Man, I love summer

Gail got me quite a cool present for my birthday this year: a custom-made driver. Our neighbour makes golf clubs, so one day last week, Gail told me that he had called, and wanted me to come over and give him a hand with his wireless router, which was giving him problems. So I went over, and he informed me that I was not there to fix his router, but to have a fitting for a custom driver. He measured my arm length and swing speed (85-90 mph), and we chose which type of head, shaft, and grip to use. (Well, OK, he pretty much chose all that stuff — he gave me some options, then told me what he would choose, and I gave him a lot of "sure, that sounds great".) He came by Tuesday night with the final product. I wasn't allowed to swing it, since the grip adhesive hadn't finished drying yet, but he said it should be OK by Wednesday evening. I may have a chance to go out to the range with it tonight (Thursday), but more than likely, I'll have to wait until next Tuesday morning when we go golfing at Fern (see below). I used to hate my driver because I simply couldn't hit anything with it. I entered a "longest drive" competition at Fern one year, and brought my three iron because I knew I could hit it farther than my driver (though I was completely smoked by others who could hit their drivers). I took some golf lessons last summer, and since then, I've had better luck with my driver, When I went out with my dad a couple of weeks ago, it was actually the best club I hit all day. But it's 11-year-old technology now (and that's assuming it was the latest technology when we bought our clubs 11 years ago, which it wasn't), so I'm really looking forward to trying this new one out.

We go to Fern for a week in August every year — this year it goes from this coming Sunday (the 13th) to Friday the 18th. We've been looking forward to this year's trip since, well, since last year's trip ended. Fern has a ton of stuff to do for the kids as well as for us. The kids love the Playvillage, where they have activities all day, as well as free time to just play. (Note that the kids don't stay in Playvillage all day, but there are always things for them to do.) There are also shows, where they bring in magicians and musicians as well as a group from the local wildlife center, and they have a hay ride every night, as well as a zip line, a couple of big climbing structures, trampolines, and mini-golf. For kids and adults, there are tennis and basketball courts, three pools (two outdoor, one indoor) and a beach, bikes, pedal carts, canoes and pedal boats, a 5-hole golf course, batting cages, a 4-way beach volleyball court (which is a lot of fun), a rock climbing wall (yes, that's me in the white shirt), and a few other extreme sports. You can borrow all kinds of sports equipment, and they have other sports-related activities; Gail really enjoyed archery last year. There are other programs as well, like a cooking demonstration with the head chef, a woodworking class with the head carpenter, mixology, scrapbooking, and blackjack lessons, an internet cafe (and apparently the pool area is a wireless hotspot now, though we don't plan on bringing our laptops anyway) and other stuff like that. Oh yeah, and all your food is included, and is excellent. Another advantage is that dinner time for the kids starts at 5:30, and for everyone else at 6:00, at which time Playvillage opens, so you can feed the kids at 5:30, then take them over to Playvillage, then come back and have a nice leisurely grown-ups-only dinner.

In previous years, we've rented jet-skis, but Fern doesn't rent those anymore. Luckily, my friend Jeff recently bought one (as I mentioned in in the camping entry), so we'll have that to play with next week as well. It's not terribly cheap, but it's not ridiculous either, and we have a great time every year. I can't wait.

The week after Fern will also be fun. We leave Fern on the Friday morning, and head north to Gail's dad's place in Sundridge. We stay Friday night there, and leave Saturday morning sans Nicholas, who's staying with John and Jackie for a week. On the way home, we stop in at my parents' place, where we drop Ryan off. So from Saturday afternoon until the next Friday, no kids. Now don't get me wrong, I love my kids, but the idea of going out to a movie without paying more for a babysitter than for the movie itself certainly has appeal, not to mention not making kids lunches every day, not fighting with bedtime every night, not worrying about making a dinner that the kids will actually eat, and so on. Gail and I will get lots done around the house, see a couple of movies, sleep in on Sunday and maybe play a round of golf. It'll be nice.

Technorati tags:
Vacation

Lunch at Harvey's with Nicholas

Me: There are four types of kids meals, Nicky. Do you want a hamburger, cheeseburger, chicken fingers, or a hot dog?
Nicholas: A hamburger.
Me: A hamburger? Not a cheeseburger?
Nicholas: No, a hamburger.
Me: OK. Are you sure you don't want a cheeseburger? Just a hamburger?
Nicholas: Yes, I want a hamburger.
Me: OK.

A few minutes later...
Me: OK Nicky, here's your hamburger. What do you want on it? Ketchup? Mustard?
Nicholas: No, just cheese.

Queensryche Live

I borrowed a fairly new Queensrÿche album from the library the other day, called "The Art of Live". Kind of a self-aggrandizing title, I thought ("We're so good live, we've turned it into an art"), but they used to be one of my favourite bands (as I've blogged before), so I thought I'd give it a try. What a disappointment. Part of my disappointment comes from the fact that most of the songs are from the last few Queensrÿche studio albums, which I didn't really like, and not so much from the first 4 or 5, which I did like. Even ignoring that, there are other problems: the crowd noise is almost non-existent (a live album without crowd noise is just weird to listen to), and there are no backing vocals. This doesn't matter much for some songs, but for a song like Anybody Listening, it really loses something without the backing vocals. I guess Chris DeGarmo was the primary backing vocalist, since he's no longer with the band. Hey, maybe that's the reason I don't like as much of the new stuff — he wrote all the songs I liked too. Another weird thing is that on the song My Global Mind, it sounds like they've shut off the amplifiers, or at least turned the distortion way down — it's not quite an acoustic version, but it certainly isn't as heavy as the original version. I think if it was a pure acoustic version, it would be OK, but it just seems mixed up here. Operation: LIVECrime was a pretty good live Queensrÿche album, but this one just seems to continue the downward spiral of a formerly great band.

