A nice, succinct summary. Wikipedia articles should all strive to be thus.
January 2007 Archives
Not that it took any great stretch of the imagination, but I think I called it. 6:15 of icetime, including 52 seconds of PP time (all near the end, I think, when the game was already lost). He tried to go with Regehr, Godard, and Phaneuf, but only Godard was willing and the referees broke them up pretty quickly. Nice cheapshot from behind by Phaneuf to knock him over in a scrum though. (Smith got Regehr later, not that that was much of a battle.) He just missed putting Zyuzin through the boards though, and therein lay the crux of young Zach's problems. Put him on a line with Nedved and Oates, and they could compete for slowest man on the ice at the All Star Game. He definitely has game, he has spunk, we didn't see enough of his stickhandling to really know, and 0 shots means we don't know how good his is (not that anybody was scoring on Kipper tonight). But man, is his skating rough. He also looked a bit tired out there at times, although maybe it was just that he has two gears: first and reverse.
He didn't play exceptionally well, although he made some good plays and no real bad ones. The misconduct at the end was cautionary on the part of the referees, I think, and not really his fault. He was doing his job, exactly what MacT told him, I think - try to get on Phaneuf and Regehr. The latter worthy manhandled Hemsky a few times nevertheless, while I saw a distinct lack of handling of Huselius and Tanguay. Granted, those two are so slippery that maybe that's difficult, but there's got to be a way to get in the cheapshots on them. You don't have to kill them like Boogard apparently tried to do to Hemsky (I missed Coach's Corner, my wife wanted the Xbox, sigh) but a shot and a warning: tell Regehr to lay off Hemsky, or you're next.
Will Stortini draw in again? Hard to say. If Stoll is out another game, maybe, but unless he can get his skating to the point where he can run guys down, his only effectiveness will really be as a corner-mucker and a scrapper. Deity knows the Oilers can use guys who will get their hands dirty and their knuckles bruised right now, but those guys also need to be able to skate well enough that they won't be a liability on the road or when they're exposed at home. I'd say maybe to stand in front on the power play like he tried to do, but that's a laugh - the Oilers PP would have to gain the zone and stay there for more than two seconds, something they've shown a distinct inability to do lately.
On the whole, just by playing in the bigs he's covered his draft number - 3rd round, 94th overall - even if it was partially because of injury. 1 NHL game puts him ahead of two first-rounders from his year (including Hugh Jessiman, somebody several HFBoarders were lusting after), as well as vast swathes of others drafted before him. He's obviously coachable and team-first (something you would expect from a young man who captained his junior team for a couple of years in a tough town), but he's got some major improvement to do if he wants to inherit the mantle of Ethan Moreau and Kelly Buchberger, never mind Georges Laraque. Grade him a C+ overall for tonight, and a B considering everything else. (Overall he'd have had a better score if he'd pissed off Phaneuf or Regehr so much they took an instigator - maybe he should take Finnish lessons from Tikkanen.)
(Photo shamelessly grabbed from Hamilton Scores. Forgive the lousy wrapping, it's late and my MT-fu has abandoned me.)
I was watching Hockey Day In Canada the other day, and my wife noted that one of the goalies didn't appear to have any throat protection. I said he likely had something strapped on like a collar, because if nothing else he'd not want to get his throat cut. Turns out maybe he wasn't.
Has Luongo never heard of Clint Malarchuk? Maybe that's too long ago, how about Trent McCleary? Still too long ago? Not to the throat, but ask Mike Smith what a slapshot off the noggin feels like. (Yeah, he was fine and skating around after that blast, but he's on the injured reserve list now with a concussion. Hopefully he's ok.)
A skater not wearing a visor is one thing, but a goalie not wearing any throat protection? There's only one word for that, and it's in-fucking-sane.
Here's a question. You're an insurance company, and you're crazy enough to insure professional hockey players. Here's a star goalie, he's making $27 million dollars over the next four years in a backloaded (6 + 6.5 + 7 + 7.5m) contract, and he's not wearing any protection on his neck. What kind of premiums do you ask for from the team? (Or are players required to self-insure? I don't know.)
When do teams start demanding that their players wear more protection? How happy would the Leafs be right now if they'd kept a healthy Berard and had McCabe and Kaberle to go along with him? (Trick question, they'd still suck, but their power play would be something to see, at least.) Could Al MacInnis have played another season or two? I know I'm not the first person to say this, and I know the NHLPA would likely file a grievance on the behalf of their players, but like the helmet issue in the 80s, maybe they need to start staging something in.
Kelly Hrudey seems confused: "So here it goes -- literally, to a man, every single player or ex-player I spoke to believed that Fitzpatrick should not be included in the game."
Yeah, so? Their votes count just as much as anybody else's, for starters, and second, the NHL said explicity that fans get to vote. That means just that: the votes of the fans count. Players don't like who the fans select? Tough titty, that's what living in a democracy is all about. Don't like the results of the vote? Either work to change it next time, or get out. Either way, don't attack the people who voted contrary to how you would have preferred; that's just stupid.
