I have found that setting up a PDF printer as your default printer is almost the perfect setup in Windows. Almost.
Currently, I use PDF Redirect as the default PDF printer here at the Castle of Confusion. I've tried (and bought) other programs to do this and I think I can say, unequivocally, that PDF Redirect is currently the best of breed. You can download it here. Defaulting to a PDF printer lets you survive accidental pressings of the print button. I'm klutzy enough to appreciate such protection.
Where printing to a PDF really shines is when printing web pages from Firefox. In the old days, I tended to save the page, but that created whole sub-folder trees of images in the page I was saving. I figured out long ago, the best option was to make a PDF version of the page, which could then be saved and looked at, when convenient. It would have all the pictures and graphics AND the links would be live to clicking IF you needed to do that. It also let me switch the default save format in Firefox to "Web page, HTML only" in the Save Type As box at the bottom of the dialog. This basically just saves the text of the page you are saving. That's good.
Of course, during my little imbroglio late last month with the crashing Popeye, I had to recover an earlier version of everything and one of the things missing in the recovery was settings for PDF Redirect. There aren't all that many settings in the program, but one of them was WHERE the program saved the PDF files to! It more or less defaults to the desktop (A blight on an otherwise useful program.) Programs that default to saving to the desktop deserve to have something nasty done to their programmers. It's unconscionable. Note that Firefox has the same dopey default.
Naturally, I forgot this when I started printing some PDF's of web pages. I then decided to check them out, just in case, by flipping over to Explorer Plus and perusing them in my data and download collection folder. Weren't there. Not a sign of them. I was ticked off and repeated the process. Still nothing. Until I noticed the part of PDF Redirect that showed where it was saving the files to. Yep, the desktop. I minimized all my windows, only to discover a panoply of icons festooning my nice, relatively empty desktop. Curses! I moved the files to the collection folder and then went into PDF Redirect and printed a small something, this time telling it to use the collections folder.
And that's all it took to correct PDF Redirect's future behaviour. JUST like Firefox, it will remember where you last saved something. Problem resolved until the next time I bomb this system back to its roots.
One last thing. My collections folder is called SHEZ. You have to be of a certain vintage of computer user to know the reference. It comes from an old program that was the best for downloading files from computer bulletin boards (the predecessor to the internet). Oddly enough, shez lives on in urban slang.
shez: A fail so hard it's beyond epic. Nothing can be saved.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
BOOKS: I've Finished My Birthday Wishlist
Although 2009 is off to a less than rousing literary success since I never got my Christmas Reading Week, I think things will get better for my Birthday Reading Week coming up in oh, about FIVE months. The reason? I've already finished my Wishbook for my birthday!!!
I have a mere 87 books on the list, which I promise not to buy between the time I officially release my wishbook and my birthday, a period of eight weeks. Takes a lot of will power, but it works for the purpose of getting lots to read and very few duplicates. Not NO duplicates, just a few. I'm hoping the new isolation method this year (nobody gets ANY common list) will mean a perfectly unique set of reading material. I've got a story later this month about the THREE copies of one book I got at Christmas, which should make Brett Battles happy.
At any rate, looking at the 24 main selections for the mid-year happiness that is my birthday, I see 13 new writers to me and eight books in various series that I am following. The Spellman, Stephanie Plum, Atticus Kodiak, Cape Weathers, Kop and The Retrieval Artist series will fulfill my quota of detective novels. The latter two are also Science Fiction as is the youth series Skybreaker. Finally, there is the welcome news of another Oregon Files book.
I'm quite excited about the new authors I will be trying. There are some excellent reviews for the list of new-to-me writers.
What I do is copy book covers to a list, a UNIQUE list that I give each of the various chapters of my extended family. On that list are six books I consider the jewels of their list, plus a further 12-24 to serve as extra options in case the books I want are unavailable for whatever reason. Rarely, it's a case of being sold out. Sometimes, the book is off the beaten path enough that the store they go to doesn't carry it. And occasionally, I get publication dates wrong and the book hasn't been published yet. In the case of one of the Artemis Fowl books by Eoin Colfer, I was wrong by a YEAR AND A HALF. A full 18 months, three wishlists, before it actually came out. Ultimately, it was worth the wait though [G].
Far from taking the suspense out of birthdays and Christmases, the list ensures gifts that I will be happy with, provides a solution to the problem of getting something for somebody who has everything he wants otherwise, and provides for SOME mystery as to WHICH books I do end up getting.
I have always included a series of knick knack gifts at all price-points, from less than a buck to more than $200, because I've always enjoyed the look on a gift-giver's faces when they see how happy I am when I open something that is ON my list, even if it's only a package of sugar-less gum. It's something I honestly treasure (and I chew a LOT, thus the ever-present notation on my wishlist). My smile almost always translates into smiles on THEIR faces. Win-win.
Readers can be a chore to buy for. When I was younger, I once got 11 books for Christmas. I had seven of them already and had read an eighth. For a LONG time, I got no more books at Christmas. It was other stuff and gift certificates. I've always hated gift certificates, even though they are given with only the purest of intentions. Despite that, I've given gift certificates on occasion. And I hated it, then, too. It seems to me that certificates are less useful than money, while at the same time, being less work than going to the store and finding that right gift yourself. It's almost the admittal of defeat in what SHOULD be a fun game of getting that something special for a loved one.
Of course, I'm famous for shopping year round. I have had Angela's Christmas books this year, stored away for two years. My gift closet is ALWAYS full!
On the other hand, I'm a chore to buy for. When people go off my list, they take risks. Sometimes they hit the sweet spot. Most times not. But I DO appreciate the effort each time.
But I'd still like them to stick to my list. Hint, Hint, Hint!
I have a mere 87 books on the list, which I promise not to buy between the time I officially release my wishbook and my birthday, a period of eight weeks. Takes a lot of will power, but it works for the purpose of getting lots to read and very few duplicates. Not NO duplicates, just a few. I'm hoping the new isolation method this year (nobody gets ANY common list) will mean a perfectly unique set of reading material. I've got a story later this month about the THREE copies of one book I got at Christmas, which should make Brett Battles happy.
At any rate, looking at the 24 main selections for the mid-year happiness that is my birthday, I see 13 new writers to me and eight books in various series that I am following. The Spellman, Stephanie Plum, Atticus Kodiak, Cape Weathers, Kop and The Retrieval Artist series will fulfill my quota of detective novels. The latter two are also Science Fiction as is the youth series Skybreaker. Finally, there is the welcome news of another Oregon Files book.
I'm quite excited about the new authors I will be trying. There are some excellent reviews for the list of new-to-me writers.
What I do is copy book covers to a list, a UNIQUE list that I give each of the various chapters of my extended family. On that list are six books I consider the jewels of their list, plus a further 12-24 to serve as extra options in case the books I want are unavailable for whatever reason. Rarely, it's a case of being sold out. Sometimes, the book is off the beaten path enough that the store they go to doesn't carry it. And occasionally, I get publication dates wrong and the book hasn't been published yet. In the case of one of the Artemis Fowl books by Eoin Colfer, I was wrong by a YEAR AND A HALF. A full 18 months, three wishlists, before it actually came out. Ultimately, it was worth the wait though [G].
Far from taking the suspense out of birthdays and Christmases, the list ensures gifts that I will be happy with, provides a solution to the problem of getting something for somebody who has everything he wants otherwise, and provides for SOME mystery as to WHICH books I do end up getting.
I have always included a series of knick knack gifts at all price-points, from less than a buck to more than $200, because I've always enjoyed the look on a gift-giver's faces when they see how happy I am when I open something that is ON my list, even if it's only a package of sugar-less gum. It's something I honestly treasure (and I chew a LOT, thus the ever-present notation on my wishlist). My smile almost always translates into smiles on THEIR faces. Win-win.
Readers can be a chore to buy for. When I was younger, I once got 11 books for Christmas. I had seven of them already and had read an eighth. For a LONG time, I got no more books at Christmas. It was other stuff and gift certificates. I've always hated gift certificates, even though they are given with only the purest of intentions. Despite that, I've given gift certificates on occasion. And I hated it, then, too. It seems to me that certificates are less useful than money, while at the same time, being less work than going to the store and finding that right gift yourself. It's almost the admittal of defeat in what SHOULD be a fun game of getting that something special for a loved one.
Of course, I'm famous for shopping year round. I have had Angela's Christmas books this year, stored away for two years. My gift closet is ALWAYS full!
On the other hand, I'm a chore to buy for. When people go off my list, they take risks. Sometimes they hit the sweet spot. Most times not. But I DO appreciate the effort each time.
But I'd still like them to stick to my list. Hint, Hint, Hint!
Saturday, February 07, 2009
TV: Review- Doctor Who
David Tennant is in the backstretch of his stretch as Doctor Who. He's in Cardiff, Wales as this is written, shooting the first of four Doctor Who Specials that will comprise this year's helping of science fictional wackiness that is the British show. Those specials take the place of a regular season this year due to Tennant's excess of other projects. He wants to move on and the makers of the show came up with this unique bridging year to wring four more performances out of Tennant before bringing in Matt Smith as the next doctor.
Given the Christmas special from this just-past holiday season, it's a well-thought out strategy.
I quite liked the last season of Doctor Who. And it's grown on me in the passage of time. What stands out is the incredible story arc created by Russell T. Davies, who brought the Doctor back from oblivion four years ago. Elements from all four seasons were all used to write an entertaining conclusion to those four years and Davies has to be applauded for creating such a far-reaching revival.
But Davies is going along with Tennant. That will undoubtedly cause trepidation, but the treasure seems to be in good hands. Still, there is more of Tennant and Davies to come. In March, we will see Planet of the Dead, which is what they are filming right now. Tennant's companion on this time will be Michelle Ryan, ex of Bionic Woman (bad) and and ex of Jekyll (REALLY quite good). Playing in her native land, with her native accent, I expect we will see a good performance out of Ryan. This is a show to look forward to.
But, if you haven't had the chance to catch that Christmas Special, The Next Doctor, you really should. I was ambivalent towards the first two Christmas Specials during the Doctor revival. They were big and bombastic and a load of fun. But no heart. And I think Christmas deserves more. Two Christmases ago we got that. Kylie Minogue guest-starred as the ill-fated Astrid in Voyage of the Damned. This year, more of the same in The Next Doctor.
David Morrisey plays The Next Doctor who seems to be some sort of steampunk future version of the current Doctor, played by Tennant. It dances around the idea with elan, leaving you to wonder how the 'unsophisticated' Next Doctor could be some future regeneration of the dapper, technologically aware current version. In the end, we see the truth and it's staggeringly horrific.
Tennant plays the Doctor with just the right bit of melancholy. It's Christmas and he's all alone. The four-year stretch (remember, the first year was played by Christopher Ecclestone), was notably busy with lots of ladies popping into his life, and true love Rose leaving it. Now, not only is Rose gone, so is Donna and Martha. Even Jackie, Rose's mum, isn't around.
The spirit of Christmas is giving and the Doctor overcomes his melancholy to return saneness to a crazy situation involving our old friends, the Cybermen. The Doctor turns back their attack and does so in memorable fashion. Still, the episode is largely Morrisey's.
All in all, I would rank this as the best of the modern-day Christmas Specials.
Given the Christmas special from this just-past holiday season, it's a well-thought out strategy.
I quite liked the last season of Doctor Who. And it's grown on me in the passage of time. What stands out is the incredible story arc created by Russell T. Davies, who brought the Doctor back from oblivion four years ago. Elements from all four seasons were all used to write an entertaining conclusion to those four years and Davies has to be applauded for creating such a far-reaching revival.
But Davies is going along with Tennant. That will undoubtedly cause trepidation, but the treasure seems to be in good hands. Still, there is more of Tennant and Davies to come. In March, we will see Planet of the Dead, which is what they are filming right now. Tennant's companion on this time will be Michelle Ryan, ex of Bionic Woman (bad) and and ex of Jekyll (REALLY quite good). Playing in her native land, with her native accent, I expect we will see a good performance out of Ryan. This is a show to look forward to.
But, if you haven't had the chance to catch that Christmas Special, The Next Doctor, you really should. I was ambivalent towards the first two Christmas Specials during the Doctor revival. They were big and bombastic and a load of fun. But no heart. And I think Christmas deserves more. Two Christmases ago we got that. Kylie Minogue guest-starred as the ill-fated Astrid in Voyage of the Damned. This year, more of the same in The Next Doctor.
David Morrisey plays The Next Doctor who seems to be some sort of steampunk future version of the current Doctor, played by Tennant. It dances around the idea with elan, leaving you to wonder how the 'unsophisticated' Next Doctor could be some future regeneration of the dapper, technologically aware current version. In the end, we see the truth and it's staggeringly horrific.
Tennant plays the Doctor with just the right bit of melancholy. It's Christmas and he's all alone. The four-year stretch (remember, the first year was played by Christopher Ecclestone), was notably busy with lots of ladies popping into his life, and true love Rose leaving it. Now, not only is Rose gone, so is Donna and Martha. Even Jackie, Rose's mum, isn't around.
The spirit of Christmas is giving and the Doctor overcomes his melancholy to return saneness to a crazy situation involving our old friends, the Cybermen. The Doctor turns back their attack and does so in memorable fashion. Still, the episode is largely Morrisey's.
All in all, I would rank this as the best of the modern-day Christmas Specials.
Friday, February 06, 2009
BOOKS: Review- Beating the Babushka
Tim Maleeny has a nice little detective series going. It purportedly stars Cape Weathers, an ex-journalist turned detective. But the first book in the series featured Cape as more of a supporting player to the real star of the series, his partner, Sally the lesbian ninja assassin. Come on, don't I have you right there?
I'm not kidding. Two books into the series (Stealing the Dragon being the first), we've seen Sally on each cover. Cape. Not a sight.
But things ARE a bit different in Beating the Babushka, the second book in the series. First, Sally doesn't show up until page 172. Not that I was counting or anything. That's because Maleeny actually got me interested in Weathers and I was more than willing to wait for the 'five-foot nothing' Sally to show up and save the day, as she did in Stealing the Dragon.
Weathers, fresh off tangling with the triads in the first book, takes on the Russian mafiya in this book. Sure, there's some sideline involvement by the triad and the Italian mafia, who are having a bit of a turf war brought on by the meddling of the mafiya. But this is basically Weathers versus a mafiya mid-level thug, an ex-KGB nasty. In the end, Weathers elicits Sally's help, and that of a little old man on Brighton Beach, to bring the nasty to justice ... in an approved Russian way. Makes for a grizzly end to an entertaining tale.
One interesting note here, is that I've been reading more than my share of San Francisco-based detective stories. At least one location, a restaurant, plays as a key locale in both this book and in Mr. Monk in Outer Space, the comedic novel by Lee Goldberg, based on the Monk TV series. Makes for an interesting back to back experience!
Maleeny's going to have a long career. He's got at least one memorable character going, maybe two, as I grow to like, and be interested in, Weathers. I really am looking forward to the next novel, Greasing the Pinata, where Weathers and Sally take on the Mexican drug cartel.
I'm not kidding. Two books into the series (Stealing the Dragon being the first), we've seen Sally on each cover. Cape. Not a sight.
But things ARE a bit different in Beating the Babushka, the second book in the series. First, Sally doesn't show up until page 172. Not that I was counting or anything. That's because Maleeny actually got me interested in Weathers and I was more than willing to wait for the 'five-foot nothing' Sally to show up and save the day, as she did in Stealing the Dragon.
Weathers, fresh off tangling with the triads in the first book, takes on the Russian mafiya in this book. Sure, there's some sideline involvement by the triad and the Italian mafia, who are having a bit of a turf war brought on by the meddling of the mafiya. But this is basically Weathers versus a mafiya mid-level thug, an ex-KGB nasty. In the end, Weathers elicits Sally's help, and that of a little old man on Brighton Beach, to bring the nasty to justice ... in an approved Russian way. Makes for a grizzly end to an entertaining tale.
One interesting note here, is that I've been reading more than my share of San Francisco-based detective stories. At least one location, a restaurant, plays as a key locale in both this book and in Mr. Monk in Outer Space, the comedic novel by Lee Goldberg, based on the Monk TV series. Makes for an interesting back to back experience!
Maleeny's going to have a long career. He's got at least one memorable character going, maybe two, as I grow to like, and be interested in, Weathers. I really am looking forward to the next novel, Greasing the Pinata, where Weathers and Sally take on the Mexican drug cartel.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
TV: Review- The Middleman
My TV-to-DVD buying habits started with Stargate: SG1. Having gotten lucky there, I was also smart enough to grab onto the sets of Keen Eddie and Firefly when those Fox-canceled shows hit the polymerized aluminum. They almost define the 'cult' classic TV show that lives on BECAUSE of the fact DVD sets were made. Firefly even revived long enough to give us a movie and three comic-book extensions.
The next cult classic will almost assuredly be The Middleman after the ABC Family network decided it and Kyle XY will not be coming back later this year or EVER! More about Kyle XY later this month, now finishing out it's third (and presumably last) season. This review is about The Middleman.
