The iTunes Store and new Linkin Park

My first purchase from the iTunes store was Linkin Park's new album, Minutes to Midnight. First of all, more kudos to Apple — buying the album was brain-dead easy. Since my credit card number was already saved from my iPod purchase, I selected the album, clicked "Buy now", it confirmed my password, and began downloading the songs, which were automatically saved in the right place and added to my iTunes library. The next time I sync'ed, the album was on my iPod. Couldn't have been easier.

Anyway, the album is a little weird. Not Primus-weird, but just quite different from the first two Linkin Park albums. I'm not a big fan of rap or hip-hop music in general (though there are a few songs that I don't mind; Eminem's "Lose Yourself" is flat-out a great song), nor the whole "electronica" genre. However, I do like the way Linkin Park "fused" their hard rock music with both rap and electronic music on their first two albums. The weird thing about this album is that the band couldn't seem to decide what kind of music to make. There are a couple of Linkin Park-esque songs, but there are a couple of rock songs with no rap at all, a pop song or two ("Shadow of the Day" could be on any Matchbox Twenty album), a couple of much more mellow songs, and "Given Up" is arguably thrash metal, complete with "Cookie Monster vocals". There was a lot more guitar and less keyboards on this album, which I'm certainly OK with, but it is quite a departure for Linkin Park. I'll have to listen to it a few more times to be sure, but so far, I like the new sound.

The one thing I don't like about buying online music is this: no liner notes! I love reading the liner notes of any album I buy, mainly for the band information, guest musicians, and stuff like that. There is almost no rapping on this album, and there were a couple of songs where the vocals sounded so drastically different from other Linkin Park songs, that I wondered if they had gotten a new "rapper"/vocalist, but because of the lack of liner notes, I had no idea. According to the band's Wikipedia page, they simply went in a new direction, and the guy who does the rapping also sings on this album (for the first time), which is why I didn't recognize the singing voice. If there is one thing I'd change about the iTunes store, it would be the ability to get liner notes for downloaded albums. Lyrics I'm not so concerned about because (a) I don't often read them anymore, and (b) there are lyrics web sites all over the internet; I'm sure all the lyrics to this album are available online somewhere.

Even newer toys

Apple just introduced the new 160 GB iPod, and dropped the price for the 80 GB ones by $120. I think 80GB is just fine for my needs, so I just called Apple to tell them I wanted a refund of the price difference. After 40 minutes on hold (thank you speakerphone), a very friendly guy answered and told me he would refund the $120 on my credit card! Thanks to cahwyguy for giving me the idea to call, and kudos to Apple for top-notch customer service!

IvanAnywhere

And I thought I had a tough commute... A guy (Ivan) on the query processing team lives just outside of Halifax, Nova Scotia. He's been living out there for a few years now, and has been telecommuting. His ability to interact with the rest of us was greatly improved a couple of months ago when IvanAnywhere was introduced. IvanAnywhere is a "telepresence" robot, built by another guy in our department, Ian. One of Ian's hobbies for many years has been flying RC airplanes, and after Glenn (Ivan's boss) semi-jokingly asked him to build a flying RC blimp with a webcam that Ivan could control, Ian thought about it and decided it was possible, though with a robot, not a blimp. He took an RC truck and mounted a tablet PC and webcam on it as a proof of concept, and once that worked, he built a robot that Ivan can control. It has a webcam as well as a digital camera, microphone, speakers, proximity sensors so it won't run into walls and such, and works over our internal wireless network. Now when Ivan wants to talk to someone, he can just go on down to their office, and he can attend meetings and even give presentations. The robot has a monstrous battery, but can run all day without being recharged.

Ivan can't do everything himself, though. The robot can't turn and move forward at the same time, so to go around a corner, it had to go forward, then spin 90°, then go forward again. Update: Yes it can! For tight manoeuvring, Ivan has to point the webcam down so he can see what he's doing, so it's easier to stop first. He can't open doors, and manoeuvring around chairs and stuff in meeting rooms can be challenging. In one meeting, Ivan misjudged how far away a chair was, and the robot crashed into it (ironically, it was Ian's chair). Also, someone here has to plug the thing in at night to recharge the battery.

Regardless of how cool this technology is, it's almost no big deal anymore. We're all so used to seeing Ivan (well, the robot, who we generally refer to simply as Ivan) roaming around, we don't think much about it. One big difference is that our area is now pretty much mandatory on all building tours, so when customers or other partners visit, they are always brought through this area to see Ivan. Thankfully they haven't changed our dress code (i.e. given us one) because of this.

As someone who telecommutes on a regular basis, I can certainly see the appeal of this for Ivan. For me, talking to co-workers via email, IM, or telephone is almost always sufficient, but I'm only at home one day a week (though it's more if the weather is bad or I'm not feeling well or whatever). If I was at home every day and it was pretty much impossible to get into the office, I'm sure I'd miss the face-to-face interaction, and I find attending meetings over speakerphone (when everyone else is in the same room) difficult. Unfortunately, I think I live too close for the company to consider creating GraemeAnywhere.

Cool — just found out that we've been slashdotted!

Update: Ian informs me that IvanAnywhere can move forward and turn at the same time, so I updated the paragraph above. Also in the comments I say that it's running a 9.0.2 server, but it's actually running 10.0.1, and it stores status and monitoring information, which is used for diagnosing problems.

Can I see your receipt, please?

Here is a story about a guy who bought something at Circuit City, refused to show the receipt when leaving, and was physically detained by the security thug at the door and the store manager. He called the police, who showed up, and arrested him for not showing his driver's license. Obviously the cop was wrong for arresting him, and personally, I would have complied with the cop, but I applaud the guy for having the stones to assert his rights and not show his receipt. I don't like the store's policy of assuming all of their customers are thieves and forcing them to prove otherwise in order to leave. If the store wants to inspect your receipt before you leave, fine, but this cannot be a condition of purchase unless they tell you this up front. None of this even addresses the fact that showing your receipt doesn't prove you didn't steal anything unless they strip search you at the same time.

The only store I shop at that requires this is Costco, but it's possible that the agreement that you have to sign when you become a member includes the right to examine your receipt when you leave. I've never questioned this — when asked, I simply hand over the receipt and wait to be allowed out. I don't like this practice, but I simply don't have the aforementioned stones. If we had Circuit City in Canada, I'd boycott them, but we don't. We do have "The Source by Circuit City", but according to their web site, they're owned by a company called "InterTAN", and not by Circuit City. Perhaps they've just licensed the name, or Circuit City owns InterTAN, or something. Anyway, I won't be shopping there, nor do I shop at Best Buy, because of the numerous stories I've heard about how badly they treat their customers, including one I blogged about last March. I'm not generally one for boycotts, as they rarely accomplish the change they are supposedly trying to bring about, but even if the store never changes their policies, I feel a little better not shopping there.

Then again, in Canada, Future Shop and Best Buy are owned by the same company, and I have no problem shopping at Future Shop. I'm not sure if that makes me a hypocrite or just naïve.

Word to the Wise

When ripping your entire CD collection, sync up your iPod every now and again. Don't wait until you've ripped 100 CDs and then try to sync. Who knew that syncing 1000 songs would take over two hours?

I've ripped a bunch of my latest CD purchases (which were sitting on top of the CD cabinet), and a few other odds and ends (some Christmas CDs and such), and then I started on the alphabetized collection. The scary thing is that I'm only in the B's right now (Blue Rodeo), and I've got 115 CDs (1609 songs, 4.7 days, 8.67 GB) already ripped.

Toy review

I did eventually get my iPod the other day. Actually, within about 20 minutes of posting this entry, I noticed a car in my neighbour's driveway, and wandered over to get my package, which was no longer hypothetical. I ran home and opened the box like a kid on Christmas morning. Is niiiiiiice. But holy crap, is that thing ever small. My wife has a little 512MB MP3 player that she uses for early morning walks, and it holds lots of songs, but she still has to refill it occasionally because she's bored of the music on it. The iPod, which is not much bigger (and when it's strapped to your arm is probably insignificantly bigger), holds 160 times as much stuff.

I'd ripped a bunch of my CDs to MP3 because of the MP3 player in my car, but they used various ripping programs (some of which are better quality than others), and use different (probably fairly low) bitrates and such, so I decided to start from scratch and just rip everything with iTunes. I've only done maybe 10 albums so far, so there's not much on there yet. I found a cable that I can use to attach to my car stereo, and this morning on my way to work, I listened to a podcast of yesterday's Prime Time Sports, "the nation's most listened-to sports talk presentation". I generally like listening to this show (live) on my way home, but because it's over AM radio (ugh), the reception isn't always the clearest, and I can't listen to AM radio and charge my cell phone in the car at the same time because of all the interference from the charger. Now I'll be listening a day behind, but the sound is crystal clear, there's no interference, I can skip bits if they start talking about football or something else I'm not interested in, I don't miss anything if I stop to get gas or if I get home right in the middle of an interesting topic, it's awesome. This is not even mentioning the fact that now I'll be able to listen to programs from radio stations that I can't even get, or (gasp) actual podcasts that are not simply recordings of radio programs. And soon (well, probably several weeks from now once I get everything ripped), I'll have my entire music collection with me as well.

I haven't even had the thing a week and already I'm wondering how I lived without it.

The Thinking Man's Spam

While checking my spam filter today looking for false positives (which are becoming more and more rare), I happened across one with a very intriguing subject line. The message itself was a stock tip, but the subject line was "It's possible of course that only similar processes to that which arise in a human brain can give rise to conscious thoughts."

It's probably rare that a spam message makes you think philosophically.

Vick is sorry he did it. And I'm the King of Siam.