Did Mr. Hrudey miss the point of the huge "Thank you for your support fans!" all over the rinks last season? Without us idiots who don't know who deserves to play and who doesn't, he wouldn't have his job. He'd be yet another irrelevant retired player, likely the subject of the occasional hometown article about the real estate business or car dealership he's running.
Granted, he didn't come right out and say everybody who voted for Rory Fitzpatrick is an idiot, not like a few other jerks, and his conclusion is probably correct, but still. "Don't hate the playa, hate the game." In the end, you got the result you wanted - lunchbucket Rory out, Very Deserving Fresh Hot Scoring Machines like Cheechoo and Staal in, real All-Stars Iginla and Pronger not even listed as "selected but injured," so quit your bitching. Your candidates won, isn't that enough?
As a professional system administrator, the idea of data loss horrifies me. A few years ago, I became interested in things like how memory works, and how to improve my own; mind mapping and memory palaces, for instance. Remembering everything is a good thing, right?
Well, maybe not. Maybe it's just as well that I don't recall the exact details of a fight I had with my wife a few months ago, and how much it hurt when I pulled a muscle in my back as a teenager, or the precise details of what my dog smelled like after he'd found a dead woodchuck to roll around in. Maybe the hundreds of other details I'm sure I've forgotten in my lifetime, some squishing together, and some fading, are not just a part of who I am.
What if this sort of fading and forgetting was integral to how human memory works? Whatever its importance to us personally, memory itself must be a key component to how human intelligence and cognition works - which returns me to my first sentence.
What if it's impossible to build a true AI without granting it the ability to forget things? How does one simulate an undergrad degree, along with its almost requisite series of hard nights out on the town and slaughtered brain cells? How do we decide what memories are important to keep around, and which must fade in order for our artificial person to be... well, a person?
Now that the All-Star voting is over, and while I'm ripping NHL icons new ones for being jerks... Wayne Gretzky, you're an asshole for slamming Rory Fitzpatrick. Your career was spent being protected by players even more marginal than Fitzpatrick. It's true, Dave Semenko scored a hat trick, and Rory never has - but that was because he was on your wing, not because he was a prolific scorer. Marty McSorley wasn't a hell of a lot better than Rory either. Oh, and where is your good buddy Marty who you couldn't do without in LA now anyway? I'm surprised he doesn't have a job with the Coyotes like most of the rest of the Gretzky-extended-clan. Maybe there was a falling out. Or maybe consorting with gamblers is a step above consorting with guys who ended their NHL careers with an ill-chosen stick, I don't know.
Don Cherry, you're an asshole too - same reason. How many hat tricks did *you* have? I'll be generous and let you count the ones from your long, long *AHL* career.
I'm with mudcrutch79 on this one, and especially with Lowetide's comments in the comment thread there. The "professional" media should hang its heads in shame for their attacks on Rory Fitzpatrick. And like cambo in that comments thread, I *might* have watched the All-Star Game had Fitzpatrick been selected. It's an irrelevant game anyway, but at least there'd have been some interest. Now? Not so much. Players are always talking about how great the A-SG is because it gives them a chance to have fun; they're always being pictured talking to other players who are normally rivals. Save it for the golf course, because I don't care if you have fun at your jobs, guys. Why should I? It's not like you care if I have fun at mine, nor do I want you to.
I picked up a Brother HL 1440 from a friend for relatively cheap: $40 for the printer, pagecount about 6400 with a new drum 50% ago. I knew it was going to be a struggle; it wasn't terrible, but there's a lot of stuff that's not really documented very well.
First of all, my router (spacek) runs FreeBSD, and since it's almost always on (if any other computer is on, it's likely to be for internets), plus I wasn't keen on depending on Linda's PC any more, so I attached it to the router with the USB cable I stole from Linda's inkjet.
Then I read the FreeBSD printing handbook. It basically says "USB is nice, don't use it. Get a parallel printer instead." Well, my 1440 has both parallel and USB, but we lack a parallel cable, so USB it was. I figured I'd be in for it anyway, so I built CUPS. I'd done some googling, and discovered I'd likely be best off at this point setting up my devfs entries:
spacek# cat /etc/devfs.rules
[system=10]
add path 'unlpt*' mode 0660 group cups
add path 'ulpt*' mode 0660 group cups
spacek#
Getting the PPD was easy: I skipped on over to linuxprinting.org and sucked it down to my Mac (reaper).
After faffing about a bit in /usr/local/etc/cups/cupsd.conf, I finally just changed every instance of "Allow localhost" to "Allow all". Horrible security, but at least it let me configure the printers without hassle. ("Allow reaper" didn't seem to work, nor did using the IP.) I was OK, because I had
Listen localhost:631
Listen spacek:631
but those went away later, and turned into "Listen 631" and now it's listening on every interface - I will have to fix that later, along with the Allow lines.
I added the printer, calling it "brother", using the https admin page, giving it the device "USB Printer #1 (no reset)", and fed it the PPD I'd previously downloaded when it asked.
