done, when we can move on to March Madness — for God’s sake, let the games begin.

What a moron. He's right - there are far less black athletes at the winter games than the summer games, but there's a logical (and rather obvious) reason for that. These are winter events, primarily dominated by northern countries - the Nordic countries, Europe, Russia. Not a lot of black people there. It's not a global conspiracy to keep black people out, so why play the race card here? And implying that the world's greatest athletes must be black is just plain racist. I think it's funny that he goes on to mention March Madness, a college basketball tournament in which at least 80% of the players are black. Has anyone complained about the lack of white players in that tournament?

I'm rather surprised that this hasn't been a bigger thing in the media. If a white reporter had said that he doesn't like the March Madness tournament (or the NBA, or the NFL) because of the lack of white players, it would be front page news across North America and he'd be fired on the spot. Yet, Gumbel makes a patently racist statement and insults every athlete participating in the Games, and not only doesn't get much media coverage, but doesn't get fired. Apparently the president of HBO was interviewed yesterday and defended Gumbel*. I don't get it.

* - Sorry, I looked around for a link to this interview but couldn't find one. Bob McCown mentioned this on Prime Time Sports yesterday.

Dilbert is teh funny

I got a real kick out of today's Dilbert . Kind of reminds me of the one a bunch of years ago where the boss is having network trouble (and you can clearly see the network cable unplugged from the wall). Dilbert tells him that it's a token ring network, and the token must have fallen out. The last panel shows Wally telling Dilbert "You are the wind beneath my wings", while the pointy-haired boss is on his knees looking under his desk for the token. Classic.

Busted!

OK, fun's over, everyone outta the pool. Gail has discovered my blog. She mentioned it the other night at dinner, though we talked about it for approximately 15 seconds before being interrupted, probably by some piece of wisdom from Nicholas ("Look, I put my fork in my chocolate milk! That's hil-air-ious"). I've already gone through and deleted all the articles about my sexual exploits with the Toronto Rock cheerleaders, so I think I'm safe. :-)

As I mentioned in a previous article, my blog was never a secret from my beloved wife; I just never made a point of mentioning it, because I figured she'd ask why ("I dunno"), and what kind of stuff do I write about ("just stuff"), and my answers would probably be rather disappointing - to me, if not to her.

When I was your age, television was called "books"

One of the DVDs I got for Christmas is one I am surprised it took me this long to get - one of my all-time favourite movies, The Princess Bride. There are a staggering number of great quotes in that movie:

Inigo: Let me explain - no, there is too much. Let me sum up.

Vizzini: He didn't fall? Inconcievable!
Inigo: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Miracle Max: True love is the greatest thing in the world! Except for a nice MLT - mutton, lettuce and tomato, where the mutton is nice and lean, and the tomatoes are ripe. They're so perky. I love that.

Humperdinck: Tyrone, you know how much I love to watch you work, but I've got my country's 500th anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Guilder to blame for it. I'm swamped!
Rugen: Get some rest. If you haven't got your health, you haven't got anything.

Inigo: I do not suppose you could speed things up?
Westley: If you're in such a hurry, you could lower a rope or a tree branch or find something useful to do.
Inigo: I could do that. I have some rope up here, but I do not think you would accept my help, since I am only waiting around to kill you.
Westley: That does put a damper on our relationship.

Westley: Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.

Inigo: That's a miracle pill?
Valerie: The chocolate makes it go down easier. But you have to wait fifteen minutes for full potency. And he shouldn't go in swimming after for at least, what?
Miracle Max: An hour. A good hour.

...and of course, the classic:

Inigo: Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

Thanks to IMDB for some of the quotes that I couldn't quite remember exactly.

Sportsmanship at the Olympics

I love the Olympics, particularly the winter ones. A lot of people say this, and it's absolutely true -- nobody gives a damn about luge, bobsled, or cross-country skiing at any other time, but during the Olympics, we're all glued to it. Same in the summer - am I ever likely to sit and watch a swimming or gymnastics competition outside of the Olympics? Not a chance, and yet during the Olympics, I have no problem watching that stuff -- actually, I really enjoy watching Olympic gymnastics. The combination of grace and strength is amazing.

