Professor Nicky teaches Fluid Dynamics 101

We bought a rain barrel about a month ago, and my father-in-law installed it for us. There's a short hose that comes out of the bottom of the barrel so that you can use it to water the garden, but I was never able to get the hose to work. I'd take the nozzle end out of the clamp and open it, but no water came out. I've done this at least four or five times over the last month before I told Gail the other day that there was something wrong with the barrel.

This morning I was talking to my father-in-law on the phone, and mentioned this hose problem to him. He suggested that maybe there was some kind of cap that should have been removed before the hose was attached, so I might have to remove the hose and see what's there. Nicky happened to be playing Wii in the next room while I was on the phone, and heard the conversation (well, my end of it, anyway). Once I was off the phone, he told me that he's been able to get the hose to work, but he had to hold the nozzle end of the hose lower than the level of the water in the barrel, otherwise the water would have to travel upwards.

I quite literally smacked myself in the head. Of course the water won't go upwards unless something's pushing it, and there's no pump inside the barrel to push it. Thank goodness I had an eight-year-old around to help me with this, or I'd have been out there pulling the barrel apart.

Spammers is so stupid

Pictures from Toronto

I don't usually make a post that's just a link to another article, but here is a collection of fantastic photographs taken in downtown Toronto yesterday during the protests. There are some pictures of the peaceful protestors, and then there are some of the idiots in black with masks from an "anarchist group" (a contradiction in terms) who were just there to smash and burn stuff. If you really believe in something so strongly that you think violence and vandalism (arguably terrorism) is the way to solve it, at least have the balls to show your face while you do it. Otherwise you're just another coward.

As seen on twitter: "Nothing says "courage of your convictions" like wearing a mask and changing your clothes after committing acts of arson & vandalism."

I especially like the one in front of Foot Locker, with the anarchist guy doing the Safety Dance.

Define "fun"

We took the boys to see Toy Story 3 tonight (mini review: lots of fun! Shrek people take notice: this is how you make a really good sequel), and on the way to the theatre, for no particular reason, Gail and I decided to keep our destination secret. Nicky kept asking where we were going and when we wouldn't tell him, he finally asked "are we going somewhere fun?" In my best "I-can't-believe-you-asked-that" voice, I said "Fun? Of course it's somewhere fun! We always go to fun places! When have we ever taken you anywhere that wasn't fun?" With almost no hesitation, he said "The hospital?"

I had to give him that one. Nicky 1, Daddy 0.

Top Ten Musical Ironies

1. U2, "Pop" – Pop is, of course, short for "popular", yet this was U2's worst-selling and most critically disappointing album ever.
2. The Beatles, With A Little Help From My Friends. The song is sung by Ringo Starr, who is a fine drummer but a crappy singer. (Actually, he's not even that great a drummer – John Lennon was once asked if he thought Ringo Starr was the best drummer in the world. John replied "He's not even the best drummer in the band", referring to Paul McCartney. But I digress.) He would never have been famous without a lot of help from his friends John, Paul, and George. The real irony is the first line of the song: Ringo sings "What would you think if I sang out of tune?".
3. Alanis Morrisette – Ironic – A song called Ironic containing no irony is itself ironic.
4. Nirvana, Come As You Are – Kurt Cobain singing "I swear that I don't have a gun" was the inspiration for this list.
5. Various, Jingle Bell Rock and Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree. They use the word "Rock" in the title, but they are not rock. Not even close. As I've said once before, if Rrrrrandy Travis can sing Jingle Bell Rock without changing either his style or the song's style, it's not rock.
6. Five for Fighting. The band name implies strength and toughness (dare I say truculence?), but all of their songs (that I've heard) can only be described as "soft rock" – in other words, wimpy and lame. More like two for unsportsmanlike diving.
7. Yoko Ono. She doesn't play any instrument – I've seen video of her pretending to play the keyboard (finger-syncing?) at a John Lennon concert as well as playing an electric keyboard that was not plugged in. Her singing makes Ringo Starr sound like Freddie Mercury. Yet she was married to one of the most talented musicians and songwriters of the rock era. And he thought she was supremely talented. <head shake>
8. John Mellencamp, Pop Singer. Apparently John "never wanted to be no pop singer, never wanted to write no pop song" but he is and he has. Several of them. Incidentally, if you ever get the chance to see Mellencamp live, do it. I've seen him a few times (and missed another concert a couple of years ago), and he always puts on a great show.
9. Extreme, More Than Words. Sounds like a slow romantic ballad about true love (performed by a hair metal band, although that's not the ironic part). This was even a popular wedding song in the early-mid 90's. The irony is that is you listen to the lyrics, the idea of the song is not "I love you so much that I don't have to say the words", but "If you love me, you'd show me by having sex with me instead of saying the words." Songwriters Nuno Bettencourt and Gary Cherone (aside: as soon as this article, containing that name, is posted to the internet, long-time Van Halen fans around the world will shudder and not know why) have admitted that the song is about sex. Likely not the kind of message you'd want to give at your wedding.
10. Linda Ronstadt. She has certainly been successful for a long time, with Grammys and gold records and such, but at one point in the early 70's, her backing band consisted of four guys named Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Randy Meisner, and Bernie Leadon. They went on to form The Eagles, who became far more popular than Ronstadt ever was.

Gie's a minute for a wee blether

So there's this kid in Alberta who's graduating high school soon. His parents moved here in the 60's from Scotland, as did mine, though he himself has never been there (don't know what you're missing, dude). He's decided that he wants to wear a kilt to his graduation, to celebrate his Scottish heritage. Cool idea, right? I thought so, but his principal has told him that he is not allowed to wear the kilt to the graduation ceremony. Why? "It does not fit the dress code".

Now there are thousands of people from around the world who have joined a facebook page that are going completely apeshit over this, telling Jacobs to go to court, that his basic human rights have been violated, that this is a hate crime... OK, take it easy people. This is not a huge conspiracy against the Gaelic people. More likely, it's a principal who doesn't want this kid flashing his junk at people while on stage, assuming he's wearing the traditional undergarments. Don't get me wrong – I fully support the kid. Not allowing him to wear a kilt is silly, but it's not a human rights violation. "Scottishness" isn't a religion that he practices (which is why all the comparisons to turbans and muslim headwear and such are faulty), so I don't think he can play the human rights card. From the Globe article, it doesn't look like he's spent tons of time embracing his Scottish heritage – never been to Scotland and doesn't plan to go, never worn a kilt, that kind of thing. Now I've never worn a kilt either, and there are lots of reasons why his never having been to Scotland doesn't mean anything. But if he's trying to claim that this is part of his own culture and upbringing, I'd have a hard time believing it. It's not like he's going to get to his graduation in a suit and tie and think to himself "This is just wrong. I should be in a kilt." You want to take it to court, fine, but let's not get all bent out of shape and start calling it a hate crime. That would be insulting to victims of actual hate crimes.