I've had lots to say about this quirky take on the super-hero motif before. I found the fast-paced pilot episode too rife with in-jokes. The rapid patter was like Moonlighting on 4x speed and, although faithful to the original comic book, I thought it too narrowly-aimed to catch broad interest. But I was pleasantly surprised when the insider stuff was trimmed down, the patter slowed up to more manageable levels, and charactes beyond The Middleman and sidekick Wendy Watson started to emerge as fully-realized and interesting characters.
Matt Keeslar played The Middleman with Dudley Do-Right straightness, leaving most of the great lines to Natalie Morales's Wendy. By the way, any woman hesitating about wearing glasses should get a gander at Morales in specs. Morales made wearing glasses a practical invitation to fall in love with her. And if your tastes don't run to sexy latinas, then I'm sure more than a few of you will latch onto Brit Morgan's Lacey Thornfield, Watson's attractive blonde roomie. Or, if you're of a certain age, I'm betting you'd really like to spend time with the saucy android Ida, played with malevolant glee by Mary Pat Gleason. Attractive, interesting and funny ladies were NOT a problem for this show.
Nope, the problem was the network. ABC Family still has to run a certain portion of religious programming due to deals made early in its existence. The Middleman, which would seem to more fit the CW profile than anything in the ABC corporate umbrella, just plain didn't fit. It ran on Monday, the same same EVERY network seems to run its keynote shows. So, it got lost. Part of its run was against Heroes. That's Programming for Idiots rule number 5. "To ensure cancellation, run show against the OTHER show available to its target audience."
So, we look forward to the summer release of the DVD set. Given my own lousy copy of the second show, I'm guaranteed to get the set when it goes on sale. I'm hoping creater Javier Grillo-Marxouch (of Lost fame) goes crazy with extras.
Give it a try and you won't be disappointed.
The next cult classic will almost assuredly be The Middleman after the ABC Family network decided it and Kyle XY will not be coming back later this year or EVER! More about Kyle XY later this month, now finishing out it's third (and presumably last) season. This review is about The Middleman.
I've had lots to say about this quirky take on the super-hero motif before. I found the fast-paced pilot episode too rife with in-jokes. The rapid patter was like Moonlighting on 4x speed and, although faithful to the original comic book, I thought it too narrowly-aimed to catch broad interest. But I was pleasantly surprised when the insider stuff was trimmed down, the patter slowed up to more manageable levels, and charactes beyond The Middleman and sidekick Wendy Watson started to emerge as fully-realized and interesting characters.
Matt Keeslar played The Middleman with Dudley Do-Right straightness, leaving most of the great lines to Natalie Morales's Wendy. By the way, any woman hesitating about wearing glasses should get a gander at Morales in specs. Morales made wearing glasses a practical invitation to fall in love with her. And if your tastes don't run to sexy latinas, then I'm sure more than a few of you will latch onto Brit Morgan's Lacey Thornfield, Watson's attractive blonde roomie. Or, if you're of a certain age, I'm betting you'd really like to spend time with the saucy android Ida, played with malevolant glee by Mary Pat Gleason. Attractive, interesting and funny ladies were NOT a problem for this show.
Nope, the problem was the network. ABC Family still has to run a certain portion of religious programming due to deals made early in its existence. The Middleman, which would seem to more fit the CW profile than anything in the ABC corporate umbrella, just plain didn't fit. It ran on Monday, the same same EVERY network seems to run its keynote shows. So, it got lost. Part of its run was against Heroes. That's Programming for Idiots rule number 5. "To ensure cancellation, run show against the OTHER show available to its target audience."
So, we look forward to the summer release of the DVD set. Given my own lousy copy of the second show, I'm guaranteed to get the set when it goes on sale. I'm hoping creater Javier Grillo-Marxouch (of Lost fame) goes crazy with extras.
Give it a try and you won't be disappointed.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
BOOKS: Review- Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants
I took Lee Goldberg to task yesterday for decrying the state of Canadian TV. I think he's wrong about it. On the other hand, he's right about choosing to continue his series of amusing detective novels featuring TV detective Monk.
On TV, Tony Shalhoub has turned Adrian Monk into a fascinating character, solving crimes despite his debilitating neuroses. Monk's the star of the TV show, but Goldberg's focal point in the book series is Monk's not-too-long suffering assistant Natalie Teeger.
As it turns out, Teeger was NOT the first Monk assistant/nurse. The series started with Sharona Fleming as Monk's lifeline to reality. Sharona was played with Jersey brashness by Bitty Schram. For whatever reason, Schram left back in the third season of the show. Off-screen, Fleming decided to re-marry the doltish father of her son and move back east. Thus the need for Teeger, as played by Traylor Howard. I have great affection for both actresses. To me, it was like replacing orange sherbert with white chocolate. Different but great, no matter which one you choose.
Goldberg takes advantage of being a novelist to bring back Sharona in Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants. And that sets up a battle between assistant Past and assistant Present to see who will be assistant Future. In doing so, he captures Natalie's insecurities perfectly. Afterall, he's been inside her head for quite a while now. He also recaps most of those earlier book adventures in some small detail during this book, making it a good jumping on point for the series. Not suprisingly, this is apparently the best-selling of the series of novels to date.
Where Goldberg falls down just a bit in this book is that he makes Sharona a little harsher than I remember the character. I went back and watched several first and second season episodes to see if my faltering memory was maybe playing tricks on me. Turns out, not so much. Sharona was less nurturing than Natalie, but a lot less of the hard-hearted Sharona that permeates the start of this book. Sure, Sharona left Monk in the lurch in the best interests of her family. But her desire to restart the association with Monk at Natalie's expense seems a little forced. Good nurses, and Sharona is supposed to be one, are in demand. Sharona would hardly be looking at Monk as her sole provider of employment.
And the mystery of who killed the key person was a lot less involving than I would have liked. Except for the fact that the killer seemed to relish his obviousness and nearly turned the tables on Monk. It took a bit of reflection for both Monk AND me as the reader, to work out just how to nail the weasel. Goldberg played fair with the clues, making the lack of a red herring all the better for BEING a red herring until the "how he dunnit" scene.
Teeger won the caged wrestling match and was awarded possession of Monk for the immediate future. That certainly means we won't see Sharona again until the TV series has run its course (maybe this spring). After that, Goldberg can have at it for another Sharona-Natalie episode.
It would make good reading, I'll bet.
On TV, Tony Shalhoub has turned Adrian Monk into a fascinating character, solving crimes despite his debilitating neuroses. Monk's the star of the TV show, but Goldberg's focal point in the book series is Monk's not-too-long suffering assistant Natalie Teeger.
As it turns out, Teeger was NOT the first Monk assistant/nurse. The series started with Sharona Fleming as Monk's lifeline to reality. Sharona was played with Jersey brashness by Bitty Schram. For whatever reason, Schram left back in the third season of the show. Off-screen, Fleming decided to re-marry the doltish father of her son and move back east. Thus the need for Teeger, as played by Traylor Howard. I have great affection for both actresses. To me, it was like replacing orange sherbert with white chocolate. Different but great, no matter which one you choose.
Goldberg takes advantage of being a novelist to bring back Sharona in Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants. And that sets up a battle between assistant Past and assistant Present to see who will be assistant Future. In doing so, he captures Natalie's insecurities perfectly. Afterall, he's been inside her head for quite a while now. He also recaps most of those earlier book adventures in some small detail during this book, making it a good jumping on point for the series. Not suprisingly, this is apparently the best-selling of the series of novels to date.
Where Goldberg falls down just a bit in this book is that he makes Sharona a little harsher than I remember the character. I went back and watched several first and second season episodes to see if my faltering memory was maybe playing tricks on me. Turns out, not so much. Sharona was less nurturing than Natalie, but a lot less of the hard-hearted Sharona that permeates the start of this book. Sure, Sharona left Monk in the lurch in the best interests of her family. But her desire to restart the association with Monk at Natalie's expense seems a little forced. Good nurses, and Sharona is supposed to be one, are in demand. Sharona would hardly be looking at Monk as her sole provider of employment.
And the mystery of who killed the key person was a lot less involving than I would have liked. Except for the fact that the killer seemed to relish his obviousness and nearly turned the tables on Monk. It took a bit of reflection for both Monk AND me as the reader, to work out just how to nail the weasel. Goldberg played fair with the clues, making the lack of a red herring all the better for BEING a red herring until the "how he dunnit" scene.
Teeger won the caged wrestling match and was awarded possession of Monk for the immediate future. That certainly means we won't see Sharona again until the TV series has run its course (maybe this spring). After that, Goldberg can have at it for another Sharona-Natalie episode.
It would make good reading, I'll bet.
BASKETBALL: The Sins of Stephen A. Smith
You have to get noticed to get ahead in the media game. It IS that simple. And Stephen A. Smith, the perpetual mouth that roared for ESPN, is a perfect example of somebody who got noticed. He chummed up with some occasionally put-upon athletes, got to be their voice in the void that is irresponsible journalism, and rose to a position of media whore.
In earlier years, the script was written for Howard Cosell.
The problem with taking that career path is that you have to be a little volcanic in nature. You have to explode or threaten to explode or you just become a big heap of rock that nobody respects ... or fears. So, every now and then, Smith erupts with some vague nonsense fueled by 'sources.' I have my own sources within the Raptor organization and I used to have the same for the Blue Jays. I never cared for the Leafs, so I never cozied up to anybody within that organization. I DO have standards you know! Not ONE of the sources I have or had, have been witness to private conversations between upper management and their star players. Not one. They might hear, maybe, what happened third hand, but not one has an ear in the big guy's office.
I want to make it clear. I get talked to by people who know more about the Raptors than 99.99 percent of the fans and workers in the Raptor universe. But Bryan Colangelo wouldn't know me from any other dumpy middle-aged white guy he might stumble over, him being a LOT taller than short old me. I can NOT tell you if Chris Bosh and Colangelo had the conversation Smith purports to KNOW they did. His SOURCES weren't in the room either.
A really good analysis of the tempest can be found at the Globe and Mail (one of my former employers) in Michael Grange's From Deep blog.
Now, had I ended up hearing the rumour before Smith, and was still working professionally, I would have made one or two phone calls. One would have been to Colangelo, asking for a confirmation or a denial (he would have denied it and I would have taped it). The other, following the same process, would have been to Bosh. I would then have reported the rumour my SOURCE fed me, then would have said, Bosh and Colangelo denied the story on the record.
This is the sin Smith committed. He got half a story. I've done that in MY past too. One paper I wrote for ended up in legal difficulties because they said I reported half a story. They buckled and I had to cough up a retraction ... even though the story was completely and utterly accurate. Because I hadn't got the 'other side,' my story was considered, legally, factually inaccurate. In fact, I was offered the chance to skip the retraction by writing a favourable review of the piece of crap software that was the heart of the issue. I went with a mealy-mouthed retraction that was as weaselly a piece of obfuscating word art as I have ever written. Then I quit the paper, madder at myself than at the publisher for failing to go to war with the weasels I wrote about.
Smith could have presented a balanced view of the story. That would not, and did not, serve his immediate need to create a media buzz. He still stands by his story. He MIGHT even be right. Somebody is lying and I'm not ready to tar specifically Smith, his SOURCE or even any of the Raptor people involved with the liar label.
But one or more of them obviously IS lying. It's just ODDS ON that it's Smith, given his sins.
In earlier years, the script was written for Howard Cosell.
The problem with taking that career path is that you have to be a little volcanic in nature. You have to explode or threaten to explode or you just become a big heap of rock that nobody respects ... or fears. So, every now and then, Smith erupts with some vague nonsense fueled by 'sources.' I have my own sources within the Raptor organization and I used to have the same for the Blue Jays. I never cared for the Leafs, so I never cozied up to anybody within that organization. I DO have standards you know! Not ONE of the sources I have or had, have been witness to private conversations between upper management and their star players. Not one. They might hear, maybe, what happened third hand, but not one has an ear in the big guy's office.
I want to make it clear. I get talked to by people who know more about the Raptors than 99.99 percent of the fans and workers in the Raptor universe. But Bryan Colangelo wouldn't know me from any other dumpy middle-aged white guy he might stumble over, him being a LOT taller than short old me. I can NOT tell you if Chris Bosh and Colangelo had the conversation Smith purports to KNOW they did. His SOURCES weren't in the room either.
A really good analysis of the tempest can be found at the Globe and Mail (one of my former employers) in Michael Grange's From Deep blog.
Now, had I ended up hearing the rumour before Smith, and was still working professionally, I would have made one or two phone calls. One would have been to Colangelo, asking for a confirmation or a denial (he would have denied it and I would have taped it). The other, following the same process, would have been to Bosh. I would then have reported the rumour my SOURCE fed me, then would have said, Bosh and Colangelo denied the story on the record.
This is the sin Smith committed. He got half a story. I've done that in MY past too. One paper I wrote for ended up in legal difficulties because they said I reported half a story. They buckled and I had to cough up a retraction ... even though the story was completely and utterly accurate. Because I hadn't got the 'other side,' my story was considered, legally, factually inaccurate. In fact, I was offered the chance to skip the retraction by writing a favourable review of the piece of crap software that was the heart of the issue. I went with a mealy-mouthed retraction that was as weaselly a piece of obfuscating word art as I have ever written. Then I quit the paper, madder at myself than at the publisher for failing to go to war with the weasels I wrote about.
Smith could have presented a balanced view of the story. That would not, and did not, serve his immediate need to create a media buzz. He still stands by his story. He MIGHT even be right. Somebody is lying and I'm not ready to tar specifically Smith, his SOURCE or even any of the Raptor people involved with the liar label.
But one or more of them obviously IS lying. It's just ODDS ON that it's Smith, given his sins.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
INTERNET: What Might Have Been
Reading Stephen Grant's column on Stan Lee Media from last week jogged memories of a time when I might have cashed in on the dot com bubble of the early 21st century. I actually started thinking about the 'missed' opportunity when Bruce Young gave me a 'catch-up' phone call on the weekend. Guess it takes two kicks to the butt to get me off it and to the keyboard.
Back at the turn of the century, part of my money was coming from programming for a bunch of food brokers. Bruce Young and Lindsay Weatherdon, chiefly. I was also their IT guy. We also teamed up in an ultimately futile attempt to break into the monopoly that ran the surveying business for newspapers in Canada. Being an old newspaperman with more than a few connections into the weekly newspaper business all over the province of Ontario, I thought we had a shot at cutting into the pie. Silly fool, me. Waste of time and money. But, I digress.
Everybody was looking for the next BIG INTERNET IDEA. Amazon was dominating every would-be entrepreneur's dreams. How to move bricks-and-mortar type ideas onto the internet and get rich by selling on a grander scale from some warehouse depot. Lindsay, especially, was hot to trot. He wanted to get into the internet grocery business.
The idea had been tried and failed. It had also worked on a limited basis in a couple of places. Lindsay thought, with some justification, that it was more a case of computer geeks (like me) not KNOWING the food business, than anything else stopping the idea from flourishing. He spent more than a few days badgering me about the idea. He'd even talked in vague terms with suppliers to see whether they would come on board. Remember, he was in the brokerage business. His company was the middleman between manufacturers and the stores themselves. Or more precisely, the chain purchasing agents. He pictured GrocersByNet as the Amazon equivalent for the food industry.
More than that, he envisioned starting GrocersByNet, spending a few months operating it, and then selling it for zillions of dollars to Amazon, Loblaws or somesuch other deep-pocketed company. I'm not sure which tropical beach he envisioned buying and then living by, but he dreamed big. And he invited me along for the ride. He even suggested GAzillions of dollars might be at stake.
I demurred. I thought then, and I think now, groceries over the internet was a bad idea. Forget fresh produce and meat, I didn't think even staples made it a good idea. My thinking was that people REALLY, REALLY want to have choices. I go into the store wanting cereal. At the moment I arrive, I don't know whether it will be Cheerio's or Special K. It's not 'til I'm in front of the arrayed colourful boxes that I make up my mind. And sometimes, I try that something new. Most times I regret it. There was a horrible Bran Flakes purchase decision that still causes turmoil on my insides, but you know what I mean. I want to see and touch what food I buy. That's just me. But I don't think I'm in the minority that way.
What I missed, according to Lindsay, was the fact HE didn't believe it would be successful either. I should be looking at the BIG PICTURE. Start the business, sell out and don't give a damn as to whether the idea actually works or not. We weren't going INTO the grocery business. We were going into the WEBSITE sale business! Still didn't make the idea palatable.
We never did move past the lunchroom table discussion level of looking into it. Or rather I never looked into it much further. The few grocery sites on the internet managed to shrivel into a few decent very niche sites. Most of the sites dealt with a small clientele in a small area. Usually well-heeled areas with a higher-than-normal concentration of computer geeks willing to pay extra not to get dressed and trod up and down food store aisles.
And of course, the dot-com boom went bust about seven years ago. We MIGHT have been able to sell out in time, profiting handsomely. Or we might have been stuck with the useless bricks and mortar warehouse(s) for our useless website and all have been sent to debtor's prison (Do they still have them?). We'll never know, cuz I wouldn't do the programming.
