A Fool's Musings

Ignore the missile? Ignore the missile

2012-01-26T20:02:00.000-08:00

I almost forgot; I've been meaning to post this for a while. It seems that, in Jetpack Joyride, somewhere between 2500 and 3500m in, when not in a vehicle, missiles effectively stop being able to hit you. I think it might still be theoretically possible for them to hit you, but I've been unable to make it happen. The downside to it is that it doesn't seem possible to get a near-miss, either. In fact, that's how I first noticed it, when trying to get near misses. I'd not quite manage to get myself in the right position, and the missile appeared to go right through me.

Fun to watch.

Anyone have a more specific idea of where the cut-off is? And should this be considered a bug, or a feature?

Free Joyriding, today

2012-01-26T18:27:00.000-08:00

Almost forgot to post it, but today (until midnight pacific time, maybe?) Jetpack Joyride is free. That is all.

Reconfirmation

2012-01-25T20:41:00.001-08:00

Accidentally ran the iPad out of juice again yesterday. Same result as before.

Amusingly, got quite a run playing tonight, where I got the coin doubler like eight out of ten games. Have a feeling I'm not going to be happy when the other shoe drops, and I get a run like that of head starts. (Although one of the good things that it took me a bit to notice is that, with the newer missions, the head start isn't nearly as annoying. Not that it isn't frequently annoying, but there are a number of missions (fly above X zappers, zig-zag, don't hurt scientist for X meters, don't touch floor or ceiling for X meters) where it actually helps.)

We're all pod people

2012-01-24T21:21:00.000-08:00

I laugh when I see someone call people buying Apple products "pod people", the implication being that Apple's products are either inferior or overpriced. And yes, I've still seen that happen at least once recently.

So it is with some amusement that I note that Apple's latest quarter saw them break all sorts of records. Not only did they blow away every financial record for the company, but they had the second-most profitable quarter for any company. Ever. (At least, if you don't measure in inflation-adjusted dollars. I do wonder about some of the older companys, like Standard Oil, back in the day. I have to think that some of their records would be awfully hard to beat, but I'm just guessing about that.)

They somehow managed to have more profit than Google did revenue ($13.6B v $10.6B. Thanks. That just blows my mind. And look at their cash on hand.

I guess there's a lot of pod people out there.

Anyway, I hope Apple keeps innovating, instead of litigating, and keeps making such cool products.

Matty's Hatty

2012-01-24T19:46:00.000-08:00

After hearing, this morning, that OV had been suspended for three games, I revised my mental estimate of their likelihood of winning even lower than I mentioned previously (and yes, I'm aware that that estimate already had the Caps as barely being an NHL-quality team). I figured that the only way they were going to win, at that point, was for TVo to steal the game for them (probably by shutting out the B's).

I certainly didn't think of the even longer odds of Perreault getting a hat trick (and barely missing a hat trick of penalties, while he was at it), with Eakin and Wideman each throwing one in as well.

The game started out about the way I expected, with almost all of the first ten minutes played in the Caps zone. TVo did manage to keep the score even to that point. But then the Caps started pushing back, and had the edge for the rest of the period. Well, except that they did allow a goal in that span. The surprise for me was that they managed to even the game up. At the break, shots were 12-10 against and scoring chances 5-4 for them. It felt like they were playing behind, but I suppose they really weren't.

Things started turning the right way just two minutes into the second, though. Cody started things off by sneaking one past Rask (I'm not sure, but I think Rask had it trapped between his arm and body, but threw it into the net when he tried to turn around to look for the puck) on a wrister from in close.

It only took forty seconds more for Perreault to get his first, when Semin carried into the zone on the right side. Rask was playing him for shot all the way (for which I don't blame him. I probably would, also), and was completely out of position when Semin passed to Perreault in the middle. Matty isn't real strong (and might not be able to stick in the league for very long, because of it), but he's got first-class hands, and buried it.

Nine minutes later, Carlson had a terrible turnover when trying to exit the zone. Seguin took the puck in alone, and glanced it off of TVo's upper arm, and into the top of the net.

Two minutes later, Perreault got his second when he almost exactly duplicated Seguin's steal and score maneuver.

A couple of minutes later, his night turned a little bit sour when he got called for hooking (and yeah, there's no question that he did it). On the ensuing penalty kill, the Caps never managed to clear the zone, and allowed a Marchand to put in a rebound from close range.

I was definitely not feeling good about the Caps chances of winning when Boston tied it up again; especially not when I saw the period summary. Boston was ahead 12-8 on shots, and 8-3 on scoring chances. It's amazing how much better you feel about things when you score on all of your chances. Once again, not a sustainable path.