A couple of things about the Games so far - an American hockey player has been complaining about the Canadian women's hockey team "running up" the score in their first two games, saying that it was disrespectful to the other teams. Hogwash. The Italian coach said before the game that he was hoping to keep the goal differential to "under 20" (and they did - the final score was 16-0). They knew they were playing a powerhouse team, and fully expected to be blown away. At the same time, Canada is playing to win the Gold, and one of the factors if there are ties in the standings is goal differential, so it's in their best interest to score as many goals as they can. Personally, I think that not playing to the best of your ability and just passing the puck around, trying not to score would be more disrespectful, essentially telling the other team "not only are you not going to win, but we're not even going to bother trying".

Major kudos to the Norwegian cross-country skiing coach who gave a Canadian skier a new pole during the race when the Canadian's pole broke. The Canadians ended up winning a Silver medal, while the Norwegians finished fourth. That's the embodiment of the "Olympic spirit" and good sportsmanship right there. Funny part: the coach said that it was no big deal, but that he wouldn't have done it for the Swedes.

Everyone's a critic

I went to my buddy Jeff's place last night to hang out - Gail and the kids are up north visiting Gail's dad, so I'm solo this weekend. It was Jeff's birthday yesterday, so a bunch of us went out for dinner, then went back to Jeff's place to relax in the hot tub, then catch the Rock game on TV.

While watching the game, I'm not exactly sure how it came up, but someone, either Steve or Lynda, made the point that one shouldn't criticize something if he or she can't come up with something better. Kerri mentioned a similar policy at work - if you're going to complain about something, you must have a better solution. I wholeheartedly disagree with this. Just because you personally cannot do a better job, that does not mean that you cannot criticize something or someone.

If this were true, then there only four people alive who would be "allowed" to criticize George W. Bush in his role as President - former Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. And yet millions of people all over the world criticize him every day.

This comes up in the lacrosse message board that I belong to all the time - people criticize the refs, and then someone who maybe refs minor league lacrosse, or knows an NLL ref or something asks "Do you know how hard reffing is? Could you do better?" No, I couldn't, and that's totally irrelevant.

A lot of art critics can't paint to save their lives. Many music critics can't sing. People who suck at sports criticize athletes with far more talent than they have all the time. I don't need to be able to replace someone in order to criticize them.

OT Thriller!

Wotta game! The Rock only get 6 shots in the entire first quarter and by partway through the second, are down 5-1. Then they claw their way back into it, finally tying the game at 10 with six minutes left in the 4th, and winning it 24 seconds into overtime. Matt Shearer scored the last three goals of the game, Aaron Wilson got 4 goals (including Toronto's first three), and Jimmy Veltman and Dan Ladouceur both played excellent games.

The offense just wasn't there at all in the first quarter, and really didn't get it together all game. Both goalies were amazing, and Toronto's defense played really well.

Some of the people I go to lacrosse games with hate overtime - one even said she wouldn't care if Rochester scored, just as long as the game ended. I don't get that. I love overtime - even the first Rock game of this year, which the Rock lost in overtime. Everyone plays their hardest, knowing the next goal wins - I find it very exciting. When they scored the winner tonight, the whole stadium stood up at once, as if they'd just won the championship.

A 3-4 record isn't anything to write home about, but they play the expansion (and winless) Edmonton Rush tomorrow night, so here's hoping they hit .500 and never look back.

Gambling again

So now there's a gambling scandal in the NHL. Not as bad as the Pete Rose thing, but still bad. This time, we have a former player involved in betting and possible money laundering and other stuff. The NHL has already stated that there is no evidence indicating that anyone involved was betting on hockey, which is the big difference between this and the Pete Rose case. Ever since Rose was banned from baseball (and therefore the Hall of Fame), I've been of the opinion that he should be reinstated, since there is no evidence that he threw games or ever bet against the team he was managing.

If you want to simply follow the letter of the law, then the case is closed. Baseball players, coaches, managers, etc. are prohibited by Major League Baseball from betting on baseball games. Rose has admitted that he did bet on baseball while manager of the Cincinatti Reds, so he's done. But perhaps we shouldn't look at the letter of the law - perhaps the question should be: is this a just rule? I've always thought that unless you are betting against your own team and/or throwing games, then betting on baseball should not be prohibited. However, after listening to some comments on the radio today, I think I've changed my mind. The rule is just, and Pete Rose should be banned from baseball. Here's why.