Nowadays, having become a very house-bound kind of guy, I sort of wish I HAD pursued the idea and that it had become a success ... for me or for the eventual owners. There are times when I do NOT like getting dressed up and heading out to the 24-hour A&P in the wee hours of the morning for a bit of crowd-free, no-lineup queue shopping. That time is right about now, what with tonight's expected low of minus-20, or thereabouts. Wouldn't it be nice if I could just log into the store's 'net site, click here and there and have the groceries sometime tomorrow afternoon?
Oh well. We all have to live with our decisions, happily or unhappily.
Back at the turn of the century, part of my money was coming from programming for a bunch of food brokers. Bruce Young and Lindsay Weatherdon, chiefly. I was also their IT guy. We also teamed up in an ultimately futile attempt to break into the monopoly that ran the surveying business for newspapers in Canada. Being an old newspaperman with more than a few connections into the weekly newspaper business all over the province of Ontario, I thought we had a shot at cutting into the pie. Silly fool, me. Waste of time and money. But, I digress.
Everybody was looking for the next BIG INTERNET IDEA. Amazon was dominating every would-be entrepreneur's dreams. How to move bricks-and-mortar type ideas onto the internet and get rich by selling on a grander scale from some warehouse depot. Lindsay, especially, was hot to trot. He wanted to get into the internet grocery business.
The idea had been tried and failed. It had also worked on a limited basis in a couple of places. Lindsay thought, with some justification, that it was more a case of computer geeks (like me) not KNOWING the food business, than anything else stopping the idea from flourishing. He spent more than a few days badgering me about the idea. He'd even talked in vague terms with suppliers to see whether they would come on board. Remember, he was in the brokerage business. His company was the middleman between manufacturers and the stores themselves. Or more precisely, the chain purchasing agents. He pictured GrocersByNet as the Amazon equivalent for the food industry.
More than that, he envisioned starting GrocersByNet, spending a few months operating it, and then selling it for zillions of dollars to Amazon, Loblaws or somesuch other deep-pocketed company. I'm not sure which tropical beach he envisioned buying and then living by, but he dreamed big. And he invited me along for the ride. He even suggested GAzillions of dollars might be at stake.
I demurred. I thought then, and I think now, groceries over the internet was a bad idea. Forget fresh produce and meat, I didn't think even staples made it a good idea. My thinking was that people REALLY, REALLY want to have choices. I go into the store wanting cereal. At the moment I arrive, I don't know whether it will be Cheerio's or Special K. It's not 'til I'm in front of the arrayed colourful boxes that I make up my mind. And sometimes, I try that something new. Most times I regret it. There was a horrible Bran Flakes purchase decision that still causes turmoil on my insides, but you know what I mean. I want to see and touch what food I buy. That's just me. But I don't think I'm in the minority that way.
What I missed, according to Lindsay, was the fact HE didn't believe it would be successful either. I should be looking at the BIG PICTURE. Start the business, sell out and don't give a damn as to whether the idea actually works or not. We weren't going INTO the grocery business. We were going into the WEBSITE sale business! Still didn't make the idea palatable.
We never did move past the lunchroom table discussion level of looking into it. Or rather I never looked into it much further. The few grocery sites on the internet managed to shrivel into a few decent very niche sites. Most of the sites dealt with a small clientele in a small area. Usually well-heeled areas with a higher-than-normal concentration of computer geeks willing to pay extra not to get dressed and trod up and down food store aisles.
And of course, the dot-com boom went bust about seven years ago. We MIGHT have been able to sell out in time, profiting handsomely. Or we might have been stuck with the useless bricks and mortar warehouse(s) for our useless website and all have been sent to debtor's prison (Do they still have them?). We'll never know, cuz I wouldn't do the programming.
Nowadays, having become a very house-bound kind of guy, I sort of wish I HAD pursued the idea and that it had become a success ... for me or for the eventual owners. There are times when I do NOT like getting dressed up and heading out to the 24-hour A&P in the wee hours of the morning for a bit of crowd-free, no-lineup queue shopping. That time is right about now, what with tonight's expected low of minus-20, or thereabouts. Wouldn't it be nice if I could just log into the store's 'net site, click here and there and have the groceries sometime tomorrow afternoon?
Oh well. We all have to live with our decisions, happily or unhappily.
TV: Review- The Border
The second season of The Border, CBC's flashiest cop drama mostly missed the sizzling presence of Agent LeGarda, the Cuban-born American liason to our Customs Security Agency played by Sofia Milos. A Canadian show needs Canuck content and the makers of the series opted to replace Milos with Grace Park, who's more or less an honourary Canadian after spending time filming both Edgemont and Battlestar Galactica out west.
Wasn't a good trade.
But that basically ends my major list of gripes with the sophomore season of the show. There are some minor ones. We saw less than I would have liked of wonderkind computer geek Heironymous Slade, played by Jonas Chernick. We saw too much of agent Gray Jackson, played by Graham Abbey. He bounced back and forth through storylines involving Park's Agent Carver and a story-line about his sad-sack father, played with the usual grizzled dishevelment by Nicholas Campbell. There was a day and time when Campbell was a leading man type. I've lived a long, long time.
And I would have liked to have seen a lot more of forgotten Nanzeen Contractor this year. She got lost in all that Jackson story-line, although she certainly was front and centre in the bifurcated "Will they survive" cliff-hanger to the season. For my money, Contractor's Layla Hourani survived the bomb in the bathtub in the bathroom, having just escaped her constraints. And Jackson and the agents accompanying Major Mike Kessler will survive due to some lousy marksmanship from the ambushing 'Ndragheta thugs.
The gang will probably all be back next fall for season three. And that's a good thing.
Kessler, played James McGowan, got over LeGarda's departure fairly quickly. He took up with British spook Charlotte Bates, played with sexy ambivalence towards most everybody by Daisy Beaumont. She was "fer 'n agin" the interests of Canada, sometimes within the same episode. And in doing so, she brought out Kessler's increasing willingness to get that rod out of his backside. It was a good combination.
I really can't remember a bad hour in the 13-episode run. On the other hand, few REALLY stand out. The Hourani-centric episode that brought back one-time one-night stand Jimmy Kosik to die heroically worked well. The submarine down episode was gripping despite its lack of action.
All and all, despite Lee Goldberg's assertion that Canadian TV is basically uninspiring, this is one show that proves him wrong. It's Canadian and proud of it.
And so am I. Catch the re-runs or get the DVD series when it comes out.
Wasn't a good trade.
But that basically ends my major list of gripes with the sophomore season of the show. There are some minor ones. We saw less than I would have liked of wonderkind computer geek Heironymous Slade, played by Jonas Chernick. We saw too much of agent Gray Jackson, played by Graham Abbey. He bounced back and forth through storylines involving Park's Agent Carver and a story-line about his sad-sack father, played with the usual grizzled dishevelment by Nicholas Campbell. There was a day and time when Campbell was a leading man type. I've lived a long, long time.
And I would have liked to have seen a lot more of forgotten Nanzeen Contractor this year. She got lost in all that Jackson story-line, although she certainly was front and centre in the bifurcated "Will they survive" cliff-hanger to the season. For my money, Contractor's Layla Hourani survived the bomb in the bathtub in the bathroom, having just escaped her constraints. And Jackson and the agents accompanying Major Mike Kessler will survive due to some lousy marksmanship from the ambushing 'Ndragheta thugs.
The gang will probably all be back next fall for season three. And that's a good thing.
Kessler, played James McGowan, got over LeGarda's departure fairly quickly. He took up with British spook Charlotte Bates, played with sexy ambivalence towards most everybody by Daisy Beaumont. She was "fer 'n agin" the interests of Canada, sometimes within the same episode. And in doing so, she brought out Kessler's increasing willingness to get that rod out of his backside. It was a good combination.
I really can't remember a bad hour in the 13-episode run. On the other hand, few REALLY stand out. The Hourani-centric episode that brought back one-time one-night stand Jimmy Kosik to die heroically worked well. The submarine down episode was gripping despite its lack of action.
All and all, despite Lee Goldberg's assertion that Canadian TV is basically uninspiring, this is one show that proves him wrong. It's Canadian and proud of it.
And so am I. Catch the re-runs or get the DVD series when it comes out.
BRIDGE: Can YOU Count to Thirteen?
Let's say you find yourself with a mostly unfamiliar partner, playing in a pairs event at the local Duplicate Bridge Club. You have time for a brief conversation and don't really come to any agreements beyond the basic American Standard Yellow Card. Your partner DOES express enthusiasm for the 1430 variant of Keycard Blackwood. How likely is THAT going to come up?
Foreboding drums of discontent play in the background ...
You get dealt [S] Q [H] Q-10-9 [D] A-Q-6 [C] K-Q-J-10-5-2. A more than decent hand with 16HCP, but too many of them made of quacks (queens and jacks). Fear not, suddenly your hand grows in value immensely as your partner opens the bidding, first to bid, with 1H, vulnerable against not. Thoughts of slam immediately come to mind.
And the bidding by right-hand opponent does nothing to stop this slam express. He makes a pre-emptive two spade overcall. The odds of partner holding important heart and club cards now go up substantially. How best to get there? With a regular partner, 3C shows where your side values are when you make the requisite heart raise to five later. It implies first or second round control of diamonds and spades for going spelunking for a slam. Wonderfully descriptive, don't you think? But will a first-time partner draw all the right inferences?
You opt NOT to take the chance. So you cue-bid spades, which will undoubtedly elicit another bid from partner. You are not going to meekly accept an 'uninterested in slam' sign-off call of 4H, but you will have at least gotten heart support off your chest. So, you pull the 3S card out of the bidding box.
The next two bids surprise you. The opponent to your left DOUBLES! Then partner bids ... 3NT! Seems like everybody around the table owns one of the four top spade honours! And partner's free bid saying so, certainly rules out a minimum opener. Is it possible partner holds the ace of spades, five hearts to the ace-king AND the ace of clubs? It's consistent with the bidding. And look at your cards. The magic holding in partner's hand means SEVEN NO TRUMP is possible. Might come down to the H8 being in partner's hand, but there are two pointed aces, six clubs and five hearts to take, if so. That's thirteen and a grand slam!
So you ask for aces and partner chirps 5C. One or four aces, the king of hearts qualifying as an ace on this bidding. Can't be one ace. It HAS to be the magic hand. 7NT emerges from your bidding box. Your left-hand opponent doubles. You smirk. You 'know' the double is a request to your RHO to find an unusual lead. It almost assuredly shows the king of diamonds. You doubly smirk. Your opponent is not going to get a chance, even with a diamond lead, to get that king. You are going to REDOUBLE and run off the first 13 tricks!
With the big blue XX card still lying on the table, the opening leader faces the jack of spades and you spread your beautiful cards on the table. Partner doesn't seem happy. More importantly, partner does not seem confident. You understand why as your queen is gobbled up by the ACE OF SPADES in left-hand opponent's hand. In short order, you find out partner has opened with:
[S] K-9 [H] K-J-8-7-6-5 [D] K-10-9-8 [C] 2
Opening leader had EIGHT spades for the 2S overcall. He also had the heart ace and was itching to double 7NT himself. HIS partner had two aces. Partner COULD have held the damage to eight down by cashing four diamonds with the aid of a finesse. Instead, a parade of spades after getting a heart out onto the table at trick three led to sluffing a trick in the wash. TEN down! MINUS 4600 rather than 4000 or even the possible 3400. Didn't matter. Ice-cold bottoms are not made of any sterner stuff than -3400.
You shake your head and wipe one possible partnership out of your contact book. It takes brilliance to lose 4600 points on a single hand. And you just can't see yourself being exposed to such brilliance again.
N0t until your partner can find 13 points to open and then freely bid again. When PARTNER can count to thirteen, it makes it so much easier for you to start counting to thirteen again.
Even if it takes awhile.
Foreboding drums of discontent play in the background ...
You get dealt [S] Q [H] Q-10-9 [D] A-Q-6 [C] K-Q-J-10-5-2. A more than decent hand with 16HCP, but too many of them made of quacks (queens and jacks). Fear not, suddenly your hand grows in value immensely as your partner opens the bidding, first to bid, with 1H, vulnerable against not. Thoughts of slam immediately come to mind.
And the bidding by right-hand opponent does nothing to stop this slam express. He makes a pre-emptive two spade overcall. The odds of partner holding important heart and club cards now go up substantially. How best to get there? With a regular partner, 3C shows where your side values are when you make the requisite heart raise to five later. It implies first or second round control of diamonds and spades for going spelunking for a slam. Wonderfully descriptive, don't you think? But will a first-time partner draw all the right inferences?
You opt NOT to take the chance. So you cue-bid spades, which will undoubtedly elicit another bid from partner. You are not going to meekly accept an 'uninterested in slam' sign-off call of 4H, but you will have at least gotten heart support off your chest. So, you pull the 3S card out of the bidding box.
The next two bids surprise you. The opponent to your left DOUBLES! Then partner bids ... 3NT! Seems like everybody around the table owns one of the four top spade honours! And partner's free bid saying so, certainly rules out a minimum opener. Is it possible partner holds the ace of spades, five hearts to the ace-king AND the ace of clubs? It's consistent with the bidding. And look at your cards. The magic holding in partner's hand means SEVEN NO TRUMP is possible. Might come down to the H8 being in partner's hand, but there are two pointed aces, six clubs and five hearts to take, if so. That's thirteen and a grand slam!
So you ask for aces and partner chirps 5C. One or four aces, the king of hearts qualifying as an ace on this bidding. Can't be one ace. It HAS to be the magic hand. 7NT emerges from your bidding box. Your left-hand opponent doubles. You smirk. You 'know' the double is a request to your RHO to find an unusual lead. It almost assuredly shows the king of diamonds. You doubly smirk. Your opponent is not going to get a chance, even with a diamond lead, to get that king. You are going to REDOUBLE and run off the first 13 tricks!
With the big blue XX card still lying on the table, the opening leader faces the jack of spades and you spread your beautiful cards on the table. Partner doesn't seem happy. More importantly, partner does not seem confident. You understand why as your queen is gobbled up by the ACE OF SPADES in left-hand opponent's hand. In short order, you find out partner has opened with:
[S] K-9 [H] K-J-8-7-6-5 [D] K-10-9-8 [C] 2
Opening leader had EIGHT spades for the 2S overcall. He also had the heart ace and was itching to double 7NT himself. HIS partner had two aces. Partner COULD have held the damage to eight down by cashing four diamonds with the aid of a finesse. Instead, a parade of spades after getting a heart out onto the table at trick three led to sluffing a trick in the wash. TEN down! MINUS 4600 rather than 4000 or even the possible 3400. Didn't matter. Ice-cold bottoms are not made of any sterner stuff than -3400.
You shake your head and wipe one possible partnership out of your contact book. It takes brilliance to lose 4600 points on a single hand. And you just can't see yourself being exposed to such brilliance again.
N0t until your partner can find 13 points to open and then freely bid again. When PARTNER can count to thirteen, it makes it so much easier for you to start counting to thirteen again.
Even if it takes awhile.
Monday, February 02, 2009
BOOKS: Reviewed- Kop
Warren Hammond's Kop, the first of a series, is an old-fashioned detective noir story. It feels like a Phillip Marlowe take on putting a science fictional polish on an old cop tale from the Depression Era. No, not the one we're going through now. But the one back in the early 20th century.
Let's start with Kop's titular hero, Juno Mozembe. He's a dirty cop. Really, really dirty. The only honest cop on the whole KOP force gets assigned to him and gets dingied up pretty quickly. His partner 25 years back, Paul Chang, runs KOP and has survived in power all these years by making deals with the organized crime on the backwater planet called Lagarto. Lagarto enjoyed a brief fling in interstellar circles as a supplier of superior brandy. Didn't last long. And the human presence on the planet has been anything but successful since. Lagarto's teeming microbial life makes anything technological a nightmare to keep working. It's almost as inimical as Harry Harrison's creation, Deathworld. Just a tad slower, but it's strangling the population that emigrated the slow way from Earth.
Hammond's constantly reminding the reader just how seedy the town is and how much life is a struggle against spoilage of every type possible. Moral bankruptcy is rampant. Crooked cops, out in the open criminality and plain misfortune haunt everyone.
In the midst of this is a struggle between Chang and the town's mayor. Chang's position has weakened considerably due to the death of the town's equivalent of the boss of bosses. There's a power vacuum created by the lack of a successor and the willingness of the godfather from up-river to move to the big city and team up with the mayor to take control of it. A murder is the kick-off to the battle to determine who wins out.
Juno gets assigned raw rookie Maggie Orzo as a partner to investigate the murder. During the course of the investigation, Hammond tells us a lot about Juno, a former enforcer for Chang, who detected more with fists than his mind. Still, he's smarter than he looks, a bit more honest than his past presumes, and he manages to do the right thing more often than not. Hot-tempered with a ready fist raised, his hands are so bad, he can't even hold a gun well enough to defend himself. He ends up being a surprise to Orzo, who comes from money herself. She's aghast at the corruption she sees everywhere, but ends up not quite the naive child she seems to be initially. And no, she doesn't keep her pure rep intact for all that long.
Kop is about establishing levels of bad. There's bad (Juno and Maggie), badder (Juno's first love, Paul, the head of the Bandur Crime Cartel), really bad (too many to mention) and pure evil (an off-world slave and drug smuggler). Not a hero in the lot. Just folks less bad than others.