Michael Vick pled guilty to federal dogfighting charges the other day, and I think there were gambling charges as well. He also apologized to a bunch of people, and said that his actions were "immature". I heard a reporter comment that a cynic might think that his comments were scripted and didn't come from the heart. Call me a cynic.

First off, what he did was not immature. He put two dogs in a ring and watched them attempt to kill each other. If the loser of the fight survived, he'd kill it himself by drowning or strangling. This is not immature, it's simply evil.

I think the only thing that Vick is sorry for is that he got caught and that his NFL career is probably over. If you go to a dogfight once and get caught, you can say you made a mistake and that you now realize that it's a bad thing. But you don't finance a dogfighting ring for years and kill at least eight dogs yourself and suddenly decide when you get caught that it's a bad thing. The weird thing is that I think the apology could have been scripted better. The first people he apologized to were the NFL commissioner and the owners of the Atlanta Falcons, who basically hold Vick's NFL career in their hands. He didn't get to the fans and kids out there who look at Vick as a role model until later.

Having said all that, I'm a little surprised at the extent of the public outrage over this issue. While what Vick did is reprehensible, and I hope he gets serious jail time for it, there have been NFL players and other sports figures that have been convicted of rape and murder with less public outcry. My guess is that it will eventually blow over. Vick will serve 3 years in prison, the NFL will quietly end his indefinite suspension, and then some NFL GM will sign him, saying that he's all better now, he's done his time, paid his debt to society, and is ready to resume being a productive member of society. Celebrity justice at its finest.

Responsibility

This entry is about responsibility. When you have a job to do, it is critical that you make every effort to make sure that job is done to the best of your ability, even if that means making sacrifices. By way of example, let's just say, hypothetically, that I was expecting a package today, coming by FedEx from, oh let's say Shanghai via Anchorage and Indianapolis. Let's also say, hypothetically, that I was at work when this hypothetical package was delivered and the FedEx guy brought it over to my neighbour's house, and he signed for it. Now the hypothetical package is in his hands, so he has taken on the responsibility of getting it to me, since I was the intended recipient. If you have this reponsibility, do you go out for the evening? NO! You stay at home and make sure that the intended recipient gets his hypothetical package as soon as humanly possible.

As I said, you may have to make sacrifices. You can go grocery shopping tomorrow. There will be other soccer tournaments that your kids can play in. You had an anniversary last year, you'll have another one next year. I'm sure she'll get married again.

So, Mr. Harrison, get the hell home, and get me my frackin' iPod hypothetical package!

New Toys!

Somewhere out there, there's an iPod with my name on it. And I mean that literally. I ordered an 80 GB iPod from apple.ca yesterday (with free engraving), and got an email this morning saying that it had shipped. I feel like rushing home and checking the mailbox every, oh, fifteen seconds or so. Maybe I'll just bring my laptop and sit next to the mailbox. OK, I'll have to cool the jets just a bit — I just checked the FedEx site, and the package left the point of origin in Shanghai, China a few hours ago, so perhaps sitting by the mailbox today would not prove useful. Tomorrow maybe.

The one I bought is priced at $349 US at apple.com, but $399 Cdn at apple.ca. Since apple.com won't let you ship to a Canadian address, I had to buy from the Canadian site, which is a total scam — the Canadian dollar is so high right now that $349 US would only cost $378 Cdn, plus the sales tax would be less. I suppose I could have bought it through apple.com and had it shipped to my friend in California, and then paid him to ship it to me, but then you have extra customs stuff to worry about, and extra shipping costs, not to mention the hassle, so I guess I'll just eat the $20 or so and complain about it in my blog. There, that's done.

I am really looking forward to getting this new toy piece of equipment. My buddy Kurt has one, and he can't stop raving about how great it is. Once I've ripped all of my CDs (450+) and put them on the iPod, I can store the actual CDs in the basement, freeing up space in the CD/DVD rack for more DVDs, which are starting to get piled in various places since we're out of room. If I wanted, I could also remove the CD player from the stereo cabinet and replace it with the iPod dock I intend to buy. My car stereo already has an iPod input jack so I'm OK there, but I might need to buy one for the van. Kurt says that you can even rip DVDs to the iPod, so if I can hook it into the DVD player in the van, that would be even better.

Update: I saw 80 GB iPods at Costco yesterday for $369. Crap.
Friday update: It went through Anchorage yesterday, and is in Indianapolis today! Estimated delivery is Monday!

Fern 2007

Last week was our (seventh?) annual trip to Fern Resort, and I think it was our best ever. I think I gained about 50 pounds, or at least it feels like it. I haven't weighed myself yet, but I'm not optimistic. The diet starts... soon.

I won't give a day-by-day summary or anything, but here are some of the highlights and (one) lowlight:

Good Stuff

• The kids were awesome. They didn't sit still when eating most of the time, and Ryan had a little bit of a tantrum once but that was short-lived, and the rest of the time they were great.
• Four-way beach volleyball. I look forward to this all year
• Golf with Ryan on Fern's 5-hole course. Ryan hit pretty well, I shot two pars and missed an eagle putt by an inch
• Golf with Jeff, Mike, and Jerry at Hawk Ridge. I came in last, but not by much, and I played reasonably well
• The food was phenomenal, as always
• I was the co-winner of the men's singles tennis tournament! Well, this was only because I was one of only three people who showed up, and it started to rain just as we got there, so the tennis pro cancelled it and gave us each points for showing up
• I won at bingo twice - $5 once time and a t-shirt the other time
• Nicky got on stage during the magic show. The magician "pulled" lots of coins out of his ear, his nose, from under his arms, etc. Nicky told us later that the magician was just hiding the coins in his hand and then dropping them in the bucket, but he played along the whole time and was hilarious
• Rachel and Sarah won the "Fern's Got Talent" competition with their routine from High School Musical
• Ryan and I saw a blue heron while riding pedal carts through the woods

Bad Stuff

• Walking with Nicky across the volleyball court, I bent down to duck under the net, while he thought it would be fun to jump and brush his head on the net, and our heads collided. He rubbed his head and said "Ow" and that was it, while I fell to the ground ("you dropped like you'd been shot" said the guy walking behind me) and ended up with a black eye and a nasty abrasion right below my eyebrow

We started our second week of "vacation" on Saturday (though we're working this week), when we dropped Ryan off at Gail's dad's place and Nicky off at my parents' place and came home alone. I love my kids more than anything, and I will certainly miss them this week, but I'll also enjoy not making lunches, not dropping anyone off in the morning or picking anyone up in the evening, not worrying about whether they'll eat what we make for dinner, going to see movies without arranging for (or paying for) babysitters, etc. We went to the CNE yesterday, saw Harry Potter (again) on Saturday and Stardust yesterday, and we might try to see The Bourne Ultimatum on Wednesday. Thursday night we're going to Canada's Wonderland (where we won't even go near Kidsville), and Friday we're going for dinner and then to see We Will Rock You in Toronto. We pick the boys up on Saturday.

Don't flash flash flash those things at me

While driving into Waterdown tonight, I was driving 60 (in a 60 zone) in the right lane, next to a car doing about the same speed in the left lane. A tow truck came up behind me doing about 80 and flashed its lights at me — but not its headlights, the flashing lights on top of the truck. He had the lights off as he was driving, but as he approached me, he flashed them on for a second and then off again. I did nothing, partially because I was in the right lane and there was a car beside me, and partially because the right lane was ending in about a kilometre anyways. When the right lane ended I moved over, and the tow truck moved over behind me (there was time to continue in the right lane and pass me before the lane ended, but he didn't).

This is something that has bugged me about tow trucks for the longest time — why do they have flashing lights on them? Police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks I understand; they sometimes have to get somewhere in a hurry, so they put the lights on and people move out of their way. But tow trucks? Who moves out of the way for a tow truck with its lights on? I certainly don't. I can understand that if they are in the process of hooking up to a vehicle in a lane or at the side of a busy road, they might want to put the lights on to alert drivers that something is happening there, but while driving? What's the point? Get over yourself, Mr. Tow Truck Driver. You're performing a service that is valuable to society, but the flashing lights are a bit much.

Homers and homers

Alex Rodriguez is one homer away from 500 on his career. When he hits it, he'll be the youngest player ever to hit 500 home runs. Everyone is going nuts over Barry Bonds's pursuit of Hank Aaron's 755, but I think A-Rod's achievement is even more impressive, especially given the fact that Bonds was on the juice for the last few years, and A-Rod (probably) is not.

Bonds's story is kind of too bad — he would have been known as one of the all-time greatest players even if he hadn't juiced himself up but because he did, now he's a joke. He has over 500 career stolen bases, and is the only member of both the 400-400 club and the 500-500 club, but will people remember him as a base stealer? Not likely, because of the home run records, the juice, and the fact that he's only averaged 5 steals a year over the last 6 years. Sure he's got the single-season homer record and he'll soon have the career record, but everyone knows what he did to achieve those records, so even if there isn't an asterisk next to the numbers in the record books, there is in most people's minds.

Even Bonds, however, has acknowledged that assuming he does break Aaron's record, the most likely player to break his record would be Rodriguez and barring injuries, I think A-Rod is a lock to do just that. Bonds is probably done after this year, so let's say he ends up with 765, and say Rodriguez ends up with 515 by the end of the season. Rodriguez would then be behind by 250 at the age of 32. Five years of fifty homers each might be a stretch, but can A-Rod average over 35 a year for 7 years, or 25 a year for 10? Sure he can.

There's a report today that a group of local businesspeople in Nashville is close to a deal that would see the Predators stay in Nashville. They would buy the team for something like $190 million, which is something like $30 million less than what was offered by Jim Balsillie. I see this as proof that Gary Bettman does not want any more NHL teams in Canada. What owner who is actively trying to sell his team would take $30 million less than what he was offered? If he's considering bids that were almost the same amount, he might decide to go with the one that keeps the team in Nashville, but no owner is going to say no to an extra $30 million out of the goodness of his heart. The big question is what has Gary Bettman promised him in order to keep the Preds from coming north of the border?

