Yearly Archives: 2008

Ahh, my good friend Karma. Nice to see you again

Posted on by
Reply

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.

On Facebook, groups, and blocking

Posted on by
Reply

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.

If the Sabres miss the playoffs….

Posted on by
Reply

… 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?)

Xbox 360 HD-DVD Player

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Digsby Widget

Posted on by
Reply

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.

What I've learned, Part Deux

Posted on by
Reply

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.