Which makes the book a fascinating read. I could do without some of the grinding dreariness. I get that Lagarto is a hell-hole and that life's tough. I don't need it hammerd at me time and time again. But after reading the first half-dozen chapters one a night, I finished the rest in one sitting when the action really picked up.
The best analogy I could think of for this book is Chinatown. It's got that grungy, dirty feeling where the bad(dest) guys get their's in the end, but the hero isn't exactly a paragon. It's not quite Chinatown-level quality. But it's a first novel and I look forward to Hammond improving as a writer and maybe letting things in Ex-KOP (the sequel) get a little better for the unfortunate inhabitants of that armpit of a planet.
Recommended.
Let's start with Kop's titular hero, Juno Mozembe. He's a dirty cop. Really, really dirty. The only honest cop on the whole KOP force gets assigned to him and gets dingied up pretty quickly. His partner 25 years back, Paul Chang, runs KOP and has survived in power all these years by making deals with the organized crime on the backwater planet called Lagarto. Lagarto enjoyed a brief fling in interstellar circles as a supplier of superior brandy. Didn't last long. And the human presence on the planet has been anything but successful since. Lagarto's teeming microbial life makes anything technological a nightmare to keep working. It's almost as inimical as Harry Harrison's creation, Deathworld. Just a tad slower, but it's strangling the population that emigrated the slow way from Earth.
Hammond's constantly reminding the reader just how seedy the town is and how much life is a struggle against spoilage of every type possible. Moral bankruptcy is rampant. Crooked cops, out in the open criminality and plain misfortune haunt everyone.
In the midst of this is a struggle between Chang and the town's mayor. Chang's position has weakened considerably due to the death of the town's equivalent of the boss of bosses. There's a power vacuum created by the lack of a successor and the willingness of the godfather from up-river to move to the big city and team up with the mayor to take control of it. A murder is the kick-off to the battle to determine who wins out.
Juno gets assigned raw rookie Maggie Orzo as a partner to investigate the murder. During the course of the investigation, Hammond tells us a lot about Juno, a former enforcer for Chang, who detected more with fists than his mind. Still, he's smarter than he looks, a bit more honest than his past presumes, and he manages to do the right thing more often than not. Hot-tempered with a ready fist raised, his hands are so bad, he can't even hold a gun well enough to defend himself. He ends up being a surprise to Orzo, who comes from money herself. She's aghast at the corruption she sees everywhere, but ends up not quite the naive child she seems to be initially. And no, she doesn't keep her pure rep intact for all that long.
Kop is about establishing levels of bad. There's bad (Juno and Maggie), badder (Juno's first love, Paul, the head of the Bandur Crime Cartel), really bad (too many to mention) and pure evil (an off-world slave and drug smuggler). Not a hero in the lot. Just folks less bad than others.
Which makes the book a fascinating read. I could do without some of the grinding dreariness. I get that Lagarto is a hell-hole and that life's tough. I don't need it hammerd at me time and time again. But after reading the first half-dozen chapters one a night, I finished the rest in one sitting when the action really picked up.
The best analogy I could think of for this book is Chinatown. It's got that grungy, dirty feeling where the bad(dest) guys get their's in the end, but the hero isn't exactly a paragon. It's not quite Chinatown-level quality. But it's a first novel and I look forward to Hammond improving as a writer and maybe letting things in Ex-KOP (the sequel) get a little better for the unfortunate inhabitants of that armpit of a planet.
Recommended.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
TV: Reviewed- The Big Bang Theory
Okay, back to blogging. I'm declaring February "Review Month" (Note, I picked the shortest month of them all to guarantee a blog a day!). I'm going to do 14 TV reviews and 14 book reviews, plus whatever other things strike me as rant-worthy. I'm picking the 14 TV shows from my current list of the 15 best and most entertaining series and adding in 14 book reviews. No, I haven't read 14 books in the last week. I'm going to fudge and include books I forgot to review that I've read in the last year or so. I've even written a few in advance. So, I should be able to keep up the pace.
Onwards.
The Big Bang Theory is the best sitcom on TV right now. And a big favourite to finish atop my own list of the best TV shows during the 2008-09 Season. And it's all due to the writers ... and the incredibly funny Jim Parsons. Sure, Johnny Galecki and Kaley Cuoco were the two names that got the pilot made, but it's Parsons, chanelling Tony Randall at his most peculiar, that makes this show magic.
The writers have chosen to write smart and let the viewers catch up. Some of the references are so inside, it takes a BIG TIME GEEK to get them. Sad/Happy to say, I'm one. But they do such a good job of explaining the jokes to the outlier, Kaley's befuddled and sweet neighbour, Penny, that most of the humour seeps through even the densest of intellects. Cuoco's easy on the eyes and seems to have transcended the dumb blonde stereotype in her role as the 'den mother' to the gang of geeks led by Parson's Sheldon and Galecki's Leonard. Even those names are an inside joke, paying homage to the great Sheldon Leonard. He was a good actor and a better producer. The Andy Griffth, Danny Thomas and Dick Van Dyke Shows were his. His memory is honoured well.
Galecki has the Oscar role to Parsons' Felix. In some ways, it's a thankless task. Parsons just dominates any scene he's in, leaving Galecki as barely more than the rest of the geeks, played by Simon Helberg and Kunal Nayyar. He has an almost-requited crush on Penny that was almost consumated in last year's season-ender. I suspect this year's denouement will repeat the process, with Penny being the initiator.
Enough. It's 'Praise Parsons' time. Think of a extra tall, human praying mantis and you have an accurate image of Parsons in mind. Parsons plays the role dead seriously, as Randall did Felix. He spills out the geek-speak with rapidity and assuredness and makes you believe him completely as the asocial physics genius. Well, asocial is a bit wrong. He's not completely anti-social. The three other geeks are 'permitted' to grace his presence, but they do so on his terms. He doesn't bend, he imperiously orders. And the others are too afraid of him to stand up to him. Leonard's occasional forays into the area of backboned confrontation never end well.
But Parsons' Sheldon manages to convey just the merest hints of humanity breaking through his persona. He's formed an almost friendship with Penny, offering her a sort-of begrudging bit of respect every now and then. That's more than he offers Helberg's Wolowitz and Nayyar's Koothrapalli. When Koothrapalli won an award, Parsons made the mere act of smiling happily for his friend an incredible piece of physical comedic theatre. You actually came to the conclusion Sheldon's incapable of actually smiling honestly.
Nothing else has been that terrifying on TV in years. Positively Nicholsoneque from his role in The Shining. You know the one. The "Here's Johnny!" role.
It's not like geeks haven't been made fun of before. What they are doing right this time is humanizing them (us?) and giving them AND we viewers a common cause to rail against. Such is the power of Parsons' performance.
Try the show. You WILL enjoy it!
Onwards.
The Big Bang Theory is the best sitcom on TV right now. And a big favourite to finish atop my own list of the best TV shows during the 2008-09 Season. And it's all due to the writers ... and the incredibly funny Jim Parsons. Sure, Johnny Galecki and Kaley Cuoco were the two names that got the pilot made, but it's Parsons, chanelling Tony Randall at his most peculiar, that makes this show magic.
The writers have chosen to write smart and let the viewers catch up. Some of the references are so inside, it takes a BIG TIME GEEK to get them. Sad/Happy to say, I'm one. But they do such a good job of explaining the jokes to the outlier, Kaley's befuddled and sweet neighbour, Penny, that most of the humour seeps through even the densest of intellects. Cuoco's easy on the eyes and seems to have transcended the dumb blonde stereotype in her role as the 'den mother' to the gang of geeks led by Parson's Sheldon and Galecki's Leonard. Even those names are an inside joke, paying homage to the great Sheldon Leonard. He was a good actor and a better producer. The Andy Griffth, Danny Thomas and Dick Van Dyke Shows were his. His memory is honoured well.
Galecki has the Oscar role to Parsons' Felix. In some ways, it's a thankless task. Parsons just dominates any scene he's in, leaving Galecki as barely more than the rest of the geeks, played by Simon Helberg and Kunal Nayyar. He has an almost-requited crush on Penny that was almost consumated in last year's season-ender. I suspect this year's denouement will repeat the process, with Penny being the initiator.
Enough. It's 'Praise Parsons' time. Think of a extra tall, human praying mantis and you have an accurate image of Parsons in mind. Parsons plays the role dead seriously, as Randall did Felix. He spills out the geek-speak with rapidity and assuredness and makes you believe him completely as the asocial physics genius. Well, asocial is a bit wrong. He's not completely anti-social. The three other geeks are 'permitted' to grace his presence, but they do so on his terms. He doesn't bend, he imperiously orders. And the others are too afraid of him to stand up to him. Leonard's occasional forays into the area of backboned confrontation never end well.
But Parsons' Sheldon manages to convey just the merest hints of humanity breaking through his persona. He's formed an almost friendship with Penny, offering her a sort-of begrudging bit of respect every now and then. That's more than he offers Helberg's Wolowitz and Nayyar's Koothrapalli. When Koothrapalli won an award, Parsons made the mere act of smiling happily for his friend an incredible piece of physical comedic theatre. You actually came to the conclusion Sheldon's incapable of actually smiling honestly.
Nothing else has been that terrifying on TV in years. Positively Nicholsoneque from his role in The Shining. You know the one. The "Here's Johnny!" role.
It's not like geeks haven't been made fun of before. What they are doing right this time is humanizing them (us?) and giving them AND we viewers a common cause to rail against. Such is the power of Parsons' performance.
Try the show. You WILL enjoy it!
Sunday, January 25, 2009
BOOKS: Reviewing the Reviewer
I have a book wishlist that is ever-evolving. I read reviews fairly regularly so that I can update the list, which is then given to my extended family two months before my birthday and then two months before Christmas. THEY provide me with most of my reading books these days. It's quite a good arrangement, easing their issues with giving me gifts and me getting a plethora of books to bide away the time not spent in front of a computer monitor or a TV tube/monitor.
Most of the reviews are of science fiction books, my greatest area of interest. But I read a lot of mystery reviews too, grateful for each one that turns me on to a new author. For practical reasons (I read the paper daily), one mystery reviewer I read regularly is Jack Batten of the Toronto Star.
Batten is also a writer of various genres, including sports-writing. If you ever get the chance, his book on Tom Longboat, the long-distance runner, is a great read. He's written plenty about hockey and even did a book on the first year of the Toronto Raptors. He's an easy read and I wish he'd write more where I could find him, on sports. He's also a good reviewer ... with a flaw.
He dotes on writers who write about depressed detectives in his bi-weekly Whodunnit column. Batten seems fascinated by European mystery novelists, especially Scandinavian ones. And an intolerable number of the puzzle-solvers feature detectives who are, frankly, a downer to spend a few hours with. Sure, it can be uplifting to find the downtrodden detectives overcoming their ennui and just plain disinterest in happier things. But the consistent championing of such books gets to me.
His Scandinavian obsession is revelatory. Scandinavians, the sunny blondes of the North, also happen to have a dark side. While generally bruited about to be one of the happiest groups on the planet, the Scandinavians who aren't happy, are really, really unhappy. The area boasts(?) one of the highest suicide rates in the world. And where there is suicide, there is also murder. And where there is murder, there is somebody out to catch them. Ergo, a burgeoning literary detective industry. With so much to pick from, there's merit to bringing it to light, over here on this side of the pond.
Which Batten does. To the almost exclusion of North American-created work. And when he does deign to write about local and American stuff, it's oft times re-issues of old works or obscure mysteries that share a too-familiar depressive approach to the mystery. He stays mostly away from 'popular' fare, save for Michael Connelly, who's works need no reviewing to prompt me adding the title to my wishlist. I 'think' Batten reviewed a Stephanie Plum book by Janet Evanovich once, but it probably prompted him to go into happiness shock for a month.
To me, it's depressing to read about depression. Sorry, but I like to consign THAT part of me to the 'let us not talk about it' portion of my life. Certainly, I hesitate to read about it. Connelly's Harry Bosch books COULD qualify as a downer. Afterall, the ususally single detective can't keep a good (and occasionally bad) woman around for long. But he's hardly the downer that his European counterparts seem to be, given my occasional forays into Batten recommendations. So I read each Batten review with the hope that his 'discovery' will be the kind of discovery that I can enjoy.
And it does happen. And it's a wonderful thing when it does. It was a review of Lisa Lutz's The Spellman Files that turned me onto that wonderful detective series. The second in that series was recently nominated for the mystery industry's seminal Edgar Awards for best myster published in 2008. And I don't think that one was as good as the first.
So, every two weeks, I read Jack Batten, looking, literally, for the happy occasion of a good mystery about a happy detective. Well, if not happy, at least not completely depressed.
Most of the reviews are of science fiction books, my greatest area of interest. But I read a lot of mystery reviews too, grateful for each one that turns me on to a new author. For practical reasons (I read the paper daily), one mystery reviewer I read regularly is Jack Batten of the Toronto Star.
Batten is also a writer of various genres, including sports-writing. If you ever get the chance, his book on Tom Longboat, the long-distance runner, is a great read. He's written plenty about hockey and even did a book on the first year of the Toronto Raptors. He's an easy read and I wish he'd write more where I could find him, on sports. He's also a good reviewer ... with a flaw.
He dotes on writers who write about depressed detectives in his bi-weekly Whodunnit column. Batten seems fascinated by European mystery novelists, especially Scandinavian ones. And an intolerable number of the puzzle-solvers feature detectives who are, frankly, a downer to spend a few hours with. Sure, it can be uplifting to find the downtrodden detectives overcoming their ennui and just plain disinterest in happier things. But the consistent championing of such books gets to me.
His Scandinavian obsession is revelatory. Scandinavians, the sunny blondes of the North, also happen to have a dark side. While generally bruited about to be one of the happiest groups on the planet, the Scandinavians who aren't happy, are really, really unhappy. The area boasts(?) one of the highest suicide rates in the world. And where there is suicide, there is also murder. And where there is murder, there is somebody out to catch them. Ergo, a burgeoning literary detective industry. With so much to pick from, there's merit to bringing it to light, over here on this side of the pond.
Which Batten does. To the almost exclusion of North American-created work. And when he does deign to write about local and American stuff, it's oft times re-issues of old works or obscure mysteries that share a too-familiar depressive approach to the mystery. He stays mostly away from 'popular' fare, save for Michael Connelly, who's works need no reviewing to prompt me adding the title to my wishlist. I 'think' Batten reviewed a Stephanie Plum book by Janet Evanovich once, but it probably prompted him to go into happiness shock for a month.
To me, it's depressing to read about depression. Sorry, but I like to consign THAT part of me to the 'let us not talk about it' portion of my life. Certainly, I hesitate to read about it. Connelly's Harry Bosch books COULD qualify as a downer. Afterall, the ususally single detective can't keep a good (and occasionally bad) woman around for long. But he's hardly the downer that his European counterparts seem to be, given my occasional forays into Batten recommendations. So I read each Batten review with the hope that his 'discovery' will be the kind of discovery that I can enjoy.
And it does happen. And it's a wonderful thing when it does. It was a review of Lisa Lutz's The Spellman Files that turned me onto that wonderful detective series. The second in that series was recently nominated for the mystery industry's seminal Edgar Awards for best myster published in 2008. And I don't think that one was as good as the first.
So, every two weeks, I read Jack Batten, looking, literally, for the happy occasion of a good mystery about a happy detective. Well, if not happy, at least not completely depressed.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
INTERNET: You've Heard About the Worm
By now, I've had three phone calls and one email about Cornficker. The latest version of this pain in the posterior is circulating and it seems to be growing at about a million PCs a day. The solution is to keep your windows updates up to date. Microsoft actually solved this one back in November. Also, run Firefox, rather than Internet Explorer and run the NoScript attachment in Firefox and never, ever, let NoScript allow Global access to scripts. Do it on a case-by-case basis. You'll know what to let in and what not to let in.
IF you want to do some reading on the subject, I was pointed to Woody Leonhard's blog on this problem at Windows Secrets. It explains (in somewhat techy speak, but with lots of pictures), exactly what this thing does. It also points to the MS site to get the patch if FOR SOME INCREDIBLY STUPID REASON you don't have the patch installed. And it also points to Scott Dunn's article on how to turn off the Auto-Run process for newly entered CD/DVDs and inserted thumbdrives. I have to tell you, Auto-Run is something that should be turned off. I hate it. And now, I have the justification for my hate. Read and decide on your own.
Lastly, Microsoft DOES have a solution to make IE running a little safer. Not enough for me, but I hate having to do recovery work, this last week being no exception. Michael Horowitz did a series of articles on explaing DropMyRights, starting with this link at C|Net. It's written for the layman and it's easy to use to put a safety net between you and the security black hole that IE is. It will even work for other internet-accessing applications. You should REALLY think about installing DropMyRights if you run IE.
IF you want to do some reading on the subject, I was pointed to Woody Leonhard's blog on this problem at Windows Secrets. It explains (in somewhat techy speak, but with lots of pictures), exactly what this thing does. It also points to the MS site to get the patch if FOR SOME INCREDIBLY STUPID REASON you don't have the patch installed. And it also points to Scott Dunn's article on how to turn off the Auto-Run process for newly entered CD/DVDs and inserted thumbdrives. I have to tell you, Auto-Run is something that should be turned off. I hate it. And now, I have the justification for my hate. Read and decide on your own.
