Blasphemy and irony

Note to those who might see "Hamilton Tiger-Cats" at the beginning and skip the rest, that this is not a sports article...

Last Saturday, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats got absolutely smoked by Saskatchewan, 51-8, one of the worst blowouts in team, if not league, history. The headline in the Hamilton Spectator on Monday was "Oh My God!". This morning, there was a letter to the editor (not sure if you need to be a subscriber to see that) complaining about the use of this phrase. My first thought when I read the letter, ironically, was "Oh, good Lord." (I'm not kidding, those were the exact words that came into my head. I swear to God.) Is this really worth writing to the editor about? Do people really have nothing more important to do than complain about stuff like this? ** It's just a phrase. Nobody's calling to God, asking Him to fix up the Ti-Cats, or asking why He let such a thing happen. It's just a group of words that people say when something happens that shocks them. Next, people will be protesting the old Batman TV show because Robin keeps using the word "holy" in reference to things that are not, in fact, holy. Get over it.

** Before you ask, yes, I do see the irony in blogging a sentence like that...

A few years ago, someone at Sybase corporate sent a company-wide email out about something, and prefaced the email by saying "Good Friday morning!", since it was sent on a Friday. Someone else replied to that email (to the whole company), complaining that to Christians, the phrase "Good Friday" refers to a particular day, and not just any Friday, and should not be used out of context. Good God, For crying out loud, the guy was just trying to be friendly. Some people will complain about anything.

BTW, when I first typed in the title of this article, I was really tempted to add "live together in perfect harmony" to the end, but decided against it. Made me laugh though.

Fern

We went to Fern last week, and as expected, we had a great time. The weather co-operated, for the most part; we only had rain on one day, and only for a couple of hours. We went to the indoor pool during that time, so we had fun anyway. The guys went golfing (9 holes) on Tuesday morning. I got one par, and missed chipping in for birdie (would have been my first one) by a fraction of an inch. I got to try my new driver out for the first time — the ball went left a lot, but it went a lot further than with my old driver. Obviously going further into the trees is less than ideal, but once I figure out how to hit it properly, it'll be very cool. I'm hopefully going to the driving range tomorrow evening with my neighbour (the guy who made the driver), so he can give me some tips on how to straighten out my swing.

Back to Fern; a summary of things we did:

• pedal carts and bikes — Nicholas was big enough this year to get the carts going
• Gail and I each tried archery (Gail did it two or three times; I think she's getting addicted)
• I played 4-way volleyball twice (I think I'm getting addicted)
• I had casino (blackjack, roulette) and Texas Hold-'em lessons
• Gail went for a walk (2.5 to 3 km) every morning at 6:30 (I was very impressed)
• Ryan and I played golf — Ryan did really well, for his second time ever on a (non-mini) golf course (his first time was last year), and I got two pars in five holes!
• I made it to the top of the "vertical playground", which is a sort of obstacle course that you climb, consisting of rope ladders, poles with wooden spikes that you climb, and some tires as well.
• Ryan went fishing and caught a minnow and a catfish

The vertical playground was actually easier than the rock climbing wall that I climbed last year. Next year, maybe I'll try the teeter-totter, which is just your basic see-saw, except that it's mounted at the top of a 40-foot telephone pole.

I didn't manage to get a ride on Jeff's jet-ski; whenever he had it out, I was busy doing other stuff. I also wanted to play tennis but never got a chance, and we didn't get the lacrosse sticks out either.

We then dropped Nicholas off at Gail's dad's place and Ryan off at my parents' place on Saturday, and drove home, stopping to see Pirates of the Carribbean in Barrie on the way. We also stopped at the Colisseum at the 400 and 407 to see Superman Returns, but the timing didn't work out, so we went home. Sunday we saw Superman Returns at the Imax theatre in Mississauga, and Monday we tried to go and see X-Men: The Final Stand, but the theatre had technical difficulties and had cancelled the movie, so we went to see that tonight. Since Saturday, we've also rented a bunch of movies, painted the bathroom and replaced the light fixture, installed a new cover on the bathroom vent (to keep birds from making nests in there like they did this past spring), and we're going to order a new garage door this week as well.

I'll post mini-reviews of all the movies we've seen this week a little later.