I also got a greatest hits album by Silverchair from the library, but I haven't listened to it yet. I will be sure to keep you, Constant Reader, informed. (Kind of a Stephen King thing there)

Leave that thing alone

I read an article on a blog yesterday, where the guy talked about circumcision — how he needed to get it done to his son when he was about 5, and he wished he had gotten it done when he was born. He says "I listened to all that nonsense about butchering and psychological damage and curcumcision being unnatural. What a mistake." I couldn't disagree more. I don't believe that circumcision causes psychological damage, but in general, there is no anaesthesia used, so (I'm guessing - I don't actually remember) it really freakin' hurts. Do you want to cause your son that much pain, even if there won't be lasting psychological damage? Not without a damn good reason — and thus far, I have not been able to find one.

The main argument that people use when arguing for circumcision is that it allows the child to avoid painful infections that could require circumcision later in life. When Gail was pregnant with Ryan, we asked our family doctor about this, and she said that most of the time, proper washing of the penis eliminates this problem. When Ryan was 3, he could wash his penis by himself, so it's not a difficult thing. She (our doctor) also said that people get ingrown toenails all the time, but nobody advocates removing them at birth.

Another argument I've heard (this, to me, is unbelievable) is that if the father is circumcised, it's important for the child's penis to look like that of his father. Hogwash. If that's true, then you'd better hope that your kids all have the same eye and hair colour as their father as well. Quite simply, people look different — my kids know this. Neither of my sons have ever asked why I look different than them.

It's true that in some cases, infections or inflammations or whatever may cause circumcision to be required in older children, or even adults. But that doesn't mean that we should just do the surgery in advance just in case it's necessary later. Hey, the tonsils and appendix serve no purpose in the human body, and they may also get infected (and if an infected appendix ruptures, it could be life-threatening), so we should remove them at birth too, right? Gail had her gall bladder removed 12 years ago because of gallstones, and she's just fine now, so should we remove all gall bladders from babies so that they avoid the pain of gallstones? The logic is the same.

Bottom line: it's painful for the child, expensive (health insurance doesn't cover it), and generally unnecessary. So why would you want to do this to your child? I don't believe that circumcision is butchery or psychologically scarring, I just don't understand why you'd elect to have it done to your child.

Note: Some people have the procedure done for religious reasons. That is not an issue for me, which is why when Ryan was born, I simply looked into the medical reasons to get it done (and found none). As an atheist, I can't say I understand it, but if your faith dictates (probably using the wrong word there) that your male children must be circumcised, then it doesn't really matter whether or not it is medically necessary. If you honestly believe that God wants your infant son to feel that much pain for no medical reason, then nothing I say in this article will mean anything to you.

Aside: I wonder how many more google searches will hit my blog now that I've used the word "penis". Maybe I should rewrite this article using various other words for penis, and watch my readership numbers skyrocket!

Update (Dec 2006): As Yappa pointed out in the comments, there have been studies that show that circumcised heterosexual men are less likely (some studies say half as likely) to get HIV than uncircumcised men. John mentioned in his blog (also in the comments) that Wikipedia lists other advantages, including lower incidence of penile cancer.

Here's a link (thanks John) to an article saying that the results were so striking that they actually ended the study a year early, saying that it would be unethical not to offer circumcisions to all the men in the study. These results are certainly interesting, and if I lived in sub-Saharan Africa, I would have to seriously reconsider having it done to my kids. However, incidence of HIV among heterosexual non-drug-using men is far lower here than it is there. I don't regret my decision not to have it done (and if I had another son I probably still would not get it done), but I must take back my (implicit) assertion that it's pointless and has no benefits.

I still don't generally agree with removing something just because it might cause problems later. Doctors believe the appendix serves no purpose, and later in life it can become infected, causing pain and if it ruptures, possibly even death, but doctors don't remove them at birth "just in case".

Camping trip

Starting in the late 80's, a few friends of mine went camping every Canada Day weekend, and I joined them starting in about 1990. Gail started in 1992 when we started dating, and we've gone every year since (though Gail took a year off in 1999 when she was 8 months pregnant). The numbers of people that went on these trips kept growing, until we had over 30 people and 8-10 camp sites. A few years ago, we decided to move the weekend from July 1st to the August long weekend, which was less busy, and easier to get camp sites. It's not like interior camping or anything; one family had a tent trailer, while the rest of us were in big tents (our tent is big enough for me to stand up in the middle). Just about everyone had air mattresses to sleep on, and Coleman stoves and barbecues, and some sites even had electricity, so we're not exactly "roughing it".

However, in 2004, we found camping very challenging — Nicholas was only 2 so he had to be supervised every minute, and it also rained a fair bit. We've had a number of rainy camping weekends, and those are just no fun at all:

• At one point in 2004 we had DVD players going in at least three different mini-vans to keep the kids occupied
• In 1996, Gail and I left a day early because our tent leaked, so everything we had brought (particularly clothes and sleeping bags) got wet. That was also the weekend my old 1988 Cavalier died, so we had to borrow someone else's car just to get there.
• Another year, everyone drove into the nearest town and we all went to a restaurant for dinner. A completely non-camping-like move, but it had rained most of the weekend, and we all just wanted to be dry for an hour or so.

2004 seemed far more work than fun, and so we really had no desire to go the next year. Some other families felt the same way, and so last year, the camping weekend was officially cancelled; a few of us rented a chalet up in Collingwood for a weekend instead.

This year, we decided to try it again, but for a non-long weekend, and so last weekend, the tradition was resurrected, up at Balsam Lake Provincial Park. I'm very glad it was, because everyone had a great time. The weather co-operated (no rain, not too hot, not too cold), the beach was nice, the lake was warm, the kids behaved themselves as much as we could have expected them to, everything went off without a hitch. We had 9 campsites and 33 people — the kids ranged in ages from a little over a year to 10.