Patent Pending

I've got an idea for the automotive industry. It's hardly groundbreaking, nor will it revolutionize anything, but I still think it's a good idea. A number of times in the past, I've been driving along in the centre lane and I see someone in the right lane with his left indicator on, so I slow down to let him in, and he doesn't go. I give him enough time to see that someone is letting him in, and then I say "screw it" and speed up again, only to notice that he was not signalling left at all, he had his four-way flashers on. I couldn't see the right-hand light because of a trailer, or other cars, or because the light was broken or burned out, or whatever. Other times, I'll be driving in the right lane and see a car driving on the shoulder, signalling left, so I move over to clear the right lane. Again, it turns out that he was not signalling but had his hazard lights on. Since the hazards and the turn indicators flash at the same rate, there's no way to tell the difference if you can only see one of the lights, or one is not functional. It occurred to me that there should be a way to distinguish between them, and the simplest way would be to double the flash rate of the hazard lights. This way, regardless of whether you saw one light or two, you could tell by the flash rate whether it was a turn signal or hazards.

Happy birthday to me!

I turned 38 yesterday (it's shortly after midnight), though I don't feel a day over, oh, say, 35. Normally our family celebrates birthdays by (among other things) going out for dinner, where the birthday boy/girl chooses the restaurant. I love Chinese food, so I chose a Chinese food buffet place in Burlington that Gail and I used to go to a lot, but haven't been in a while. However, Ryan had soccer last night, I have a golf tournament today, Ryan has a soccer practice on Wednesday, and I have a baseball game on Thursday, so we're not going for dinner until Friday. They gave me my presents today though. Gail gave me tickets to see We Will Rock You (warning: link plays music without asking and (even worse) doesn't seem to have a "shut the hell up" button - I hate that ) with a bunch of our friends at the end of August. As an unintended gift, she also took both boys to Ryan's soccer game, which gave me an uninterrupted hour to continue reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I was very impressed by the gifts from the kids — Gail said that they chose them themselves (i.e. it wasn't Gail buying the presents and saying that they were from the boys). I broke my sunglasses a week or two ago when sliding into second base (I've kind of fixed them, but one of the lenses falls out fairly easily now), so Nicholas got me a new pair. Ryan got me a music stand, so I can put my music books on it, rather than putting them down on the overly-cluttered desk in the office.

I also got one birthday "gift" that I did not need. My golf shorts (I really should buy a second pair) were in the laundry, and as I said, I have a golf tournament later today, so I put in a load of laundry with the intent of moving them from the washer to the dryer just as I was going to bed. When I checked around 11:15, I found that the washer was still full of dirty water, and nothing was happening — there was no power getting to the washer. I checked the circuit breaker, which was fine, so I grabbed an extension cord and tried that. The washer groaned for a second and then stopped again. I had to empty all of the clothes from the washer into the laundry sink, then scoop out over 40 litres of water from the washer before I could find the problem, which was a pair of Ryan's pyjamas wrapped around the agitator. I fought with that for a while before dislodging them. By this point it was almost midnight, and now I had to put the clothes back in the washer, restart it, and wait for it to finish so that I could put everything in the dryer so that I had golf shorts to wear tomorrow. I'm too tired to continue reading (not that I'm not enjoying the book), so I says to myself, "Self", I says, "what activity can you do to pass the time when you're tired and don't feel like thinking?" You guessed it — blogging!

Well, the washer is done now, so I'm off to move the clothes into the dryer and hit the hay. Now that I'm old, I really should get to bed earlier.

But the game tokens are really expensive

I enjoy reading Ken Levine's blog - he's a TV writer that used to write for such shows as Cheers and M*A*S*H. This morning's entry is about his recent trip to Vegas, and if you've ever been to Vegas, you gotta read this. The last line sums it up perfectly: "Las Vegas truly is Chuck E. Cheese for adults."

Never Break the Chain

I pulled out Fleetwood Mac's classic record album Rumours this morning, and listened to (most of) it on the way to work. I haven't listened to it in years, and I think I'd forgotten how good it is — it's considered a classic for a reason. Part of it is obviously the presence of the big hits Dreams, Don't Stop, Go Your Own Way, and You Make Loving Fun, but the other songs are all great as well (particularly Never Going Back Again and The Chain), with (for me) two glaring exceptions: the boring Songbird and the boring Oh Daddy, both of which are Christine McVie songs. Lindsay Buckingham and Steve Nicks, I always thought, were the primary singers and songwriters of Fleetwood Mac (at least during their heyday in the late 70's and into the 80's), and Christine McVie was "the other one", who wrote and sang some songs as well, but rarely the good ones. Her songs were always closer to "adult contemporary" and further away from the rockier stuff, and I've always found her voice kind of boring. Stevie Nicks' voice, on the other hand, is very unique, and can be either powerful or soft depending on the song. McVie wrote the hits like You Make Loving Fun, Don't Stop (though Lindsay Buckingham sings mosts of it), Say You Love Me, Over My Head, Hold Me, Little Lies, and Everywhere — with the exception of Don't Stop, all of them are keyboard-heavy love songs. They're not all bad songs (I actually like Don't Stop and Hold Me, and I don't mind Little Lies), just not so much my cup of tea. Some of her lyrics are a little more inane than the rest of the band, like from You Make Loving Fun: "Sweet wonderful you, you make me happy with the things you do", or from Say You Love Me: "Woo me until the sun comes up and you say that you love me". How often do people nowadays use the term "woo me"?

"Dreams" is, for me, a song that just screams "radio in the seventies". I was eight when it was released in 1977, and was just starting to pay attention to the music my parents listened to on the radio. I remember listening to the lyrics and even analyzing them in my little eight-year-old way:

Thunder only happens when it's raining   (obviously)
players only love you when they're playing   (why? That doesn't seem fair)

Strangely, even though I always think of the 70's when I hear that song, I think it has also aged well, in that it doesn't sound like a 70's song. There are some songs that you just don't hear on the radio after a few years because their sound is so typical of a certain year or "era" that they sound old. You will still hear "Dreams" on the radio, but rarely "Shake Your Booty" by KC and the Sunshine Band. Melissa Etheridge's self-titled debut and "Skyscraper" by David Lee Roth were both released in 1988, but Roth's album gets almost no airplay these days on rock radio stations, while you'll still hear Melissa Etheridge now and again. Why? Because Roth's album sounds like a typical late-80's pop-rock album, while Etheridge's music is a little more timeless. Same with Fleetwood Mac.

Pitching, hitting, and gambling

During the baseball offseason, I wrote that I didn't understand why the Jays had signed Frank Thomas and Matt Stairs and had not done anything about their pitching staff. Obviously, I said, hitting wasn't the problem last year, pitching was, so going out and improving the hitting while leaving the pitching alone didn't make sense. So now, we're halfway through the season, and what do we have?

Hitting:

• One hitter over .300, only two others over .280
• Five people with higher slugging percentages than Thomas and Wells
• Eight people with higher on-base percentages than Wells
• The Jays are 21st out of 30 in AVG and OBP, though 9th in SLG, and 29th in SB

Pitching:

• Four pitchers with ERAs under 3.00, and eleven under 5.00
• The Jays are 15th of 30 in team ERA, tied for 2nd in complete games, and right around 15th in a number of other pitching categories.
• This is without Ryan and Chacin, and Halladay and Barnett have been out for part of the year as well.

Bottom line? The pitching ain't the problem anymore. It's not outstanding, but the rookies and young guys have stepped up and done a fine job. The hitters have not. Vernon Wells and Frank Thomas are being paid way too much money to have the stats that they do.

In another blog entry from a while ago, I talked about Pete Rose and how the fact that he never bet against his own team is irrelevant, gambling on sports while you are involved in them is bad in general. I said that if he gets into debt or some kind of trouble with the mob, they could ask him to throw (or at least influence) games for them as part of the debt repayment. Lo and behold, yesterday it was announced that an NBA referee has been suspended and will likely be arrested for getting in gambling trouble with the mob, and being forced to negatively affect the outcomes of games that he was working. This is just the nightmare situation that all of the major professional sports leagues have been dreading (though probably expecting) for years.

Camping weekend 2007

This past weekend was our annual camping trip to Balsam Lake. While last year's trip was a lot of fun, this year wasn't so much. First off, our numbers were down from 9 campsites and 33 people last year to 6 campsites and 22 people. Unavailable were three families that have been camping with us for many years, so they were missed. Problem number one. Friday night was fine; we arrived in the late afternoon and got set up, then had dinner. Not long after we got there, one of the other kids, Dominik, fell in the forest and cut his leg on a branch. It turned out that the branch had actually punctured his leg, and there was a large hole. His mom Jenny took him to the hospital in nearby Lindsay. After a few hours in the ER, she returned with Dominik, who was very proud of his six stitches. Problem number two.

The rest of the night was less eventful. We sat around the campfire, got the kids to bed, then sat around the campfire some more, drank some frosty beverages, and ate chips and marshmallows. It got pretty cold that night, so Gail and I shivered in our sleeping bags for a while before getting to sleep. We had made sure that we had enough warm things (blankets and warm PJs and stuff) for the kids, so they were fine, but we were freezing. Problem number three.

The next morning was great. Gail got up with the boys, as I got a bit of a lie-in. We had breakfast and the boys rode their bikes for a while, though Dominik and his brother Anton crashed into each other on their bikes, and though Dominik was fine, Anton scraped his arm and leg up pretty good. No ER visit required for that one, but I'd call that problem number four.