When I was in Scotland in 2000, my cousin Hazel got married, and we were there for the wedding. My aunt told me that I had to wear a kilt. I think she expected me to jump back and yell "What?! I'm not wearing one of those things!!". Instead, I told her that it would be very cool and I was definitely up for it. When I was told she was joking and I didn't have to, I was quite disappointed. Kilts are very expensive, so buying one was out of the question, but I should have looked into renting one. I may never have a chance again. Ach well.

The Attack

I don't generally use my blog to write sob stories about myself, but enough people have asked me about this that I figured I should write about it.

It all began three months ago today, on February 5, 2010. It was a Friday, and normally I work at home on Fridays, but I needed to work at home one day the next week, so I swapped my work-at-home day from Friday to the next Tuesday. Plus, we had an engineering "all-hands" meeting, so I figured I should probably be there for that. The meeting was in the early afternoon, and I don't remember much about it; partially because it was three months ago, and partially because most of what they say at these things is corporate-speak anyway. Once Mr. Sales/Marketing VP starts talking about "key verticals" I tune right out.

Anyway, after the meeting, there were snacks available, so I lined up with everyone else to grab something. I think I got a cookie, a brownie, and a mini cream puff. I took them back to my office and got back to work. After finishing the treats, I began to feel a little weird. I remember thinking "I shouldn't have had that cream puff." (Note that the cream puff in question was not much more than an inch in diameter.) After a few more minutes, I decided I probably just had to "use the restroom" as our American friends might say, so I did. That didn't make me feel any better. After another few minutes, I thought I might be sick, so I went back to the bathroom. After five minutes or so, nothing had happened, and it didn't feel like anything was going to happen, but I felt worse, and started getting light-headed. A minute or two later, I was quite dizzy and my hands started shaking uncontrollably and I thought "this is more than just a bad cream puff".

I left the bathroom to find my boss Mark, but he wasn't in his office. On my way back to mine, I passed our documentation manager Laura's office, and luckily she was there. I walked in and just said "I need some help" and fell into her second chair. Laura later said she almost didn't recognize me, I was so pale. Laura immediately took control and to this day I am amazed how calm she was. She put her coat over me because I was shivering, she took my pulse (somewhere in the 50 range I believe – about half what it normally is), and then called 911. After explaining the situation and giving our address and everything, Laura went into overdrive. She grabbed people from the hall and started assigning them jobs. One person (John, I believe) was to go downstairs and make sure the ambulance found the right building entrance. Another was to wait by the security doors to open them for the paramedics. She called reception to tell them an ambulance was on its way. She contacted HR to make sure they knew what was going on. Someone was sent to find Mark. Jill from HR came upstairs and used my cell phone to call Gail. All she was able to say at the time was that I was not feeling well and was going to be taken to a hospital. (She had to call back 15 minutes later to tell her which hospital.) All the while I was either half-conscious or passed out in Laura's chair.

Shortly thereafter, the paramedics arrived. In my memory, it was only about 5 minutes from when Laura called, and I remember being impressed at how fast they got there. Laura told me later that it took at least 20-25 minutes, so I must have been passed out for longer than I thought. I remember the paramedics being very friendly, asking me lots of questions, taking my pulse and blood pressure, and then lifting me effortlessly onto the stretcher. I remember seeing many concerned looks from my colleagues as they wheeled me out to the ambulance.

Once inside the ambulance, the only thing I remember was vomiting, and then wondering if that would solve the problem. Had I overreacted? Wasted these people's time? It didn't take long for me to realize that no, the problem wasn't solved, I didn't feel any better at all. After about 20 more minutes, the ambulance left for Grand River Hospital in Kitchener. I remember the ambulance ride being quite bumpy and wondering why they didn't put better shocks on ambulances.

My memories of the the rest of that day (and most of the next week) are quite blurry. I remember being wheeled out of the ambulance, because it was cold and I had no coat on. I remember seeing Gail and the boys and assuring them that I'd be fine, even though I still had no idea what was happening. I remember being asked repeatedly how often and how much I drink. I remember overhearing a doctor telling Gail that I may never be able to drink alcohol again, and feeling disappointed (though not devastated – I don't drink that much anyway, as I told a number of doctors). I remember being told that I was being given a painkiller called dilaudid because the morphine that they gave me didn't touch the pain at all, and dilaudid is nine times stronger than morphine. Then I remember thinking "what the hell is wrong with me that I need such a strong painkiller?"

The official diagnosis was severe acute pancreatitis. The main causes for pancreatitis in North America are (1) alcohol abuse (explaining the numerous questions about drinking), and (2) gallstones. Over the next few weeks, I had a number of ultrasounds, CT scans, and an MRI, and I was told I did not have gallstones, so they had no idea what caused the pancreatitis in the first place. It wasn't until after surgery in mid-March (to drain the pancreatic cyst that had formed and remove my gall bladder) that they found the real cause – turns out I had lots of gallstones, and a number of them had left the gall bladder (which was full of "sludge") and were sitting in the common bile duct. One had continued into the pancreas and lodged itself there. This prevented the pancreas from secreting the enzymes it creates, and those enzymes started dissolving the pancreas itself. This, as they say in the medical community, is bad.

If the gallstone in question had simply blocked the opening to the gall bladder, then this would have been a fairly routine gallstone attack. They would have removed my gall bladder, probably laparoscopically so I wouldn't have this huge scar across my belly, and I'd have been back to normal two months ago. But nooooooo, I had to get the sneaky gallstone that went right to the pancreas.

I spent the next two months at Grand River Hospital. Gail and I started sending out email status updates to friends and family; they are all gathered together here. I've been out of hospital for a little over a month now, and the recovery continues.

Update: I've written a number of other articles on my hospitalization and recovery. They're all gathered under the "hospital" tag.