My buddy Jeff bought a Jet-Ski a couple of weeks ago, so we all had a ride either on it or being pulled behind it on a tube, so that was a lot of fun. One of the tubes was shaped like a hot dog, and you're not supposed to sit on it, you kneel (especially when you're in the back). I was behind Ryan, and so kneeling the whole time (it was all of about 10 minutes) just killed my legs — three days later, my legs are still stiff and sore. Playing baseball last night didn't help much; they loosened up during the game, and felt pretty good afterwards, but today they're as bad as yesterday. I just hope they're better before my next ball game on Thursday night. In the words of one Mick Jagger, what a drag it is getting old.

Article on IPv6

I found an article from the Times Online (a British paper) talking about IPv6 and how it will revolutionize the internet. Not a very good article (even ignoring the fact that I already knew most of it), but because the author obviously skimped on his research:

• When the internet was developed in the 1980s,... — actually, it was the early '70s
• They gave each address a "16-bit" number... — No they didn't. Each IPv4 address is a 32-bit number.
• ...a new one was written based on "32-bit numbers" — In IPv6, each address is a 128-bit number.
• The number given for 2³² was 340,282,366,920,938, and then a bunch of zeroes, but that's not accurate. The actual number is greater than the one given by 463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456, or over 4.6 sextillion.

Obviously, with IPv6, we're going to need bigger tubes.

Vacation Week

Busy busy week. Gail and I are both on vacation this week, but we didn't actually go anywhere; by that I mean that we didn't go somewhere for the whole week, just a couple of day trips and stuff. Last Sunday, we decided to work outside, moving about 1/3 of a cubic yard of triple mix from a big bag on the driveway to the gardens in the backyard. Of course, Sunday was the hottest day of the year so far, and one of the hottest in the last few years — according to the thermometer in the back yard, it was 38°C (102°F) in the shade. We took a break in the hottest part of the afternoon and watched some of The Lord of the Rings - The Special Extended Director's Cut (or whatever) while the boys napped. I really enjoyed the LOTR trilogy, and the extended ones are even better. Seems that Mr. Editor Guy wasn't a big fan of Faramir, since he had a lot more scenes in the extended version than in the "regular" ones.

Monday, we went to Canada's Wonderland again, and spent most of the day in the water park. Being Monday (i.e. not a weekend), we figured it wouldn't be crazy busy, but being hot (mid-high 30's again) increased the numbers, but it still wasn't too bad. Gail's mom came with us; driving her home was kind of funny. She lives right in Toronto, and seems to think that since we live a fair ways outside the city, we're completely unfamiliar with it. I've told her a number of times that I know the city, particularly Scarborough, where she lives, pretty well, but it doesn't seem to sink in. She lives near Victoria Park and the 401, and coming home from Wonderland, the 401 got busy, so I got off on Allen Rd. and went north to Sheppard, which I planned on taking across to Victoria Park. She gave us a tour on the way back, and kept giving me directions. Even after I pointed out that I used to work on Don Mills just south of Sheppard and drove Sheppard Ave. home every day, and was born in North York, and lived in Scarborough for 11 years, and so on, she still pointed out where Victoria Park was and told me that I wanted to turn right at the lights right after Consumer's Road. Sigh.

Tuesday we finished the bag of dirt from the driveway, took the boys to the library, and had a rather nice uneventful day. My parents came by after dinner, and stayed until this morning. Wednesday morning, my dad and I went to play golf — my first game of the year. I shot something like 117, which it a touch higher than I have shot before, but I only get out two or three times a year. My driver was working really well though, so I was very happy with that. I did hit it left quite a bit, but at least it was consistent, not all over the place like I used to hit. I used to hate my driver, but after the lessons I took a couple of years ago, I can hit it pretty well now. The rest of the day was more gardening and playing outside with the boys, and then we had a wonderful dinner outside on the deck - the heat had subsided, and there were no bugs, so it was very nice.

Today, we took the boys to Ontario Place. I had been there a number of times as a kid, but probably not in 20 years or so. It rained for a while in the afternoon, but we spent part of that time in the Cinesphere, part of it in the water park, and the rest on the wilderness adventure ride (i.e. log flume), so we got a little wet, but we had a lot of fun anyway. Best part — Ontario Place has a policy where if it rains for more than an hour continuously, you can get a coupon for free admission any other day, so we get to go back another time for free. Since it cost us about $105 for admission, this is a good thing.

Tomorrow, we're going camping for the first time in two years. There are going to be something like 25-30 of our friends there, so it should be a lot of fun. Gail will likely take a ton of pictures, so I'm sure I will scan a bunch and make a Camping 2006 page on our web site.

On an unrelated note, I created a LiveJournal account today, so now I have three blogs (I also have one for my NLL Pool, but I only update that one with pool-related information, and only during the NLL season (Dec-May)). I only created it so that I can comment non-anonymously on other LJ users' blogs; I have no plans to actually use it as another blog.

Exodus from Edmonton

OK, I don't get this. The Edmonton Oilers were a game away from winning the Stanley Cup, and suddenly everyone's jumping ship. OK, maybe Chris Pronger had "personal reasons" for wanting out, but there seem to be a lot of players who are leaving Edmonton. Obviously Pronger was traded to Anaheim, but a bunch of free agents have also left: Ty Conklin, Georges Laraque, Sergei Samsonov, and Jaroslav Spacek have all signed with other teams. Mike Peca is supposedly in talks with the Leafs (though that seems to have stalled), and Radek Dvorak has stated that he has no interest in returning. I'd have figured that after having been that close to winning it all, you'd want to stay with the same team, and try to get just that little bit better next year. Maybe after Pronger asked to be traded, a bunch of the free agents figured there was no chance of that, and so they all jumped ship.

Kind of sucks for Edmonton fans, though they probably still have a better chance of winning it all next year than the Leafs. The Leafs should sign Peca and Anson Carter quickly, then sign Eric Lindros to a cheap contract (if he'll take one; if he wants more money than last year, let him go), and dump Jason Allison. They already did the right things in buying out Ed Belfour and Tie Domi (I like the guy and all, but he's getting too old, and is too expensive for what he brings to the table), and they resigned Nik Antropov to a fairly cheap contract, which is good (well, the cheap part is good). Not a big fan of Antropov's — we've been waiting years for that guy to turn into the star player he was touted as, but so far in his career, as Bob McCown would say, he's just a guy.