In 2004, Rose admitted (after 15 years of denial) that he did indeed bet on baseball games involving the Reds, which he was managing at the time. Perhaps he never bet against the Reds, but he also did not bet for the Reds in each and every game. It's possible that in the late stages of a season, when the playoff hopes were gone, he'd bet on the Reds to win a game, and not bet on them to win the next game. This could make him do whatever he could to win the first game, possibly at the expense of the second. Maybe he rearranges when pitchers are starting, or brings in more relief pitchers or pinch hitters than he normally would, to ensure that game 1 is a win. If there were no bets, he might do things differently to save players for the next game, but if he didn't bet on the next game, his judgement, and therefore his decisions, will not be the same. This is not exactly throwing game 2, but it's close, and damn near impossible to prove. This is what Rose critics mean when they say he compromised the integrity of the game.

Another thing I'd never considered is that when a rich person gets involved in gambling, it's not unlikely that he may meet some "connected" people, i.e. the mob. If he needs a loan, or is otherwise indebted to the mob for whatever reason, they may force him to throw games as part of repaying said debts. This could happen even if you're not betting on your own sport - if a baseball player (who's not allowed to bet on baseball) gets involved with the mob while betting on football, the same thing could happen.

MLB commissioner Bud Selig has stated on numerous occasions that Rose will not be reinstated as long as he's commissioner, so Pete may have to wait until a new commissioner is elected to try for reinstatement again. Good luck Pete, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Haiku

A few of us at work use MS Messenger, and one of the things that messenger allows you to do is add a "tagline", a single short line of text that is displayed after your user name. Usually these are blank, though a few of us put little amusing things in there now and again. In the last week or two, one of my colleagues started putting in haikus, so a few others have been doing it too. It's kinda fun. In our case, they're mostly sports-related. Here's mine for today:

Great news for the Leafs
Aki Berg is returning
The Cup is ours now

I kind of liked the first one I did too:

Haiku can be tough
You have to count syllables
This one is wrong

All Steves, all the time

Ever notice how a lot of great guitar players are named Steve? Steve Howe (Yes), Steve Vai, Steve Harris (Iron Maiden), Steve Lukather (Toto), Steve Morse (now with Deep Purple), Steve Hackett (Genesis), Steve Stevens (Billy Idol), and the late Steve Clark (Def Leppard) and Stevie Ray Vaughan. You got a few Jimmys too (Hendrix, Page, Vaughan), a couple of Erics (Clapton, Johnson), three Adrians (Vandenburg from Whitesnake, Belew from King Crimson, and Smith from Iron Maiden), and even a guy named Vivian (Campbell, from both Def Leppard and Whitesnake) but still it seems like an inordinate number of Steves.

Look around for great guitar players named Graeme, and you'll be looking for a while. In fact, look around for anyone remotely famous named Graeme (with that spelling), and you'll find exactly two - a composer named Graeme Revell, who's done lots of movie soundtracks, and Graeme MacKay, who does political cartoons for the Hamilton Spectator. Maybe someday I'll join that list, though as what, I don't know.

Pandora update

Pandora 2.1 has been released, and it has some fancy new stuff. You can add songs to your "favourites" list, which is available online (mine is here). Note that I just started updating this today, so there are very few songs there right now. There are other fancy things like an RSS feed to the most popular songs / artists.

Hmmm... the Pandora computer must be on an 80's thing today. I've already heard songs from Whitesnake, Loverboy, and Honeymoon Suite.

Why bad food is sometimes good

WARNING: Extreme Geek Alert!

I've been working through a weird issue with the database engine - sometimes, when trying to read a blob, I'd get a debug assertion, indicating that a condition that should never happen has happened. After looking it over for most of today, I found that the file number of the file it's trying to read from was 61453. I assumed that this was just some garbage semi-random value, but the more I looked at it, I realized that it was exactly the same value every time. Repeatability in debugging is a very good thing. On a whim, I converted this value to hex: 0xf00d.

When Windows allocates memory, it fills the memory buffer with the hex values 0xbaadf00d, so that it's obvious that this memory has been allocated but not yet used. The fact that this value was 0xf00d was a strong indication that the value was simply never set. A few more minutes of debugging and I found the problem.

Say all the nasty things about Windows that you want, but it would have taken a lot longer to find this problem on Unix. Unix doesn't fill allocated memory with anything, so if I were to run the same test there, sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't, and the repeatability would be much lower, thereby making the problem harder to solve.

\/\/ind0wz r00lz!!!!1!!1!1!

(Not really, I just put that there for John-the-Mac-boy's benefit.)