Muse

My wife is a Twilight fan. She's read all four books in the series several times each, and she's watched the first two movies countless times each. Note that she's not one of those nutty Twimoms that scream like a 15-year-old girl when Jacob takes his shirt off – she just likes the story. Or so she tells me.

Anyway, part of her nuttiness obsession interest in the series is the soundtracks. She has the soundtracks for each of the two movies as well as the score (i.e. background music) for the first. She plays these CDs frequently in the car when taking the boys places, so they are now very familiar with them as well (I must say, hearing a 7-year-old ask us to play Death Cab For Cutie or Linkin Park is very cool). One of the songs that immediately hooked them is Supermassive Black Hole by a band I'd never heard of called Muse. (Stephenie Meyer is apparently a big Muse fan – there's a Muse song on the New Moon soundtrack as well.) If you've seen the first movie, this is the song that plays during the baseball scene. As an aside, they really should have worked on Alice's pitching style – she throws like a girl vampire. Anyway, I liked the song as well, and soon picked up Muse's 2006 album Black Holes and Revelations.

My first thought was that they were similar to U2, though heavier. It turns out that they toured with U2 last year, so I guess I wasn't far off. But as I listened more, I realized that some songs were nothing like U2 at all. "Invincible" has a Tom Morello-like guitar solo, though it turns out that's not that unusual for Muse. Not on every single freaking song like Rage or Audioslave, but guitarist-singer-songwriter-chief-cook-and-bottle-washer Matthew Bellamy does some pretty funky stuff with the guitar here and there. "Map of the Problematique" keeps sticking in my mind, though not like an earworm, just because it's a very cool song. "Knights of Cydonia" is more prog-rock, and there's almost an "epic" feel to it.

I got to really like this album, so in mid-January, I picked up a couple more: Origins of Symmetry from 2001, and last year's The Resistance. These guys are all over the map – you could call them "alternative", though heavier at times than a lot of alternative bands. You could also put them in the "progressive" category, but some songs are more guitar-driven rock than many progressive bands.They have quiet sections with just piano and vocals, and others where Bellamy is screaming over his own guitar. On the other hand, if you had told me that "United States of Eurasia" was an recently discovered Queen track from the late 70's, I don't think I'd even question it.

Muse is one of those bands (like CCR, Big Wreck) where one guy is the driving force behind everything – Bellamy sings lead vocals, plays (excellent) guitar and keyboards, and writes all the songs. This is not to say that the other guys aren't contributors – they are both excellent musicians as well, though the bass is a little more hidden on Black Holes and Revelations than on the other albums. Bellamy has an interesting and sometimes powerful voice (check out "Micro Cuts" on Origin of Symmetry) with a pretty wide range, and he certainly loves his falsetto.

I would never have heard of this band or had a chance to enjoy their music if they weren't on the Twilight soundtrack. I guess the moral of this story is that if you are a band that has a chance to get your song on a movie soundtrack, do it.

NLL Predictions revisited

Back in January, I posted my predictions for the NLL this year. Let's see how close I came, shall we?

Attention Facebook readers: You might want to click the "View Original Post" link at the bottom of this note. Facebook sometimes messes up the formatting.

 

East	My Prediction	Actual Standings
1.	Rochester	Orlando
2.	Orlando	Toronto
3.	Buffalo	Buffalo
4.	Toronto	Boston
5.	Boston	Rochester
6.	Philadelphia	Philadelphia
West
1.	Calgary	Washington
2.	Washington	Calgary
3.	Edmonton	Edmonton
4.	Colorado	Minnesota
5.	Minnesota	Colorado

 

In the East, I got two right, two off-by-one, and the rest (that would be another two) totally wrong. Picking Rochester to win the east when they didn't end up making the playoffs looks like a pretty bad call. I should have listened more closely to the part of my brain that wrote the line "Then again, the 2008 Knighthawks, with Grant and Evans, didn't make the playoffs."  I thought Toronto would pick it up a bit and finish fourth – but I, like everyone else, didn't expect second place.

In the West, I was very close. Nailed Edmonton in the middle, and if you swap the other pairs, I would have gotten them all right.

Coming soon – playoff predictions.

Hospital: Roommates

My work insurance covers the cost of a semi-private room when staying in the hospital. When I moved from emergency into an actual room, we asked about paying the difference and moving to a private room. The hospital told us that even if they could give me a private room, it would likely only be for a night here or a night there because higher priority patients (i.e. those who require isolation) would be given the private rooms before the rest of us. As a result, I had roommates almost every night of my stay. None of the names below are real, and unless it's critical to the story, I've left out why they were hospitalized.

Harold

My first roommate was a elderly gentleman named Harold who could not speak. (Aside: New entry on my list of "creepiest things to look at": an old man sleeping with his mouth wide open.) I don't know the reason he was in the hospital, but he had a fancy thing that he could hold up to his throat and talk, and you would hear what sounded like a computer-generated voice saying what he was trying to say. It wasn't foolproof technology by any means – half the time it was just as hard to understand as his silent mouth movements. Harold was only with me for a day or two.

Roommate 2

My second roommate was also only with me for a couple of days, and I think it was when I was just starting to be a little more coherent at times, though I never caught his name. I remember him getting served his lunch or dinner, and he had real food on his tray. This was when I was still on water and nothing else (not even jello or juice or anything), and I remember being jealous and thinking "must be nice". Then his doctor came in to talk to him and his wife, and it turned out that he was diabetic and was in the hospital to get some toes amputated. The whole "must be nice" thing faded pretty fast.

Roommate 3

After the diabetic guy, I apparently had another roommate for a night or two – an East Indian doctor who works or used to work at Grand River hospital. I have absolutely no memory of this fellow, but Gail tells me he existed.

At this point, I was moved down from the 6th floor to the 5th.

Peter

My first roommate on the 5th floor, Peter, was probably in his mid-50's. We didn't have any conversations or anything, but we said hello a couple of times here and there. He spoke some English, but sounded to me like he was German or Austrian or something. One night I was heading to the bathroom when he popped his head out from behind his privacy screen and started talking to me in what I perceived to be gibberish. When he was done, I politely told him that I had no idea what he was talking about. He talked some more, and again I told him, "I'm sorry, I still don't understand". In the next "blurb", I heard the word "Croatian", and I immediately said "No, I don't speak Croatian." He asked about Serbian, and I told him that I couldn't speak Serbian either. He then said something like "...then what..." I told him "English" and he said "Oh, English!" as if English was a really weird language to speak in Ontario. I went to the bathroom and returned to bed.

