OK, you talked me into it...

• Four Jobs You've Had In Your Life
  • McBurger slinger.
  • dBase IV (whoa!) monkey
  • Student assistant at the college computer center. (Easiest time I ever served. I got paid to screw around on a VAX and give Elementary Education majors helpful advice like "Click there." when they couldn't figure out a Mac.)
  • VB monkey
• Four Movies You Could Watch Over And Over
  • Monty Python And The Holy Grail
  • Field Of Dreams
  • True Lies
  • The Lord Of The Rings
• Four Cities You've Lived In
  • Cheswick, PA
  • Grove City, PA
  • Glenshaw, PA
  • (I haven't moved that many times. Heck, I'm stretching it by counting college.)
• Four TV Shows You Love To Watch
  • Monk
  • My Name Is Earl
  • Battlestar Galactica
  • Numb3rs
• Four Places You've Been On Vacation
  • Toronto, ONT
  • Orlando/Bradenton, FL (Is vacationing in a Disney-owned property a requirement of citizenship in the US? And if you're a baseball fan, I highly recommend you see at least one spring training game in your life.)
  • Washington, DC
  • Colorado Springs, CO
• Four Websites You Visit Daily (Besides Slashdot)
  • CNN
  • AutoWeek
  • GMail
  • A ton of RSS feeds
• Four Of Your Favorite Foods
  • Hawaiian Pizza (Don't start!)
  • Lasagne
  • Mom's meatloaf
  • Fish and Chips
• Four Places You'd Rather Be Right Now
  • [See Vacation List, above]
  • Ireland
  • Japan
  • Seven Springs, so I can put all this damn snow to good use!

It was like 1991 all over again. The crowd was rocking, Christina Aguilera sang the National Anthem, Mark Recchi was on the wing, the Pens were getting out-shot but still winning, Mario was dominating every shift, and the refs put the whistles away in the third period.

But, of course, this is 2005. That means Christina's no longer that little girl from Wexford who sings the Star-Spangled Banner real good, but a multi-platinum international superstar who has to hold on to her wig for the high notes. The refs didn't blow many whistles in the third because they wore 'em out in the first two. And Mario wasn't on a line with Recchi and Kevin Stevens, but Ryan Malone and Ziggy Palffy.

But that's OK, because The Wreckin' Ball is showing young Sidney Crosby the way. Sid's a quick study, judging by how he scored his first NHL goal: Stuffing a close rebound behind Hannu Toivonen at 18:32 of the 2nd. (Assisted by Recchi and Palffy, on the power play, for the record.)

For those of you who haven't been to your local NHL rink for a game yet, beg, borrow, or steal to get tickets! Watching teams trade end-to-end rushes, long lead passes (no more two-line-pass rule!), and odd-man breaks is a blast when you're in the middle of a loud, rowdy crowd of 17,000.

Only four things could ruin such a wonderful night:

1. Most players still haven't learned that using stick on player == minor penalty, no matter how light the touch is. Lots of power plays and 5-on-3 time. Just kills the flow.
2. I am now convinced that the NHL tells its linesmen the exact opposite of what the rulebook says on icing. For years, they'd call icing when a defensive player could play the puck. All too often, they'd call icing when a defensive player tried to play the puck, but missed. Now, if an iced puck is the result of a missed pass, the linesman has the discretion to wave it off. Which, of course, means that the linesmen call icing every stinkin' time!
3. The refs still enjoy altering the outcome of the game with late-third penalties. There were two penalties called in the third period: One on Boston at 3:44, one on Pittsburgh, with the game tied, at 19:19. 16 minutes of non-calls, and they decide to get ticky-tack again with less than a minute left? What a crock!
4. Eddie Olczyk is under the mistaken impression that Steve Poapst is a penalty killer. Poapst spent the short overtime staggering around the slot like the last hour of a South Side pub crawl, looking for an alley to pee in, totally oblivious to the Bruins' power play. Glen Murray had time to pitch a tent before scoring the game-winner.

Final score: Bruins 7, Penguins 6, and Steve Poapst thanks his lucky stars that he hasn't been in town long enough for anyone to recognize him at the Giant Eagle.