The third period was a lot of back-and-forth, end to end play. There were almost no stoppages for the first fourteen minutes or so. Happily, one of those few was when Perreault completed his hat trick. The Caps had a great offensive sequence, with a lot of zone pressure. It was capped by Hamr barely stopping the puck from leaving the zone, throwing the puck on net, and having Matty step in front of the net to slam home the rebound. I think it was Washington's only sustained offensive pressure in the entire game, so it was great to see it consummated.

The Caps got one or two more chances off the rush, but were mostly sitting back and playing defense after that (again, not a sustainable strategy, though, as I said, at least they did generate a couple of chances).

I should mention, too, that the Caps were lucky several times that pucks slowed down enough to cancel the icing that would have otherwise resulted from the clears. That was a substantial factor in the lack of stoppages in play.

But they kept playing hard to the end, and were rewarded with half a minute left when Wideman pulled the puck off the dot in another defensive zone faceoff, and skipped it down the ice and into the empty net.

That was when I finally felt that I could relax and be happy about the results (though, looking back, I'm still not happy about the process).

Thankfully, that was the end of the excitement, so the Caps skated off with two points.

That gives the Caps a week to heal up. I was glad to hear that OV decided to skip the all-star game; I hope he comes back recharged, and ready to dominate. Especially since he'll have a few extra days.

But things are going to start getting really close together from here on out. The next game is the 31st, at Tampa, followed the next day by another in Sunrise, FL. If I'm remembering correctly, it'll be 31 games in 60 days. Let's hope Backstrom's back and healthy by then, because they'll really need him now.

(On a side note, when I was reviewing the period summary while writing this, I noticed that Flip Saunders was fired by the Wizards. No idea about whether that was merited or not -- I did realize that they were 2-15, but I expect that from the Wiz -- but I wonder if John Wall will now be labeled as a coach-killer. He got Flip flipped a lot quicker than OV got Boudreau canned.)

Spurring action in the City

2012-01-23T19:08:00.000-08:00

I watched the Manchester City v Tottenham game yesterday (via DVR, of course), also. I hadn't realized that Tottenham was doing as well as they are; they haven't looked very good the few times I've seen them this season (except once, I think). I certainly didn't expect that it was such an important battle for the top.

But the game started out quite even, with Spurs controlling most of possession, but very little in the way of scoring chances for either team. Given that, it wasn't too surprising that the first half ended scoreless.

But things got very exciting in the second half, with City scoring a pair in three minutes ten minutes or so in. But then, almost immediately after, they had a terrible defensive misplay leading to a very easy goal. And then, five minutes or so later, Bale put a beautiful shot from just outside the box into the top corner, hooking across most of the goal on the way. Not a fan of his, but that was pretty.

That's where things stood until stoppage time. There were more chances on each side (more for City, I think), but things just going back and forth.

One thing that made it a bit more interesting was that, shortly (maybe immediately? I can't remember) after the last goal, City substituted in Balotelli.

I'd kind of wondered why he was on the sidelines to begin with, as he's scored in almost every City game I've seen this season (several of them really, really nice ones, too; he got my attention early in the season with a nice bicycle kick). But watching him kind of showed why (I thought maybe it was just because he seems to be an arrogant schmuck); he tried to do everything by himself, and even interrupted the flow a couple of times.

And yet, in stoppage time, he forced the Spurs defender to pull him down in the box (amusingly, I thought it might have been a dive initially, but the replay showed that he'd had his legs scissored from under him). He took the shot, and even showed creativity there. He started with a normal, fast approach, then slowed almost to a stop just before shooting, which threw Friedel off. So, even though the shot didn't have a lot on it, and even though Friedel went the right direction, he still couldn't get to it.

If he grows up (mentally, that is), he will be one hell of a player. He's got the talent and creativity; he's just very undisciplined. Anyway, it made quite a finish to the game.

Of course, the lingering question is whether Mario will be censured for his apparent attempt to stomp on Parker earlier in the game. Can't really defend that; you just can't treat other players like that. Definitely no understanding of sportsmanship. Again, part of growing up.

That result left City comfortably on top, with Man U hoping to match them later yesterday. Unfortunately, I ran into the limit of number of channels to record, and that game didn't get recorded at all. (Apparently, my DVR took my command to cancel recording the Giants/49ers game to mean that I actually wanted to record it in SD instead of HD. *sigh*)

Samba in the Moonlight

2012-01-23T19:06:00.000-08:00

I watched Rio with my daughter a couple of weekends ago, and enjoyed it quite a bit more than expected.

I went into not really knowing anything about it, beyond being about birds.