A few hours later, some movement in my room woke me, and over the PA system, there was announcement of a "Code White" in progress on my floor, and then they specifically mentioned my room number, but the other bed. A short while later, the Code White was cancelled, and four security guards brought Peter, weeping, back into the room and secured him to the bed. It turned out that he had had some kind of breakdown and wanted to "run away". After he left our room, the nurses tried to stop him but he grabbed a pencil from the nurses desk and brandished it like a weapon. (Code White means something like "we have a patient who is a danger to himself or others".) He left the next day, though I don't know if he was discharged or moved somewhere else.

Henri

I had the room to myself for a half a day, and then they brought in Henri, who spoke with a French accent – eventually I found that he was originally from somewhere in Northern Ontario. I don't think I even had a "hello" conversation with him, but he wasn't afraid of telling the nurses anything they wanted to know, and a bunch of stuff they likely didn't want to know. His first night, a nurse asked him why he was there, and he matter-of-factly said "I'm addicted to painkillers", and also told her that he liked to get drunk a lot. He was very specific on the types of booze that he would buy because it was the cheapest and the strongest. Sorry, I don't remember the names he mentioned.

He never once pressed the nurse call button, he'd just wait until he heard his nurse (or possibly any nurse) outside the door, and yell "Excuse me!" Not a morning or evening went by that he didn't remind his nurse to bring him his pain meds. At the time, I thought he was just being impatient, but it then occurred to me that he was essentially going through detox right there, so he was probably in as much pain (some physical, some not) as I was.

He wasn't the friendliest of folks (not surprising, as a depressed homeless drunk drug addict). He asked one of the nurses if she spoke French and she answered no. He then spoke to her in French, which is rude enough as it is.  When she came over to my side to do some work on me, she mentioned that she doesn't speak French, but she has lots of family from the Sudbury area and as a result she understands more French than she speaks. She knows what he said to her (though she didn't tell me), and it wasn't very nice.

He was with me for at least a week, possibly two. The day he left, he was getting dressed when a nurse came in, and he got angry at her, saying that she was trying to look at his <some French word I didn't catch>. Guessing at what the word meant, I had to laugh – nurses see a hundred of those a day, and I'm pretty sure that nobody was trying to see his.

Daniel

Daniel was my roommate for a week. His wife came to visit him every day, and they were both pretty friendly, so we had a few conversations. A couple of times his grandkids came in (ages about 3, under 2 and about 8 months) – the oldest loved to play matching games or "war" with grandma, but he cheated like crazy (according to grandma). Nice couple - not much else to say about him.

Ronald

Ronald was an older English gentleman. At one point, Gail, the boys, my parents, and my sister were all visiting me, and he called out asking when they were leaving. We thought he was just being rude, as did his wife ("Ronald!" she said), but then he said no, he just wanted to leave with them. Over the next couple of days, however, his mind seemed to go, and he fell into dementia. He was calling out for "Ruth" to help him, though there was no nurse named Ruth. Other times he'd call out his wife's name. He had difficulty doing pretty much anything, but got angry when nurses tried to help him, even cursing at them a couple of times.

Once, (during the day when he was more coherent) he was bragging to the nurses that he was a math whiz and asked them to give him a math question. Someone asked him 50 times 99. Then one nurse said "We have another math whiz over there – Graeme! What's 50 times 99?" I multiplied 50 by 100 (5000) and subtracted 50 and said "four thousand, nine hundred fifty". All was quiet from the other side of the room until Ron said loudly "smart ass". We all had a good laugh.

During the day, for the most part, he was pretty coherent, though he slept a lot. At night though, that's when his mind seemed to go. He'd call for his wife in the middle of the night, he once asked a nurse to call him a cab because he wanted to go to Grand River Hospital (and refused to believe that he was already there), and he asked me once if I could give him a ride somewhere tomorrow.

After a little over two weeks, he was transferred to another hospital in Kitchener.

Klaus

Will talk your ear off, loudly, with a strong German accent. Quite the impressive history of hospitalizations and surgeries (including hip replacement, cancer, chemo), especially given that he was 80 years old, and quite spry for his age. Actually, he was quite spry for someone ten years younger. Just a day or two after he moved in, I was informed that I was having my surgery, so I moved out.

---

After surgery, I was taken back to the sixth floor, where I was given the same room (601) as I was in the first time I stayed on 6. The next day I was moved to a different "wing" of the floor, which turned out to be just around the corner, but the nurses here are more accustomed to dealing with recovery from abdominal surgery. I only had one roommate the rest of my stay.

 

Charlie

Charlie was an 88-year-old stubborn-as-an-ox Ukranian guy (It's getting more and more difficult to come up with interesting but not cliché ethnic pseudonyms for my roommates, so Charlie will just have to do for this one, OK?). I'm not sure what he was originally in for, and his surgery was a couple of days before mine. He had a lot of visitors – his son came every day, sometimes more than once, as did a number of others. His son called him "tato" a lot (and I mean a lot, sometimes twice in the same sentence), which I interpreted as Ukranian for "dad", since nobody else (except his other son, who was only in once or twice) called him that. He had a picture of his twin 21-year-old grandsons on his table and would tell every nurse he had who they were. He was obviously very proud of them, and they came to visit a lot too. At one point his wife was also admitted to the hospital, and they took him downstairs in a wheelchair a couple of times to visit her.

As I said, he was pretty stubborn, so a few times his nurse would tell him that if he wanted something, he had to press the call button, but he'd try to get out of bed himself to do whatever it was. I'd press my call button (which was shared with his), and his nurse would come in and give him hell for getting out of bed. Then once I got out of my bed to go to the bathroom, and so he called the nurse. The nurse told him that I was stronger than he was and that it was OK for me to get up by myself. After a week or so, he ended up strong enough to get out of bed by himself.

He spoke with a strong Ukranian accent, so we didn't have a lot of long conversations. Near the end of my hospital stay, I was diagnosed with a minor virus that required me to be in isolation, so after two weeks with Charlie, I was moved to a private room. Charlie went home the next day, and I went home about three days later.

