Week Twenty-One of NHL 2006-07

Posted on March 1, 2007 by Steve

The trade deadline has come and gone. I was really surprised that Philly came out ahead for a change and didn’t just shed everyone they could ditch. After Forsberg left, the team didn’t have any serious contenders to trade outside of its youth movement. Maybe they should miss the playoffs more often because when they’re in the running, former GM Clarke would give up future draft picks and untapped potential (cough! Justin Williams) for short-term rental players (cough! Adam Oates and Sean Burke). My team landed Martin Biron in goal! I had been proposing that hare-brained idea ever since Jeff Hackett retired! Buffalo gave him up too easily in my opinion. Ryan Miller had been their starting goalie for a while but I have no idea who they will turn to for backup. Sadly, this means Esche will be dumped over the Summer and Niitymaki is the new backup, if they don’t trade him. I would keep Esche and deal Nitty instead. All will be revealed in early April is my guess. GM Holmgren was also successful in ditching disappointment extraordinairre Kyle Calder. Too bad he couldn’t get Michal Handzus back. In true ex-Flyers fashion, Calder landed with the Red Wings (a real contender) and scored four points in his first game with them. At least we have younger players and draft picks to reconstruct the team around.

Phoenix appears to have thrown in the towel. Laraque was dealt to Pittsburgh to protect their crybabies. It was that or continue to be a healthy scratch. Contrary to the innaccurate EPSN pundits, CuJo, Nolan, JR and EJ were not traded. I think Gretz will continue to build his team around Doan even if JR, Ricci and CuJo are cast aside as their contracts expire. Speaking of JR, he’s still talking about retirement. Again, we’ll see come April.

As for the rest of the NHL, I was rathered disappointed to see Detroit pick up Todd Bertuzzi. Until then, I had always felt this organization was a class act. Despite how much I dislike the Avalanche or any particular player, no one deserves to have his neck broken. I pity Bertuzzi for letting his anger and need for revenge get the better of him but he should still be banned from all professional hockey. What he did will always remain inexcusable and now Detroit put him on their roster with a good chance of having his name on the Cup. Other trades? St. Louis having a fire sale was no shock. Maybe Guerin will help with San Jose’s depth and Keith T will give the Thrashers some badly needed grit and experience. The lslanders wasted everyone’s time taking in Ryan Smyth from Edmonton. I guess I’ll have a team to cheer for in the playoffs once 16 winners are locked in. Meanwhile, I’m back to a state of denial about Philly’s goalie problems being solved.

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Happy Seventh Birthday Nicolas

Posted on March 1, 2007 by Steve

This young man is my friend Nelson’s oldest son, not my nephew which is why the letter “h” is “missing” in his name. Today is his seventh birthday and not his 1.75 since his birthday is technically February 29, 2000.

He and his family will be moving to the Chicago area sometime this year so maybe he will meet my nephew and they can compare notes about life as a Nick and how cool Uncle Steve is…NOT!

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Happy Birthday Bernadette Peters

Posted on February 28, 2007 by Steve

As always, it’s impolite to state a woman’s age but it’s not like you couldn’t find it in imdb.com, unless the actress has it withheld. Bernadette has been a favorite of mine since I was a kid and I think it was The Jerk with Steve Martin that made me more aware of her.

Despite her appearances in movies and TV being rather infrequent, again see what imdb.com has to say, she does still star in Broadway shows. Not sure what’s she’s doing lately but I was very fortunate to see Ms. Peters in 2000 for the revival of Annie Get Your Gun while I was attending MacWorld in NYC. I had a seat on the eighth row too. She was (and still is) gorgeous! I have asked the wife if I can use my “Get out of Jail Free” card on her. No luck. I’m only kidding anyway because Bernadette had been married since 1996 and sadly, I discovered in my brief research of her that her husband died in a helicopter crash in 2005. It may explain her low profile lately.