Technorati tags:
Hockey
Edmonton Oilers
Toronto Maple Leafs

The Big E

I was browsing around on Wikipedia this evening before my baseball game, when I came across the entry on Eric Lindros. I've never been a big fan of the Big E, mainly because of the way he started his career. He was drafted by the lowly Quebec Nordiques in 1991, and had indicated, even before the draft, that he wouldn't play for them. It was that arrogance that pissed me off — he'd never played a single NHL game, and already he's decided that he's too good to play for Quebec. He demanded to be traded, and he was — to the Philadelphia Flyers. The trade was unbelievable though: Lindros went to Philly, and here's what went back to Quebec: Peter Forsberg, Ron Hextall, Chris Simon, Mike Ricci, Kerry Huffman, Steve Duchesne, a 1st round draft pick in '93 (Jocelyn Thibault), a 1st round draft pick in '94 (traded to Toronto in the Mats Sundin deal), and $15 million in cash. Three years later, the Nordiques moved to Colorado, traded Thibault to Montreal for a goalie by the name of Patrick Roy, and won the Stanley Cup (they won it all again in 2001, and have also won 8 division titles). Lindros went on to lead the Flyers to the Cup finals once in 1997, but they didn't win it.

I found it quite ironic that Lindros refused to play for Quebec because they sucked so bad, and yet trading him away allowed Quebec to become a very strong team for many years. Lindros plays for the Leafs now (or at least he did last year, but hasn't yet been resigned for next season), so I'm supposed to like him now, but first impressions stick with me for a long time. Having said that, I wouldn't mind if the Leafs did resign him, as long as it isn't for much money - $1.5 million tops.

Technorati tags:
Eric Lindros
Quebec Nordiques
Philadelphia Flyers
Colorado Avalanche

The Circus

We went to a circus on Saturday. The Shriner's circus was in Burlington, and some friends of ours had tickets but couldn't go, so they gave them to us. There were your standard trapeze artists, clowns, jugglers, and stuff (though not a single pair of stilts to be seen anywhere), and they were all good. The things I wasn't so impressed with were the animal acts. Oh, the animals were all trained very well, and the performances went off without a hitch, but something about applauding because six horses were running single file in a circle, then switched directions because some woman with a whip twirled her arms just didn't sit well with me. At least once (I think twice) the MC said that elephants are an endangered species and that they hoped that the opportunity to see the elephant at the circus would cause us (the audience) to become interested in helping do something about it. He also said that elephants in the wild generally live around 45 years, but elephants living in captivity can live up to 80 years. I read over the web site for the circus company, and they do say that they are they take "great pride in the care that [their] animals receive", and I'm sure that the animals are generally not mistreated. The elephant act didn't bother me — one elephant standing on a little stool while some gymnast climbed around on him — and the trained poodles were very cute, but the only time I saw a whip (which was not used on the animals — in fact, she never cracked it once) was during the horse act, and that bothered me.

I'm no tree-hugger, and I do eat meat, but cruelty to animals really bothers me. I cannot envision a scenario involving these horses and a whip that does not involved some cruelty to the horses. They were also tied up in such a way that the horses could not lift their heads beyond a certain point. This was probably for the safety of the performers, but the horse is a very majestic animal, and seeing them with their heads constantly pulled down made them look subservient and humiliated, and I really felt sorry for them.

Weirdness: the MC looked a lot like Wil Wheaton, who writes one of the best blogs on the 'net. His latest entry (ironically about writer's block) is a great example of why blogging was invented.

Technorati tags:
Circus
Animal cruelty
Wil Wheaton

Changed comments again

I changed the comment stuff on my blog back to the standard blogger comments. The Haloscan stuff was working OK, but I just didn't like the look of it — to read the comments, you had to pop up a separate window, and that window had advertising links in it, and I'm too lazy to reformat the window to look nicer. I've moved the comments made during the Haloscan days back over, though I haven't found a way to reset the times to the original times, so it looks like I got a bunch of comments on various different entries all within a few minutes of each other on the same day. One of the main advantages of Haloscan is trackback, which is not offered by blogger, but my blog is low-traffic enough that not having it is no big deal.

Update: I figured out how to edit comments, so all the comment dates/times are now correct.

Technorati tags:
Haloscan
blog comments

More Separated at Birth

In a comment on my last posting, Yappa said: "I agree with those! In addition, I've always thought that Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter look like twins." Well, let's see:

Helena Bonham Carter	Johnny Depp

Yup, no question. Must be the facial hair.

Separated at Birth?

Is is just me?

Steve Yzerman	Michael Keaton

While I'm at it...

Corey Hart	David Duchovny

I've always thought the same thing about k.d. lang and Colin James early in their respective careers, but I couldn't find any pictures that illustrated the similarities.

Technorati tags:
Steve Yzerman
Michael Keaton
Corey Hart
David Duchovny

Great lacrosse article in Tacoma paper

Here is a great article in the Tacoma News Tribune about the possibility of the NLL expanding to the Seattle/Tacoma area. The reporter admits that he knows zilch about lacrosse, but has obviously done research on the game and the league, and realistically evaluates whether this could be a good thing for the city. In previous years, when the NLL is considering expanding to a city, I've seen articles in that city's newspapers written by people who also know nothing about lacrosse, but who are less open to the possibility. Some sports writers seem to think "How can a sport be any good when I don't know anything about it?" Many times, I've seen similar articles that seem to be a long version of "Lacrosse? What's that?". Nice to see a reporter doing some real reporting for a change, and not just dismissing an idea out of hand because it's something they're unfamiliar with. Kudos to Mr. John McGrath.