Later in the morning, we got together with the other families and had a communal brunch. One of our camping traditions is that we get everyone together one morning and make egg McMuffins. I was on egg duty while Jeff did ham slices, Liisa did cheese, Faisal toasted the English muffins, and Steve sort of supervised and helped out as necessary. Every year the assembly line is different, and it's a lot of fun. After the cooking and eating was done, the adults who weren't cooking helped clean up... and that's when the rain began. Problem number five.

Tarps were quickly whipped out, and Steve and Richard climbed trees and worked tirelessly in the rain to keep Lynda's site dry (which was where our communal campfire was). The rest of the morning and the whole afternoon were spent hiding from the rain. I sat in our dining tent and taught Ryan and Dominik how to play cribbage, others played euchre by the campfire, Nicholas and Jake watched DVDs in Jeff and Kerri's camper, some people read books, and others napped. By late afternoon, we were all quite tired of the rain. Gail had found a couple of small leaks in our tent, so she rearranged the beds so that none of them got wet. We had figured by that time that our beach towels were not likely to get used for anything else, so we started using them to mop up the tent. Problem number... what am I at now? Five? Six?

Paul and Jenny's tent was leaking worse than ours and given that, plus problems number two and four (their kids both getting hurt), they decided to cut their losses, and packed up in the rain and headed home. At dinnertime, we all decided that we just wanted to be dry for a while, so as we had done one previous year, we all drove into town and went to a restaurant for dinner. For an hour or so, we didn't care that it was still raining, and when we got back from dinner, it had stopped. Gail grabbed our damp sleeping bags and ran for the comfort station, where there were washers and (more importantly) dryers. A couple of hours and a few dollars later, our sleeping bags were warm and dry again. Campfire was fun that night, as we roasted marshmallows and enjoyed the lack of rain... until about 10:00, when the thunderstorm hit. Problem number... oh, I don't know. Look it up.

The rain was pretty hard, and the thunder was loud. I love thunderstorms, so once I realized that our tent was no longer leaking (or at least was leaking in places we already had covered), I actually enjoyed it, and slept better that night than the previous one.

Sunday morning, the rain had stopped, but everything was still wet. We had no choice, though, but to pack all the wet stuff up into the van. Judicious use of towels, tablecloths, and blankets kept most of the dirt and mud contained, and we were on the road by 11:30 or so. It was nice and sunny at home, so we put the tents up again in the backyard to dry, and then all of us had the nicest, warmest, and most welcome showers / baths we'd had in recent memory.

Even more Law & Order spinoffs

See on MSNBC today:

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On-the-job training shouldn't last four years

The Leafs have announced that they are looking at hiring a "mentor" for GM John Ferguson Jr. The position would be "senior hockey administrator", and would only last a few years. Ferguson would still be the GM and would still make the decisions. Richard Peddie says that "John is still a very young man in a tough hockey market... and it occurred to us that John could use some help." He also says "John is still learning the job, and even though we have made some progress, we haven't made enough..."

This is ridiculous. How is Ferguson "still learning the job" after four years? They call him a "young man", and considering he's only 40, that's true. But Bryan Colangelo is only 42, and he's president and GM of the Raptors, with no mentor. He has MLSE's full support and full authority over the team. And what progress have the Leafs made during JFJ's reign? They made the playoffs in his first year as GM, then there was the lockout, then they haven't made the playoffs in the last two seasons. If after four years, they think he still needs help and is still learning the job, then why is he still in the job? Why don't they just fire his ass, and hire someone competent? Or, if they're really determined to have him as the GM at some point, then hire a real GM (who does know the job), and make Ferguson his assistant GM for a few years, or as long as it takes for him to learn how to run a team.

Unphotographable

In the spirit of melle.ca, this is a picture that I did not take of the most beautiful double rainbow I've ever seen. On our way to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (in IMAX 3D! Way cool!) last night, we saw it over Mississauga. It started out as just the base of a rainbow, and before long we could see the entire arc of one, and about half of the second. The full one was the most vibrant rainbow I've ever seen, literally lighting up the sky.

Double rainbows are rare enough, but the brightness and beauty of this one had me wishing I had a camera on my cell phone. There were a number of cars pulled over to the side of the road, and the occupants of every car I passed were all staring off to the east. Nature is amazing.

Northern Ontario Adventure, Part Two

Day Four: North of Superior
It's about a five hour drive from the Sault to Manitouwadge, but we were in no big hurry. We packed up in the morning and headed out. Hwy 17 north of the Sault goes through Lake Superior Provincial Park, which is absolutely beautiful. There were lots of hiking trails and beaches, and one place where you could walk out onto a ledge under a cliff where several-hundred-year-old native-drawn pictographs are visible. (Aside: on the ledge, there is a plaque dedicated to a Canadian author and artist named Selwyn Dewdney, who studied and wrote about native pictographs for many years. One of his sons, Kee Dewdney is a professor at Western, where I did my Masters.)

On the drive, John was leading the way, and for whatever reason, didn't want to stop anywhere along the way, so we passed by a number of photo opportunities on the way up. Gail was a little disappointed, but we figured we were coming back the same way anyway, so we'd get the pictures then. Unfortunately, when we did come back, it was very foggy, so some of the pictures we missed on the way up were impossible on the way down. We stopped at Wawa for the obligatory picture with the big goose, and also to grab lunch and fill up. A couple of hours later, we were in Manitouwadge, enjoying a beer on the back patio in the sweltering heat. Since it was Canada Day, we wandered down to the beach, where the town was having a BBQ, and there was some entertainment for the kids. On our walk back to Rolly's place, he pointed out a barely-visible footprint in some dust, casually mentioning that it was from a bear. Bears are a big problem in this area. Rolly has seen some bear footprints in his back yard, and the town dump is no longer open to the public because of the number of bears that hang around there. If you have a load of stuff you want to take there, you have to contact the town who will arrange an escort for you, and the basic rule is "get in, dump your stuff, and get the hell out". Anyway, a little while later, the black flies and no-see-ums came out, and we went inside.

One thing I found interesting about being that far north was that it stays lighter later. Around here during the summer, sunset is about 9:00, but up there, sunset didn't happen until almost 10:00. Rolly was saying that it never really gets fully dark during the summer; even in the middle of the night, there's still a bit of a glow on the horizon. In the winter, it's the other way around — sunrise doesn't happen until 8:30, sunset is shortly after 5:00, and the middle of the night is pitch black.

Something I was hoping for on this trip was a glimpse of the Northern Lights, but they are more common during the winter, and we never managed to see any. Rolly wants us to come up during the winter sometime, so maybe then.

Day Five: Manitouwadge
Monday was our first full day in Manitouwadge. In the morning, we went over to the police station. When you visit a police officer, it's almost required that he give you a tour of the police station and put you in a jail cell. He put the boys in a cell and closed the door, and they had lots of fun trying to get out. After a while, he simply pulled the door open again, and we all had a good laugh at the fact that he never actually locked it, it was just heavy.

Rolly has a little sailboat that he keeps behind the police station, so after our tour he took the boys (and me) out for some spins around the lake. I've never been on a sailboat (other than a big-ass catamaran in Jamaica), so I never think about sailboats as being able to turn suddenly, but this one was small enough that one yank on the rudder and we'd turn 90° on a dime. It was very cool, and the boys loved it as well.

The rest of the day was spent kicking the soccer ball around, riding bikes (I took Nicky's training wheels off and did the whole running-alongside-the-bike thing for a little while until he got tired of it), and watching the boys splash around in the little pool that Rolly had filled up for them. Once again (and I think this is pretty standard up north), the outside part of the day ended when the bugs came out.

Day Six: Moving Day
Rolly lives with his girlfriend Candyce, who grew up in Manitouwadge. Her mother was moving from a house in town to an apartment on Tuesday, and John, Jackie, and I offered to help with the move while Gail hung out with the boys. The move took part of the morning and an hour or so in the afternoon, since there wasn't all that much stuff. It was overcast all morning, but luckily the rain held off until after we were done. Once the rain started, we hung out in the house playing cards, and the boys drew pictures. They also decided (entirely on their own) to write thank-you cards to Rolly and Candyce for inviting us to stay, and Nicky even wrote one to Gail and I for bringing him to Manitouwadge. We also borrowed Rolly's computer and internet connection (high speed, thank goodness, I don't know if I could handle a modem connection again) to book a trip on the Agawa Canyon Tour Train for Thursday, a trip we were really looking forward to, but as fate would have it, we would not be making.

Day Seven: Some Endings Come Too Soon
Wednesday we left Manitouwadge for Sault Ste. Marie, where we were going to camp for two nights. Shortly before we left in the morning, Gail realized that we had never retrieved the email that the Agawa canyon people had sent us with our confirmation number, so she asked me to go and get it. I logged onto Gail's webmail account to get the number, and saw an email from Gail's aunt Jeanne with the subject line "Sad news". Gail's aunt Barbie had passed away on Sunday, and was found by her daughter on Monday. At the young age of only 57, she had suffered a heart attack. The funeral was going to be in London (Ontario) on Friday. I broke the news to Gail, and we decided to cancel the train trip and simply head home. We figured we should be able to make it to (or near) Sudbury that day, and then it was about five hours home from there on the Thursday, giving us lots of time to get to London on Friday.

The drive to the Sault was broken up by a couple of photo-stops (though we did have to skip a few, as I mentioned before, because of the fogginess). We stopped at Old Woman's Bay, and all four of us had a great time climbing around on the huge rocks on the beach. We also stopped to see the aforementioned pictographs, which was also very cool. We decided at that point that Lake Superior Provincial Park would be a great place to go camping for a week. We had a picnic lunch at the pictograph place before continuing on to Sault Ste. Marie. John and Jackie set up their trailer and we grabbed the rest of our stuff from them, and continued on our way. The drive to Sudbury was uneventful, other than the torrential rain that we hit just outside of Sudbury. We stopped at a hotel just off the highway around 9:00, went for a quick swim to relax (very nice after sitting in the van for most of the past 12 hours), and went to bed.