Hospital: Little luxuries

I am now home from the hospital. I was discharged on April 2, exactly eight weeks after being admitted. I still have a lot of recovery to do, but boy, is it good to be home.

I did a little bit of writing while in the hospital, but not much. I wrote a long article about my various roommates, which I'll publish in a day or two, but here's one regarding things that are normally important to people but not when you're in the hospital.

These are some things I have not seen or done since I arrived at the hospital. Note that these are strictly because of being in the hospital, not related to my particular condition.

• Money. I've paid for a few things with credit cards (phone, TV, internet), but that's only because I have my credit card numbers recorded somewhere. I have no idea where my actual wallet is (I think Gail has it), nor have I used cash.
• Travelling by car, van, bus, truck, etc. I got here in an ambulance, but since then the only modes of transportation for me other than walking have been wheelchairs and stretchers (and moving beds around with me in them once or twice).
• Clothes. I wear a pair of pyjama pants and a hospital gown every day. I get new pants and gown every day or two. (Note: that was before surgery. I don't wear the pants now because of this big ol' incision across my belly.) I have a housecoat that I can drape over myself if I get cold. I have a few pairs of socks and a pair of slippers. That's the entire extent of my wardrobe.
• Haven't seen, pet, or played with any dogs or cats, or any other kind of animal. I miss playing with my sister-in-law's dog Candy, and being ignored by my sister's cats.
• Weather. There were a couple of days where Gail took me outside for a few minutes because it was so nice, but apart from that, I don't generally care whether it's sunny, cloudy, rainy, snowy, or anything else. The only times I do care is (a) when I have to close the blind on my window because it's too sunny, and (b) when I have visitors from Waterdown or Toronto, and I don't want them driving in bad weather. Of course, Gail drives here every day, so I suppose I should care every day, shouldn't I?
• Food. I was on a "clear fluid" diet for a long time – nothing but Jello, juice, popsicles. Then I got moved to a "full fluid" diet, where I got things like milk, Cream of Wheat for breakfast, some creamy soups, that kind of thing. Still nothing to chew. Since the surgery, I'm back on clear fluids. I can't tell you how sick to death of Jello I am.

The Lucky Loonie

At the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, the guy setting up the ice for the hockey finals was a Canadian. As most Canadians know by now, he planted a Canadian loonie directly under centre ice, and Canada won two hockey gold medals. Of course we all know that there is no causal relationship between these events (the loonie didn't cause or even help the hockey teams to win), but it makes for a pretty cool story. Since then, the whole "lucky loonie" thing has been used at the 2003 IIHF World Championships, the 2006 Winter Olympics (though not for hockey, only for curling), and even the 2006 Stanley Cup finals between Edmonton and Carolina.

While watching the women's snowboard cross last week, I heard the announcers mention that the course builders had planted a Canadian loonie under the course somewhere, hoping to give the Canadians a bit of an advantage.

Note to those Canadians involved with setting up events at the Olympics, whether at Vancouver or other future games: It's been done. Let's just drop it now, OK?

Another hiatus – this one less fun

I've gone on blogging hiatus a couple of times over the last couple of years – once for our trip to France, another for our trip to the UK. You may have noticed that I haven't posted anything in a couple of weeks, so I'm on another hiatus, but this one was more forced. And a lot less fun.

On February 5, I was taken to Grand River hospital in Kitchener with acute pancreatitis, which basically means that my pancreas had a complete mental breakdown and started trying to dissolve itself. I have been in the hospital ever since, and likely will be for at least another couple of weeks. I will write more about the details later, but suffice it to say that blogging will be light if not nonexistent for the next little while.

I shall return!

Our Saviour comes through big

This past weekend, in a nutshell, is why the Leafs hired Brian Burke. When he was hired, the masses rejoiced. Our Saviour had arrived and was going to transform the team from a laughing stock to a Cup contender. For a while, he didn't do much of significance, and then he traded two first round draft choices for Phil Kessel. There were mixed emotions about that one – many thought it was a great move, bringing in a young stud goal scorer and giving up nothing. Others said "Nothing? You call giving up two first round draft picks (and a second!) nothing?" When the Leafs started the season with 3 wins in their first 20 games, the possibility of giving a first overall draft pick for Kessel became very real. People started questioning whether Burke was indeed the right guy. And then came January 31, 2010 – the day everything changed.

The biggest complaint about the Leafs this year has been goaltending – in particular, Vesa Toskala. Ever since the day the Leafs acquired Toskala, there has been talk that he's a good backup but wasn't starting goalie material, and he seems to have proven that in his time with the Leafs. Jason Blake, meanwhile, scored 40 goals in 82 games the season before being signed by the Leafs, and 50 goals in 216 games as a Leaf. He was eating up a ton of cap space for not much production. If Burke managed to get rid of the two of them for nothing, I think it would have made the team better – addition by subtraction. Yet Burkie managed to convince Anaheim to take a struggling goalie and an overpaid non-scoring forward for a quality starting goaltender. Of course, Giguère would have been a very high-priced backup in Anaheim anyway, so maybe it's a push for them.

Then there's the Calgary deal. They sent four players to Calgary and got three back. Let's say for the sake of argument that the Leafs are a contending team in, say, four years. What are the odds that all four of Stajan, Mayers, Hagman, and White are on that contending team? Not very high. So the Leafs gave up a bunch of players that don't likely fit into their long-term plans (well, maybe White) for a former Norris trophy nominee (not even two years ago) and two prospects. Is it possible that Phaneuf was a flash-in-the-pan and his best days are behind him? Well, sure it's possible, but he's only 24, so it's not likely. I heard an interview with a Calgary sports report the other day saying that Phaneuf was no longer "fitting in" with his teammates or coaching staff in Calgary, so perhaps a change of scenery is what he needs to turn his game around. Then again, I can think of a number of players who were sent packing from Toronto only to find success elsewhere (happens a lot in baseball – Jeff Kent, Woody Williams, Chris Carpenter...), and not that many who did it the other way. As Bob McCown wrote, "The list of players who have regressed after landing in The Big Smoke is very, very, very long." But even if Phaneuf never wins a Norris, he's still a very good defenseman.