Technorati tags:
lacrosse
NLL
National Lacrosse League

Rock 'n' Roll Family Tree

A number of years ago, I created a web page called "The Rock 'n' Roll Family Tree". It was a static page of bands and musicians that linked them all, i.e. a musician that was in two bands linked those two bands. If another musician in one of those bands was also in a third band, then that band was linked as well, and so on. A band was only considered linked if a member of that band was also a member of another band — things like guest appearances, one-off duets, session work, and things like that didn't count. Eventually, I had well over 100 bands linked, including everyone from Black Sabbath to Culture Club to Foreigner to Strawberry Alarm Clock.

Unfortunately, I've since lost the original list, but I've been toying with the idea of re-creating it. Of course, I'd do it in PHP now, with a backing database. I'd love to use SQL Anywhere (the database product I work on) as the backing store, but very few web hosting companies (if any) offer SQL Anywhere support (mine does not), and I am not willing to host the site myself on my own home machine. I'd also love to add a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon-type thing where you could enter two musicians or bands and display the links between them, but that's a lot more work. For example, to get from Whitesnake to Metallica, you could do this:

• Steve Vai was in Whitesnake
• Rudy Sarzo was in Whitesnake with Steve Vai
• Rudy Sarzo was also in Quiet Riot with Randy Rhoads
• Randy Rhoads played with Ozzy Osbourne
• Mike Trujillo also played with Ozzy Osbourne
• Mike Trujillo is now in Metallica

In many cases, there are multiple ways to get from one band to another — Steve Vai also played with David Lee Roth, as did a guitarist named Jason Becker. Becker was previously in a band called Cacophony with Marty Friedman, who later joined Megadeth with Dave Mustaine, and Mustaine used to be in Metallica.

Just for completeness, Steve Vai appeared in a movie in 2006 called Crazy, with Chris Ellis, who was also in Apollo 13 with Kevin Bacon. And Kevin Bacon is also a musician, having recorded an album or two with his brother, so maybe he'll make this list too.

Aw, crap. I just found bandtoband.com, which is exactly what I described above. They took my idea and ran with it. (Though I suppose it's possible that they simply had the same idea, and didn't steal it from me.) They have almost 7,000 bands in their database, so I suppose there's no reason for me to do it.

Technorati tags:
Music
Kevin Bacon

The Daily WTF

The Daily WTF is a blog site that lists everything from software architectures to actual pieces of source code that just make you shake your head and say "What the F**k?" (hence WTF). Most are overly complicated ways of doing something easy, like the function that determined if a number was negative by converting it to a string and then checking if the first character was '-'. I guess "num < 0" was just too obscure.

This might be the more frightening (and hilarious at the same time) piece I've ever seen on there. Thank God I don't have to deal with this kind of stuff. The managers where I work are all really good &mdash and I'm not just saying that because my manager reads my blog. Really.

Technorati tags:
Software
Management

More on male oppression

John came by my office ("I'd comment, but that would require work") and mentioned that in Canadian divorce law, the mother will almost always be given custody of children unless (a) she is deemed an unfit mother, and (b) the father is considered "adequate". If both parents are considered adequate, then the woman will always win. A woman who doesn't give a rat's ass about her kids, but doesn't actively abuse them, will win custody over the most doting and caring of fathers. Basically, in the eyes of the courts, any woman who is not shooting up heroin and turning tricks in front of her kids must be a better parent than any man could possibly be. If anyone can give me an explanation of this one, I'd looooove to hear it.

I remember hearing a few years ago that the average man is only slightly less likely to die of prostate cancer than the average woman is to die of breast cancer. However, breast cancer research gets ten times the amount of federal funding (this was an American quote) that prostate cancer research does. Now, that was from Rush Limbaugh, so who knows how accurate it was, but still...

Well, my build is done now, so back to work...

A political rant

Look out, a rare political "rant" from me. Note that "rant" is in quotes, because it's probably too strong a word for what I'm going to write here; a rant is usually fuelled by some passionate belief in or against something, and I am just not that passionate about politics. But something I saw the other day did kind of piss me off, so I had to share it. Actually, I have two things to say; the first just a comment, the second is the rant.

Anyway, onto my thoughts. Whimsley and Yappa Ding Ding wrote a couple of weeks ago about Bob Rae becoming leader of the federal Liberal Party. Yappa likes the idea, while Whimsley doesn't; not because it's Bob Rae, but because the idea of someone joining a political party as leader bothers him, and I have to agree. When Jean Charest quit the federal Conservative Party to become the leader of the Quebec Liberal Party a few years ago, I was confused. I mean, political parties are built on beliefs and ideals about how to govern, they're not just distinct groups of people. It's not like Johnny Damon leaving the Red Sox to join the Yankees. I would have thought that changing parties would be akin to someone raised Catholic deciding to suddenly convert to Judaism, which I suppose is not that big a deal. However, in the case of a party leader quitting to join a different party as its leader, it would be like the Pope deciding to give up all this Catholic stuff and become a rabbi. I will be the first to admit that I'm less than knowledgeable about politics, so am I missing something?

Now, the rant. In the last federal budget, a new childcare credit was created, so that parents of kids under 4 can get $100 a month for childcare (or beer and popcorn if you so desire). I downloaded the necessary forms from the government website yesterday, and was dismayed to see this at the top:

For CCTB purposes, when both a male and a female parent live in the same home as the child, we presume that the female parent is primarily responsible and should apply, unless a note from the female parent is attached to this application that states that the male parent is primarily responsible for the child.

Once again, as a father, I am considered "less important" than Gail, simply because I am male and she is female. Gail gives the boys their baths more often than I do, just because I don't particularly like doing it and she doesn't mind. Gail cooks more often than I do because she's a better cook. And she gets the boys clothes ready more often because she is more concerned about what they wear, and if the shirt and shorts go together and stuff like that. But I make the boys breakfast and Ryan's lunch every day. I start dinner when I'm home before Gail. I do laundry as often as Gail does, and when it's done, I end up folding it more often because she hates doing that part. I'm not going to go through and list everything that each of us does for the kids, but suffice it to say that Gail and I are equally capable of caring for our children. The idea that I need a fucking note signed by my wife to say that is sexist and insulting.

Technorati tags:
Politics
Childcare

Leafs after Pronger?