Lastly, Microsoft DOES have a solution to make IE running a little safer. Not enough for me, but I hate having to do recovery work, this last week being no exception. Michael Horowitz did a series of articles on explaing DropMyRights, starting with this link at C|Net. It's written for the layman and it's easy to use to put a safety net between you and the security black hole that IE is. It will even work for other internet-accessing applications. You should REALLY think about installing DropMyRights if you run IE.
COMPUTERS: Backups Good ... NOT Checking Backups BAAAADDD!
A week ago Thursday, my primary computer Popeye developed a case of Blinking Windows Desktop. The taskbar and icons would blink out. About every ten seconds or so, they would blink back into existence for a second or two, before vanishing into the ether again. Certain parts of my screen would still work ... RocketDock and StartEase, two programs I use for launching programs when I'm too lazy to use the start button. Opened programs would not blink out. And, if I was quick, I could open some of the programs with their here now, soon to be gone icons on the desktop.
Subsequent investigation revealed that this was NOT a virus issue, nor a detectable rootkit. It wasn't hardware driven, although I had updated my motherboard, network card and sound card about a week earlier. It wasn't a video-card driver issue. The problem survived starting up in safe mode running straight VGA video. Wasn't a cabling issue. I have multiple monitors and it failed using each different cable connected to all monitors, singly or in groups. I uninstalled the last five programs I had installed recently. No luck. I offered the hardware guy a chance to look, but he declined. He'd already done what I did next.
I googled for "Blinking desktop" and found LOTS of company. And about 5,000 page views later, I discovered what I think just about everybody else discovered.
THERE WAS NO SOLUTION.
One more shot. I booted up with Winternals recovery disk and got no blinking. It told me there was corruption in the NTKernel file. I tried a repair and all I got was an unbootable Windows partition.
So I did what I should have done hours earlier. I went to the backups and restored. In the process I lost some Stickies note data for reasons I'm about to explain. But otherwise, my data was intact due to my paranoia about putting it on drive C: and doing a LOT of cross-computer backups of data.
But, and it's a big but, the problem was that I didn't back up PROGRAM SETTINGS all that well. Part of it was due to missing files I needed backed up. That was the note data from Stickies, the electronic version of Post-It Notes that I use. Bad me. The other problem was that the backup program I was using to automate a good portion of the backups, Karen's Replicator, was not set up properly. REALLY, REALLY BAD ME. With a caveat. The only issue I have with KR, which is free for home use, is that when it encounters a bad configuration setting, it blithely tries and then goes on when it doesn't work. Without raising much of a fuss.
What I had done when setting up KR on Popeye was to copy the configuration files from Nuklon. And Nuklon backed up a LOT of stuff to drive F:. There is no drive F: on Popeye, as I made the decision to meld the drives E: and F: into one big E: on the newer machine. I WAS smart enough to go through the various settings that detailed backing up Popeye stuff to Nuklon and to Ollie, but not the internal stuff. Makes me wonder why anybody (is there anybody other there?) would be taking my advice!!
At any rate, I had some programs to re-install that I had installed SINCE the Drive Snapshot backup of C: had been made. That included Stickies, by the way. There were a lot of customization settings that had to be set right, again, in some programs. XanaNewsreader was a 'joy' to get just right AND to start using the existing collections of newsgroup messages. But a day later, I was operational for almost everything.
Except my programming environment, Delphi 7. The mismatch between what was now on drive E:, where I installed Delphi 7 and run it from, and the bits and pieces it expected to find on drive C: were too considerable. I had to re-install from scratch.
Again. And again. Because I got cute trying to take shortcuts in doing the install. One time, I was missing a couple of dll files because I didn't check one box. Another time, the try went south after I discovered I'd forgotten to include the database portion of the install. That's bad for a guy who makes a living programming database programs. THIRD time through, most stuff installed. I say MOST, because the new installation order seems to have resulted in some of the various third-party libraries I work with having a bad time NOW working together. They did a week ago Wednesday. And they will real soon now. But I'm CLOSE to overcoming the problem, and haven't lost anything that is important AND irretrievable.
But it would have been a LOT easier if I'd only checked the backups and the logs of creating them.
Subsequent investigation revealed that this was NOT a virus issue, nor a detectable rootkit. It wasn't hardware driven, although I had updated my motherboard, network card and sound card about a week earlier. It wasn't a video-card driver issue. The problem survived starting up in safe mode running straight VGA video. Wasn't a cabling issue. I have multiple monitors and it failed using each different cable connected to all monitors, singly or in groups. I uninstalled the last five programs I had installed recently. No luck. I offered the hardware guy a chance to look, but he declined. He'd already done what I did next.
I googled for "Blinking desktop" and found LOTS of company. And about 5,000 page views later, I discovered what I think just about everybody else discovered.
THERE WAS NO SOLUTION.
One more shot. I booted up with Winternals recovery disk and got no blinking. It told me there was corruption in the NTKernel file. I tried a repair and all I got was an unbootable Windows partition.
So I did what I should have done hours earlier. I went to the backups and restored. In the process I lost some Stickies note data for reasons I'm about to explain. But otherwise, my data was intact due to my paranoia about putting it on drive C: and doing a LOT of cross-computer backups of data.
But, and it's a big but, the problem was that I didn't back up PROGRAM SETTINGS all that well. Part of it was due to missing files I needed backed up. That was the note data from Stickies, the electronic version of Post-It Notes that I use. Bad me. The other problem was that the backup program I was using to automate a good portion of the backups, Karen's Replicator, was not set up properly. REALLY, REALLY BAD ME. With a caveat. The only issue I have with KR, which is free for home use, is that when it encounters a bad configuration setting, it blithely tries and then goes on when it doesn't work. Without raising much of a fuss.
What I had done when setting up KR on Popeye was to copy the configuration files from Nuklon. And Nuklon backed up a LOT of stuff to drive F:. There is no drive F: on Popeye, as I made the decision to meld the drives E: and F: into one big E: on the newer machine. I WAS smart enough to go through the various settings that detailed backing up Popeye stuff to Nuklon and to Ollie, but not the internal stuff. Makes me wonder why anybody (is there anybody other there?) would be taking my advice!!
At any rate, I had some programs to re-install that I had installed SINCE the Drive Snapshot backup of C: had been made. That included Stickies, by the way. There were a lot of customization settings that had to be set right, again, in some programs. XanaNewsreader was a 'joy' to get just right AND to start using the existing collections of newsgroup messages. But a day later, I was operational for almost everything.
Except my programming environment, Delphi 7. The mismatch between what was now on drive E:, where I installed Delphi 7 and run it from, and the bits and pieces it expected to find on drive C: were too considerable. I had to re-install from scratch.
Again. And again. Because I got cute trying to take shortcuts in doing the install. One time, I was missing a couple of dll files because I didn't check one box. Another time, the try went south after I discovered I'd forgotten to include the database portion of the install. That's bad for a guy who makes a living programming database programs. THIRD time through, most stuff installed. I say MOST, because the new installation order seems to have resulted in some of the various third-party libraries I work with having a bad time NOW working together. They did a week ago Wednesday. And they will real soon now. But I'm CLOSE to overcoming the problem, and haven't lost anything that is important AND irretrievable.
But it would have been a LOT easier if I'd only checked the backups and the logs of creating them.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
BRIDGE: I Miss Alan Truscott
In the last fortnight, I've had occasion to post a couple of comments at the blog run by Judy Kay Wolff. Judy's a feisty but gracious lady who I've met exactly once in person, and she, of course, does not remember it. It was an elevator ride at a national championship tournament in Toronto (I misremembered earlier and thought it might have been Buffalo). She was with her now-deceased husband Norman Kay. They couldn't have been more gracious to a t-shirt-wearing, baseball-cap wearing head of the ACBL's PR effort for the tournament. In some ways, it was sad I didn't make more of an impression!
At any rate, Judy brought up Alan Truscott in her blog and it brought back some of my happiest memories of the various tours I took as PR head for the ACBL. Certainly, I was a polarizing choice for the job when Paul Cohen first hired me. I dressed considerably differently that the various doyens that ran the league. At that first meeting in Portland OR, I was able to identify every friend and foe I had on the board. And I never changed a single mind. I tried. At first. Then I gave up and went about doing my job.
And that got me the respect of Truscott, the long-time bridge columnist for the New York Times.
He rewarded that respect by being happy to share stories about the various personalities within the Bridge world. Bridge is filled with people who'd I consider villains, ranging from cheating jerks at local clubs all the way to the top of the international bridge scene, both players and politicians. I make enemies easily and quickly and some very rich, nasty people have a permanent hate on for me. And me for them. On the other hand, the list of great people easily exceeds the list with screed. Judy, Norman and her current husband Bobby were amongst the group that lets me cherish my memories of being involved in Bridge at its top levels.
So was Alan and his wife, Dorothy Hayden Truscott. Absolutely the best story you can tell about the very proper erudite Alan was that he proposed to Dorothy on the steps of the Taj Majal. The stiff facade was nothing but caramel coated inside. He was funny and willing to allow jokes to be told on himself. I always found Dorothy to be more reserved in fact. Maybe it was because I looked like a hippie, to her.
Not that Alan wasn't demanding of the use of the Queen's English. I remember that at one national event in upper state New York (I'm waffling, trying to remember whether it was Niagara Falls or Buffalo), Alan had occasion to refer to something as plebian. Pronounced it pleh-BEE-an. It was like a veritable scene on The Price is Right in my head. I ... ME ...! had caught the man William F. Buckley would look to for grammatical help, mispronouncing a word. At least here on this side of the Atlantic! West Point cadets at called Plebes, pronounced Pleebs. It was a word I used occasionally too. And I always pronounced it PLEEB-ee-an.
I called Alan on it and he gave me that look. NOW, I know the look was one of pity. But all I saw was a glint of fear. I bet him the entry fee for an upcoming game he and I were going to be playing at the tournament. Alan would surely have paid for his entry and mine, had this contretemps never arisen. He always carried around a roll of ACBL scrip (like gift certificates in the Monopoly money format), to pay for such things. But I had to be taught a lesson. The entry fee for us both was to be the prize.
The only dictionary in the press room was a British one. And that wouldn't do. So we went hunting. We eventually found a Webster's and a New World dictionary. Found there were TWO spellings for Plebian (the other being Plebeian) ... and one pronunciation.
We then sat down and discussed how we were going to go about playing the game I was now paying for completely. That was when I discovered that Alan still had a few residual issues over having a convention (a set of agreements in Bridge) HE came up with, credited to a friend of Judy and Norman's, Robert Jordan. In fact, I played the Jordan 2NT convention with all of my partners at the time. He might have been bent at the shoulder and losing that fine white hair of his, but Alan's ears starting steaming. That's when I found out I had been playing the TRUSCOTT 2NT convention all along. And so it said on our convention card when we sat down to play a few minutes later.
I'd love to tell you we two Bridge journalists managed to best the field in that one and one-time only partnership between Alan and I. Or that I did something of note, worthy of being in a Times column. But neither happened. We had a good game and placed, but didn't win.
Alan and Dorothy are no longer with us. They live on in the stories that we can tell about them. The memories we can relive and enjoy. That's why, if you are into Bridge, then Judy's blog is worth your time. I'm glad somebody's taken on the task of getting as many of the tales of these people back into circulation as she can.
Even if you didn't know Alan, Dorothy, Norman or even the Wolff's, Judy will make you feel like you did. And that's a good thing.
At any rate, Judy brought up Alan Truscott in her blog and it brought back some of my happiest memories of the various tours I took as PR head for the ACBL. Certainly, I was a polarizing choice for the job when Paul Cohen first hired me. I dressed considerably differently that the various doyens that ran the league. At that first meeting in Portland OR, I was able to identify every friend and foe I had on the board. And I never changed a single mind. I tried. At first. Then I gave up and went about doing my job.
And that got me the respect of Truscott, the long-time bridge columnist for the New York Times.
He rewarded that respect by being happy to share stories about the various personalities within the Bridge world. Bridge is filled with people who'd I consider villains, ranging from cheating jerks at local clubs all the way to the top of the international bridge scene, both players and politicians. I make enemies easily and quickly and some very rich, nasty people have a permanent hate on for me. And me for them. On the other hand, the list of great people easily exceeds the list with screed. Judy, Norman and her current husband Bobby were amongst the group that lets me cherish my memories of being involved in Bridge at its top levels.
So was Alan and his wife, Dorothy Hayden Truscott. Absolutely the best story you can tell about the very proper erudite Alan was that he proposed to Dorothy on the steps of the Taj Majal. The stiff facade was nothing but caramel coated inside. He was funny and willing to allow jokes to be told on himself. I always found Dorothy to be more reserved in fact. Maybe it was because I looked like a hippie, to her.
Not that Alan wasn't demanding of the use of the Queen's English. I remember that at one national event in upper state New York (I'm waffling, trying to remember whether it was Niagara Falls or Buffalo), Alan had occasion to refer to something as plebian. Pronounced it pleh-BEE-an. It was like a veritable scene on The Price is Right in my head. I ... ME ...! had caught the man William F. Buckley would look to for grammatical help, mispronouncing a word. At least here on this side of the Atlantic! West Point cadets at called Plebes, pronounced Pleebs. It was a word I used occasionally too. And I always pronounced it PLEEB-ee-an.
I called Alan on it and he gave me that look. NOW, I know the look was one of pity. But all I saw was a glint of fear. I bet him the entry fee for an upcoming game he and I were going to be playing at the tournament. Alan would surely have paid for his entry and mine, had this contretemps never arisen. He always carried around a roll of ACBL scrip (like gift certificates in the Monopoly money format), to pay for such things. But I had to be taught a lesson. The entry fee for us both was to be the prize.
The only dictionary in the press room was a British one. And that wouldn't do. So we went hunting. We eventually found a Webster's and a New World dictionary. Found there were TWO spellings for Plebian (the other being Plebeian) ... and one pronunciation.
We then sat down and discussed how we were going to go about playing the game I was now paying for completely. That was when I discovered that Alan still had a few residual issues over having a convention (a set of agreements in Bridge) HE came up with, credited to a friend of Judy and Norman's, Robert Jordan. In fact, I played the Jordan 2NT convention with all of my partners at the time. He might have been bent at the shoulder and losing that fine white hair of his, but Alan's ears starting steaming. That's when I found out I had been playing the TRUSCOTT 2NT convention all along. And so it said on our convention card when we sat down to play a few minutes later.
I'd love to tell you we two Bridge journalists managed to best the field in that one and one-time only partnership between Alan and I. Or that I did something of note, worthy of being in a Times column. But neither happened. We had a good game and placed, but didn't win.
Alan and Dorothy are no longer with us. They live on in the stories that we can tell about them. The memories we can relive and enjoy. That's why, if you are into Bridge, then Judy's blog is worth your time. I'm glad somebody's taken on the task of getting as many of the tales of these people back into circulation as she can.
Even if you didn't know Alan, Dorothy, Norman or even the Wolff's, Judy will make you feel like you did. And that's a good thing.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
TV: Fall 2008 ... The Fallen
With last Friday's broadcast, Stargate: Atantis is gone. Sort of. There is at least one movie in the planning and the success of life-extending movies for the original Stargate series, SG1, suggests that we will be seeing the cast and characters of the city by the bay (spoiler more or less intended) for a while to come. But I will miss the 20 episodes-a-year series for sure.
I thought the series finale was a really good hour (or 42 minutes, but you get the drift). It followed up on the CSI: Vegas send-up from the week before and contained enough twists and cameos to please this old coot. And I'm part of the minority who actually are happy Dr. Rodney McKay, the annoying Canuck genius, is growing up a little and getting into a cute relationship with Dr. Keller. David Hewlett and Jewel Staite have done a good job with something that was apparently thrown at them in the last year or so. All in all, Atlantis leaves us in a good place, looking forward to the movie (series?) and to the next Stargate series, Universe, debuting in July.
The rest of the fallen from Fall 2008 is a motley lot that doesn't include much to regret, save for Boston Legal, which tumbled to an end that included just about every rip a writer could get out about network TV executives and their complete and utter cluelessness about a TV audience which doesn't include 17-34 year old dunces. I'll eventually find a replacement for the tomfoolery that was the legal team at the heart of Boston Legal. And it'll probably be David E. Kelley's next show, whenever it comes out. So colour me a neutral sort of shade of sad.
I have no regrets over the passing of The Shield. The story had been writ large and was finished. Michael Chiklis' Vic Mackey was an iconic character that could not come to any other kind of ending. And it was a satisfying ending, compared to the fadeout that finished The S0pranos. Loud and profane, but ultimately human, The Shield made an art out of the flaw. Flawlessly.
Much has been made over the demise of Lipstick Jungle. Not being the target audience, I won't miss it. I only watched the show for Lindsay Price, who I find astonishly cute and who possesses the best eye-crinkling grin amongst all current actresses. I don't feel the same way about Brooke Shields and Kim Raver, so I used the remote, a lot, when watching the show. As usual, I did find Andrew McCarthy and Paul Blackthorne fun to watch act. But ending the show seems a mercy to me.
