Gen X Spring Sports Pool 2006

The tenth annual internet pool in a row. That is mind-numbing in the evident dedication to the pursuit of idleness and lack of productivity. Here are the rules in the most complex and utterly unwinnable pool yet:

1. NHL playoffs

Pick five scorers, one goon, one goalie, eight teams and a dark horse.

  • A point for a goal by a scorer.
  • A point for an assist by a scorer.
  • A point for a penalty minute by a goon. If your goon is kicked out of the playoffs and thereby the pool, you double the penalty minutes he has achieved to that point. The logic here is that the goon is a nut-bar. The later that he freaks and gets tossed for the balance of the playoffs, the more nut-bar like he is, the more he is the essential goon.
  • A point for each thousandth save percentage over .900 by your goalie
  • 5 points for picking each of the teams in the second, third and fourth rounds.
  • 25 bonus points for picking the dark horse – the team with the lowest regular season points to go the farthest in the playoffs. The dark horse must be seeded in the lower half of their conference.

2. Other Hockey

  • Name the winner of the Memorial Cup, Canada’s Jr A Men’s hockey championship. 10 points.
  • Pick four scorers in the Memorial Cup. One point for each goal or assist.
  • Pick the winner of the AHL’s Calder Cup. Ten points.

3. World Cup Fitba

  • Which team goes farther: Togo or Trinidad and Tobago? Ten points. Total goals breaks the tie.
  • Who wins the World Cup? Ten points.
  • Who wins the golden shoe for top scorer? Ten points.

4. Other Fitba

  • Pick the two teams in the English FA Cup Final. Five points each.
  • Pick the winner of the FA Cup. 10 points.
  • Pick the winner of the Scottish Premier League – not a Cup, #1 in the league table. Ten points.
  • Does Morton go up to the First Division of the SFA? Ten points if you are right.

5. Baseball

  • Who wins when the Red Sox and Yankees play on 1 May 2006? Ten points.
  • Who wins when the Red Sox and Yankees play on 2 May 2006? Ten points.
  • Who starts as pitcher for each team when the Red Sox and Yankees play on 1 May 2006? Ten points for each correct pick.
  • Which of thse two teams will be ahead of the other in the standings at 9 am 3 May and by how many games? Ten points for correct team and ten points for nearest to the lead in games.

6. Other Sports

  • Who wins the One Day International Series on Saturday, 20 May 2006 between teh West Indies v India, held at Jamaica? Twenty points. Guess the final score and you get ten more points if you are within 25 wickets on the score differential. Ten more points if you can explain how you exactly you know the score is what it is.
  • Who wins the World Snooker Championship at The Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, England held from 15 April – 1 May? Twenty points.
  • Who wins the British and Commonwealth super middleweight title match to be held on May 26, York Hall, London between Carl Froch v Brian Magee. Ten points. Ten more points if you name the exact round that the fight ends.
  • Who is the top scorer in the NBA playoffs. Twenty points.

I have to think of a few more questions on international sport. These will be posted in a bit. Get your picks in by 18 April 2006 at a reasonable hour.

Ah, My People

Things are a wee bit different in the old country:

…South Harris residents argue the Sabbath must be strictly observed as a day of rest. Some left marks of their disapproval at the quayside. Yellow tape bearing the words “Caution Keep Out” had been tied across the ferry slipway and several posters bearing the words “remember the Sabbath day” were posted on surrounding signs and buildings.

Just another reminder that I am going to aych-eee-double-hockey-sticks along with the rest of you lot fer dayin mony a wicked deed like taykin’ the ferrrrry ona Sundee. Badjuns alla ye.

This Friday’s Friday Chat

What kind of week was it? It was hopefully the last glimpse of a skim of
snow. It has been a fairly optimistic week otherwise with lots of contact with
old friends over the internet, planning a summer reunion in Halifax at the end
of July. But what else has the internet done for me lately?