Thursday we drove home from Sudbury, arriving home shortly after lunch. Gail immediately packed yet another bag, and was picked up by her mother and aunt on their way to London. I arranged for a sitter for the boys for Friday, and drove out to London on Friday for the funeral.

Afterword
This was one of my favourite family vacations ever, though it obviously could have used a different ending. I love visiting new places, and the scenery through Lake Superior Provincial Park was some of the most beautiful I've ever seen, rivalling the Blue Mountains in Jamaica and the mountain vistas of Whistler and Jasper. (It's hard to call the rocky desert landscape of the Grand Canyon "beautiful", though it was certainly awe-inspiring.)

Gail turns the big four-oh next year, and decided a few years ago that she wanted to go to Paris for her 40th, so that's in the plans for next summer. I turn forty the year after that, and I'm still trying to decide where I want to go then. After paying for Paris, I'm not sure we'll be able to afford Hawaii or Australia the next year (two places I really want to go), and up until a couple of weeks ago, the thought of spending two weeks camping in Northern Ontario would not have appealed to me in the least, but after last week, maybe....

Northern Ontario Adventure, Part One

Note: this entry was written on Thursday evening, but I never got around to posting it until today, so in the article, "today" means Thursday (July 5) and "tomorrow" means Friday (July 6). I haven't even written the second part of it yet.

We got home early this afternoon from a 2484 km trip around Ontario. The sheer size of this province astounds me — from our place to Manitouwadge was almost 1300 km and took us a day and a half, and Manitouwadge is still a full day's drive from the Manitoba border, and the far north of Ontario is unreachable by roads. The trip was a lot of fun, and we saw some amazing things, but unfortunately we had to cut the trip short. On Wednesday morning, we found out that Gail's aunt Barbie had passed away on Sunday. We were planning on leaving that morning anyway, but we missed out on an extra day in the Sault, plus a day in Sudbury as well. The funeral is tomorrow in London.

I'm going to break the trip in half, just so that I don't have one huge blog entry; rather, two semi-huge blog entries. A google map of the whole trip is here.

Day One: Heading Out
Gail had the day off, and I left work around 2:00. We picked the boys up after their last day of school, and headed out. We stopped near Canada's Wonderland, about an hour away, and went to Chuck E. Cheese's for dinner. This is a family tradition — we go there for dinner on (or near) the first and last days of school. We continued on to Gail's dad's place in Sundridge, where we stayed the night.

Day Two: The Road to the Sault
Friday morning, we had a quick breakfast and headed out on the road. Gail's dad John, his wife Jackie (Gail's stepmother, though because they got married when Gail was in university, she never uses that term, she's just "Jackie"), and their Jack Russell terrier Patches in their truck pulling their camper trailer, and the four of us following in our van. We went through North Bay and Sudbury, then stopped at a rest stop at Spanish River for lunch. Shortly after Spanish River, the traffic stopped dead. The next six kilometres took about an hour, until we got to an intersection that was being blocked by some native protestors holding signs saying things like "Honour our treaties". There were several OPP officers there as well, directing traffic. I don't get it. Do these protestors honestly think that they're going to get what they want, or even gain any public support by inconveniencing hundreds of people who aren't involved in their dispute?

Anyway, once we got through that, it was clear sailing through Sault Ste. Marie to Pancake Bay, where we were going to camp for the next two nights. Shortly before getting there, though, the traffic stopped again. We thought it might be another protest, but it turned out that there was a serious car accident ahead. After about 20 minutes, they cleared enough space so that we could get through, and the campsite was only about 2 km after that. The boys played soccer and rode their bikes while we got the camper set up, then a quick dinner and campfire, and it was off to bed.

Day Three: Pancake Bay
On Saturday, we went on a two hour hike on a beautiful trail around the campsite. There were a number of completely different ecosystems on this trail, mainly forests, but some parts were more rocky, and then it opened up into a "fen", which is apparently the same as a bog except that fresh water flows through it, so you get different kinds of plant and animal life. The boys walked the whole way (they're too heavy to carry, and I can only piggyback them for short distances now), and took turns walking Patches, which they seemed very excited about. We never managed to get to the beach, though it looked pretty nice. After dinner, John crafted a perfect marshmallow-toasting campfire, and we were all asleep by 10:30.

To be continued....

Jays, potholes, and a long journey ahead

The first weekend of summer! And how do I celebrate it? By getting a sunburn, of course. I went with my dad to the Jays game on Saturday, and we sat down the third base line. The roof was open, since it was a glorious warm (but not hot) sunny day, and I forgot to put sunscreen on. Since I wore shorts, the tops of my legs got burnt, though the rest of me was fine. It was a great game — the Jays won 11-6, and Matt Stairs and Frank Thomas each had four hits including a home run. One of Thomas' hits should have been a long single, but he tried to stretch it into a double and was thrown out at second by about five steps. The second baseman actually had to wait for Thomas to get there before tagging him.

After the game, we met up with my mother and sister and had dinner at a nice restaurant on King St. called N'Awlins, where I had alligator as an appetizer, followed by some amazing blackened catfish.

Sunday, we went to Rockwood Conservation Area east of Guelph for the Sybase company picnic, which was a lot of fun. There was a beach, paddleboats and canoes for rent, and of course a BBQ lunch was served, but we spent most of our time there hiking through the woods with the help of one of my friends on the doc team. She has been to the park many times before, and acted as our guide and photographer (since we both surprisingly forgot our camera). We visited the ruins of an old factory and some pretty cool caves and potholes carved out of the rock. In this context, a pothole, for those of you as geologically-challeged as myself, is basically a cylindrical vertical cave, as if someone had taken a 10-foot-wide drill and drilled straight down, anywhere from two to twenty feet. We were amazed at how smooth the edges of these potholes were, and almost perfectly round. All in all, we probably hiked for about 5 miles, so the kids were good and tired when it came to bedtime last night. Gail and I were pretty tuckered out as well — Gail fell asleep on the couch around 10:00, and I woke her up around 11:00 when I went to bed. She said she'd be up in a minute, but fell asleep again, and I don't think she actually made her way upstairs until around 3:30.

This weekend, we're going up north to visit Gail's dad's wife's son Rolly (Gail's stepbrother, I guess, though she never really uses that term for him). Rolly is a police officer up in Manitouwadge, which is a little town about half-way between Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie. We're driving up to Gail's dad's place on Thursday night (about 3 1/2 hours), then from there to the Sault on Friday (about 6-7 hours), and then up to Manitouwadge on Saturday (another 3-4 hours). According to Google Maps, it's about a 1200 kilometre trip from home each way. Rolly is apparently lining up all kinds of things for us to do, including sailing and probably some canoeing (I know Rolly loves canoeing and has even built his own canoes in the past), and I'm sure there will be lots of hiking as well. I'm really looking forward to this trip — I've never been this far north in Ontario.

We'll be up there for a week, returning home around the 8th of July, so blogging will likely be light (i.e. nonexistent) during that time. I'm sure, faithful readers, that you can find something productive to do during my absence.

Who would have thought... it figures

Alanis Morissette has a song called "Ironic", in which she sings about a bunch of supposed examples of irony: "rain on your wedding day", "a black fly in your Chardonnay", "a death row pardon two minutes too late", "ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife", the story of a man afraid to fly who finally gets on a plane that ends up crashing, etc. The funny thing is that none of the things she sings about are actually examples of irony. Rain on your wedding day isn't ironic, it's just a drag. Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife might be ironic if you're a knife salesman, but otherwise it's not. The bit about the plane crash might be ironic if the man is travelling to a visit a doctor or therapist who is going to help him get over his phobia.

So we have a song entitled "Ironic", which contains no examples of irony. That's pretty ironic. Don't you think?

Proud papa moment

Ryan was given a special award yesterday at school. From last fall until late January, he was part of a four-student team working on a project called Exploravision. It's an international science competition, where students have to research current technology and then use their imaginations to design some kind of future technology, outlining things like what it will do, why it's better than the current technology, what other sorts of technology need to be invented / expanded in order for this to work, that kind of thing. A parent of one of Ryan's classmates wanted to enter both of his daughters in the contest, and decided to be the team's coach. He recruited a family friend to be on the team, and then asked his daughter's teacher (who's also Ryan's teacher) for a suggestion on a fourth person, and she recommended Ryan. The team met after school and on weekends, and the idea they came up with was a system to more efficiently apply sunscreen using nanotechnology. They researched the history of sunscreen, skin cancer, the light spectrum, nanotechnology, and other related topics on the web, and even visited McMaster University to visit with some nanotechnology researchers. They got to visit a clean room and laboratory, and use one of the most powerful electron microscopes in the world. It was an amazing experience for all the kids — the whole project, not just the visit to Mac.

Ryan and the team had a lot of fun with this project, and out of thousands of entries from across the US and Canada, their team placed in the top 10% and was given an honourable mention. They each got a framed certificate and a prize (a pair of compact binoculars) from Toshiba, who sponsors the event. Ryan was very excited about the award (we wanted it to be a surprise, so didn't tell him about it, though I'm sure he was wondering why we were at an assembly at his school), and Gail and I are beyond proud (I'm even misting up a little writing this entry, but don't tell anyone). Many thanks to the team's coach Greg Hodgins and Ryan's teacher Barb MacLeod for all their hard work.

Vindication

Steve Simmons from the Toronto Sun wrote an article today on the same thing I wrote about last week — how the Leafs ownership is all about profit, and not about winning the Stanley Cup. Sometimes it sucks to be right.