And what can you say about Pushing Daisies and Dirty Sexy Money? I 'enjoyed' the first season of the sugary, overly artsy Pushing Daisies. But when the day I spent watching the season on DVD was done, I didn't feel the slightest urge to see season two. Loved Anna Friel, and Chi McBride is never less than great. But I OD'd on bright colours and sentimentalism. I DID stick with Dirty Sexy Money to the end, but my enjoyment was fading as they turned Zoe McLellan, my original reason for watching the show, into somebody I didn't enjoy watching. Peter Krause and Donald Sutherland did their jobs, the rest and the writers didn't do enough compelling work in theirs.
The CW came up with a couple of shows that verged on watchability, then sank when the rented-out Sunday line-up for the micro-network went belly up. I'm a sucker for love shows and Valentine had some good elements. Amongst youngish actresses, Autumn Reeser and Christine Lakin, have been found appealing. But whoever did Jaime Murray's look in the show should be shot. She looked emaciated AND harsh, all at the same time. Was actually tough to look at. And Easy Money had very little in the way of support for Jay Ferguson's lead, other than Marsha Thomason. The rest of the clan at the loan company were simply unpleasant or bumpkins. Although it was a look at a rarely-seen segment of society, there's a reason we rarely see it. Sort of feels like the slime you occasionally have to scrub off the sides of your toilet, if you know what I mean.
Ahhh, what else was there? The first casualty of the season was the Jerry O'Connell-starring Do Not Disturb. It was a loud and leering. O'Connell works best when he's endearing and this makes two comedic failures in a row. He's a new papa and should take some time off, and then find a dramedy or even outright drama to play in, harkening back to the days of Crossing Jordan, and before that Sliders. Of course, I remember him as a kid playing in My Secret Identity. I am that old. The other quick hit last fall was putting The Ex-List out of viewers' misery. As uncharitable as it may seem, Elizabeth Reaser just wasn't good looking enough. I'm sure she's a knockout personality in person, but the show had to have a knockout looker too. And she wasn't it. If they'd only switched with Alexandra Breckenridge, the sexy, tattooed teacher best friend, the show might have had legs.
I have every episode of Eli Stone and My Own Worst Enemy ever broadcast. I might even watch them one of these years. Christian Slater is almost always entertaining. Hard to believe Enemy wasn't watchable. I will probably watch it and Eli Stone and end up decrying their early deaths. But I doubt it.
Well, that's it for the belated reviews of shows you'll never be able to watch ... unless they come out on DVDs. Enj0y them if you can!
I thought the series finale was a really good hour (or 42 minutes, but you get the drift). It followed up on the CSI: Vegas send-up from the week before and contained enough twists and cameos to please this old coot. And I'm part of the minority who actually are happy Dr. Rodney McKay, the annoying Canuck genius, is growing up a little and getting into a cute relationship with Dr. Keller. David Hewlett and Jewel Staite have done a good job with something that was apparently thrown at them in the last year or so. All in all, Atlantis leaves us in a good place, looking forward to the movie (series?) and to the next Stargate series, Universe, debuting in July.
The rest of the fallen from Fall 2008 is a motley lot that doesn't include much to regret, save for Boston Legal, which tumbled to an end that included just about every rip a writer could get out about network TV executives and their complete and utter cluelessness about a TV audience which doesn't include 17-34 year old dunces. I'll eventually find a replacement for the tomfoolery that was the legal team at the heart of Boston Legal. And it'll probably be David E. Kelley's next show, whenever it comes out. So colour me a neutral sort of shade of sad.
I have no regrets over the passing of The Shield. The story had been writ large and was finished. Michael Chiklis' Vic Mackey was an iconic character that could not come to any other kind of ending. And it was a satisfying ending, compared to the fadeout that finished The S0pranos. Loud and profane, but ultimately human, The Shield made an art out of the flaw. Flawlessly.
Much has been made over the demise of Lipstick Jungle. Not being the target audience, I won't miss it. I only watched the show for Lindsay Price, who I find astonishly cute and who possesses the best eye-crinkling grin amongst all current actresses. I don't feel the same way about Brooke Shields and Kim Raver, so I used the remote, a lot, when watching the show. As usual, I did find Andrew McCarthy and Paul Blackthorne fun to watch act. But ending the show seems a mercy to me.
And what can you say about Pushing Daisies and Dirty Sexy Money? I 'enjoyed' the first season of the sugary, overly artsy Pushing Daisies. But when the day I spent watching the season on DVD was done, I didn't feel the slightest urge to see season two. Loved Anna Friel, and Chi McBride is never less than great. But I OD'd on bright colours and sentimentalism. I DID stick with Dirty Sexy Money to the end, but my enjoyment was fading as they turned Zoe McLellan, my original reason for watching the show, into somebody I didn't enjoy watching. Peter Krause and Donald Sutherland did their jobs, the rest and the writers didn't do enough compelling work in theirs.
The CW came up with a couple of shows that verged on watchability, then sank when the rented-out Sunday line-up for the micro-network went belly up. I'm a sucker for love shows and Valentine had some good elements. Amongst youngish actresses, Autumn Reeser and Christine Lakin, have been found appealing. But whoever did Jaime Murray's look in the show should be shot. She looked emaciated AND harsh, all at the same time. Was actually tough to look at. And Easy Money had very little in the way of support for Jay Ferguson's lead, other than Marsha Thomason. The rest of the clan at the loan company were simply unpleasant or bumpkins. Although it was a look at a rarely-seen segment of society, there's a reason we rarely see it. Sort of feels like the slime you occasionally have to scrub off the sides of your toilet, if you know what I mean.
Ahhh, what else was there? The first casualty of the season was the Jerry O'Connell-starring Do Not Disturb. It was a loud and leering. O'Connell works best when he's endearing and this makes two comedic failures in a row. He's a new papa and should take some time off, and then find a dramedy or even outright drama to play in, harkening back to the days of Crossing Jordan, and before that Sliders. Of course, I remember him as a kid playing in My Secret Identity. I am that old. The other quick hit last fall was putting The Ex-List out of viewers' misery. As uncharitable as it may seem, Elizabeth Reaser just wasn't good looking enough. I'm sure she's a knockout personality in person, but the show had to have a knockout looker too. And she wasn't it. If they'd only switched with Alexandra Breckenridge, the sexy, tattooed teacher best friend, the show might have had legs.
I have every episode of Eli Stone and My Own Worst Enemy ever broadcast. I might even watch them one of these years. Christian Slater is almost always entertaining. Hard to believe Enemy wasn't watchable. I will probably watch it and Eli Stone and end up decrying their early deaths. But I doubt it.
Well, that's it for the belated reviews of shows you'll never be able to watch ... unless they come out on DVDs. Enj0y them if you can!
Monday, January 12, 2009
FOOTBALL: Really Thought It Would Be Chargers-Eagles
I'm not a huge football fan. I won the roto league both years we did one, but it was more inertia than anything else. That, and picking LaDainian Tomlinson each year. But I digress.
Thought I had a real Wild Card chance at winning the NFL playoff pool, since I loaded up on Chargers and Eagles. The Eagles are still alive and surely the miracle Arizona Cardinal run will come to an end at the raptors of the pigskin's hands. So, that part of the parley looks good. Unfortunately, Ben Roethlisberger turned out NOT to be so concussed as to not show up against San Diego. So it'll be Steelers-Ravens and who in their right mind can cheer for that thug Ray Lewis and his teammates. Not I. So it will be a battle of Pennsylvannia come Super Bowl Whatever Number It Is. Not up there with Manning vs. Manning. But good enough.
Maybe Andy Reid will have something good happen to him afterall.
Thought I had a real Wild Card chance at winning the NFL playoff pool, since I loaded up on Chargers and Eagles. The Eagles are still alive and surely the miracle Arizona Cardinal run will come to an end at the raptors of the pigskin's hands. So, that part of the parley looks good. Unfortunately, Ben Roethlisberger turned out NOT to be so concussed as to not show up against San Diego. So it'll be Steelers-Ravens and who in their right mind can cheer for that thug Ray Lewis and his teammates. Not I. So it will be a battle of Pennsylvannia come Super Bowl Whatever Number It Is. Not up there with Manning vs. Manning. But good enough.
Maybe Andy Reid will have something good happen to him afterall.
INTERNET: Redesign Horror Part 3 (and Counting)
And the list grows. The lastest is SciFi.Com combining it's Science Fiction Weekly site with SciFiWire.com. The result is useless, an opus of clicking and clicking and never finding anything of the old sfw site that made it the last thing I did during my weekend roundup of once-a-week sites.
Strictly speaking, this isn't a site redesign, it's SciFiWire taking over Science Fiction Weekly. There's a reason I stayed away from SciFiWire in the past. It's useless, ugly and not a little bit off-putting. So, I lose another bookmark.
Down to 22,198 at this point.
Strictly speaking, this isn't a site redesign, it's SciFiWire taking over Science Fiction Weekly. There's a reason I stayed away from SciFiWire in the past. It's useless, ugly and not a little bit off-putting. So, I lose another bookmark.
Down to 22,198 at this point.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
COMPUTERS: The Weekly Cleaning
A quickie. Toronto plays Boston at the bottom of the hour and I still have hours of programming after the basketball break. Sooooo, here's what I do weekly to keep my computer operating as nicely as possible. Here's my folder of maintenance programs to run once a week (Saturday's usually, but it was Fridays).
At any rate, I run Crap Cleaner first. I analyze and then perform the clean to get rid of all Temporary files. Microsoft lies a lot, but most often about temp files. They stay around, eating up space and sometimes eating up programs because of the detritus left behind. My only trick is uncheck Autocomplete Form History under Windows Explorer and NOTHING under Advanced. Leave the Start Menu Shortcuts and Desktop Shortcuts unchecked, which I believe they are by default under System. Going to the Applications tab at the top, uncheck Cookies and Saved Form Information under Firefox/Mozilla. After running the Cleaner app in Crap Cleaner, I then run the registry cleaner. You will have to Scan for issues and follow the instructions two or three times. Four times is rare AND I've seen it go to six once. I don't save the registry for undoing before hand. You can if the paranoia strikes you. But generally I trust Crap Cleaner to not torch my computer. Besides, I have backups (G).
I then run Spyware Blaster and update it. Then I close it. Really simple, that one.
ShellExView is something relatively new. It lets me see what added itself to my operating system since I last ran it. The FULL display it will show you can be wide. REAAALLLLY WIDE. In fact, I've got it stretching across two 1600x1200 wide monitors! Thank goodness for row highlighting. At any rate, more for geeks than non-geeks. But it can't hurt to look (but not touch anything), if you are less tech inclined.
After that, comes runs for Spybot and Avast Anti-Virus. Rarely, if I'm feeling something's hinky and I can't get anything out of Spybot or Anti-Virus, I run Microsoft's Windows Defender. And if THAT still leaves my hairs at attention, I'll run Rootkit Revealer to see if something's gotten in and dug in deep.
I almost run Double Driver after any instance where I have changed any hardware or updated the drivers on my system. That gives me protection by copying the drivers for the hardware to another computer in another room, in case this computer 'blows up.' And MozBackup normally gets run about once a month, or whenever I want to copy data from my main machines to one of the others, to let them have current settings and bookmark lists in Firefox, email settings in Thunderbird and to-do's in Sunbird.
FileHippo's Update Checker and UpdateNotifier from Cleansoft both check my programs on the computer and tell me which have updates awaiting out there on the ether. I run both, because they catch things the other misses. I was surprised, for example, to find out this morning that 7-Zip, SpeedFan and Java Runtime version 6 were not up to date on my system. THAT's why you run these kind of utilities when you juggle three computers. AM-Deadlink gets run about once a month and it goes through my bookmarks and tells me which ones are dead and gone. Keeping my bookmark list under a million entries is a never-ending fight.
Finally, once a fortnight, I WILL run Drive Snapshot to back up my computers, one to another in a sort of chain. This is, of course, in addition to the nightly backups I run with Karen's Replicator.
And lastly, when the machine starts feeling slowly, I run Smart Defrag from IoBit. I SHOULD run it more regularly, but if you are running NTFS, it has a LOT less effectiveness than if you are running Fat32. Still, once a month seems about right.
NOT shown, is the occasional use of a DVD-burner backup, where I take off a Snapshot backup onto DVD's. Frequently to be done while watching a hockey or basketball game.
There you have it, a weekly maintenance routine. You can do it in a one-day slugfest, or run one or two of the items each day during your lunch break. The long ones (Avast, Defrag and to a lesser extent, Spybot and Snapshot), might need longer than a lunch break, depending on your storage space. I've got between 2 and 3 terrabytes of storage all told. It CAN take some time.
Gotta go, Raptors-Celtics in the first of a home-and-home!
Saturday, January 10, 2009
TV: That Remote Impulse
I have a TV in every room in the house, except the bathrooms. And that's because of logistical issues, not any more sane reason. In fact, I have more than one TV in more than on room. And I live alone. I am a TV addict most of the time. I still read a lot and that meanie guy at my main customer has me working harder than I have in years, but I'm still a TV guy.
Actually, I'm a TV guy with a remote. And I'm willing to use it.
What's amusing is see how Pavlovian I've become while watching TV. I reach for the remote at the slightest possibility the show I'm watching is about to take a break. I see a fade out starting and I'm scrambling for the remote as quickly as a man my size can do it. It's usually just inches away from my left hand, but occasionally it's elsewhere, resulting in a frantic search to try to avoid watching that most awful of all things, a commercial.
And I'm SOOO trained to do this, it even happens when I'm watching fare that doesn't have commercials. I watch sports live, which DOES have commercials. I watch shows I've recorded from over-the-air broadcasters, which sadly still do have commercials. And I watch collections of TV shows and the odd movie on DVD. (I still have VHS videotape machines, but I haven't watched one in probably six months). The collections are commercial free.
In all three of these watching situations, fade in means remote use. I hurriedly course through the other channels when watching sports. Admittedly, if I'm in a room with multiple TVs, it's the little side TV that I send channel-hopping. If watching recorded TV, the fast forward button gets extended use. On any remote, that button tends to be the first button to go. I go through a lot of remotes.
But the funniest thing is when watching a collection. There's a muscle spasm to get to the remote and then a relaxation as I remember there are NO commercials in these collections. I relax. Until the next fade out, when the process repeats itself. I KNOW I should just put the remote away and save myself these reflexive movements, but, at this point in my life, I can't help myself.
How long into watching a collection do I stop responding to the slightest darkening of the screen? About the third show, say two hours into it. Pretty sad, hunh?
Actually, I'm a TV guy with a remote. And I'm willing to use it.
What's amusing is see how Pavlovian I've become while watching TV. I reach for the remote at the slightest possibility the show I'm watching is about to take a break. I see a fade out starting and I'm scrambling for the remote as quickly as a man my size can do it. It's usually just inches away from my left hand, but occasionally it's elsewhere, resulting in a frantic search to try to avoid watching that most awful of all things, a commercial.
And I'm SOOO trained to do this, it even happens when I'm watching fare that doesn't have commercials. I watch sports live, which DOES have commercials. I watch shows I've recorded from over-the-air broadcasters, which sadly still do have commercials. And I watch collections of TV shows and the odd movie on DVD. (I still have VHS videotape machines, but I haven't watched one in probably six months). The collections are commercial free.
In all three of these watching situations, fade in means remote use. I hurriedly course through the other channels when watching sports. Admittedly, if I'm in a room with multiple TVs, it's the little side TV that I send channel-hopping. If watching recorded TV, the fast forward button gets extended use. On any remote, that button tends to be the first button to go. I go through a lot of remotes.
But the funniest thing is when watching a collection. There's a muscle spasm to get to the remote and then a relaxation as I remember there are NO commercials in these collections. I relax. Until the next fade out, when the process repeats itself. I KNOW I should just put the remote away and save myself these reflexive movements, but, at this point in my life, I can't help myself.
How long into watching a collection do I stop responding to the slightest darkening of the screen? About the third show, say two hours into it. Pretty sad, hunh?
BASEBALL: An Opportunity Missed
I love knuckleball pitchers. Besides the pure entertainment value of somebody throwing the pitch, I think knuckleballers perform an important task in today's pitching staff-weakened major league baseball. That task is pitching in blowouts and emergency situations. It means leaving kids in the minors to develop, rather than throwing them to the wolves in a spot start, almost certain to be confidence-hurting.
My favourite butterfly thrower of all time was Wilbur Wood, of course. When you teamed him with a young Rich Gossage, of pre-Goose fame, it was almost like it was unfair. Wilbur would come in with seven or eight innings of 69 MPH dancers and then Gossage would come in throwing flames. An awful lot of major leaguers took days off when Wood pitched. Of course, Wilbur wasn't above starting BOTH games of a double-header back in the day. Gimme a Wood today, and I'd have a four-man pitching staff regardless of the money. EVERYBODY else would pitch on a five-day rotation, basically. The Neo-Wood would start the rest of the games. Ahhh, but I dream.