  • Update#2: Just remembered that I forgot to remember to post about hearing Perry F. Rockwood on “The People’s Gospel Hour” this week on 1170 AM WWVA Wheeling, West Virginia while I was hunting for baseball. It is a Nova Scotia produced radio evangelical program seemngly on every station everywhere on the Maritime Canadian AM dial when I was a kid. I thought I had blogged posted before the soft spot I have for Perry’s voice and his pronunciation of “Boston, Massachusetts” at the end of every broadcast but I cannot find that reference via a search. So much for the internet. Good news! Perry is 88 and going strong.

  • Update: Iggy
    might get me to vote Liberal for the first time ever.

  • Mr. Harper is having a first brush with reality, needing now to debate the
    Afghanistan
    mission, having to pull back a
    contract to an insider     on accountability policy of all things and generally
    having to put a decade worth of puffery to the test. He is doing reasonably well
    but any claims to sightings the second coming of anyone’s Messiah are
    pre-mature. His tendency to secrecy and making up reasons for the things he does
    out of the air are going to get to be as annoying as his love of junior
    micro-management. He is not the only clever guy in the sandbox but at least he
    is a change and a keener. There is much good in hiring a keener.

  • It’s been a hard week for the creationists and Biblical literalists among
    you so there will be a round on the progressive faithful at happy hour today –
    soda pops for thems that want them, the good stuff for thems that need it.
    First, a
    transitional fossil     has been found linking our fishy forefathers to our
    monkey-like ones. I’ve never had a big problem with the scaley and tail-y past
    we share and suspect God has a good giggle at the trashing about people do to
    figure out what is what. I think reference to The Book of Job is
    instructive wherein the Creator took one of us aside and said “Huh? You think I
    tell you all the good stuff?” Then there was the
    Book of Judas     finding. Seeing as the Deas Sea scrolls were found in some guy’s tinder pile as
    he was stoking the flames of another fire under the bubbling stew pot for his
    family ‘s dinner, it should come as no surprise that there are loads of
    alternate versions out there. So raise a glass in commisseration for the
    fundamentalists whose fundamentals got a little shifty this week. Pray hoist ye,
    bruvvers and sistahs!

  • Has anyone started podcasting lately? I am feeling more and more that as
    bloggy text is actually solidifying as a hobby, podcasts are going the way of
    ham radio – nerdy and little understood. But it is not in the nature of the web
    to analyze what it likes to call its lesser successes. What people may be
    realizing is simply the difference in effort required to control text as opposed
    to sound. And podcasting needs a public success. After all, all of bloggy
    legitimacy has centered on one event, the great whoop-tee-doo of the firing of
    Dan Rather. Podcasting needs its similar Jimmy’s-in-the-well moment. It has yet
    to come.

  • Finally, I know someone who has had a windfall. I won’t tell you who or what
    but it was a surprising sign of my late-arriving semi-maturity that I did not
    curse my lack of such luck. Maybe it is the return of baseball, the passing out
    of winter or the general state of good tidings that have been surrounding me and
    mine far and wide but there was none of the usual gnashing gut churning
    why-does-this-never-happen-to-me stuff. Why is that? Am I losing my
    touch?

Well that is it for today. Let us gather and chat about things
we really do not understand fully and allow the glory of the medium give us
credence far beyond the quality of our thoughts.

Unfamiliar But Familiar

I am actually apolitical. Sort of. I think for the most part most politicians are good people working hard, the whole thing about Tory financial planning capacity aside. I also pretty much think that it is a difficult thing to translate the experience of people in another country and try to align it with what is going on here. The detailed ground rules are too important but practically speaking unknowable. I may be happy to watch the UK’s Question Period from Westminster on CPAC for the spectacle in lucid wit but we don’t really understand the context. Yet there is more than a moments entertainment for me when reading what Ian writes in his fuming foaming moments:

…you all got what you wanted, and in the eyes of progressives, you got what you deserved. Now your President has an approval rating of 37%, even in the usually-more-conservative Time Magazine poll. Roughly translated from the 2004 election returns, that means 14.2 MILLION people who voted for Bush now disapprove of him. Well, fourteen-point-two-million, you have nobody but yourselves to blame, you pathetic boobs.

