Mike’s Blog

Yeah, I know no one keeps ‘em.  But I’ll give it my best shot this year, as usual.

This is what I hope to achieve in ‘09:

• No more apologies.  I’m not sorry for anything anymore.  I do this too much and it paints a picture of me as someone who’s weak.  No one ever apologizes to me, so why should I?
• By the same token, I’m going to be a better person and not do the things I would normally need to apologize for.   In all things, I want to set a good example for my daughter - including watching my mouth.  I cuss like a sailor and she’s just now starting to learn how to speak.  That ain’t good.
• Be nicer to my wife.  I’m too hard on her for a lot of things.  I gotta learn to relax.
• Be more productive at work - even if I don’t get rewarded for it.  I feel I do good work, but I could be better.
• Improve my focus.  I have to accept the fact that I’m not a good multitasker, and cut out the distractions.
• Speak my mind more often, regardless of the consequences.  I’m going to start by confronting my bosses about the fact that I got passed over for a raise in favor of a guy who sleeps in his chair at work.   I don’t want to be a doormat, and I’m going to speak up when I feel I or someone else is getting the shaft (like, for example, a couple weeks ago when I felt a co-worker was unnecessarily chewed out in a very rude fashion over email and I said nothing about it).  However…..
• I’m not going to be relentlessly negative about everything.  Nobody likes that guy.
• Get more sleep.  When I wake up in the morning craving brains, that’s not a good sign.  And on a related note….
• Cut down on the things I get myself involved in.  I have too many interests and activities, and I fool myself into thinking I have enough time for all of them.  I’m a dad.  I don’t have that kind of time anymore.  I have to be more realistic.
• Be more consistent.  I waffle too much in my opinions.  I’m going to pick a side and stick with it.
• Blog more.   This has the added bonus of adding more stuff to my Facebook profile, since I’ve got that set up already.  (Hi, Facebook.)  I’m going to give it my best shot to do a weekly update type of thing.  I’ve said this in the past and always regretted not sticking with it.  I’m going to try a Monday schedule and see how it goes.
• Increase my Xbox gamerscore to 25,000 by the end of ‘09  - it currently stands at 15,535 after finishing off Gears of War 2.  And I’ll give it my best shot to do this legit; I’m going to actually play the games I already own, not seek out those with easy gamerscore. (As an aside: I know that the concept of gamerscore on Xbox 360 is silly to some, and turns others off.  I grew up in an era where games were played to achieve the highest score, not to simply finish the game.  Having your initials on the top of the leaderboard - we didn’t have room for a full name, for God’s sake - was a badge of honor, one you wore proudly.  I view Xbox Live gamerscore as an extension of that.)
• Find ways to control my spending and expenses.  My credit card debt is obscene.
• I’m not going to say I’m resolving to elmiinate my debt by the end of the year, but I want to make a big dent in it.  Lower it by 50%, at least.

I think that’s enough of a list to keep me busy.  Happy New Year, everyone.

As a big believer in the notion that the success of a sports league is the continued strength and success of its oldest franchises, I am really happy to see this.  Just two short years ago the Blackhawks were a complete joke, and the quick turnaround has been a pleasant surprise.

Fans warm to Blackhawks after decade of apathy - NHL - Yahoo! Sports

Nowadays, the Blackhawks are such a hot ticket even seats way up high in the United Center are filled. The Indian Head logo is all the rage, spotted across the city on men and women, young and old, on everything from jerseys to caps to pajama bottoms.

As a video on the Jumbotron before a recent game proclaimed, “Hockey never left Chicago, but it has definitely returned.”

A year after the season ticket base dwindled to 3,400, it’s now a franchise-record 14,000. Every game so far has sold out, including a regular-season record 22,690 for the Oct. 25 game against the Red Wings. Merchandise sales are up a whopping 60 percent from last year.

I’m playing in four fantasy leagues this year.  I don’t mean to brag, but after six weeks, I’ve scored more points than everyone else by far in every league and I’m ranked #1 or #2 in each.

OK, I guess I did mean to brag.

I’m sure this post just totally blew up my karma.  Ah well.

I missed last year, but this year I’m back with a vengeance.  Here are my predicted records for the 2008 NFL season:

Oh, I’ve just gotta put this one up.

I am hereby predicting another last-place finish for Tampa.  Guess 12 years of watching Barry on ESPN wasn’t enough to prove to the Lightning’s new owners that Barry knows absolutely nothing about hockey.  (And as for how Barry was employed by ESPN for so long: ESPN doesn’t know a lick about hockey either.)

Lightning hires Barry Melrose as coach - NHL - Yahoo! Sports

Hard to believe my first Father’s Day as a dad has come and gone already.  This is an image of the card my darling daughter gave me (I suspect she had a little help from Mommy in making it, though):

Sarah is now 6 months and a week old.  Today was her six-month checkup - she’s now up to 14 lbs, 12 oz. and is 26.5 inches long, so she’s more than doubled her weight since birth now.  She started baby food a couple months ago and is now eating three regular meals a day, plus bottles in between meals to supplement, with the occasional baby biscuit.  She’s been flipping over for a while and seems like she’s just about to start crawling, which means I’d better get some gates installed around the house pronto.  I expect her teeth to start coming in very soon, too.