A couple of quickies

The headline in today's Hamilton Spectator is "New Weapons of Terror", along with a picture of various bottles: water, hair gel, shampoo, V8, contact lens solution, toothpaste, etc. This is in response to the new airline rules banning passengers from bringing any type of liquid or gel in their carry-on luggage. I'm all for security, and I have no problem getting x-ray'ed and searched before I get on a plane, but this is just getting silly. When we went on our cruise in 2001 (2 months after 9/11), our luggage was searched, and we were forced to break off the little nail file on our fingernail clippers. (Note that we didn't have to throw it away, we just had to break it off.) Nobody would have batted an eye at a 6-inch sharpened pencil, which is arguably more of a weapon than the nail file.

Here is a funny article about the next step in this "war on terror". The terrorists may not have succeeded in significantly affecting the Western economies or changing government policies on anything (which, presumably, is at least one of their goals), but I'm sure they're all having a good laugh at the stupid policies that have resulted from their activities.

On a completely unrelated note, I went out to Quizno's for lunch today. Man, do they have it wrong. Their food is great, that's not the issue; their ordering system is just silly. You get in line at one end of the counter and when it's your turn, you tell the guy what kind of sandwich you want, what type of bread and extras you want, and whether it's to eat in or to go. Then he makes the sandwich and puts it into the Magic Yummy Sandwich Making machine (aka toaster). You then get into a second line, behind all the same people you were in line behind the first time, and go to the payment counter, where you have to tell the person there what you already ordered. They handle the payment, then cut and wrap your sandwich and give it to you. Why do I need to give my order twice? This is the only restaurant (fast-food or otherwise) that I know of where I have to do this. What's worse - the first guy doesn't want your whole order, just the sandwich part of it. If you want soup with it, or a combo with chips and a drink, he doesn't care. Surely they can figure out a way to handle the customer giving their order once and once only. Every other restaurant in the world can do it...

How NOT to coach

On the drive home tonight, Bob McCown (my favourite sportscaster) was talking about an article by Rick Reilly (my favourite sports writer) in this week's Sports Illustrated (which I haven't received yet). (Here is a link - not sure if you need to be a subscriber or not to read it) It talks about the championship game in a kids' league (9- and 10-year-olds) in Utah. The home team is down by one, batting in the bottom of the ninth, with two outs and the tying run on third. Their best hitter comes to the plate, and is intentionally walked to get to the next batter, Romney, who is the worst hitter on the team. He strikes out to end the game. The kicker (well, one of them) is that Romney happens to be a cancer survivor who has to take human growth hormone and has a shunt in his brain. The coach of the winning team defended his decision, saying that it's "just good baseball strategy". Well, sure it is, and I initially agreed with him. Cancer survivor or no, if he can't play at the level expected in the league, then he shouldn't be playing.

That's when I heard the second kicker — in this league, everyone gets to bat, there's a four-run limit per inning, and there's no stealing until the ball crosses the plate. Given those rules, it's obvious (or should be) that this isn't a rep league — the primary focus of this league is fun. There is no "level expected in the league". Because it's not a rep league, things like intentional walks shouldn't happen, and pitching to the slugger was the right thing to do. Walking him to get to the kid who could barely swing the bat made it all about winning. Obviously the winning coach never heard the old saying "It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game".

Man, I love summer

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

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

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

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

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Vacation

Lunch at Harvey's with Nicholas

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

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

Queensryche Live

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

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

Leave that thing alone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Camping trip

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

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

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

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

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

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

Article on IPv6

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

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

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

Vacation Week

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exodus from Edmonton

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

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

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Hockey
Edmonton Oilers
Toronto Maple Leafs

The Big E

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

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

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Eric Lindros
Quebec Nordiques
Philadelphia Flyers
Colorado Avalanche

The Circus

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

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

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

Technorati tags:
Circus
Animal cruelty
Wil Wheaton

Changed comments again

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

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

Technorati tags:
Haloscan
blog comments

More Separated at Birth

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

Helena Bonham Carter	Johnny Depp

Yup, no question. Must be the facial hair.

Separated at Birth?

Is is just me?

Steve Yzerman	Michael Keaton

While I'm at it...

Corey Hart	David Duchovny

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

Technorati tags:
Steve Yzerman
Michael Keaton
Corey Hart
David Duchovny

Great lacrosse article in Tacoma paper

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

Technorati tags:
lacrosse
NLL
National Lacrosse League

Rock 'n' Roll Family Tree

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

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

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

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

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

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

Technorati tags:
Music
Kevin Bacon

The Daily WTF

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

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

Technorati tags:
Software
Management