I have numerous other chores to tackle today yet in honor of her birthday, I will take the time to watch Pennies from Heaven and listen to my favorite CD of her singing.

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Picayune “Classic” buried in site now

Posted on February 26, 2007 by Steve

You may have noticed some slight changes on the site. Several new categories have been declared from the “ashes” of the older ones. Hopefully it didn’t trigger anyone’s RSS readers or e-mail alerts for past posts. Sorry in advance.

I also did some additional tinkering with the guts of the Weblog’s nature to see how I could incorporate past stories. And why not? I started making Web pages for my own personal reasons 10 years ago. You can treat them as Easter Eggs to kill boredom fishing for them.

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Intel’s Austin site “collapses” again, but on purpose this time

Posted on February 26, 2007 by Steve

It’s about time this eyesore and final reminder of the high-tech bust in Austin was removed. A while back I had proposed naming it after George W. Bush in honor of his half-finished and half-assed accomplishments as Governor from 1995-2001.

Course Intel had a piece of primo real estate which will be the new court house. Can’t remember if it’s Federal, State, City or County. Doesn’t really matter, I can’t be called up for jury duty for at least another year. Intel may make a decent processor but they obviously didn’t know squat about planning, forecasting or how turn this liability into an asset. The city of Austin shares a big piece of the blame. The people in charge probably fell all over themselves to give them the land thinking Intel would create jobs just as CSC claimed. Instead, we lost Liberty Lunch (one of my favorite live music venues). CSC got a great view, then turned around and brought fewer jobs than they originally stated.

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Spell Cards which will work better than my “money” ones

Posted on February 24, 2007 by Steve

Complete Spell Cards

To kick off the Spring Cleaning I’ve done for Picayune by dividing the Gaming section up into D&D and Video Games, here’s a new review of a cheap tool I’ll be rolling out into my campaign.

One of my House Rules is more of a courtesy to the DM than a mechanic—all books stay closed until it’s either the player’s turn to cast a spell, needs to clarify an action being taken or the DM says it’s allowed. This prevents the players whose characters aren’t “doing anything” (because it’s not their turn) from combing through the PHB to research their next move. Trivial? Petty? Not really even though it’s just a game but consider this immediate example I use to strengthen my argument. During an NBA match, the referees are busy overseeing the game for fouls, goal tending, etc. (they used to enforce traveling until Michael Jordan). The coaches and players on the bench aren’t scanning the NBA rule book to tie the referees’ hands yet they could. Now imagine the other nine players on the court who don’t have the ball reading the rule book and may still be doing this when the ball is passed to them. Makes a pretty slow game on top of trying to put the refs at a disadvantage. Sadly, D&D is also a magnet for rules lawyers with a perverse need to play Stump the DM, yet these types never run campaigns, lest they would get their chops busted for their errors. Anyway, I’m also trying to heighten the pace of combat to simulate the chaos of battle like that first great melee in The Fellowship of the Ring when the nine heroes were in Moria. Otherwise, conflicts in D&D end up being a form of complicated chess.

Enter these spell cards to compensate for the PHBs having to stay closed. When Third Edition appeared, another company manufactured sets of these. Little did I know they included spells created by the product’s publisher. I didn’t know of their existence until someone cast a spell I had never heard of. Nothing makes a session less enjoyable than a bamboozled DM with monsters going down faster than Enron’s stock all because the player casts a spell equal to a smart bomb. Then WOTC revised the rules with the 3.5 Edition making a sizable portion of the cards useless. I gave them away but the idea remained a solid suggestion. Now the good folks at ENWorld.org sell a downloadable PDF of all the 3.5 spells in the SRD for a mere six bucks. There is even permission printed on the side of each page to tell kinko’s that the purchaser has the right to photocopy them. Now if the people at kinko’s knew how to line them up correctly (a different crisis with their customer service). These cards are great for all the wizards, clerics, bards, etc. in your group. They then should only have the cards representing the spells they’re allowed to cast for that day. For wizards, clerics and druids, the cards are removed as each spell is expended. For sorcerers and bards, I suppose they would check off how many times each one is used. It also comes in handy for the cards representing which spells are in a wizards personal spell book.