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all the father's out there! I, for one, had a great Father's Day; actually, it was a great Father's Day weekend. On Saturday, I took Nicky to his soccer game in the morning, while Gail did some basement cleanup with Ryan. After soccer, we did some more cleanup while the boys entertained themselves with the Wii for a while and playing outside for a while. After lunch, Gail and I decided to "divide and conquer", so Nicky and I went to do something fun and Gail and Ryan went to do something fun. Nicky's choice was bowling, so we went to a 5-pin place in Waterdown and played a couple of games. After that, we met Ryan and Gail at a bookstore in Burlington, and swapped kids. Ryan decided that he wanted to go bowling as well, but he wanted 10-pin, so we went to a 10-pin place in Burlington. When using the ramp, Ryan did pretty well — at one point, he hit two strikes in a row and then knocked 9 out of 10 down on the next shot. My second game was easily the best game of my life — I bowled a 183, and left a grand total of 2 pins standing the whole game. I shot 5 spares in a row, then a strike, then 9, then two more spares, then a strike, and I got 9 on the last two throws. Could be that Wii bowling has improved my real bowling game! Guess I should be playing Wii baseball more often, considering how I'm hitting in my baseball league this year...

Anyway, on Sunday, we went to see Shrek the Third, which I enjoyed, as did the boys. After, we went for dinner to a place in Burlington called Tony Roma's, where I enjoyed some very fine back ribs. Tomorrow I'm home with Nicky, since his babysitter is on vacation, then I have baseball tomorrow night, Ryan is getting a special award at an assembly Tuesday afternoon, my parents are coming on Wednesday for Grandparent's Day in Nicky's kindergarten class, then they're staying to babysit Nicky on Thursday, and I'm going to a Jays game with my dad next Saturday. Oh, and Ryan has soccer on Monday and Wednesday nights. And Gail's going to the grade 8 graduation on Thursday night to present an award to some graduating students (she's chair of the school council). And the cable guy is coming on Thursday to fix our cable which has been flaky for a couple of days. And I have another baseball game on Wednesday which I can't make it to, and I'll have to cancel my guitar lesson on Thursday night too. All in all, not far from a fairly normal week at our house.

Apparently, I Rock

Someone at work brought in an XBox the other day, and we played Guitar Hero II at lunch time. I had heard a lot about this game, but had never played it. It's kind of like Dance Dance Revolution, except that instead of stepping on a particular part of the floor pad, you hit buttons on a "guitar". Holy crap, was that a lot of fun. I did three songs: You Really Got Me (Van Halen's version), Message in a Bottle by the Police, and finished off with a tougher one, Iron Maiden's The Trooper. After every song, it came up and said "You Rock!", though I'm not sure if that's a rating of my performance, or just what it says when you're done. A couple of people were watching, and they said I did really well — I hit over 90% of the notes on all three songs, got 100% in numerous passages (though I only did about 75% during the solo in The Trooper), hit 160 notes in a row in Message, and ended up with over 100,000 points in The Trooper, which, apparently, is very good.

I don't have an XBox, and I doubt I'll buy one just for this, but if this game comes out for the Wii, I'm there.

The Big Decision

I am at a crossroads, considering making one of the most critical decisions of my life. Do I stay the course, continuing something I've done for many years and that I'm comfortable with, or have I had enough of the status quo? Am I ready to make the life-altering decision that will have lifelong consequences for me and my children?

I'm talking, of course, about my allegiance with the Toronto Maple Leafs and my position of "lifelong fan". I've been a Leafs fan as long as I can remember, having been brought up in Toronto. I remember watching Leaf games as a kid with my dad and saying dumb things like "Wow, if that guy was a Maple Leaf, we would have scored!" when the opposing goalie passed the puck to one of his defensemen. I weathered the storm in the 70's when the team sucked, though I don't remember most of it. I was there in the 80's when the team sucked; I even coloured my hair blue during the playoffs one year (when all my friends said they were going to do it too and then chickened out — not that I'm still bitter about that). I was there in the 90's and 2000's when the team didn't suck as bad most of the time, and I've been there the last two years when the team sucked. But over the last couple of years, as I pay more and more attention to the team (thanks to listening to sports radio during my commute every day), I grow more and more frustrated with the way the team is run:

• John Ferguson has done a lousy job of building the team into a winner, and they just resigned him to a long-term contract.
• Nik Antropov was supposed to be a top prospect, but has been a total bust. After six full seasons and part of another, he's certainly had enough time to make the most of his supposed potential, but simply hasn't, and yet they just resigned him as well.
• They signed Bryan McCabe to an insanely large contract, with a no-trade clause — he's a good offensive defenseman, but is not that great defensively, and certainly doesn't deserve to be paid as if he is among the upper echelon of defenseman.
• For years, the Leafs would sign past-their-prime players and pay them as if they were still in their prime. (One notable exception is Eric Lindros, who was definitely past his prime, but they didn't pay him a ton.) The only reason they don't still do this is the salary cap. Even if they didn't pay them big bucks, they'd trade away prospects and draft picks to get them. They are still doing this (see Yanic Perreault last year).

MLSE is making money hand over fist on the Leafs, and it has been projected in the media a number of times that if the Leafs ever did win the Stanley Cup, public interest in the team might actually drop in subsequent years (I've heard the same thing about the Chicago Cubs, though it didn't seem to happen when the Boston Red Sox finally won the World Series). So MLSE has no real incentive to put in the effort to win the Cup, and it's been painfully obvious that they have no particular interest in doing so. Hence the hiring of a inexperienced (i.e. cheap) GM that they can control. This would explain the signing of popular players to rich contracts, rather than trying to sign players that might actually help the team win. Tie Domi and the aforementioned McCabe come immediately to mind. (Though the Antropov signing puzzles me, since he's neither useful nor popular.)

They just resigned the very popular Mats Sundin to a one-year deal, which I don't have a huge problem with. I wouldn't have been too disappointed, however, if they had decided not to resign him, as long as they used that money to sign young players with some upside, rather than doing something stupid like signing Alexei Yashin. I've heard rumours on the radio that the Leafs are interested in signing Yashin, and I cannot imagine a dumber move for the Leafs than signing him, unless they get him for some bargain-basement price and have the ability to trade him or send him to the minors at any time.

Anyway, back to MLSE, which also owns the Toronto Raptors. However, the way they handle that team is vastly different than the way they handle the Leafs. MLSE paid big bucks to hire a stud GM for the Raptors, and make that team into a winner. This makes sense — the Raptors have been around for less than 15 years and to a large extent, they're still trying to create a long-term fan base. If the Raps suck for years and years, it's logical to think that interest will decrease, so they want to make that team into a winner to keep the fans interested. MLSE is a business, attempting to make a profit, nothing more. If winning a Stanley Cup will significantly increase that profit, then that's what they'll try to do, but it won't. But Toronto fans have shown for 40 years that they will pay to watch the Leafs and buy jerseys and stuff even if the team doesn't win, so why bother paying for a stud GM or putting in any significant work to help the team win when there's no significant financial advantage to doing so?

I lived in Ottawa in 1993 when Ottawa was awarded an expansion franchise, and I've had a soft spot for the Senators ever since. But Senators coverage on the local TV and radio stations is minimal unless they're playing the Leafs (or in the Cup finals), so I'd have to work pretty hard at being a die-hard Sens fan. Now, along comes Jim Balsillie, attempting to be my saviour.

If Balsillie moves the Nashville Predators to Hamilton or Kitchener-Waterloo, my prayers are answered. Balsillie isn't buying the team to make money — he's a hockey fan, so he (presumably) wants to win a Cup, which means he might be willing to do whatever is necessary to accomplish that goal, which MLSE is not. I'll have a local team to cheer for that might actually be interested in winning, and actually has the talent to do so. Tickets for games might be easier (i.e. possible) to get, and I won't have to take out a second mortgage to go to a couple of games. Copps Coliseum is less than 15km from my house, so if they play there for a year or two while they build an arena in Waterloo (where I work), that would be perfect.

I'm sure I will always be a Leaf fan to some extent, especially if the Predators don't move to southern Ontario. But until Leaf ownership changes their tune and actually tries to put a winning team on the ice, my passion for the Leafs will wane.

Update: Just thought of a cool song lyric that I should have used as the title of this post: "We said our love would last forever, so how did it come to this bitter end?" from "Kayleigh" by Marillion.

Stanley Cup Champion Ducks

...boy does that sounds weird. So I ended up 11 for 15 in my NHL playoff picks. As I said before, I wouldn't call Ottawa's defeat "choking" - in previous years, they've had great regular seasons and then lost to inferior teams in the playoffs, while this year, they beat the inferior teams (and you could even argue that Buffalo wasn't) and then simply lost to a better team. Can't fault them too much for that, though the fact that Jason Spezza and Dany Heatley are now appearing on milk cartons all over the National Capital Region certainly didn't help them.

We did the Walk for Miracles this morning. It was indeed 5km, same as the Run for the Cure, but was a little more leisurely, and seemed less hectic. However, the main reason for that was the fact that there were way less people there. I don't remember the actual numbers, but I think the Run for the Cure has something like thirty thousand people walking through the closed streets of downtown Burlington. Today, there were a maybe a couple of thousand walking along sidewalks through downtown London. No streets were closed; actually, I don't think the path they chose even crossed any streets. Anyway, both boys walked the whole way (no wagon!), so I was pretty impressed with that. We had lots of fun, and will probably do it again next year.

Edited to add: Here are a couple of pictures from last year's Walk for Miracles. There are three pictures from London — the little girl cutting the ribbon is Sarah, and her mom Cindy is helping.

Wal-Mart Walk for Miracles

This coming weekend, the four of us are walking in the Wal-Mart Walk for Miracles in London, Ontario. The walk will raise money for the Children's Hospital in London. As some of you may know, our friend Sarah had multi-organ transplant surgery there in August of 1997 at the age of six months, and is now a happy and healthy ten-year-old. We are walking with Sarah, her mother, and a bunch of other friends and family. We would like to help the Children's Hospital continue the wonderful work that they do.