Whenever I hear of a big-name baseball player requesting a trade, or a rumour that some star player is being shopped around, I always immediately wonder if the Blue Jays can get him. I think about what position he plays and if the Jays could use some improvement there, can he be used as a DH and would that improve the team, that kind of thing. Sometimes I dismiss it pretty quickly; when the Rangers were shopping Alex Rodriguez and his $120 million dollar salary, I knew very quickly that he wouldn't end up in Toronto, since the Jays simply couldn't afford him, though I did think it would have been great it that were possible. Other times, it wouldn't really improve the team anyway - a couple of years ago, if some big-name first baseman was being shopped, it probably wouldn't have made much sense for the Jays to look at it, since we already had Carlos Delgado at first, and giving up a ton for a part-time first baseman and DH would have been too much. But in any case, the thought always came up.

So it would seem logical that I'd do the same thing with the Maple Leafs, but for some reason, I don't. When it was announced the other day that Chris Pronger wanted to be traded from the Oilers for "personal reasons", it didn't even occur to me that the Leafs might be interested. I did not think "Wow, wouldn't it be great if he ended up with the Leafs?", even as a passing fantasy. I thought it interesting — I can't imagine why he'd want to be traded off of a team that he led to within one game of the Cup, but maybe there are people on the team (or in coaching or management positions) that he just cannot work with, or something like that. Anyway, it was rumoured this morning that the Leafs are offering Tomas Kaberle and Matt Stajan to Edmonton for Pronger, and that Edmonton wants Alex Steen instead of Stajan. The possibility of Pronger in a Leaf uniform came as a total shock to me, and I don't really know why. Is it because the Leafs GMs have a history of going after aging veterans past their prime, rather than trying to get a superstar player in his prime? When was the last time the best player in the league played for the Leafs? An awful long time ago, I assure you. Now, given the fact that the best player in the league has been named Gretzky, Lemieux, or Jagr for the vast majority of the last 25 years, that doesn't mean much, but still.

But more central to the Pronger thing, when was the last time the Leafs acquired someone who was, at the time he was acquired, one of the best in the league? You could argue for Mats Sundin in 1994. Other than that... well let just say it was before the Ballard years, and Ballard gained control of the team in 1971, according to Wikipedia.

In other Leafs news, they traded for Andrew Raycroft the other day. I have to say, I'll be more confident with him in net than with the 40+ oft-injured Ed Belfour. With Raycroft as the starting goalie and J.S. Aubin as his backup, the Leafs should buy Belfour out (as I've said before), and either trade (good luck) or release Mikael Tellqvist.

Technorati tags:
Hockey
Toronto Maple Leafs

Bomb scare

Last Friday, something happened at Ryan's school that I never figured would happen in the small quiet town of Waterdown: the school was evacuated because of a suspected bomb. One of the caretakers was on the roof of the school getting tennis balls and such that had been thrown up there, when he saw a pipe sealed up with tape, and a wire sticking out of it. He told the head caretaker, who told the vice-principal, who called the police, and they evacuated the school (all 700+ students, plus 50+ teachers and staff) into the gym of Waterdown District High School, which is right next door. The bomb squad was called, and they sent their robot up onto the roof, which knocked the bomb-like thing down onto the ground. When it didn't explode, they blasted it with a water cannon, which destroyed it. What they found inside was puzzling: two batteries taped together and an empty bottle of white-out. I believe they took the contents to their forensics lab, where they will hopefully pull some CSI-magic and find out what idiot (or idiots) made this fake bomb.

I am certainly no explosives expert, but I don't get this. White-out is almost certainly flammable, considering there's alcohol in it, but would it explode when connected to a couple of batteries? If it would, would the explosion be powerful enough to blow up the pipe that they were inside, let alone do any damage to anything around it? My guess is no, but even if that were true, what's the point of using an empty bottle? On the other hand, if the idea was to make something that just looked like a bomb, then why put anything inside it at all?

The discovery happened around 10:30, and I happened to find out about it earlier than most other parents. I was working at home (as I do every Friday), and had headed over to the school around 12:00 to do a couple of quick administrative things for Gail (school council chair, dontcha know), and that's when I saw all the police tape and stuff. I went back home, and then my neighbour came by a couple of hours later to say that they were asking parents to come and get their kids, so I went over and got Ryan. This was about 1:45, and he hadn't eaten since breakfast, since their lunches were all still in the school. I asked him what they had done while in the gym, and he simply said "we sat". They apparently put a movie up on the screen in the gym at one point, but he didn't know what movie it was. The principal sent a note home to all the parents on Monday explaning everything, and also saying that the police had told him repeatedly that this was the most orderly and speedy forced evacuation they had ever seen. I suppose it served as an emergency preparedness test, which they passed with flying colours, so something good came out of it.

Downloading music legally? You can do that?

I entered the world of legally-downloaded digital music a couple of weeks ago. I admit, I have downloaded some music illegally — from Napster several years ago, just some songs that I liked from bands that I didn't want a whole album of. In a few cases, I ended up buying the album anyway, and in the cases where I didn't, I generally don't listen to those songs anymore anyway. I have also downloaded some music from various torrent sites - mainly for guitar practice. Being in the software industry, I'm not a big fan of pirating stuff, so I feel kind of dirty (and not just a little bit hypocritical) doing it.