Now, I'm not saying that the Leafs will make the playoffs this year or win the Cup next year because of this deal. But now the Leafs have a stud front-line scorer (age 22), two top-tier defensemen (ages 24 and 31), a goaltender who's been a Stanley Cup and Conn Smythe trophy winner, and a highly-touted young goalie backing him up. That sounds like a pretty good nucleus to build around, and it's a helluva lot better than they had when Mr. Burke was hired.

Rock destroy Knighthawks

Holy cow, what a game. This is what Rock lacrosse was back in the early 2000's - Lots of offense, strong defense, outstanding goaltending, smart play and just an all-round exciting game. I'm ready to give new Rock owner Jamie Dawick the NLL 2010 Executive of the Year award right now. Can we please just forget that the whole Kloepfer era happened? I don't know who those guys wearing the Knighthawks jerseys were, but they certainly didn't play like the Knighthawks I predicted would win the east this year. John Grant had a terrible game – he was dropping the ball left and right. He should have been given assists on two of the first three Rock goals, because they resulted directly from balls he dropped. Grant took a stupid and unnecessary penalty in the first quarter (as he always does when frustrated), though he managed to keep his head for the rest of the game. Gary Gait was held pointless, as were the Knighthawks, since Craig Point was invisible (see what I did there?). Pat O'Toole made some good stops here and there, but... well let's just say that he didn't have his best game ever.

Garrett Billings, on the other hand, was everywhere, scoring 5 and adding 3 assists. Other than Billings, the Rock goals were quite spread out, as nine other players scored at least once. Bob Watson was unbelievable in goal, and now has a microscopic GAA of 5.47 after 3 games. The Rock defense was also awesome. I remember reading off the names of the Knighthawks on the floor during their first offense shift – I believe my exact words were "Grant, Williams, Gait, Point, and Bomberry. Ouch." But those five players were held to a combined total of three points. As I said Watson was outstanding at stopping the shots that got to him, but there were an awful lot of shots that were never made because the Rock defense knocked the ball away, grabbed it out of the air, or just prevented the Knighthawks from getting open enough to even take a shot.

It wasn't that rough of a game, until near the end when it was pretty much over anyway, and even then it was only two players that caused all the roughness, both of whom are named Evans. Rochester had nine penalties all night, and only one wasn't by a guy named Evans – that being Grant's roughing call in the first. Shawn got three minors and a fighting major, and Scott got four minors. In addition, both should have been given at least unsportsmanlike conduct penalties, since they wouldn't stop chirping at the refs, even after sitting in the penalty box. I get the two of them confused – since there's two players on the team named "Evans", their first initial should be on their uniforms as well, like the Rock did with the Sandersons – oh, wait. Anyway, one of them asked the penalty box door guy to open the door a couple of times so he could go back out and yell at the ref some more. Lucky for him the door guy didn't do it – leaving the penalty box before your penalty is over gets you a misconduct penalty and an automatic game suspension. I almost expected one of them to pull a Pat Coyle and deck the ref.

There are players in pro sports who are just pests. They're irritating and get on your nerves, but are undoubtedly great players. Scott Stevens was one, as is Sean Avery. Tie Domi as well, though his skill level was lower. In lacrosse you've got your Evans brothers, Mark Steenhuis, and Brian Langtry – Kim Squire was another one early in his career. Quite honestly, I find John Tavares is like that too. In many of these cases, you hate playing against them, but would give anything to get them on your team – Tavares, Stevens and Langtry are great examples of this. For me, the Evans brothers, like Avery, do not fall into this last category. They're great players, no question, and they're passionate and they play hard – attributes that I like in athletes. But playing hard doesn't mean punching people in the head when trying to get the ball from them. It doesn't mean crosschecking the goalie. It doesn't mean hitting a player into the boards from behind and then throwing up your hands as if to say "What did I do?" when you get a penalty for it. And it certainly doesn't mean whining to the refs about every single call that goes against your team. Playing hard and being passionate is great and all that, but it has to be combined with sportsmanship, and I didn't see a lot of that from the Evans boys tonight. Having said that, full props to both of them for taking part in the customary handshakes after the game – I have seen other players lose it completely near the end of a blowout and are either escorted off the floor or simply walk off without shaking hands. I guess there's some sportsmanship in there.

At the end of the game, the Rock announcer said that the Rock would be playing "this same Knighthawks team" in Rochester next week, and I said to my friend "He's wrong. That game will not feature the same Knighthawks team. And if it does, Paul Gait should be fired." The Rock ran roughshod over the Blazers in week 1, only to see a very different Boston team the next week. It will largely be the same players playing, but I suspect the Knighthawks of next week's game will be quite different from the guys who played tonight. That will be an entertaining game, just as this one was.

Jim Veltman – Mammoth Head Coach?

The Mammoth fired their head coach the other day after a 0-2 start, and GM Steve Govett, who's never coached a lacrosse game in his life, has announced that he will be taking over as coach. We'll see how long that lasts. But if he's looking for a new head coach that does have some lacrosse coaching experience, former Rock captain Jim Veltman is available. The Mammoth had some interest in Veltman a couple of years ago, asking him to retire to join their coaching staff. He declined, played one more year, and then retired to join the Rock's coaching staff. The entire staff other than Veltman was then unceremoniously fired a couple of months into the next year, and it was announced that Veltman would join the front office in an unspecified position. As far as I can remember, the Rock have never mentioned his name again.

Veltman has never been a head coach at the NLL level, but he was one of Glenn Clark's assistant coaches for a short while. He has been coach (for a while, a player-coach) of the OLA's Ajax-Pickering Rock for a while, so he certainly has coaching experience.

If Veltman is hired by the Mammoth, just remember folks – you heard it here first.

Book Review: Memories of the Future Vol. 1

Star Trek: The Next Generation is one of my all-time favourite TV shows. I watched it religiously when it was on in the late 80's and early 90's and I bought each season on DVD as soon as it was released. I also enjoy former TNG cast member Wil Wheaton's writing, so imagine my excitement when he started writing reviews of TNG episodes a couple of years ago. He wrote an article about every ten years or so – OK, it was more often than that, but that's how it seemed when you were patiently (or not) waiting for the next one to come out. He posted links to them on his blog, and then gathered them all up, did a few more, and put them in a book called Memories of the Future. There will be at least two volumes; each covering one half of the first season of TNG; only Volume One has been released. I don't know how much further he'll go - I asked him on twitter if he was planning on continuing the books or podcasts right up to season 7, but he never responded. Geez, you get 1.6 million followers and suddenly you don't respond to questions? Bastard. I'd respond to you, @wilw.