The only knuckleball throwing starter of the current era is Tim Wakefield of the Bosox. I'm on record, I think he's worth faaaaar more than his salary. It's close now, but he's been a bargain for more than a decade. He's started, closed and been the long man ... frequently switching between roles during the season. And he's done all three with something between capable and outstanding success. He's not really a Wood. He throws fastballs and his floater has been 'controlled' most of the time, rather than the kind of wild darter Wood threw. But he survives alone.
That's because the Boston knuckleball factory has not exactly cloned his successor. The Bosox gave up on Charlie Haeger last year, sending him on to San Diego. And now, they've taken Charlie Zink off their 40-man roster. And nobody took the bite to grab a cheap potential surprise in the box.
And I'm really disappointed the Minnesota Twins weren't the team to see the potential of having Zink around, amidst a pretty decent collection of hard-throwing youngsters. (And yes, I know they have R.A. Dickey available on a minor league contract. Can't have TOO many options) Granted, Zink is no Wood nor even a Wakefield. But so much of baseball success is presenting other teams with problems and surprises. Much is written about teams complaining about facing youngsters fresh from the farms and 'not knowing anything about what he throws.' Sure, teams get over that issue by the second, or sometimes the third, time through the order. But 9-18 outs is a treasure trove in any game.
Zink and/or (less probably) Dickey would represent that surprise for at least the first month or two of the season. A LOT of pitchers have gotten fulll seasons out of unorthodoxy. Remember Mark Eichhorn? He almost won an ERA title throwing frisbees. And how about Hideki Okajima. Really masterful that first year, wasn't he. Not so much last year. There's other guys who's initial surprises hid the fact that they could really pitch and went on to long careers. Marichal, Valenzuela, and others had unique deliveries, AND long-lasting careers.
I've set it before and I'll say it again. With wins being precious in October, I'd invest in a line of pitching coaches for specific pitches. At EVERY stop along the way in my minor leagues, I would have one pitcher (at least) who threw the knuckleball. And I'd have a sidewinder and a sub-mariner if I could find any with potential. That would give my developing catchers experience in catching unorthodox pitchers. And, of course, I'd spend the money and go out and get coaches who could coach those pitches. Not enough for every team. But I'd make them roving instructors. I'd even bring them up to the majors periodically when one of their charges made the big show. Get Eichhorn to teach the slingers and whoever taught Wood for the knuckleballers. Phil Niekro if that guy isn't available.
I know the Twins think they've filled their unorthodox quota with Dickey. But Zink remains more of an unknown. And that's what surprises are made of.
My favourite butterfly thrower of all time was Wilbur Wood, of course. When you teamed him with a young Rich Gossage, of pre-Goose fame, it was almost like it was unfair. Wilbur would come in with seven or eight innings of 69 MPH dancers and then Gossage would come in throwing flames. An awful lot of major leaguers took days off when Wood pitched. Of course, Wilbur wasn't above starting BOTH games of a double-header back in the day. Gimme a Wood today, and I'd have a four-man pitching staff regardless of the money. EVERYBODY else would pitch on a five-day rotation, basically. The Neo-Wood would start the rest of the games. Ahhh, but I dream.
The only knuckleball throwing starter of the current era is Tim Wakefield of the Bosox. I'm on record, I think he's worth faaaaar more than his salary. It's close now, but he's been a bargain for more than a decade. He's started, closed and been the long man ... frequently switching between roles during the season. And he's done all three with something between capable and outstanding success. He's not really a Wood. He throws fastballs and his floater has been 'controlled' most of the time, rather than the kind of wild darter Wood threw. But he survives alone.
That's because the Boston knuckleball factory has not exactly cloned his successor. The Bosox gave up on Charlie Haeger last year, sending him on to San Diego. And now, they've taken Charlie Zink off their 40-man roster. And nobody took the bite to grab a cheap potential surprise in the box.
And I'm really disappointed the Minnesota Twins weren't the team to see the potential of having Zink around, amidst a pretty decent collection of hard-throwing youngsters. (And yes, I know they have R.A. Dickey available on a minor league contract. Can't have TOO many options) Granted, Zink is no Wood nor even a Wakefield. But so much of baseball success is presenting other teams with problems and surprises. Much is written about teams complaining about facing youngsters fresh from the farms and 'not knowing anything about what he throws.' Sure, teams get over that issue by the second, or sometimes the third, time through the order. But 9-18 outs is a treasure trove in any game.
Zink and/or (less probably) Dickey would represent that surprise for at least the first month or two of the season. A LOT of pitchers have gotten fulll seasons out of unorthodoxy. Remember Mark Eichhorn? He almost won an ERA title throwing frisbees. And how about Hideki Okajima. Really masterful that first year, wasn't he. Not so much last year. There's other guys who's initial surprises hid the fact that they could really pitch and went on to long careers. Marichal, Valenzuela, and others had unique deliveries, AND long-lasting careers.
I've set it before and I'll say it again. With wins being precious in October, I'd invest in a line of pitching coaches for specific pitches. At EVERY stop along the way in my minor leagues, I would have one pitcher (at least) who threw the knuckleball. And I'd have a sidewinder and a sub-mariner if I could find any with potential. That would give my developing catchers experience in catching unorthodox pitchers. And, of course, I'd spend the money and go out and get coaches who could coach those pitches. Not enough for every team. But I'd make them roving instructors. I'd even bring them up to the majors periodically when one of their charges made the big show. Get Eichhorn to teach the slingers and whoever taught Wood for the knuckleballers. Phil Niekro if that guy isn't available.
I know the Twins think they've filled their unorthodox quota with Dickey. But Zink remains more of an unknown. And that's what surprises are made of.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
COMPUTERS: Is YOUR Password on This List?
Interesting list of the 500 most common passwords used by stupid people. Unless YOUR password's on the list. I will amend this to the 500 most common passwords used by 'careless' people. Nah, you have to be pretty stupid to use one of these passwords.
Why?
Well, most password crackers start by running down this list. Then they go through the dictionary. ONLY when the find you've decided not to use a common word or name do they start the potentially length task of trying to crack your password through brute force efforts of trying every combination of upper and lower case, letters and punctuation marks. You can see how the difficult jumps by umpteen degrees.
I've said it before, I'll say it again. Take a person's name who made an impact upon you as a kid and spell said name backwards. Break up the syllables of the new word with a punctuation mark and capitalize the last letter. If you want to go another extra mile, add numbers to the start or the beginning. An easy way is to 'draw' the letter on your numeric keypad. Z would be 7895123. So, if the person who made an impact on me was Zia Mahmoud, the international bridge star, I could easily go with "a/iZ7895123". Mugford would become "drof+guM1475963".
Or you can take a starting word and then add it to the letter and numbers kind of thing. Let's say I want to use bank as my starting password and I bank at the Scotiabank. I could use bank%S987456321 while over at the Royal Bank I would use bank%R14789653. Now, using bank is stupid but make it a pet's name ... say bugsy ... and you get an easy to remember password system. I defy anybody to guess bugsy^S987456321 as a password anytime soon.
And best of all, you won't have to write down your password on a notepad beside the monitor, thus allowing visiting relatives into your business, if you know what I mean !?!?!
NOTE: Computer keypads have 789 at the top. Be aware that PHONE keypads and other kinds of keypads often have 123 at the top. Just sayin' ... so no complainin'.
Why?
Well, most password crackers start by running down this list. Then they go through the dictionary. ONLY when the find you've decided not to use a common word or name do they start the potentially length task of trying to crack your password through brute force efforts of trying every combination of upper and lower case, letters and punctuation marks. You can see how the difficult jumps by umpteen degrees.
I've said it before, I'll say it again. Take a person's name who made an impact upon you as a kid and spell said name backwards. Break up the syllables of the new word with a punctuation mark and capitalize the last letter. If you want to go another extra mile, add numbers to the start or the beginning. An easy way is to 'draw' the letter on your numeric keypad. Z would be 7895123. So, if the person who made an impact on me was Zia Mahmoud, the international bridge star, I could easily go with "a/iZ7895123". Mugford would become "drof+guM1475963".
Or you can take a starting word and then add it to the letter and numbers kind of thing. Let's say I want to use bank as my starting password and I bank at the Scotiabank. I could use bank%S987456321 while over at the Royal Bank I would use bank%R14789653. Now, using bank is stupid but make it a pet's name ... say bugsy ... and you get an easy to remember password system. I defy anybody to guess bugsy^S987456321 as a password anytime soon.
And best of all, you won't have to write down your password on a notepad beside the monitor, thus allowing visiting relatives into your business, if you know what I mean !?!?!
NOTE: Computer keypads have 789 at the top. Be aware that PHONE keypads and other kinds of keypads often have 123 at the top. Just sayin' ... so no complainin'.
INTERNET: Redesign Horror Part 2 (and Counting)
Another site I visit daily has taken the plunge into becoming a useless Web 2.0 mess. BetaNews has been my goto site for keeping track of updates to current programs AND finding the odd new gem. No more. The redesign of the site, which has the same whitewashed look as ESPN and Zap2It, is beyond unuseable at the point. And just WHO thought orange type on bright white background was a good idea?
Nope, the place to get your updates now becomes FileHippo, only using BetaNews as a fall back option.
2009 is starting off as a very, very bad year.
Nope, the place to get your updates now becomes FileHippo, only using BetaNews as a fall back option.
2009 is starting off as a very, very bad year.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
BASKETBALL: Dallas Trade's a Dud
The much ballyhooed potential trade sending Andrea Bargnani and Anthony Parker to Dallas for Josh Howard, Antoine Wright and DeSagana Diop, ranks right up there with the idiotic trade floated awhile back that would have send serviceable Toronto Raptors to New York for dead weights Eddy Curry and Stephon Marbury. The trade does NOT make sense, doesn't fit under the NBA salary cap rules and is a non-starter.
IF the Raptors want to deal Bargnani for a wing, they will find better offers than taking on Diop's long-term contract and spare part Wright. Getting rid of the team's best wing isn't a solution to needing two wings. Howard's development into a problem child goes against the grain of trying to build a team with character, not OF characters. So, that won't be the way Bryan Colangelo goes. At least I hope not.
Seems to me, the way to go is move Jermaine O'Neal, what with Bargnani playing decently at his natural position, centre. The obvious direction is Miami, with Shawn Marion on the return flight to Toronto. That said, O'Neal's ticket and health remain suspect and he's not going anywhere until one or the other of those two things clears up. And it's not going to be the contract. Until then, Colangelo's stuck trying to improve the wing dramatically. He might trade spare parts for other teams' spare parts, hoping he gets the advantage of a new setting.
Relax, Bargnani's not going anywhere.
IF the Raptors want to deal Bargnani for a wing, they will find better offers than taking on Diop's long-term contract and spare part Wright. Getting rid of the team's best wing isn't a solution to needing two wings. Howard's development into a problem child goes against the grain of trying to build a team with character, not OF characters. So, that won't be the way Bryan Colangelo goes. At least I hope not.
Seems to me, the way to go is move Jermaine O'Neal, what with Bargnani playing decently at his natural position, centre. The obvious direction is Miami, with Shawn Marion on the return flight to Toronto. That said, O'Neal's ticket and health remain suspect and he's not going anywhere until one or the other of those two things clears up. And it's not going to be the contract. Until then, Colangelo's stuck trying to improve the wing dramatically. He might trade spare parts for other teams' spare parts, hoping he gets the advantage of a new setting.
Relax, Bargnani's not going anywhere.
FOOTBALL: What Ever Happened to the Coffin Corner Kick?
Most football games these days feature at least one (or five or six) situations where one team's punter tries to kick the ball high and short ... say a foot short of the goal-line. Most of the time, the ball bounces into the end-zone. Sometimes it's caught well short of the goal-line by a return man making a fair catch. But at least once, we are entertained by players trying desperately to down the ball inside the five. And more often than not, it seems to lead to a replay.
There's an art to pooching a kick high enough to let your tacklers get there and short enough so that it doesn't go through the end-zone for a touchback, bringing the ball out to the 20-yard line. It's such an art, that few are good at it. But they all try.
So, why not bring back the coffin corner kick. Sure, it's less likely to end up on the one-inch line. But getting it to within five yards, give or take of the five-yard line shouldn't be nearly as difficult as pooch-kicking has become. Depending on the wind, the kicker should aim for the five yard line and be happy with any result inside the ten. And most times, it'll be pretty well within the ten, if the kicker figures the wind out right.
We won't end up with gigantic men flopping all over the field trying to tap dance over the goal-line and will the ball back into the field of play. But we won't get those tv commercial-inducing replays either.
Bring back the Coffin Corner from the dead!
There's an art to pooching a kick high enough to let your tacklers get there and short enough so that it doesn't go through the end-zone for a touchback, bringing the ball out to the 20-yard line. It's such an art, that few are good at it. But they all try.
So, why not bring back the coffin corner kick. Sure, it's less likely to end up on the one-inch line. But getting it to within five yards, give or take of the five-yard line shouldn't be nearly as difficult as pooch-kicking has become. Depending on the wind, the kicker should aim for the five yard line and be happy with any result inside the ten. And most times, it'll be pretty well within the ten, if the kicker figures the wind out right.
We won't end up with gigantic men flopping all over the field trying to tap dance over the goal-line and will the ball back into the field of play. But we won't get those tv commercial-inducing replays either.
Bring back the Coffin Corner from the dead!
INTERNET: Let Me Redesign The Usefulness RIGHT Out of This
LEAVE MY WEBSITES ALONE!
It's a new year and some people are determined to ruin it for me. It's not enough that I'm behind on a big project. I can't even depend on Yogi Berra to help me through these troubled times. *I* can hear Yogi joking "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." So why can't the web designers out there do the same?
First it was the ESPN makeover. Gawd save us from idjits that want to make my life better. So, I'm not going there regularly anymore. Then, Canoe.ca's JAM TV Guide decided the perfectly working television listings it had, just had to be spiffed up. They use the Zap2It TV grid. And you know, whoever designed it is an ex-paper publishing kind of person. How do I know? Cuz despite having a 1600x1200 screen to view it, I can only see about eight channels at a time!!!! It's scroll, baby and roll over because you might as well enjoy it. You have no choice. Really, you have no choice.
Negative white space is a publishing term to help readers focus in on what's truly important. Say..... like the listings for ALL the bleepin' channels. But nooooooooooo, some idjit, fresh off destroying ESPN, latched onto the TV site and decided each channel listing had to have at least THREE rows to go with it, so that they can show the broadcaster's little logo, the call letters AND the channel number. And the descriptions have to be big and airy, say FOUR ROWS HIGH big and airy. So they can add red NEW for new programs and HD for High Definition indicators (here's a TIP, Start each listing with NH,_H,N_ or __. Done!).
Awfully pretty, but completely fails the 'function defines form' test. This is Web 2.0 madness run completely amok. But there's more. There has to be more.
I used to be able to set my default settings to show a four-hour grid starting at 7 pm nightly. From there I could request a different starting time. No more! Now I get a choice of three hours or six hours. Who, I ask WHO!, ever needs a six hour grid? I'm a TV addict. And *I* don't need a six-hour grid! (Tried printing out the grid. FIVE PAGES! And that was for a three-hour listing of a SUBSET of the channels available!)
Naturally, as disgusted as I was, I immediately thought about going to a different purveyor of local TV listings. Even made the mistake of trying to use my Rogers Yahoo! Home Page. Gotta love the idjits at this site even less than Zap2It. I want to see two things on my home page. A link to my mail and the TV Guide. Soooo, with my nice big monitor, I can JUST barely fit three hours of TV listings onto a maximized window, six channels at a time.
Why you ask, thinking 1600x1200 is a pretty big screen? Cuz the morons at Yahoo! enforce a multi-column layout. Whichever I choose, two or three, they share the columns equally. And that's despite me wanting ONLY A SINGLE EMAIL ICON in one column! Thus I get a 800x1200 to show the TV grid. And, because the same idjits working for the other faux Web 2.0 designers, the grid insists on running squares big enough to do verything Zap2It's does, except show the corporate icon of each channel. And that's with the SMALL fonts option selected! Try clicking the FEEDBACK button. Dare ya, dare ya, dare ya!
I tried the TVGuide.ca site, which is affilitated with Bell Sympatico and Microsoft. Turns out it is close to what I want, but really, really doesn't behave in Firefox. And who can trust Internet Explorer to such an important task as figuring out what you are going to watch and what you are going to record?
Soooooo, off I went to find yet another alternative. Surely the Toronto Star would save me. Nope. Like The Toronto Sun (canoe.ca), they use ... you guessed it, Zap2It! Better (Worse?), I can only get SIX channels on the first page there! Just how do users with monitors two-thirds smaller cope? And I'm betting my brother Rick with his new iTouch, isn't using the web to check the TV listings much. By the way, another of my old employers, The Toronto Globe and Mail, have stooped to linking through the Star's listings to Zap2It. So much for competition. I even tried the National Post. Sort of a bastardized version of Zap2It WITHOUT the options? Yep, even LESS options! These are information purveyors fer gawd sakes!
Everybody's in bed with Zap2It. Sometimes with partners, sometimes without. That company is now in charge of my TV listings whether I like it or not.