Before getting too much into the specifics, it was kind of weird having Fox doing a movie about humans interfering with the environment, given that it seems to be Fox "News'" mission to discredit global warming.

Leaving that aside, the musical interludes were very well done. I especially liked the use of samba and bossa nova, as I'm very fond of both styles (although I don't think I could listen to either with huge frequency), and samba is definitely great dance music (though I've probably forgotten all the steps I used to know; it's been a while).

And the concept of the movie is also great; taking the brazilian bird to Minnesota, and having him grow up a geek. His initial attempts to learn to fly were hilarious.

I liked, too, the relationship between the two main humans. Predicatble, and not deep; in fact, pretty much playing to stereotypes, but funny.

In fact, the whole movie was pretty predictable, but still very enjoyable.

Jemaine Clement did a wonderful Scar-turn as the bad guy; he was excellent.

I liked it pretty much from beginning to end; just lots of fun to watch.

Penguin-tentury

2012-01-23T19:03:00.000-08:00

My DVR let me down a bit in Sunday's matinee matchup between the Caps and Pens. Part of that is my fault; I kept forgetting to set it, since it was on NBC. And part of it wasn't; the game ran long, so the DVR stopped recording with four minutes left.

Anyway, because of the first problem, I missed almost the entire first period (the Pens were already up 2-0), including why MarJo wasn't playing. The rest of that period did not look any better, with the Penguins carrying just about all of the play. I was slightly tempted to turn the game off, since it was feeling like a continuation of the Hurricanes game from the other night.

But I resisted the temptation, and the Caps put together a very nice second period. They weren't dominating the second nearly as much as the Pens did the first, but they managed to match the scoring, evening it at two. It was also a very chippy period, with the Caps refusing to be pushed around. There were a number of questionable hits, but not many calls on them.

One that was weird was Malkin tripping Alzner (man, Malkin is dirty; it's really jumped out at me the last two times the Caps have played the Pens). They claimed that the trip wasn't called because the whistle had already been blown. I'm sure that's true, but what difference does it make whether the whistle has blown, or not? Doesn't that make it, if anything, even worse? It certainly sets a horrible precedent.

Anyway, things were looking pretty good, and started looking even better when, a minute into the third, Perreault created some space for Semin and OV. As you'd expect, those two converted. But things went back to more normal when, six minutes later, the Pens scored again to tie the game up.

The Pens mostly dominated play again for the rest of the period, but Neuvy kept the team in the game.

And, as I said, the DVR gave up with four minutes left, so I missed the end of the third and all of overtime. So I'm not sure what happened that had the Pens scoring with the only shot of overtime.

In the end, I'm not sure how I feel about the game. It's definitely disappointing to lose after leading early in the third. On the other hand, with the way the first went, I didn't expect the Caps to tie the game, let alone get a lead. And at least they got a standings point.

But it's hard to be happy with things, when the Caps were heavily dominated for most of the game. I'm just not feeling good about where this team is heading.

One small thing that I noticed was a problem on the power play (which looked pretty bad until the power play that ended up being a 5-on-3). But a weakness they ended up with, when they did get set up, was that they needed a lefty on the right half-wall (Backstrom's normal spot, of course). A couple of times, they got the puck over there in great shape for a shot, but whoever was in that position (I forgot to take note) couldn't take the one-timer because of the handedness issue. They did end up scoring, but it ruined several good opportunities. I hope we're not going to see that happen again.

That's about it for yesterday. Next up is... how shall we put it? A large challenge, with the Bruins coming to Washington. Not feeling good about that at all. Ick. I'm just going to keep my fingers crossed that they can find a way to get a point, because I don't think they've got more than a one in four chance of actually winning.

Going out of control

2012-01-20T21:38:00.000-08:00

One reason I didn't watch the Caps game earlier this evening was that we were able to get out to watch a movie. We didn't see a lot of options, but Haywire looked interesting to both of us.

It was kind of amusing, during the trailers. We saw one for something called Safe House, whose tag line is 'No one is safe'. And then, a couple movies later, we saw another trailer for one called 'Safe', which looked like it should have been a fourth Transporter movie. Amusing contrast there, though.

What did I think of Haywire? I mostly liked it. I had a little trouble keeping track of names, and that made it a bit more confusing than it should have been. I liked what they did to try to reduce that confusion, although it didn't make a whole lot of sense, really (a covert operative, government or private, can't just give out those sorts of details. It gets you thrown in jail).

Gina Carano did a very good job as Mallory. Her fighting seemed a lot more believable than most, and now that I look up her background on IMDB, I can see why (MMA and Muay Thai fighter). Her style was a lot more believable than, say, in Hanna (also helps that she's a lot bigger than Saoirse Ronan).