Test page came out ok, so I told CUPS to "Share published printers connected to this system" (that's when it blew away my Listen entries) and googled for "windows ipp". The first hit gave me the hint - set up a class. I did that, called it Windows, and then downloaded the Brother HL 1440 drivers from brother.com. I had to install the Printing System, so I tried it on Linda's Windows PC first. (Hey, I just rebuilt mine!) Piece of cake.
reaper picked up on the shared printer too, as soon as I told it to go look. That was less than successful - printing off one of my blawg entries cut off the top little bit. I'm not sure what's going on, maybe a PPD issue.
During the initial setup, I'd been getting "foomatic-rip failed" error messages when I tried to print anything. I fixed that by installing the print/foomatic-filters port and restarting CUPS.
I'd made some changes to my smb.conf (I run Samba on spacek to share my home directory to my Windows PC), but it turns out those weren't necessary. I may try adding Samba support anyway, just because I'm like that.
So in summary:
1 USB printers work ok in FreeBSD, but you'll want to change/create /etc/defvs.rules (I have a FreeBSD 6.1 box, YMMV for older distributions).
2 Chances are good that you'll want the print/cups and print/foomatic-filter ports installed. I also did print/a2ps-letter for good measure, as the foomatic port said it might want it.
3 You'll likely need to create a class for a Windows machine to pick up on the IPP printer. I had already created the http://spacek/class/Windows port while trying to do things by hand, then the Brother Printing System stuff found it at installtime - will likely try creating the port first by hand when I go to install the printer on my own Windows machine.
4 Mac printing was less than wildly successful.
5 Following the above directions will result in a less-than-secure CUPS installation, although that's easily rectified.
I'll post further once I've got things a bit more refined.
Update (12 January 2007): It looks like you first have to trick Windows by starting to add a network printer; tell it the address is http://cups.server:631/classes/classname, then cancel out. During the installation of the Brother software, it will ask what kind of printer, tell it that it's a "Network Shared Printer" - it will bring up a "Browse for Printer" dialogue box. Cancel that, then it will ask what port to use. Then you can select the http port and away you go.
I'd meant to ruminate on this one for a while, or perhaps do a bit more research, and then I forgot to publish it over the break. So I'm publishing it now, but it was written 28 December 2006.
New stuff: given the news out of KC, I'm even more disappointed in Mario. It seems clear to me that the Balsillie bid wasn't really being taken seriously, and it seems that the Pens ownership are just trying to leverage free arenas. Bully for them if they can get it, but the language Lemieux used here goes beyond the pale, IMO.
Old stuff:
I'm shocked and disappointed that Mario Lemieux would take this approach. (I don't need to be offended, I'm sure Jim Ballsillie can be offended enough on his own behalf.) Unless "sources" are very wrong, the NHL placed some last-minute conditions on the sale, and Ballsillie had initially said he may come at it again. Well, I guess he won't be now, and I expect he'll be requesting his deposit back too.
Hey Mario, if you want to see what being jerked around is like, you could look to Edmonton for an example. (I went looking for stories on the dude who was allegedly a millionaire that came out of nowhere and put in a bid on the Oilers, but turned out to be a con man. I couldn't find them. Pretend there's a link to one of them there, I didn't feel like busting out Lexis Nexis tonight.)
It's bleedingly obvious to anybody who's half paying attention that the Oilers are severely lacking on the blueline. Their weaknesses have been exposed (bad first passes, Smith and Staios are overworked while trying to also break in rookies) and it's only going to get worse. In Anaheim, Pronger's out a month or so and Beauchemin's out indefinitely, the 'canes are down three starters and just traded for Seidenberg (a guy who has been sometimes rumoured to be on his way to Edmonton), Atlanta is minus Andy Sutton, John-Michael Liles and Jordan Leopold hurt in Colorado, Bryan Berard is hurt in Columbus, New Jersey is missing Richard Matvichuk and Colin White. On Long Island Joel Bouchard is gone indefinitely, across the way the Rangers have Sandis Ozolinsh out for a while, PIttsburgh may have a new arena before Eric Cairns returns and Mark Eaton is hurt too, and finally the Caps have Bryan Muir and John Erskine out indefinitely.
I didn't count, but that's an awful lot of NHL-calibre defencemen (even if some of them are borderline) out "indefinitely", and I didn't count the half dozen or eight that are set to return soon or are day to day. As well, playoff teams are going to want to start loading up soon. Anaheim, in particular, is likely to want at least one more guy in case Pronger's foot doesn't heal (I wonder if it's the same one he broke last season?), and Beauchemin's injury is a ruptured spleen - ouch. The Devils are likely going to be shopping for the same sorts of guys that the Oilers want, and they've got Scott Gomez to dangle.
If Lowe can pull off another Salmaleinen for Spacek type deal, my hat is truly off to him, but right now I'm resigned to watching the team back into 7th or 8th place again in the last couple of weeks, or miss the playoffs altogether. That would be too bad, as Roloson's not getting any younger (or better, from the sounds of it) and neither are Smyth, Smith, Moreau, and some of the other core guys.