Yes, I called you “pathetic boobs”. You deserve it. You left us with this guy and only now bother to show righteous indignation? You make me sick. You had access to the same information as the rest of us. At least real conservatives stick by their guns, but you’re the worst kind of pusillanimous, wobbling imbeciles. I hope your stomach lining eats away what’s left of your digestive tract.

Oh my. When I read or hear commentary like that I am really happy that I live in a country with more than two parties. I think that the greater complexity of us versus them helps focus on actual policy more than platform, on action more than words. So it is not without some hope that I watch this week’s return of the minority in different form to Ottawa. If you think about it, the nation has been locked in a set of facts that have been around compared to where we were about 1990 with Chretien and Martin fighting for the Liberal leadership and Reform was well on its way on its share of the plan to break up the then somewhat squalid conservative movement with the NDP and Bloq holding their own but not breaking away. Now, in a reversal of fortunes, we have conservatives actually being the ones saying they are going to clean up government and a bunch of the untested are competing for the Liberal leadership, all the while the NDP support solidifying under a more acceptable platform and leadership than has existed for decades and the Bloq actually starting to wobble as the old guard get older. In one way this is a new start but in another it will be less than a change as the ideas being shuffled are largely the same and, mortality being what it is, it is all downhill from here.

Opening Day

Here it is. The beginning of the good part of the year. Baseball begins tonight and I am already figuring out how and when to make the drive to Cooperstown – maybe even for the Hall of Fame game. Four and a half hours according to Google but I think it is more like three and a half if Syracuse is two from here.

Baseball’s beginning also means eyeing those two Watertown Wizards double headers on the Canada Day long weekend. Maybe a game at Auburn or Syracuse or Ottawa as well. Staying away from major league tickets means you can take the family to half a dozen games instead of buying a good pair of tickets to one.

This year I play catch. I am taking my glove to Maine in two weeks and, just for the record, note that Binghampton’s in town then. Maybe I’ll buy a bat and get the kids some mitts as well and start working on their double play. Six ain’t too young – not if you want to make sure they are more interested in the game rather than something grimly isolating like fly fishing or reading. And then there are those Sox games on the car radio fading in after sunset from 1080 Hartford. And on the computer during the day.

When does it get to be too much? How many times does it take for ice cream to become boring?

Update: A few lessons learned. First, price objects of kids’ desire before exposing kids to those objects. What they do not know will not hurt you. Second, Walmart has a good range of well made little kid gloves which are are sized by the inch. The lad got a ten and herself an eleven and a half. Who knew? Canadian Tire, no so much but it may just be that the stock is not out yet because hockey season lasts until July, dontcha know. Third, test the glove by having kid hold ball in glove and turn glove over to see if kid can hold ball in glove while shaking. Passing that test move on to the grip test wherein the kid with glove on tries to keep it on as you try to tug it off. This test can be confused with the no-kid-you-are-not-getting-the-129-buck-glove situation so be clear on the verbal instructions at that moment. Finally, good to see a league baseball is still under five bucks, though you no longer get them in individual boxes.

Now, off to throw three throws, roll my ankle and lay on the ground as the kids say “Gedup! Gedup!” knowing ten years from now in the same situation they will not be as kind.

Rollerball

You know how good, how useful TV is when it gives you the chance to see a movie you were not allowed to see in grade seven. It was like a glimpse into the future when the Flea rules the planet and treats us all like pawns on a chessboard. Best of all – it’s Canadian content with Norman Jewison in the director’s chair. Dig the font. Robots will demand the use of that font when they rule us. They will also make us wear tight beige slacks.