Bottom Line: This product is more of a prop or an alternative bookkeeping method since its downside is more junk the players can lose. I personally like this better because the player can only cast the spells that are in his “hand.” I can also hand over a stack of cards to represent the contents of another wizard’s book for my friend Mark’s PC Zorl to figure out. The publisher also has a set of cards that represent all the magic items from the DMG in the SRD.

Posted in D & D | 1 Comment

How does the camera “add” 10 pounds?

Posted on February 24, 2007 by Steve

What a relief to get this explanation yesterday from Slate.com. It really compensates for them publishing the nonsense and delusions of Christopher Hitchens. All this time my wife was telling me it was the number fives I ate at Whataburger! Now I also know which colors to wear to make me look more svelte instead of exercising, eating less and asking for a slimming feature in the next iPhoto.

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Oldie but goodie for new “Cat”-a-gory

Posted on February 23, 2007 by Steve

Since I have hit 500 posts, redoing the Categories crossed my mind and the first one I’ve decided to go with is the addition of a Cats section. According to my more blog savvy co-worker and friend Peter, Friday is the traditional day most cat blogs are updated. To launch the first “new” entry, here’s an old movie I edited of Nemo and Molly playing with a toy. Miette chose to just lie there. It was my first attempt at editing with iMovie back in 2003. I like to think my techniques have improved. There may be more footage of other cats in my life having their misadventures. I need to piece more together because I want to set it to a rather fun Nellie McKay song.

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RIP Dennis Johnson

Posted on February 23, 2007 by Steve

It was very sad to hear the news on KUT this morning. As a kid, I was a Celtics fan back in the Eighties and Dennis Johnson was a well-known player on the team with Bird, McHale, Aigne and Parish. He wasn’t very tall, compared to the others, but I remember he was a really effective guard. Good ball handler.

When the NBA’s developmental league added a franchise to Austin, the Toros, I was only excited about the team having Dennis Johnson as the coach. Personally, all the truly great players make the transition like Doc Rivers, the only member of Marquette’s 1977 NCAA championship team to have a shred of a career in the NBA. Anyway, I have a bit of regret not going to any of the Toros games now that DJ passed away. I kept putting it off and off yet kept a glimmer of hope that when I did go see them, I might have a brief conversation and photo op with one of my childhood NBA heroes.

Currently, both of the upcoming game for the Toros are postponed. I think I will make some effort to go now, especially if there’s going to be a tribute to him.

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Week Twenty of NHL 2006-07

Posted on February 22, 2007 by Steve

I’m feeling better about my Flyers now that the other skate has finally dropped regarding the indecisive Peter Forsberg. And guess what? They easily beat the NY Rangers without him. I can only hope, futilely, the clowns on FSN will finally shut up over how badly the team does when he’s not in the lineup. On the downside, Mike Knuble broke his face with an accidental collision into Shanahan. I was grateful it wasn’t intentional on either players’ part because there had been some serious fighting between Sean Avery and Todd Fedoruk earlier. I like my team to be tough but I want them to have good sportsmanship. The Flyers were and can be a great team without having to resort to goon moves or malicious hits. Now they’ve gone on to lose against Buffalo, the best team in the East, and Boston, still rebuilding ever since Ray Borque left. I’m excited over Sami staying on for another two years because he’s my first pick to currently wear the C. I don’t know what will remain of the team come next week when the trade deadline hits. Fingers crossed on Holmgren not trading away the younger guys: Umberger, Richards and Carter to get more aging has-beens: Hatcher, Rathje, York and Zhitnik.