To ease my guilty conscience, I have been looking for a place to buy digital music that (a) had a good selection of stuff (lots of sites have independent stuff, but I wanted big labels as well), (b) the ability to purchase single songs, not just entire albums, and (c) no restrictions on the downloaded files. Most of the sites I've found so far (like iTunes) have restrictions on the files — you can only listen to the songs so many times or for such-and-such a time limit, or you can only download the files to a particular device (or small set of devices), or stuff like that. I want the ability to make CDs, copy MP3s around anywhere I want, stuff like that. My guitar teacher told me about puretracks.com, so I checked it out. It has all three of the criteria I listed above, plus the prices are good, and best of all, the site is Canadian. The only minor caveat is that the files you download are compressed WMA files, not MP3, so they can only be played with Windows Media Player. However, the license you get allows you to burn CDs, and Media Player can do that. So, I downloaded a few albums, and for each one, burned a CD, then fired up my MP3 ripper and ripped the CD to MP3s, so now I have the unrestricted MP3 files that I wanted. I have no intention of illegally distributing these files, I just want to be able to copy them between my computers, use them on my MP3 player in the car, and on the MP3 player I bought for Gail for her birthday (which she has yet to open, 2 months later). It's annoying to have to burn a CD and then rip it (and then erase it, so I can use it again for the next album), rather than just convert from WMA to MP3 directly. The MP3 ripper I have (CDex) has that ability, but can't seem to handle these WMA files (possibly because they're licensed), so until I figure out how to do the conversion, I'll have to go through this extra step. Annoying and time-consuming, but not that big a deal.

The first things I downloaded were the song "River Below" by Billy Talent, and the first album from Godsmack. I had heard good things about Godsmack, but I didn't know any of their stuff. I did read in the Wikipedia entry on them that they are often compared to Alice In Chains (and are, in fact, named after an Alice in Chains song), and I like Alice in Chains, so I figured what the hell. It only took about three Godsmack songs before I decided I should probably just go ahead and buy the other three Godsmack albums too. I asked my friend Steve, who's into lots of really heavy stuff, and he said that all the Godsmack albums are really good. A week after my first download, I downloaded the entire Billy Talent album, as well as the third (Faceless) and fourth (IV) Godsmack albums — for some reason, the second one (Awake) is only available on physical CD. I haven't gotten to the IV album yet, but from the first two, I'm not hearing much of a similarity to Alice in Chains. So far, it seems more like Metallica's James Hetfield singing with Stone Temple Pilots. A couple of songs even sound kind of like Creed, though I have thought in the past that Creed sounded like STP anyway. I like the Billy Talent stuff as well — the guitarist has an interesting style, though the singer is a little screechy sometimes.

Maybe I should go all out and ease my guilty mind by going through the songs that I downloaded illegally and either (a) erasing them, or (b) buying them through puretracks. Of course, if I do that, then I'd have to go and actually buy the first season of Family Guy too...

Technorati tags: Godsmack Alice in Chains Billy Talent puretracks.com

A story about each of my kids

Ryan

Ryan made a Father's Day card for me at school this week, and presented it to me today. It's got a drawing of me wearing a Toronto Rock jersey, and there's a little survey inside called "Meet My Father". Here are the questions and answers:

• My father's name is Grame
• His eyes are green
• His hair is black
• He is 38 years old
• My favourite food that my father makes is Kraft dinner
• My father works hard at mowing the lawn
• I like it when Dad and I play baseball
• I love my father because he loves me

Well, my name is spelled wrong, I'm 36, and my hair is brown, but apart from that, the rest are right. Especially the last one.

Nicholas

This evening, about 20 minutes after I put Nicholas to bed, he came downstairs to tell me that he thought there was a bear in his room. He's never been afraid of bears before, so I think this came from the movie Over the Hedge, which we saw last weekend, and which featured a large scary bear, voiced by the large scary Nick Nolte. Anyway, I took him back upstairs and told him that there were no bears in there. I told him "Mommy and I don't allow bears in the house. If one comes to the door, we tell him to go back to the forest where he's supposed to live, and he goes away." Nicky, who incidentally just turned four, continued along those lines — for a second. He said "If a bear is in my room, I'll tell him 'Go away bear, go back to the forest'. Then I'll whack him in the nuts."

I doubt he even knows what "nuts" refers to. I'm sure he got it from Ryan, who may or may not know what it means himself, and probably got it from some older kid at school.

You can never have too much pitching

We went to the Blue Jays game on Saturday - part of a group deal with the Waterdown Minor Baseball Association, where Ryan plays. It was Nicholas' first ever baseball game, Ryan's third, and Gail's first in about 6 years. I've gone to a couple of games with my dad since the kids were born - before that, Gail and I would go to at least 7 or 8 games a year, sometimes more, and usually including the home opener. Ah, how times change.

Anyway, Nicholas had no interest in the game whatsoever. He was interested in his grilled cheese sandwich, ketchup flavoured chips ("they spice my tongue!"), popcorn, and the books we brought, but mainly he was interested in the flip-down chairs. Ryan watched a bit of the game here and there, but was fascinated by the Jumbotron. Later in the game, he also found the books we brought and was so enthralled by one of them that when Troy Glaus hit a home run, Ryan didn't even look up. Gail watched the game but didn't really pay attention to it; she was focussed on making sure the boys kept themselves occupied. I actually watched the game, which the Jays lost 5-3. Ted Lilly, who I've never been a big fan of, pitched a great game. He only allowed three hits in 8 2/3 innings, and struck out 12. Two of those three hits, however, were home runs - the first with 2 walks aboard, and the second right after a Shea Hillenbrand error, so it was 5-0 after 4 innings. Lyle Overbay and Troy Glaus both homered to make it close, but the Jays offence just couldn't get anything going. I think Vernon Wells and Alex Rios each grounded to third base three or four times.

The Jays are doing pretty well this year - I read today that they are leading the league in batting average, slugging percentage, and on-base percentage, and are one of only two teams since 1969 to have a team batting average over .300 more than 60 games into the season. They're only a couple of games out of first in the East, but they've had an amazing nine opportunities this year to sweep a series, and have yet to do so. They could really use one of those 10 or 12 game winning streaks to boost their confidence.

You wouldn't have thought this going into the season, but I guess pitching is their weakness this year. Their starting pitching has been decent, but not great. Lilly has been fine, but not the all-star he was a couple of years ago. Chacin and Towers are all performing below where they were last year; Towers has been just dreadful for all but one start, and the mighty expensive A.J. Burnett has pitched all of a game and a half. On the upside, Roy Halladay has been his usual amazing self, and rookie Casey Janssen has been a welcome addition - an ERA of just over 3.00 and 5 wins in 9 starts. The bullpen has been… well, let's just say that calling them "spotty" is being kind. B.J. Ryan, who was also expensive, has been worth every penny so far (15 saves in 16 opportunities, an ERA of 0.61, and a WHIP of 0.67), but looking down the rest of the pitching stats, Justin Speier is the only reliever with an ERA under 5.00. That's nasty.