Anyway, this book is a must for TNG fans. Wil rips each episode apart, telling you what was good and what was bad, which is fun to read because there were a number of really bad episodes in the first season. There is a lot of humour in the episode recaps and technobabble, and I found the behind-the-scenes memories really interesting.

Wil also gives some insight into the whole TV industry and how it works – like when person X is writes a script for an episode, but then their original script is hacked and changed without their knowledge by someone else who doesn't get credit. By the end of the process, the writing of this really bad episode is still credited to person X, who really had nothing to do with how bad it is. It seems unfair, but that's how it works. Wil pulls no punches, naming names on who were the worst writers, directors, and guest actors that he worked with.

Wil is very complimentary to the other cast members of TNG, particularly Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner, who are indeed excellent actors. One person he's not very complimentary to, however, is himself. He seems convinced that he was the worst actor on the set, and that a large contributing factor to that is his youth. A number of times he mentions that if he wasn't such a self-absorbed teenager at the time, he might have done a better job. Of course "self-absorbed teenager" is a redundancy, and Wil himself does acknowledge this at one point, when he tells the story of apologizing to (I think) Patrick Stewart for being the way he was when he was a teenager and not appreciating things as he should have. Stewart tells him that everyone at the time understood that he was a teenager, and that that attitude came with the territory. Of course, some of this self-deprecation could just be modesty – he only makes a point of mentioning when he did a lousy job. Perhaps there were a number of episodes where he thought he did a great job, but he decided to keep the "Wow, my performance was really great in this episode" thoughts to himself.

Wil was also doing weekly podcasts called "Memories of the Futurecast", where he would read part of his review of one episode a week. In many cases, he'd expand on the stuff in the book, or mention memories that had come up since the book was written or that he didn't include in the book for whatever reason. Those were pretty cool too – Wil is a good storyteller and is also pretty funny, though I find sometimes that the funny loses steam fairly quickly. In one or two of the podcasts he mimicked a conversation between himself and some pretend person - the first two or three lines were pretty funny, but then he kept going and the next seven or eight lines were just not. More is not always better. It's kind of like my seven-year-old: "if I say or do something and daddy laughs, then obviously if I do it every ten seconds for the next hour, it remains funny." Wil doesn't go that far, but there have been a few times where he starts one of these jokes or "conversations" and after the second or third line I think to myself "OK, that was funny, but stop there. Please just stop there." and he doesn't. These long drawn-out jokes don't appear in the book though, just the podcast.

The one thing I don't like about the book is the language – there's a fair bit of cursing and some sexual language and stuff like that. This is true of all of his podcasts actually, he's quite the little potty mouth. It doesn't bother me directly - I'm no language prude, and some parts of this book are quite hilarious because of the language. Example: when talking about Q giving them the whole Farpoint thing as a test, Wil explains why this will not be a problem: "in Starfleet, we save the universe and fuck the green alien chick before breakfast. We got this one." My problem is that my 10- and 7-year-old sons are both TNG fans (ironically, Wesley Crusher is their favourite character along with Data) and I think they would get a big kick out of some of these stories, but it's just not appropriate for kids that age to read about anyone fucking green alien chicks, or any other colour of alien chick for that matter. Perhaps I can find some stories that the boys would like and read parts to them.

As I said, if you're a TNG fan, you owe it to yourself to check this book out, or at the very least, find the reviews through his blog. I am anxiously awaiting volume 2 and any subsequent volumes.

Weirdest. Lacrosse game. Ever.

The 2010 Rock home opener was last night at the ACC, and it was a great game – it was very physical, the score was close throughout, and it went to overtime. There was a lot of fighting and tons of penalties. It was also rather weird, in that there were a number of things that happened that I don't think I've ever seen before, but more on that later. The Rock won it 8-7, with rookie Garrett Billings scoring the winner in OT after a beautiful behind-the-back pass from Colin Doyle. It was very nice to Doyle back in a Rock uniform after being traded away three years ago in one of the worst trades in Rock history.

Doyle is known for being a scorer and team leader, and you will never find a better clutch player anywhere, but he's a pretty tough dude as well. He doesn't fight much – I'm sure his coaches won't generally let him since he can't score from the penalty box – but it happens, and five minutes into his Rock return, he got involved (and held his own, I thought) with Boston's Paul Dawson, who's known to be a good fighter. Of course, Boston losing Paul Dawson for nine minutes (roughing + facemasking + fighting major) is a little easier for the Blazers to take than Toronto losing Doyle for nine. But after Doyle and Dawson were in the box, and before the next whistle was even blown, four other fights broke out around the benches. The refs let them all go until the players decided that they had had enough and just walked away, and then all eight players were given game misconducts. Luckily for the Rock, Boston lost league MVP Dan Dawson and a couple of other offensive guys, while two of the players the Rock lost weren't likely to see much floor time anyway. The unmistakeable message from the Rock was "You will not touch our captain." I am not a fan of fighting in lacrosse or hockey, and I think starting four fights was a bit extreme, but I did stand and applaud as the Rock players headed to the dressing room after standing up for their teammate and captain.

As rare as a Colin Doyle fight is, there were a number of things in that game I don't think I've ever seen in a lacrosse game before – and I've seen every Rock home game but one in the last nine years:

• Four separate fights on the floor at the same time
• Eight players ejected at once
• Coincident facemasking penalties (I'm not sure I've ever seen facemasking penalties at all, actually)
• Goaltender leaving the crease penalty
• Unsportsmanlike diving penalty
• Dan Dawson fighting – Dawson pounded the snot out of Pat McCready, who's a decent fighter himself. I suppose being 6-foot-5 and consistently punching downwards helps

The first quarter alone must have taken 45 minutes to play. Things settled down after that, mainly because neither team could afford to lose more players. Losing Dan Dawson really hurt the Blazers offense, while the Rock defense was decimated – all four Rock players tossed were defenders. There were times when both Doyle and Manning were playing D - I figured that they just got caught on the floor during a quick transition, but then realized that they had to play defense because almost half of their defenders were in the dressing room.

Bob Watson now has a GAA of less than 7.00 after two games, which is pretty unbelievable. He made some pretty key saves in OT, but throughout the game, Cosmo was even better. If not for some of Cosmo's acrobatics, this game would have been over long before it was.