I have no choices. TV Guide's dead, killed for the sake of a redesign that was stupid. The newspaper grids are inadequate and their web-sites are pretty ... and ineffectual. It's like the newspapers are TRYING to die off as quickly as possible.
Just leave my stuff alone. Go play with other people's hobbies.
It's a new year and some people are determined to ruin it for me. It's not enough that I'm behind on a big project. I can't even depend on Yogi Berra to help me through these troubled times. *I* can hear Yogi joking "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." So why can't the web designers out there do the same?
First it was the ESPN makeover. Gawd save us from idjits that want to make my life better. So, I'm not going there regularly anymore. Then, Canoe.ca's JAM TV Guide decided the perfectly working television listings it had, just had to be spiffed up. They use the Zap2It TV grid. And you know, whoever designed it is an ex-paper publishing kind of person. How do I know? Cuz despite having a 1600x1200 screen to view it, I can only see about eight channels at a time!!!! It's scroll, baby and roll over because you might as well enjoy it. You have no choice. Really, you have no choice.
Negative white space is a publishing term to help readers focus in on what's truly important. Say..... like the listings for ALL the bleepin' channels. But nooooooooooo, some idjit, fresh off destroying ESPN, latched onto the TV site and decided each channel listing had to have at least THREE rows to go with it, so that they can show the broadcaster's little logo, the call letters AND the channel number. And the descriptions have to be big and airy, say FOUR ROWS HIGH big and airy. So they can add red NEW for new programs and HD for High Definition indicators (here's a TIP, Start each listing with NH,_H,N_ or __. Done!).
Awfully pretty, but completely fails the 'function defines form' test. This is Web 2.0 madness run completely amok. But there's more. There has to be more.
I used to be able to set my default settings to show a four-hour grid starting at 7 pm nightly. From there I could request a different starting time. No more! Now I get a choice of three hours or six hours. Who, I ask WHO!, ever needs a six hour grid? I'm a TV addict. And *I* don't need a six-hour grid! (Tried printing out the grid. FIVE PAGES! And that was for a three-hour listing of a SUBSET of the channels available!)
Naturally, as disgusted as I was, I immediately thought about going to a different purveyor of local TV listings. Even made the mistake of trying to use my Rogers Yahoo! Home Page. Gotta love the idjits at this site even less than Zap2It. I want to see two things on my home page. A link to my mail and the TV Guide. Soooo, with my nice big monitor, I can JUST barely fit three hours of TV listings onto a maximized window, six channels at a time.
Why you ask, thinking 1600x1200 is a pretty big screen? Cuz the morons at Yahoo! enforce a multi-column layout. Whichever I choose, two or three, they share the columns equally. And that's despite me wanting ONLY A SINGLE EMAIL ICON in one column! Thus I get a 800x1200 to show the TV grid. And, because the same idjits working for the other faux Web 2.0 designers, the grid insists on running squares big enough to do verything Zap2It's does, except show the corporate icon of each channel. And that's with the SMALL fonts option selected! Try clicking the FEEDBACK button. Dare ya, dare ya, dare ya!
I tried the TVGuide.ca site, which is affilitated with Bell Sympatico and Microsoft. Turns out it is close to what I want, but really, really doesn't behave in Firefox. And who can trust Internet Explorer to such an important task as figuring out what you are going to watch and what you are going to record?
Soooooo, off I went to find yet another alternative. Surely the Toronto Star would save me. Nope. Like The Toronto Sun (canoe.ca), they use ... you guessed it, Zap2It! Better (Worse?), I can only get SIX channels on the first page there! Just how do users with monitors two-thirds smaller cope? And I'm betting my brother Rick with his new iTouch, isn't using the web to check the TV listings much. By the way, another of my old employers, The Toronto Globe and Mail, have stooped to linking through the Star's listings to Zap2It. So much for competition. I even tried the National Post. Sort of a bastardized version of Zap2It WITHOUT the options? Yep, even LESS options! These are information purveyors fer gawd sakes!
Everybody's in bed with Zap2It. Sometimes with partners, sometimes without. That company is now in charge of my TV listings whether I like it or not.
I have no choices. TV Guide's dead, killed for the sake of a redesign that was stupid. The newspaper grids are inadequate and their web-sites are pretty ... and ineffectual. It's like the newspapers are TRYING to die off as quickly as possible.
Just leave my stuff alone. Go play with other people's hobbies.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
HOCKEY: Proud To Be a Canuck
My brother Wayne is depressed about 50 weeks a year. But during the fortnight starting Boxing Day, Wayne lights up like a Christmas tree. It's time for the World Junior Hockey Championships and time to wear the flag and strut around.
This year's Canadian squad at the World Juniors was not at the expected strength we've come to expect from the eight-time straight gold medal finalists. Specifically, a whole raft of defencemen unexpectedly made their NHL teams, creating potential problems on the blue-line. It's been an area Canada has used to dominate teams from the northern hemisphere annually for the last couple of decades.
Instead of Luke Schenn and Drew Doughty being the shutdown Canadian pair, this year's team has Thomas Hickey and Colton Teubert. And frankly, team captain Hickey has been awful. In fact, no Canadian defenceman has been anywhere close to being the best defenceman in the tournament, although P.K. Suppan (a Montreal draftee) and wunderkid Ryan Ellis have been good offensively.
Add that to Vesa Toskala-like goaltending from Dustin Tokarski and some real bone-headed misplays by forward Steffan Della Rovere and you have a formula for Canadian disaster.
But the reason why this tournament lights Wayne's life up is that in the midst of all that's wrong with the current Canadian team, the thing's that right is that they play with passion and grit ... and luck.
Luck, the residue of effort and design, goes Canada's way. It certainly did last night in the Houdini act of dispatching the Russians by the famously lucky score of 6-5 in the semi-final game. But that luck was manufactured by Jordan Eberle, John Tavares and a crew of kids who fumbled and flounced until there was no time left to other than buckle down and win the game. Eberle's goal with a tick under six seconds left was (Paul) Henderson-esque and will put him in the pantheon of famous Canadian goal-scorers. Mind you, a loss to Sweden Monday night will put a pale on that accomplishment. But if the Canadians win (and they certainly believe they will ... and so do I), then the goal retains it's lustre for all time.
That goal effectively won the game for Canada. Sure, there was 10 minutes of obviously scoreless overtime that was mostly downhill for Canada. Then came the shootout, with Eberle and Tavares neatly depositing the puck in the Russian net while both Russian shooters failed. But there wasn't a single moment where you feared the Russians, so obviously depleted for having come up five or so seconds from pulling off the upset on Canadian ice.
And that's why you have to love this tournament. It's played by kids and kids make mistakes. The difference is how you react to those mistakes. The Canadian way is to pull the boot laces a little tighter and get on with the task of recovering and then thriving.
We Canadians might have a milquetoast reputation around the world. We are the 'nice' North Americans. But when it comes to hockey, we're anything but nice.
It's a good time of the year to be Canadian.
This year's Canadian squad at the World Juniors was not at the expected strength we've come to expect from the eight-time straight gold medal finalists. Specifically, a whole raft of defencemen unexpectedly made their NHL teams, creating potential problems on the blue-line. It's been an area Canada has used to dominate teams from the northern hemisphere annually for the last couple of decades.
Instead of Luke Schenn and Drew Doughty being the shutdown Canadian pair, this year's team has Thomas Hickey and Colton Teubert. And frankly, team captain Hickey has been awful. In fact, no Canadian defenceman has been anywhere close to being the best defenceman in the tournament, although P.K. Suppan (a Montreal draftee) and wunderkid Ryan Ellis have been good offensively.
Add that to Vesa Toskala-like goaltending from Dustin Tokarski and some real bone-headed misplays by forward Steffan Della Rovere and you have a formula for Canadian disaster.
But the reason why this tournament lights Wayne's life up is that in the midst of all that's wrong with the current Canadian team, the thing's that right is that they play with passion and grit ... and luck.
Luck, the residue of effort and design, goes Canada's way. It certainly did last night in the Houdini act of dispatching the Russians by the famously lucky score of 6-5 in the semi-final game. But that luck was manufactured by Jordan Eberle, John Tavares and a crew of kids who fumbled and flounced until there was no time left to other than buckle down and win the game. Eberle's goal with a tick under six seconds left was (Paul) Henderson-esque and will put him in the pantheon of famous Canadian goal-scorers. Mind you, a loss to Sweden Monday night will put a pale on that accomplishment. But if the Canadians win (and they certainly believe they will ... and so do I), then the goal retains it's lustre for all time.
That goal effectively won the game for Canada. Sure, there was 10 minutes of obviously scoreless overtime that was mostly downhill for Canada. Then came the shootout, with Eberle and Tavares neatly depositing the puck in the Russian net while both Russian shooters failed. But there wasn't a single moment where you feared the Russians, so obviously depleted for having come up five or so seconds from pulling off the upset on Canadian ice.
And that's why you have to love this tournament. It's played by kids and kids make mistakes. The difference is how you react to those mistakes. The Canadian way is to pull the boot laces a little tighter and get on with the task of recovering and then thriving.
We Canadians might have a milquetoast reputation around the world. We are the 'nice' North Americans. But when it comes to hockey, we're anything but nice.
It's a good time of the year to be Canadian.
FOOTBALL: Donald Brown Appreciation
UConn Huskies' Donald Brown is going to be an NFLer one of these days. And I hope he does really, really well. Because he appreciates the good things in life.
Such as ketchup. Specifically Canadian Ketchup from our good friends at Heinz Canada. He raved about the ketchup to reporters last week before he led the Huskies to an International Bowl win over the University of Buffalo Bulls. I really didn't have a team in that fight, although Buffalo's long-ago principled response against racism and the team's proximity SHOULD have made them 'my' team.
But how do you go against The Ketchup Kid?
You don't. Best wishes on a fabulous NFL career Donald!
Such as ketchup. Specifically Canadian Ketchup from our good friends at Heinz Canada. He raved about the ketchup to reporters last week before he led the Huskies to an International Bowl win over the University of Buffalo Bulls. I really didn't have a team in that fight, although Buffalo's long-ago principled response against racism and the team's proximity SHOULD have made them 'my' team.
But how do you go against The Ketchup Kid?
You don't. Best wishes on a fabulous NFL career Donald!
HOCKEY: Bashing Ballot-Box Stuffing
I'm a hockey fan, which is a generic term for being a Montreal Canadians' fan. Despite that, I know an injustice when I see it. And Alexei Kovalev starting ahead of Alexander Ovechkin in the all-star game, home site of Kovalev or not, is the poster child for voting injustice.
Last century, I wrote a piece for TV Guide that took on the long-time stupidity that fan voting for all-stars had become. This was in the 80's for gawd sakes. And the solution proposed then would still work today and would get around the kind of stuffing we've seen the good burghers of Montreal pull off this year. The computing power to do it was available then. Today, writing the program to handle the plan would be a weekend's work. If that.
Simply put, I'd let ballot stuffers stuff to their heart's delight. But what I WOULD do is to identify the source for all ballots. Then I (and my bank of computers) would apportion the percentage of each source's ballots according to the amount each player received. Sure Kovalev would get the maximum 100 votes (or, apparently close to it) from Montreal. However, he might not get a single vote from any other locale anywhere else in the league. So, he might total 101 votes in all (getting fractional votes elsewhere). Ovechkin would probably get the 100 Washington votes, as well as 125 or so total from the rest of the league. Instant starter on merit.
And you know, in a gate-driven league, it sure wouldn't hurt to have some of those empty Islander seats filled by Ranger fans, anxious to exercise their voting rights in 'enemy' territory. The same cross-pollination might occur in southern California or even southern Florida, although there's no guarantee that both areas will continue to have multiple teams in the future. The fun one would be Calgary and Edmonton engaging in a voting war between die-hards who see the trip to the other town during voting season suddenly having lots of allure.
Each team would get one ballot for each of a sold-out total for the time they are at home during the voting season. If the team has 10 dates and a sell-out total of 19,928, they'd get 199,280 ballots to distribute. Naturally, not all ballots would go out and I'm sure some staffer would spend his or her weekend punching six times for local lads on any that didn't go out the door to paying customers. So what? The effect on the overall voting totals in my 'electoral college' would be minimal. There'd be similar efforts elsewhere too, off-setting even the most diligent stuffers. This process would get around what I dubbed "The California Effect" in my old TV Guide article.
The California Effect came about because major league baseball had a LOT of early season games in California in those days. The Split Double-Header was still a thing of the future then. In those days, a rain-out resulted in a true double-header, which cut profits immensely. So, to avoid creating double-headers, many more games were played in California and points south during prime voting season. More games, more votes. For local players. Resulting in Steve Sax starting an all-star game in a year where he might have been the worst second-baseman in the game. MY system would even off-set the games played at home discrepancy between teams.
It's the same discrepancy that has hurt Chris Bosh in the NBA ballotting for that sport's all-star game.
There would be one extra locale, the REST OF THE WORLD, to allow for anybody, anywhere, to make their voices heard (or more accurately, their votes counted). Again, the votes would be apportioned according to percentage of vote.
In all, any player would be able to get a maximum of 3100 votes. In the BEST of years, even a Gretzky might top out at 3000 or so. Setting a record there would be a TRUE measure of the player's worth/popularity. And there would STILL be a total vote record to keep track of. In basketball, it would let the billion or so Chinese who vote for Yao Ming to feel vindicated, while stopping him from starting when he doesn't deserve it. Yao could win the overall total vote and not come near being voted a starter, as he did in a year where he didn't play much due to injury.
Let's face it, the all-star game has ALWAYS been a popularity contest. Fans WANT to see old-time faves, even if they no longer deserve the privilege (a privilege they often don't want, prefering some off time with the family instead). Okay, that's fair. What isn't fair is one town, Montreal, determining that Kovalev should start ahead of Ovechkin. That's not a preference anybody with any sense should have.
Certainly not a REAL Montreal, errr, hockey fan.
Last century, I wrote a piece for TV Guide that took on the long-time stupidity that fan voting for all-stars had become. This was in the 80's for gawd sakes. And the solution proposed then would still work today and would get around the kind of stuffing we've seen the good burghers of Montreal pull off this year. The computing power to do it was available then. Today, writing the program to handle the plan would be a weekend's work. If that.
Simply put, I'd let ballot stuffers stuff to their heart's delight. But what I WOULD do is to identify the source for all ballots. Then I (and my bank of computers) would apportion the percentage of each source's ballots according to the amount each player received. Sure Kovalev would get the maximum 100 votes (or, apparently close to it) from Montreal. However, he might not get a single vote from any other locale anywhere else in the league. So, he might total 101 votes in all (getting fractional votes elsewhere). Ovechkin would probably get the 100 Washington votes, as well as 125 or so total from the rest of the league. Instant starter on merit.
And you know, in a gate-driven league, it sure wouldn't hurt to have some of those empty Islander seats filled by Ranger fans, anxious to exercise their voting rights in 'enemy' territory. The same cross-pollination might occur in southern California or even southern Florida, although there's no guarantee that both areas will continue to have multiple teams in the future. The fun one would be Calgary and Edmonton engaging in a voting war between die-hards who see the trip to the other town during voting season suddenly having lots of allure.
Each team would get one ballot for each of a sold-out total for the time they are at home during the voting season. If the team has 10 dates and a sell-out total of 19,928, they'd get 199,280 ballots to distribute. Naturally, not all ballots would go out and I'm sure some staffer would spend his or her weekend punching six times for local lads on any that didn't go out the door to paying customers. So what? The effect on the overall voting totals in my 'electoral college' would be minimal. There'd be similar efforts elsewhere too, off-setting even the most diligent stuffers. This process would get around what I dubbed "The California Effect" in my old TV Guide article.
The California Effect came about because major league baseball had a LOT of early season games in California in those days. The Split Double-Header was still a thing of the future then. In those days, a rain-out resulted in a true double-header, which cut profits immensely. So, to avoid creating double-headers, many more games were played in California and points south during prime voting season. More games, more votes. For local players. Resulting in Steve Sax starting an all-star game in a year where he might have been the worst second-baseman in the game. MY system would even off-set the games played at home discrepancy between teams.
It's the same discrepancy that has hurt Chris Bosh in the NBA ballotting for that sport's all-star game.
There would be one extra locale, the REST OF THE WORLD, to allow for anybody, anywhere, to make their voices heard (or more accurately, their votes counted). Again, the votes would be apportioned according to percentage of vote.
In all, any player would be able to get a maximum of 3100 votes. In the BEST of years, even a Gretzky might top out at 3000 or so. Setting a record there would be a TRUE measure of the player's worth/popularity. And there would STILL be a total vote record to keep track of. In basketball, it would let the billion or so Chinese who vote for Yao Ming to feel vindicated, while stopping him from starting when he doesn't deserve it. Yao could win the overall total vote and not come near being voted a starter, as he did in a year where he didn't play much due to injury.
Let's face it, the all-star game has ALWAYS been a popularity contest. Fans WANT to see old-time faves, even if they no longer deserve the privilege (a privilege they often don't want, prefering some off time with the family instead). Okay, that's fair. What isn't fair is one town, Montreal, determining that Kovalev should start ahead of Ovechkin. That's not a preference anybody with any sense should have.
Certainly not a REAL Montreal, errr, hockey fan.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)