Technorati tags: Blue Jays baseball

Movie Review: Firewall

We rented the movie Firewall last night. It was pretty good - we're both big fans of Harrison Ford (Hollywood Homicide notwithstanding), and as usual, he gave a pretty good performance. Having said that, it must kind of get old for Ford, since he's played the same "Don't screw with my family" kind of guy in lots of movies (The Devil's Own, Air Force One, Patriot Games, The Fugitive (kinda)). Anyway, there were a couple of "yeah, right" moments, but overall, it was quite believable, and very entertaining. The ending was kind of disappointing though — it was almost as if they realized "Hey, we're out of time, let's end this now". Some other comments:

• These hackers are good enough to be able to hack the desktop computer of the VP of security of a bank, and yet can't just get the money out themselves? OK, so maybe getting to the desktop is one thing, but getting access to the real customer data is something else. That's certainly possible. But didn't they realize that the terminals in the server room (required for their plan to work) were just removed for security reasons? I would think that this would be the kind of thing that would show up in a recent email to the VP of security during the merger process. Haven't they been monitoring his email for awhile, watching for possible snags in their plans?
• I don't think you can use a scanner from a fax machine to scan a computer screen. Even if you could, the scrolling was way too fast for it to work as reliably as depicted.
• The phone rings and nobody does anything, so the kid goes to answer it. The bad guys completely freak out, and then afterwards, yell at the mom to do as she's told. But nobody told her anything! The bad guys should have given her instructions the second the phone started ringing, or simply said "nobody answer it". Bad guys is so stupid.
• Being a fan of "24", the appearance of Chloe was a little weird, especially since she worked for a technical guy but wasn't technical herself. Going into the church, asking Bobby to borrow his cell phone, and then just walking out with it was a classic Chloe move.
• SPOILER: Say you're the wife at the end of this movie. The nightmare is finally over. Your family is safe, the bad guys are all dead, and your husband is badly beaten and can barely stand up straight. So what do you do? Stand there and look at him from 50 feet away for a full 30 seconds, and then stroll slowly over to give him a hug? No, you'd run to him as fast as you can. Same for the kids, for that matter
• SPOILER: Why the hell did the bad guys bring the dog with them? Other than as a plot device, of course.

Despite these little nits (which I can find in about any movie), I enjoyed this one.

Technorati tags: Firewall Harrison Ford

I've seen everything... I've seen it all

OK, after saying that I don't generally post links, here's the second one in two days. It's a short video starring Patrick Stewart from Star Trek: TNG. It's a scene from a British show called Extras, and it's absolutely laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Technorati tags: Patrick Stewart

Fun with photoshopping

I don't just blog links all that often, but some of these photoshopped pictures are just amazing. Thanks to L for the link.

Actually, there are a few other pages on that site that are neat: Stars: then and now is good, as is the one with Celebrities' pictures as kids.

Kypreos is still a goon

While working out this morning, I was watching Sportsnet news. They had a hockey crew on there talking about the Cup finals, when former NHL goon and current Sportsnet hockey analyst Nick Kypreos started ranting about how the Edmonton players should warn the Hurricanes that their goalie is next and maybe after their goalie, someone like Erik Cole. (Cole is already out for the season, so perhaps he said or meant Eric Staal.) This kind of brain-dead comment just shows that while Kypreos may have changed from a player to a TV hockey analyst, he's still a goon at heart. The injury to Roloson was completely accidental; nobody ran their goalie, so Edmonton shouldn't be looking for revenge.

I'm not a fan of fighting in hockey (or lacrosse), but I will admit that there are some cases where it's… well, necessary is too strong; perhaps understandable, to some extent. If someone really runs your goalie, or hits your star player with a cheap shot, then I can see sending Tie Domi or your team's equivalent out to have a conversation with him. Note that "cheap shot" here is important — if someone hits your star player with a clean hit, no revenge is warranted, even if that hit ends his season. I also think that whatever revenge may be warranted should only apply to the current game - once that game is over, the opportunity has passed. This whole "so-and-so hit our star player last game, so the next time our teams play, we're going after him" is moronic and childish. For a prime example of how this is a bad idea, just reread the previous sentence as "Steve Moore hit Markus Naslund last game, so we're going after him". Todd Bertuzzi kept the promise that his team made, and ended Moore's career by breaking his neck. (Note for the record that Moore's hit on Naslund was clean.) For all Bertuzzi's apologizing and crying during press conferences and stuff, he meant it, and would do it again in a heartbeat, though perhaps not from behind next time. I was disappointed in Gary Bettman for lifting his suspension during the lockout, and embarrassed to have him on the ice for Team Canada at the Olympics. I think his suspension for such a blatant cheap shot should be as long as Moore's injury keeps him out - if Moore's career is over, then so should Bertuzzi's. He's a great player, but nobody should be allowed to get away with that kind of crap.

I'm thinking Nick Kypreos would disagree with that.

Technorati tags: hockey Nick Kypreos NHL Stanley Cup

I'm a real blogger now

I guess I'm really a part of the blogosphere now - not because I'm writing stuff on a blog, but because someone else's blog linked to an article in mine. Whimsley saw my response to his article on blogging. I had to smile at the sentence "Except he says it better" — Tom is a professional writer and published author, so this is quite the compliment to little ol' me.

Tom's blog is read by a number of other people (friends and family of his, and likely some people who have read his recently-published book), and if his book is a hit, that'll bump his readership numbers as well. Since there's a link to my blog on his, that might bump my numbers too. Woohoo!

Oh wait, I don't care about that. I forgot.

Technorati tags: blogging

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.