She’s definitely got her own personality by now.  She’s a very happy baby - when I check on her in the morning, if she’s awake she’ll let loose a huge smile when she sees me.  I can’t think of any better way to get my day off to a good start. She’s also very curious and very smart.  I love watching her study some new object, trying to figure out how it works or what its purpose is.  A good example is her new pool, which we got just last week.  Although she can’t sit up on her own quite yet, she’s fairly good at holding herself up if we put her in a sitting position - so we’ll sit her down and let her splash around in the pool.  She studied the water like there was going to be a quiz afterwards, with the most serious look on her face.  It’s the cutest thing.

My favorite part so far about being a dad is simply watching her grow up.  As an example, over the last week or two she’s started to use her hands to hold her own bottle.  She’s not consistent about it yet, but I can see her learn how seemingly right before my eyes.  It’s very common to see her doing things that just a week ago she hadn’t learned yet.

I love being a dad.

I haven’t put anything up here in a long time. Too long. I intend to rectify that.

So while I regain my bearings here, I present proof at long last that spam is indeed the work of the devil:

Now that the playoffs are in full swing, lest anyone forget how heated things can get, here’s a little reminder…

Last year, Chris Neil leveled Chris Drury with a blindside hit a full second after the puck was shot, driving his shoulder into Drury’s head.  Drury missed 4 or 5 games with a concussion, and when the hit was called dirty, Ottawa fans screamed “You gotta keep your head up”.   Daniel Alfredsson apparently didn’t listen.  Mark Bell just proved to the Senators that karma is a bitch by doing almost the exact same thing to Alfie - a guy who, by the way, proved how high-class he is last year by intentionally shooting the puck at Scott Niedermayer during the finals.

Ottawa fans, don’t you dare tell me the Bell hit was dirty after defending the Neil hit.  Don’t you dare.

Exhibit A right here. LOL

Wifey’s creative skills at work!

When you block someone on Facebook who belongs to the same group as you: in addition to not showing up in their other search results, you also will not appear to them as a member of that group.

That probably seems obvious to most, but since it seemingly wasn’t explicitly mentioned anywhere, I conducted an experiment (thanks Mike!) and thought I should mention the results in case anyone else out there wondered about this.

… the bright side is that there are now only 14 games left in Dmitri Kalinin’s Buffalo Sabres career.

Now THAT is something to celebrate!

Mr. Regier, if your team truly has a need for a slow-skating defenseman who mishandles the puck, commits countless giveaways, and allows breakaway after breakaway, please give my agent a call.  I’ll offer my services for much less than the soon-to-be free agent Kalinin will surely fetch on the open market.

(Dmitri, you didn’t seriously wonder why your agent hasn’t been called yet, did you?)

I decided to get the Xbox 360 HD-DVD add-on this week, since the price came down to $50 in the wake of Blu-Ray’s victory over HD-DVD.   So far, I’m impressed with the picture quality and the menu system that pops up while the movie is still playing - that’s pretty neat.   (Dumb moment during setup that I must share: I popped the install disc into the HD-DVD drive, which made a loud noise and claimed it couldn’t be read.  Then it dawned on me: of course it can’t be read, the 360 doesn’t know how to use this drive yet, that’s why there’s an INSTALL DISC.  Durrrrr.)

Blu-Ray fanboys are pretty funny, by the way.  “But HD-DVD is obsolete!”  Really?  I must have been imagining that I was watching King Kong in HD last night.  Figment of my freakin’ imagination, that’s for sure.  Look, HD-DVD didn’t magically stop working just because eight movie studios decreed that “the market” (read: themselves) decided that Blu-Ray was better.  Fact: $400, plus $30 per movie,  is too much for me to pay.  $50 for an HD-DVD player with a ton of clearanced movies for less than $15… now you’re talking.  My add-on will work fine until combo players become cheap enough, or Blu-Ray becomes cheap enough and I rip my HD-DVDs and re-burn to Blu-Ray.  It’s 50 lousy bucks, there’s not a whole lot of risk here.

However, I reserve the right to change my opinion if the HD-DVD player blows up my house or says mean things about my mom.  THEN the gloves are off.

I couldn’t resist putting this up.

Happy Valentine’s Day to my friends that celebrate it.  Guys, may you not go broke pleasing your ladies!

Digsby is a new instant messenger program that strives to combine IM, email, and social network updates.  It’s in private beta right now, although I managed to get an invite.  I just added a widget over there in the sidebar that lets visitors to this site chat with me in real-time if I happen to be logged in. Let’s see how this goes.

In my post the other day, I neglected to mention of the most important things I’ve learned: newborns cry a lot, and it’s not a behavioral thing - it’s just the only way they know how to communicate. Therefore, it’s really important to learn not to take it personally. I’ve found that keeping this in mind helps me to stay patient when Sarah is being particularly difficult (and believe me, it’s happened - particularly when it’s late, I’m super tired, and I can’t think straight anymore. My wife seemed really impressed yesterday when I mentioned I understood this concept - is this something a lot of new dads just don’t get?

Also, a clarification: the other day, I said that those without children who don’t have the experience should just shut up. That’s not really what I should have said. Advice is always welcomed; I don’t ever want to discourage that. But there’s a difference between someone who passes along a helpful hint that he has perhaps learned from a sibling with a child, versus the childless know-it-all who tells you you’re doing it all wrong.