If you would like to sponsor us, please go to the team page. Any donations are very much appreciated. To be honest, I have no idea how long of a walk it is - 2km, 5km, 10km, ... but however long it is, that's how long we're walking. The next step is to convince the kids to walk, and not ride in the wagon like the Run for the Cure last year.

Books you will not see on amazon.com anytime soon

1. "Hockey - A Gentleman's Game" by Todd Bertuzzi
2. "A Comprehensive Analysis of U.S. Foreign Policy in the 20th Century" by Paris Hilton
3. "How I Made Millions Playing Professional Lacrosse" by anyone
4. "Feeding Your Family on only $17 Million a Year" by Latrell Sprewell
5. "My Favorite Hanukkah Traditions" by Mel Gibson
6. "An Actor's Guide to Avoiding Typecasting" by Joe Pesci
7. "Burying the Hatchet: How to Resolve Personal Differences And Just Get Along" by Roger Clemens and Mike Piazza
8. "Building a Successful Long-term Career in the Entertainment Industry" by that kid who played "Webster" on TV (foreword by Leif Garrett)
9. "High on Life: Why You Don't Need Alcohol To Have Fun" by Lindsay Lohan
10. "Being a Sports Celebrity Without Becoming a Jerk" by Kobe Bryant, Barry Bonds, Latrell Sprewell, Roger Clemens, and numerous others

Honourary mention: "George Foreman's Big Book of Baby Names" (I saw that on some web site somewhere and got a good laugh)

Enough ripping already

One of the TV shows Gail and I have liked to watch for years is Law & Order. In more recent years, we've also enjoyed its cousins, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. For those of you who don't watch them, each of these shows occasionally has an episode they describe as being "Ripped from the headlines", where they take a real-life high-profile news story, and write an episode about it. Of course, they change the names and some details and stuff, but it's usually pretty obvious what story they're talking about. For example, a few years ago, they did one about a man who was arrested and tried for several murders, including that of his wife's sister. Later on, it was revealed that his wife was directly involved in the killings, and was just as evil as he was, if not more. This was the story of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. There was another one about a six-year-old beauty pageant winner who was murdered. For the most part, the stories had some obvious connections to the real-life stories, but diverged in some way as the story went on.

I think these "ripped from the headlines" episodes were fairly popular, since they began becoming more and more frequent, and then I think the writers just started getting lazy. In the last month or so, there was a L&O story about a female astronaut who suffered a mental breakdown, and drove across several states (wearing adult-sized diapers to avoid having to stop) to confront her lover and his wife. The other day, we started watching one (this was L&O:CI) involving a pudgy bleach-blonde former stripper who had become famous by marrying a 90-year-old billionaire and inheriting his estate on his death. Her 20-something son died of a drug overdose shortly after the birth of her daughter, and then she died mysteriously shortly after that. When the story started to deal with paternity issues, we got bored and turned it off.

Note to the L&O writers: enough of the "ripped from the headlines" stuff already. It's been done. To death. Drop it. It's one thing to write a story that vaguely resembles a news item, but when you take the news item, modify the names of the people involved, and that's it, well, that's hardly even worthy of the term "writing", is it?

Stanley Cup Final pick

OK, after going 4-for-4 in the second round, I went 0-for-2 in the third round. What's more, I predicted Buffalo would beat Ottawa in 6 or 7, and Ottawa took out Buffalo in 5 — couldn't get much more wrong. Oh well, I'm still 11-for-14 overall. Only one pick left!

This one is tough. So far, I've tried to keep emotions out of it, picking teams that I thought would win, rather than teams I hoped would win. But now that the Senators (my second favourite team) are in the finals, I'm finding it hard not to root for them. I'm really hoping they can pull this off. A friend of mine grew up near Toronto but now lives near Ottawa, and he's abandoned the blue-and-white to become a die-hard Sens fan. He told me last year that in Ottawa, the regular season almost doesn't matter anymore, all that matters is what happens in the playoffs. Obviously no Leaf fan would think that way, because (a) it's never a guarantee that the Leafs will even get to the playoffs (they didn't this year or last), and (b) it seems that for some Leafs fans (not me), any season where they do make the playoffs can be considered a success, regardless of when they get knocked out.

Any (non-Leafs) team might be a serious contender for a couple of years, maybe more, and then they usually start to suck. Edmonton was great in the early-mid 80's, and sucked in the early 90's. The Islanders were great in the early 80's, then have pretty much sucked ever since. Calgary, Montreal, the Rangers, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Dallas, they've all had periods of time where they were serious contenders, and then a few years later they were at the bottom of the heap. A few teams like Detroit and New Jersey may not be contenders every year, but rarely seem to have really crappy teams. Anyway, near the beginning of this season, when the Sens were losing (and the Leafs were winning), I started to wonder if this was the end of the Sens run, if their window of opportunity was closing. Then they turned their season around and began winning, and suddenly, making the playoffs wasn't an issue, the question was (as usual over the past several seasons), how far would they go. I think their reputation as playoff chokers is now gone. Alfredsson seems to be the leader in Ottawa that Mats Sundin has never quite become in Toronto, he, Heatley and Spezza are firing on all cylinders, and I think this is the year.

Ottawa over Anaheim in 6.

You hit a what?

Heard on the traffic report on a Toronto radio station this morning:

...and if you're north of the city, on Highway 10 just south of Highway 89, there's a dead kangaroo in the left lane...

I just hope that whoever hit the animal didn't have any car damage:

Insurance company: You hit a what?
Driver: A kangaroo.
Insurance company: Rrrrrriiiiiight. Let me just check your policy...

Third Round Picks

Just call me Mr. Prognisticator. I'm now 11 for 12 in my NHL playoff picks, after a perfect second round. I expected the Ottawa series to go longer, but I did get the winner right. Now for my third round picks...

• Buffalo over Ottawa — this is a hard one. I am a closet Senators fan (Shhhhh.... I don't think you're allowed to be both a Leafs fan and a Sens fan, so don't tell anyone), so I'd love to be wrong here, but I think Buffalo is just too strong. However, I fully expect this series to go at least six games.
• Detroit over Anaheim — this is a hard one as well, but I think Hasek will come up big for Detroit. I suspect that the winner of this series will take the Cup.

By the way, didn't I break your heart?

I am a big fan of Marillion's first four albums — the ones they recorded with Fish as their lead singer. In the late '80's, (right about the time I got into the band), Fish left and was replaced by a guy named Steve Hogarth, and for whatever reason, I never picked up any new Marillion albums after that. Last week, I was buying the new Rush album from amazon.ca, and decided to pick up the first Marillion album with the "new" (almost 20 years ago) singer, "Season's End", as well as another newer one, "Afraid of Sunlight". I listened to them for the first time today at work, and, well, I'm not sure yet. The music is unmistakeably Marillion (moreso with Season's End), but it really sounds weird with someone other than Fish singing.

Changing lead singers is far more significant a change than any other band member, and this is magnified when the singer has as distinctive a voice as Fish. This was evident when David Lee Roth left Van Halen, but Van Halen's music wasn't terribly different from other hard rock bands at the time, so Van Halen's first album with Sammy Hagar just sounded like another new band with a great guitar player. In this case, Marillion's musical sound is so distinctive, changing singers is even more significant, possibly similar to AC/DC replacing Bon Scott with Brian Johnson, though that happened before I really paid much attention to popular music. In that case, both Scott and Johnson had distinctive voices — Johnson's is similar to Scott's, but different enough that it was obvious that he was a good fit with the band without being a Bon Scott clone. When I Mother Earth replaced Edwin with, um, whoever they replaced him with, the result was a pretty good band with a fairly average lead singer. The newer stuff is still great musically, but I'm not as thrilled with the vocals, and that's what I've found so far with the "new" Marillion. Steve Hogarth's voice is not very distinctive, and I'm not sure it fits with the band as well as Fish's voice did. In fact, every now and again Hogarth sounds like he's doing a bad Fish imitation.

I've learned in the past that immediately writing off an album after a single listen is frequently a bad idea — I didn't like Dream Theater's Scenes From A Memory when I first heard it, but it grew on me, and is now one of my favourite Dream Theater albums; same with The Tragically Hip's Trouble at the Henhouse. I'm very glad to be listening to new Marillion music, for the first time in almost twenty years, and I hope I really start to get into it, because they have eight more albums that I don't have, plus a new one coming next year. I get very excited about new music!

Note: The title of this post is a lyric from "Kayleigh", a song from Marillion's amazing 1985 concept album "Misplaced Childhood". According to Wikipedia, the success of this song has significantly increased the number of girls given the name Kayleigh in the UK. I know a woman (here in Canada) who would have named a daughter Kayleigh because of that song. She ended up having two sons, neither of which, thankfully, is named Kayleigh.

Gas Boycott

I read an article from MSNBC today about a proposed "gas boycott" on May 15. The organizers want people to refrain from buying gas on that day to "stick it to Big Oil" — they think that if enough people don't buy gas that day, the oil companies will lose millions and will be forced to reduce gas prices. Yeah, right.

The article explains why a "gas boycott" will will have exactly no impact on long-term gas prices. I've been saying this for years; I even had a letter to the editor published in the local paper a few years ago when one of their columnists suggested it. I didn't do all the math that the author of the article did, but it seemed obvious to me that it was hogwash. First off, if you didn't need gas on the 15th anyway, then your refusal to buy gas that day is meaningless, so only the participation of those who would have filled up that day will have any effect. For those who do need gas on the 15th, refusing to buy gas that day just means that you'd fill up on the 14th or the 16th instead, so the total revenue of the gas companies would be even over that three day period. Gas prices would fall on the 15th, but would come back up again on the 16th as demand returned to normal — they might even go higher.