Short of an Edmonton-esque miracle from last season, I think Phoenix has run out of gas to make a playoff spot. They’re 17 points out, in 12th place and only 22 games remain (44 possible points). Trading away Nagy really smarted along with some serious spankings they’ve taken. They need to win practically every game, especially if it’s against anyone in the West other than Detroit, Anaheim, San Jose or Nashville. Everybody else are cream puffs. How much faith the Great One and GM Mike Barnett have will be demonstrated by the trade deadline too. Allegedly Nagy got pushed out to make room for the salary cap next year. What other underperforming or clutch talent they release will determine their chances.

The NHL needs to make the trade deadline on a date before the All-Star Game, it is still too close and Frei makes a great point against rental players. Wow ESPN.com has something constructive instead of talking smack about my guy JR.

Which brings me again to my annual plug celebrating The Miracle on Ice at Lake Placid. Twenty-seven years ago, the US beat the Soviet Union in the semi-finals at the 1980 Winter Olympics, paving the way for our first gold medal in Hockey in 20 years. It has been our last too since the closest we had was the silver at Salt Lake which remains better than the atrocious performance at Turin last year. I think I will watch Miracle tonight because the Flyers game against Carolina will be a snooze.

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Democracy (In)Action or mini C-Span 2007

Posted on February 21, 2007 by Steve

Tuesday night was yet another demonstration of the futility and frustration I have with my homeowner’s association which I’ve concluded is a re-enactement of high-school government. Last year the annual meeting was in April so I have no idea why it’s in February. Supposedly, this is the only one for the year. Didn’t matter too much, I was attending because the fees were jacked again over vandalism and other things I wanted to declare BS on. I’m still dealing with the petty letters from the overpaid company this is really handled by. Speaking of which, maybe I can find a VC to back me on making up a cash cow company like Associa or Alliance or whoever it is these days. It’s terribly lucrative in my opinion. This company collects $43 a quarter from over 700 households and the lionshare is kept as “fees” for doing something I can only guess is mailing out snotty letters, having its snoops measure the grass, paying a landscaping company and not doing much else.

The meeting ended up a bust due to no quorum of 65 people and proxies. When it was declared to start at 630 PM, the quorum was short by 21. Then the annoyance began. The attempt to adjourn at 7 PM was delayed as there was armtwisting happening to get more proxies. I was one of the jerks pushing for a dismissal, requesting we’d meet again because I wanted to gauge the opinions of my neighbors. The current president made a valid point of the venue costs for the meetings. I would agree but I’m still pissed over the rate hike of five percent being shoved down my throat. Luckily, there were other people in my minority being as “uncooperative” to get the meeting canned at 730 PM as the quorum fell short by three. Then someone tried to corral us back in with talk of quorum being made after it was officially declared a bust. No dice, one lady and I said we wouldn’t surrender our proxies thus preventing the 65.

Rather a rude move on my part I will admit and I’m not thrilled about my 43 bucks being wasted. But I need more time to gauge what’s on the minds of my neighbors since the general consensus is the HOA is a nuisance and not something we really want to be a part of. I like the idea of a community, just not the one being formed wastefully around my home.

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1987: First date with Maureen

Posted on February 21, 2007 by Steve

When I chose classes for my second semester at Marquette, I made sure that my History 002 discussion teacher was Larry Woods again. Not only was he studying for his doctorate, he had numerous anecdotal stories from the time periods Father Donnelly covered in the lectures.

One unforeseen benefit of the class was it being the meeting place of my first college girlfriend, Maureen Carey. I’d been out with other women last semester but there were no repeat dates leading to a relationship or whatever it should be called. Maureen sat across from me in the class. We had spoken to each other over History matters before, not much else. I did think she was interesting and attractive in her own way so I finally asked her out after class several days before this anniversary. Obviously she agreed, hence there’d be no story. How well we hit it off was probably the bigger surprise to me. Not that I had a craving for rejection; one is always just taken aback with success after a string of failures at anything. It went on to be a rather standard relationship between a pair of 18-year olds with its melodrama and other standard behaviors; from the perspective of an older, hopefully wiser, adult.