Subtle Thoughts

I had no idea broad brushes came in this massive gauge:

The UK is steaming towards a “National Information Registry” — one big database of everyone’s personal information, tied to biometric IDs. This system won’t fight terrorism, but it will compromise the privacy of British people. What’s more, the system will be impossible to implement, resulting in widespread harm to people who get screwed by the errors it generates.

Bad. Bad, bad, bad and bad. Boing say BAD!!! So certain yet so disconnected from law and privacy policy…and stuff. Good thing Cory is hitting the beach to recover from whatever tensions a newly aging futurist might need to recover from.

Friday + Bullet Points = Chat

That is the magic formula, the secret to all idle thought and a crushing blow to economic production. Even though this is the shortest weekend of the year, it is still worth anticipation and therefore chattery:

  • British Columbia is passing an Apology Act. Here is the text in first reading. It is a little wee law that basically says you can say you are sorry for something without that being used against you. It does not mean that you are excused for the thing you are apologizing for but it does also mean the apology in itself does not serve as a GOTCHA! sort of thing. It is an interesting idea as ultimately there is no real barrier to legal action and, frankly, if you do apologize you are still highlighting that there may be a case to be brought against you if someone were to investigate further. But it speaks to civility and also levels the community so that, say, a professional who has done something they are not comfortable with but which is within the realm of normal non-perfection can actually say “Oops” or maybe something even kinder.

  • It’s been a rather adult week around here between applying for a mortgage and growning out my sideburns. I am under orders on the latter point. The trouble is I do not have the most robust near-ear fuzz and what is there is snowy white as is my whole beard now. That is why I shave – to look more 37 rather than 57. But apparently the suggestioning of a mini-moutasche near each of my temples is an important fashion statement so on I go.

  • Speaking of manliness…am I the only one who is noting our new Prime Minister is getting rather large rather quickly? As a fellow traveller in this regard, it concerns. Heaviness especially at pace is not necessarily good for you. I know, I know…but some people actually are saying so. Here is my evidence over time. He has even taken to wearing gut covering vests when he is in the stinking hot jungle while the guys from Texas and Mexico wear thin searsucker. I don’t expect he is a devotee of the beery world so what is he up to? Is he a secret pastries man? A two litre a day of Coke guy? What does a nerdy policy wonk do to get out of shape this fast? But if he wants to do it well, he really should get in touch with me. Two words: boston chocolate.  Again, the man needs my help.

  • Oh, yes. I went on a cable TV splurge just to check it out. Last year, I signed up for a movies/super-station package and got the Friday night Red Sox game. OK, I signed up for the Friday night Red Sox game and happened to get a movies/super-station package. But then the Super station lost the Friday night game rights. What to do? Well, dump the uber-transmissions and get the sports. 1600 baseball games. Seven bucks more. But what about the east coast stations? Nothing like watching Carl Wells on CBC Newfoundland tell about how the Burin is getting battered by storms again this week. One day I fully expect him to have a panicked look mid-hurricane and turn to the camera screaming “SWEET JESUS IN THE MANGER! WE’VE LOST FOGO!!!”. So that’s another seven. Then for another four bucks or so they guy on the phone said – I clearly heard him say this – “we can turn the tap on full.” Best value, too, said he. So now we have 247 channels. Including One, the channel so generically named you can’t find it on Google unless you use the counter-intuitive long form of the name: One – the Body, Mind & Spirit channel. My leafy green consumable and skin balm awareness is expanding as I sit here. I know it is.

Ten Digit Dialing

Apparently we move to ten digit diliang soon. I have a computer in my house. It uses the phone to dial in even though it is a high-speed connection. I have set the password automatically. Years ago. I have no idea where it is. I think I have to change my dialing from seven to ten numbers. I have no idea if I can do that. I have no idea of whether I need to actually know the password. So I don’t check. I don’t want to elevate my irritation. That is my pesky irritation of the day. Thank you for listening.

Update: I looked. I had no idea. I ran away. I hate anything under the word “properties”.