So the game was pretty weird, but in actual fact, the whole Rock experience was a little different too. Two for the Show were not there (sorry, have to dry my tears before continuing... (snif) OK, I'm better now), and for the first time ever, none of the players (save Whipper) had nicknames. The attendance was only about 11,000 – I was surprised at how low that was. I was expecting 14-15,000 or so. They did have the same "hostess" as last year – the pretty girl who gives stuff away, and she had a helper this year. I question the wisdom of asking fans trivia questions for prizes during play, which caused me to miss a goal, but then I suppose that's my own fault for not watching the game. The fact that I let that draw my attention away from the game it itself a little weird, considering it was a really good, albeit weird, game.

Roberto Alomar and Richard Nixon

On my way home from work today, I was listening to a Prime Time Sports podcast from the other day, the day after the Baseball Hall of Fame announcement. During the show, Richard Griffin of the Toronto Star made perhaps the dumbest comparison in the history of, well, anything. They were discussing the fact that some players are not voted in to the Hall for years and then are voted in, when nothing changed in the meantime to suddenly make them HoF-worthy. Griffin said:

Richard Nixon in 1960 was no different than the guy in '68. He was not elected in '60, he got to be President of the United States in 1968.

He's comparison the election of a President with the selection of a player into the Hall of Fame. This is not just an apples-to-oranges comparison, this is apples to Volkswagens. And I don't mean Beetles, because they're sort of round like an apple, I'm talking about a Touareg or one of those big old bus things. And one that's not red. Or green. Or yellow.

• I don't know what the population of the US was in 1960 or 1968, but it was well over a hundred million, most of whom were eligible to vote. A large percentage of them are less than fully informed on the issues and where the candidates stand on things. There are about 500 professional baseball writers who can vote for the HoF, and they all follow baseball in great detail because it's their job. You and I may not agree with them all of the time, but they are better informed on baseball than the majority of voters are on politics.
• When you vote for the President, you choose exactly zero or one of the candidates. There are only a handful of candidates, and usually only two that have any real hope of winning a Presidential election. Not only will people vote for you if they want you to be President, but they may vote for you if they don't want the other guy to be President. Perhaps people thought Kennedy was a better choice for President in 1960, but that Nixon was a better choice than Hubert Humphrey in 1968. The HoF voters can vote for any number of eligible candidates, so voting for one doesn't automatically mean that you can't vote for someone else. If you think Andre Dawson and Tim Raines are both worthy, you can vote for both of them. If you don't think Dawson is worthy, you don't vote for Raines to try to keep Dawson out.
• You elect a President for what you think he is going to do. You elect a baseball player to the HoF for what he's already done.
• Does he really think that Richard Nixon was no different in 1968 than in 1960? He may not have served as a Senator or Congressman during that time, but things happened during his life that changed who he was. Plus the country changed, so even if he wasn't right for the country in 1960, he may have been in 1968. None of that means anything when electing someone to the HoF. What Alomar did during his career will not change between now and a year from now.

I'm not sure what surprises me more – that a professional journalist would make such a meaningless comparison, or the fact that none of the three other professional journalists / broadcasters on the show called him on it.

Rock 2010 season opener

Just watched the Toronto Rock – Boston Blazers game on TSN2. Dave Randorf and Brian Shanahan did the announcing, and did a fine job. Randorf isn't that familiar with lacrosse or the NLL, but is doing a far better play-by-play job than many other lacrosse neophytes I've heard in the past. The video is very clear (apparently in HD, though I don't have HD), and the whole thing is just very professional – much better than the Score did a few years ago. After a couple of years without it, it's great to see Rock games on TV again. All the games are streamed live on the internet, but this is just orders of magnitude better.

One thing I hate about watching lacrosse on TV is that the announcers always feel like they have to explain all the rules – over and back, shot clock, crease violations, stuff like that, during every game. I understand that lacrosse is a niche sport and they're trying to build interest among those watching who may be unfamiliar with it, but it's still annoying to those of us who already know it. Another thing I hate is that lacrosse doesn't get the high-paying advertisers, so we get lots of the short-infomercial type commercials – MicroForce, Slap Chop (we actually have one of these, with a different name, and it works really well), Palm Wallet... (Having said that, the second half of the game had less of these than the first half.) Of course, lacrosse is on TV rarely enough that I'm not going to complain about it. Uh, except now.

First Rock goal of the season: rookie Creighton Reid? Unassisted? After a bad play by Dan Dawson? What planet are we on again?

Rock rookie Garrett Billings scored four in the first half of his first ever NLL game and one more in the 4th. Hominuck, LeBlanc, Reid and Billings each scored in their first Rock game. Beautiful.

Remember when I said that the return of Colin Doyle might help Blaine Manning rebound from last year? Manning has a hat-trick in the first half and another goal in the 4th, while Doyle had a goal and seven assists.

Troy Cordingley said at half-time that they're doing all the "little things" well, and one of the things he specifically mentioned is getting on and off the floor quickly. How did he manage to coach Josh Sanderson in Calgary last year? Sanderson is an outstanding player, but during his time in Toronto, he was always brutal for taking his time getting off the floor.

Other notes:

• The edges of the carpet looks like they don't fit near the edges. The time-delay video of the conversion from ice to lacrosse floor was very cool.
• There were an awful lot of empty seats right behind the benches.
• Boston should have won their challenge in the second quarter – the ball didn't cross the line before the player stepped on the crease line, so the goal shouldn't have counted.
• Is Troy "potty mouth" Cordingley really a first-grade teacher? Wow.
• A couple of times Boston players looked like they wanted to fight – kudos to the Toronto players for not responding.
• Both Boston goalies are former (very capable) backups for Watson in Toronto. Watson outplayed them both, though Cosmo really pulled it together in the second half.
• The NLL has a new stats provider this year, but they had problems in the second half of the game. Last year, Pointstreak was usually a couple of minutes behind the game, but right now, ten minutes after the game ended, the web site still says it's 12-5 in the third, and has for half an hour or so.

Anyway, it was a great game, and it was surprising how different the Rock team looks compared to last year. I'm sure it's not entirely because of Doyle's return, but they seemed to be brimming with confidence, and playing smart. Looking forward to the home opener next Friday!