Devils 5, Penguins 1, as Martin Brodeur puts a stone cold shutdown on the Pens' power play. Points of interest:

1. It's a shame we opened against the Devils and Brodeur. Between 37 shots, and a power play that rotates Lemieux, Malone, Palffy, Crosby, Recchi, LeClair, Gonchar, Jackman, and Tarnstrom, any lesser goaltender would be curled in his net, whimpering "Make it stop."
2. Thibault's rubber, Brodeur's glue. Rebound control for teh win!
3. Watching Sidney Crosby puck-handle is like watching Jagr in his prime. (Prime = "Before he turned into a sullen, compulsive-gambling headcase who thinks Darius Kasparaitis has mastered the English language.") Strong as an ox, and he still has a few more years to bulk up.
4. Thibault scares me sometimes. Last night, he nonchalantly watched a floater of a wrist shot that he though would sail over the net. It clanked off the front of the crossbar and back into the slot. If you watch the replay closely, you can see his eyeballs pop out through the cage of his mask.
5. Over/under on LeClair's penalty minutes for the season: 300, all of them minors for tripping and holding. Looks like there won't be a place for another Legion Of Doom in the New NHL.

I've just read the transcript of an address that I found quite interesting. I found the following passage particularly eloquent. I'm not posting a link or naming the original author right away. The author's identity may color your opinion, which, indirectly, is part of the point. (If you know who it is, no spoilers, please.)

In fact, our first self-expression as a nation - "We the People" - made it clear where the ultimate source of authority lay. It was universally understood that the ultimate check and balance for American government was its accountability to the people. And the public forum was the place where the people held the government accountable. That is why it was so important that the marketplace of ideas operated independent from and beyond the authority of government.

The three most important characteristics of this marketplace of ideas were:

1. It was open to every individual, with no barriers to entry, save the necessity of literacy. This access, it is crucial to add, applied not only to the receipt of information but also to the ability to contribute information directly into the flow of ideas that was available to all;
2. The fate of ideas contributed by individuals depended, for the most part, on an emergent Meritocracy of Ideas. Those judged by the market to be good rose to the top, regardless of the wealth or class of the individual responsible for them;
3. The accepted rules of discourse presumed that the participants were all governed by an unspoken duty to search for general agreement. That is what a "Conversation of Democracy" is all about. [Emphasis mine.]

I've had a long-winded screed on the folly of party allegiance percolating in my brain for a while, and I may put it to HTML soon. Until then, consider this a little political hors d'oeuvre from somebody who normally doesn't engage in public ramblings on the subject.

Update: 3 Nov 2005 (a month?!): The author is Al Gore. The full article is here: http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/5/14301/6133

Check out ScuttleMonkey's writeup on a collection of interviews with Bill Gates.

Most of the comments deliver the smackdown SM deserves for such FUDness. I tried to use an Email Of Mysterious Future to save him the embarassment, but daddypants@slashdot.org is bouncing. Oy. Don't their teeth hurt from all the chewing gum necessary to hold this website together?

Rodent extremists at their worst.

For Father's Day, my wife bought me a "Squirrel Proof" bird feeder and 25 pounds of something called "oiled sunflower seeds." It had a cardinal -- feathered, not St. Louis -- on the bag.

The squirrels have been having a free banquet in my backyard ever since.

It only took me two 25-pound bags of Home Depot bird seed to figure this out. How in the world were six-ounce birds eating three pounds of seed a day? And still flying?

Then I saw it. Perched on my state-of-the-art, just-for-birds feeder, a squirrel, casually eating away, knocking down some of the $10.99 seed to a couple of his friends on the ground.

Have you ever...

[ X ] Started following a meme, then realized that you have no time to complete that many items when you're getting crushed at work and trying to sell your house at the same time.

Finally, after being held hostage by UPS for an extra day, my copy of OS X Tiger arrived. So far, so good. Dashboard is nice. So far, though, the only GMail notifier widget I could find uses flowers in a vase, which really doesn't go with my aggresively abstract wallpaper. Mail is OK, but count me among the people who hate the new toolbar style. I wish Apple (and Microsoft, for that matter) would pick one toolbar style and stick with it.

BTW, FortKnox, if Bettis (or is it still Xerxes?) was screaming in pain last night, that was me. I was trying to use Automator to grab the FotoKon, but it stops cold on the first timeout, and it isn't transactional. I have to delete everything that was downloaded before the error, or it will save a 2nd copy with "-1" attached to the file name. And Automator has a symptom of Internet Explorer Disease: Hit Stop, and those files just keep downloading. What do you expect from version 1.0?