I will always remember that Maureen originated from Hope, AR. It was unusual for Marquette since 80 percent of the student body hailed from either Wisconsin or the Chicago suburbs. The other recollection I will always have is her mentioning her hometown being the same hometown of her state’s current governor. Back in 1987, everybody’s attitude toward that was, “that’s nice dear, but no one really cares about the governor of a backwater state.” Besides, Hope, AR was more famous for being the world HQ of Klipsch Speakers then. Nobody would’ve predicted Bill Clinton winning the presidency in five years later.

What happened anyway? School ended and I spent the Summer with my parents in the suburbs of Philly. They despised her even though they barely knew her. It didn’t matter, I was blackmailed into dumping Maureen or not being allowed to attend Marquette in the Fall. Trust me, there was pressure from them to have me transfer to some lesser school in PA or San Diego (Dad accepted an offer in July to move). They had some insane idea about me dropping out of school and marrying her! The majority of my friends have always found such an accusation hilarious due to my long-standing aversion to marriage. When I did return to Marquette, she rightfully didn’t want to talk to me until Christmas Break. Sadly, there were never any more conversations. I lost contact with her and all I ever heard were rumors of her dropping out of school in 1988 and some other implausible or unverifiable stories, namely Maureen becoming a lesbian.

Overall my days with Maureen were positive and part of the education I received at Marquette. Without my parents’ meddling, I have no idea how much longer the relationship would’ve lasted. I’m confident it would’ve ended long before marriage came into the picture if matters were allowed to take their course—the fate of my other girlfriends except Somara. From then on, I never discussed the women in my life with my parents again but Maureen isn’t synonymous with secrecy. She will always be associated with the potential and excitement my Freshman year embodied.

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Rogues Gallery is our new comic store

Posted on February 20, 2007 by Steve

Yesterday I received a rather odd, unexpected surprise going to Dragon’s Lair in Round Rock, our local comic book and D&D store, y’know, nerd supplies. The previous owner sold it to the store’s manager Randy but it is no longer a DL, it is now Rogues Gallery. I think the name comes from those listings of all of Batman’s or Flash’s enemies, e.g. Mirror Master and Captain Boomerang are members of the Flash’s Rogues Gallery. Anyway, I think the name change won’t really matter. Randy is a solid guy with a nice, friendly staff.

Now to figure out if there’s anything I can do to help like arrange an in-store appearance of my friend Steve to promote his Athena Voltaire comic.

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Five hundredth Post today!

Posted on February 20, 2007 by Steve

Once again, here comes the shameless plug for reaching the 500-posts milestone dressed up as a story. It’s better than some stupid recollection of Nirvana, etc. on what would’ve been Kurt Cobain’s 40th birthday, which is still a shame, he should’ve sought professional help like I did for depression.

I feel I did pretty well on achieving this number in a mere 268 days. It sadly means I didn’t average one post per day but that remains the goal. Maybe I’ll have better luck when 1000 posts rolls around.

I would like more comments from my friends who live outside of Austin but the ones nearby are still encouraged. Don’t be shy. If you need it removed, ask me. You need to redo it. Again, ask me. I have figured out how to hack around and fix things, especially dates and times for posts.

What’s in store for the drive to 1000? I actually pulled off more than 15 entries per category so there will be a re-organization of Categories which would be an expansion. I’m also open to suggestions.

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Happy President’s Day! Now go shop or else bin Laden wins

Posted on February 19, 2007 by Steve

In honor of President’s Day, which is only a holiday for the Post Office, Banks and some Federal Offices, here is a little short cartoon putting George in a Chuck Norris vein (big thanks to Peter for finding it first). Don’t play around children unless you want to deal with them singing the song, driving you crazy with its funny, yet frequent profanity. Huge apologies to my ex-roommate and Ultra Cubs fan Paul on Lincoln’s prediction on a series of games between the Cubbies and White Sox.

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