The only way to permanently reduce gas prices is to permanently reduce demand for gas, which means permanently reducing consumption. Making gas guzzlers more expensive and hybrids cheaper would be a good step — when I bought my Sunfire a couple of years ago, I would love to have bought a hybrid, but even given the lower gas costs over the life of the car, I couldn't afford the initial cost. My Sunfire was about $21,000 including all taxes and fees and such; hybrids started around $32-35,000 (they might be a little cheaper now, but I don't think they've come down all that much). If you assume that the car uses $40 of gas per week, and the hybrid uses half, or $20 a week, then it would take eleven years before the cheaper gas offsets the $11,000 extra cost. Now, I don't know exactly what kind of mileage a hybrid gets compared to a standard car (is it half? More? Less?), but until the prices come down significantly, or I get a big bonus at work, I won't be looking hybrid.

Aside: I know this is an unfair comparison because my car is pretty cheap, and they don't make hybrid Sunfires, so I'd have to upgrade to a Camry or something like that, which is more expensive to begin with. I'm comparing apples to oranges, but the fact remains that I would like to have bought a hybrid but couldn't afford one.

Mysteries of Modern Life

Here are a few things to ponder over your first glass of frozen concentrated substitute for artificial morning breakfast beverage (with or without pulp-like substances added):

Why is is that people will not shut off a car's engine if the windshield wipers are part-way through a cycle? I do it myself, and I've seen others do it as well — they either turn off the wipers first, or if they are on an intermittent setting, simply wait until the wipers have stopped before shutting the car off. Why do we do this?

Why do Americans talk about ice hockey? As opposed to what? Sure, there's field hockey, but very few people play it or talk about it. If I just say "hockey", what are the odds that I'm actually talking about field hockey? Couldn't you just assume I mean ice hockey? If I talk about "bowling" and I don't specifically say the word "lawn", you can assume I mean "standard" bowling — I don't need to add an adjective.

And why do they talk about hot tea? If I wanted iced tea, I'd have said iced tea, but if I didn't say "iced", can you not assume I meant hot? This even penetrated the American-made show Star Trek: The Next Generation, where Captain Picard's favourite drink order was "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot". I've never heard of iced Earl Grey tea, so it should be obvious he meant hot. They did address this in the final episode "All Good Things...", where an elderly Picard (in the future) was asked by a British woman if he wanted tea, and he answered "Tea? Earl Grey. Hot", to which she replied "Of course it's 'ot!"

Why do smokers (many of which wouldn't otherwise think of tossing garbage out the window of their car) not think twice about tossing cigarette butts out the window? Why not use the ashtray in the car?

Why do North American cars with power windows have an "express-down" feature (i.e. press the down button once and release it, and the window goes all the way down) on the driver's window but not the others? European and Japanese cars have it on all the windows. And why isn't there an "express-up" feature?

Deterministic non-determinism

A colleague pointed me to a blog entry on a blog by the VP of VMWare. It talks about a new "replay" feature in the next version of VMWare — you can record the execution of your VM to a file, and then replay that file later. This will reproduce the VM's execution exactly as it happened the first time. This is an unbelievably cool feature for debugging things like memory stomps and race conditions.

When trying to find a bug, the easiest way is to run it in the debugger, put breakpoints near where you think the problem is happening, and then run it, hoping that it fails the same way that it did before. If it doesn't, well, try again, or tweak some part of the test case to try to cause it to be more reproducible. If it's a race condition, it's highly possible that attaching the debugger or tweaking the test changes the timing enough that the problem never shows up. With this thing, once you've reproduced a problem, you could then replay it (in the debugger!) and step through the code, knowing that the problem will reproduce. You can step "back in time" to just before the problem occurred, and then step through the problem as it happens. According to the web site, the recording process has no effect on the speed of the VM. This is not possible according to the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle, which, strangely, is specifically referenced in the article. Ah, what did he know, anyway?

Apparently it doesn't have SMP support, so if your problem is SMP-related, this won't help you. But it looks like a very nice piece of software engineering, so kudos to the VMWare people!

Thunderbird

I made the big email switch this week, going from Outlook to the brand-spankin' new Thunderbird 2.0. My company actually uses Lotus Notes as the "standard" email client, but after a few years of using that, I found that it sucked rocks, so I took a week and switched to Outlook. First I politely asked IT to set me up with an IMAP account, which let me access my network-stored email folders from Outlook. They did that, and I used that to suck down all my archived mail. Then I abandonded IMAP and went to straight POP, and life was good... for a while.

I think it was when I upgraded to Office 2003 that things started to go bad again. Every now and again, I'd go for several hours without receiving any email, and discover that Outlook simply stopped checking, or something. I would shut down Outlook and start it up again, and then it would download all kinds of stuff from the previous few hours. It also took forever to start up Outlook (as much as several minutes sometimes), and the search capabilities were terrible, although I found a tool called LookOut that solved that problem. However, Microsoft bought the company that made Lookout, and changed the product into something called "Windows Desktop Search". Apparently Lookout itself is no longer available. I still have an install though - email me if you want it.

I started using Firefox as my default browser several years ago, and I love it, so when I found out that the same team made an email client called Thunderbird, I immediately downloaded it. I tried using it for a couple of days, but I could never get the LDAP stuff working, so searching the company address book for a name would not work. This was a big pain, so I decided to wait until that bug was fixed, and I went back to Outlook. A year or two later, I tried it again, and ran into the same problem. I asked another guy in my department how he got his to work, and he had no idea, it just did. Then we looked at mine, and it just didn't. We even went so far as to use a packet sniffer and point Thunderbird at a perl script that my boss wrote that acted as a proxy to the real LDAP server, and got nowhere with that either. After more searching, I found that this was a known bug in Thunderbird — the LDAP stuff did not work if IPv6 was installed on the machine. Since I was working on IPv6 for SQL Anywhere, I had it installed, which explained why it didn't work for me. I followed the progress of the bug for a while, and found that it was not going to be fixed until Thunderbird 2.0, so I had to shelve my plans to switch to Thunderbird yet again, though I did switch to using it as my newsreader at that time, and have been pretty happy with it in that capacity.

When I heard last week that Thunderbird 2.0 was being released, I got all excited, and downloaded it immediately. I tested the LDAP support and it worked, and it (relatively) seamlessly imported all my Outlook contacts and mail, and I've been using it for a week now. Honestly though, other than being faster than Outlook, I can't say I'm noticing much of a difference. It's better at dealing with junk mail, but I prefer Outlook's addressing — the To and CC lists consist of a single (expanding) text box where you can enter names separated by semicolons. The names are then expanded, and if more than one match is found, Outlook underlines it and you can right-click to choose the correct one. With Thunderbird, each address is listed on a separate line (so if you're sending an email to 20 people, you have this huge list of names, rather than one text box). When you enter a short form, it searches your address books until it finds one that matches, and then replaces the name with that address and stops searching. If I type "Kurt" to send an email to the guy in my department named Kurt (who wasn't in my personal address book), it searched the company directory, found someone named Kurt (probably the first one alphabetically), and used that address. There is no indication that the name wasn't unique. However, you can click "Contacts", which opens up a little sidebar that gives you similar functionality. I'm sure I'll get used to it and it'll be good enough — I'm just used to the way Outlook did it, not requiring the extra sidebar.

I should probably have waited until 2.0.1, or at least until a patch or two was released, since it crashes now and again, and I've even seen the same behaviour that I saw with Outlook — no email downloaded for a long time, but no error messages to say why, or even to indicate that there was a problem. But updates to Outlook were few and far between, while I'm sure there will be fairly regular updates to Thunderbird, so I'm going to continue with Thunderbird on the assumption that these irritations are a bit of short term pain that will eventually result in long-term gain. At least I'm supporting the open source community! That's good, right?

Open Source

Maybe I'm naïve, but I just don't get the big deal with open source software. I think it's great that people are willing to put their time and effort into writing it, documenting it, and supporting it, but there are people out there that believe that all software should be open source, and that commercial closed source software is generally a Bad Thing. While I can certainly see the advantages of open source software, I make my living writing closed source software. It's fairly simple: if Sybase didn't make revenue selling SQL Anywhere, I'd be out of a job.

Thinking about it a little more, I'm quite sure that I am naïve when it comes to open source, because I don't think I understand how it works. The extent of my knowledge about the process is this: there is a code repository somewhere on the web, and anyone can sync up to it and make changes to the code. But are there regular code reviews? Are there people checking every code submission to see if someone is adding bad code or trojans or anything like that? Who checks all the different platforms? Who runs regression tests to make sure that new features aren't breaking old features, or that performance isn't being affected? Who decides which new features go in and which ones don't? Surely there must be a full-time team of developers and managers that oversee all of these things, but how do they get paid? Who can afford to take on a full-time job that pays nothing? Is the open source world entirely populated by rich developers who don't need an income? I doubt it. Is it enough to have advertising on the web site and a "Please donate" button with a link to PayPal?

I just checked the OpenSSL web site, and it says specifically that the project is volunteer-driven. The Apache Software Foundation is a non-profit charitable organization, and their annual reports (complete with financial information) are listed on their website. However, according to the 2006 report, every officer of the company received $0 compensation, and the total revenue of the entire organization was under $150,000. Total compensation, wages, and benefits were $0. Again, are they all rich and don't need incomes? How do you squeeze in being a director or VP of such an organization if you already have a full-time job elsewhere?

I've been a professional software developer for over 15 years, so I probably should know the answers to these questions, and I'm feeling rather stupid that I don't. If you do, please leave a comment and let me know how this works. Maybe I should stick to blogging about my kids or sports.