What's your Ron Mexico alias?

Mine's Montserrat. Rock Montserrat.

I suck. There was supposed to be a second photo, but I forgot. So the best I can do is a hint to the one photo that's there:

That photo was taken on vacation last fall, before the family went to dinner at a very fancy (and very good, I might add) restaurant in Colorado Springs.

I had else something in mind for this, but I just saw sound bites from Bob Goodenow and Dan Boyle on ESPNEWS. They're still posturing.

THE GAME'S DEAD. STONE FUCKING DEAD.

Bettman and Goodenow are standing over a gruesome corpse. The bloody knives are still in their hands.

And Dan Boyle is asking me to take sides?! Easy for him to say. He's in Sweden, taking some other hockey player's job.

Not like the owners have anything better to say. How about this passage from Bettman's letter to the fans:

...I want you to know we worked very hard, starting as far back as 1999, to prevent this from happening.

Yeah. In 1999, you started building a warchest.

Today at work, I packed my hockey-related cubicle decorations away. Once I get done writing this, I'm putting my jerseys in the cedar closet downstairs. The bobbleheads are going back in their boxes, behind the doors in the living room entertainment center.

Fuck 'em.

I've had a manifesto on this topic percolating all winter. For now, while I'm at work, I'll just say this:

The NHL will not survive as long as Gary Bettman and Bob Goodenow are in charge. No collective bargaining agreement can be successfully negotiated while labour's and management's leaders are taking it personally.

(Comments disabled. Save 'em for the upcoming rant.)

Is that a bubble around my head? I'm sorry, I'm afraid that's the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field. You see, I visited the Apple Store in Shadyside this evening. I wanted to see a Mac mini up close and personal.

I must have it. It will be mine.

You have to see one in person to appreciate just how small it is. The original plan was to get the S-Video adapter and use it in the living room. Now, I'm thinking it will go in the bedroom because I'm sure I'll have room for it: It can replace the stack of CDs currently occupying a small corner of the nightstand. I already have a flat-panel monitor that would work perfectly. (I don't think I could put it on top of the mini, though. The base is too big.) Just add Bluetooth kbd/mouse, and I'm set!

What really sold me, though, was Pages. Yeah, I'm buying a Mac for a word processor. Only a true geek could get a big stupid grin at the sight of an inspector palette. That's how much I prefer Lotus Word Pro to MS Word. I wonder if Apple poached any old SmartSuite devs from IBM? It's not like SS has been updated in, what, 4 years?

No procrastinating on my taxes this year, no, sir. To paraphrase a popular local morning show sketch:

I get my income tax check, and pow! It's dahn ta Macs'n'at!

(Prepare for more shameless gushing once it arrives.)

FUCK!

That is all.

From dubiousdave, via a certain Butcher we know and love.

For once, I feel like one of these things is right on about me. I'm really looking forward to being a father. Of course, I'm also looking forward to other things, like marriage, a long-term relationship, not totally screwing up a first date, things like that. :-P

I may have to see Big Fish now.

You are a XPIG--Expressive Practical Intellectual Giver. This makes you a Catch.

You are a magazine-cover, matinee idol dreamboat. Parents love you and want to set you up with their kids. However, first dates are tough because it takes time for your qualities to come out.

You are generous and kind. You think first and act later. You are cool in a conflict, but your practical side means if your partner throws out emotional appeals ("why can't we do what I want for a change?") they will grate on your nerves, even when the conflict is resolved.

You're a romantic. You enjoy the thrill of the hunt, and you don't just fall into bed with anyone. You pay close attention to your significant other's needs, and this makes you an excellent lover and partner. The problem is that your friends and lovers may find it so easy to express things to *you* that they lose sight of whether you feel as comfortable with *them*! This doesn't necessarily make you feel under-appreciated -- you're too well-adjusted and self-aware for that -- but you may feel restless. Thus you seek adventure in your life outside the relationship to prove and actualize yourself.

Of all the types, you would make the best parent.

You are coiffed.

Didja see "Big Fish"? 'Cause you're like Ewan MacGregor in "Big Fish."

Of the 35770 people who have taken this quiz, 8.1 % are this type.