Anyway, as I said, I was a little confused about a couple of pieces. Partly, it was losing track of a couple of names, but I was also a little confused about who the government types worked for. I'd actually like to see it again, just to track the names, and figure out who Michael Douglas' and Antonio Banderas' characters work for. I'm not sure if it all fit together.

I did like what they did with the cinematography. I thought that a couple of times in the movie; although I don't think I can describe what, exactly, was different or significant with what they did.

Another thing I thought was good was that the characters could get hurt. (The bad part, there, was that they forgot about one injury in one scene.)

Still, I enjoyed it overall, and might well buy it when it comes out (as few opportunities as we get to see movies in the theater, I'm not going to see it again there. Especially with 'Secret World of Arrietty', 'Hunger Games', 'Pirates! Band of Misfits', and 'Brave' all coming out soon).

Ugly, Ugly, Ugly

2012-01-19T20:17:00.000-08:00

Just finished watching the Caps game from earlier tonight; man, was it ugly. My closing comment the other night was about how the Caps should win, but we needed to hope it wasn't like the Islanders game (since that was also a "should win" game). Yeah, it was just about exactly like the Islanders game.

I guess the one good thing you could say was that they didn't give up any even strength goals. Oh, and TVo (some weird, third-period creativity aside) had an excellent game, despite the three goals allowed.

Other than that, the power play was wretched. Not only did it give up the short-handed, first period goal to Jokinen, but it gave up at least one breakaway on every opportunity. It gave up more shots than it took, as well.

The penalty kill? Two goals allowed on three opportunities.

Shots? Took 23 vs 33 allowed. Even down two goals for almost the entire third period, they still couldn't manage to take more shots than they allowed.

Scoring chances? Down 6-3 in the first. Down 7-5 in the second. Not sure about the third.

Mental miscues? They pulled Vokoun, briefly, and then still managed to get called for two many men on the ice. Oy.

Protecting the puck? -2 net giveaways (which is much closer than it felt), -5 net takeaways.

This was just an ass-kicking, from about the third or fourth minute of the game, onwards. Guys, you don't win just by showing up, no matter what the standings say.

At this point, I'm not even sure if I want to watch the Pittsburgh game on Sunday. If it goes even remotely like this one, it'll just be too depressing to bear.

On the Forum-check

2012-01-18T19:55:00.000-08:00

Well, a game that looked pretty good, superficially, for the Caps tonight. They got great netminding from Neuvirth, no doubt. And 3-0 feels a lot better when you're not on the zero end of things.

But most of the same thing continued. Very few shots (fewer than last night, actually), too many giveaways (it didn't feel like it, but there were even more than last night), way too many penalties (though a couple were kind of... curious, but I'll come back to that). The one mitigating factor was that at least scoring chances were in their favor through two (11-9).

But, basically, we saw almost the same performance except that a couple of shots went in.

Ok, that's not entirely true, the passing was crisper, and more accurate. The penalty killing was also a lot more effective, though that could be as much due to Montreal's deficiencies as to the Caps efficiencies. The power play also managed to convert one opportunity (though it took most of a four-minute advantage). But it was still mostly the same as we've seen recently, and that's not a good thing.

The lineup was not entirely the same tonight. Perreault came back into the lineup, scoring a goal despite playing only eight shifts (two of which were very short; nhl.com doesn't even list him as having played, despite crediting him with the goal). Erskine was also back, as expected. Not so expected was that he never dished out any punishment on Bourque.

In fact, the only "punishment" dished out was to Hendricks, who fought Bourque very early on, but didn't do much.

MarJo had a very eventful night. He had the second goal on a close-in shot to the top shelf, took a stick to the face that led to the aforementioned four-minute power play, and suffered through a knee-on-knee collision with about 2:30 remaining in the game. Let's hope it isn't a serious injury. Heck, any injury that takes him away, even just for a very short time, will be very debilitating for the team. They'd end up having to play Laich on the top line, Halpern on the checking line, with Eakin and Perreault, I guess, taking the remaining two positions. That is not a line down the middle that would inspire fear into the opposition.

Boy, I hadn't thought about it before. That's just scary. Let's not think about it, and hope MarJo's ok.

I mentioned some curious penalty calls. To elaborate, two of the third-period calls (plus several non-calls) were a bit... questionable. Erskine got quite the whammy of a call on a hit on Darche. He ran into Darche, gliding, standing up, and got a minor for elbowing and a double-minor for high sticking. His elbow did hit Darche, probably in the head, but it was against his body at impact. It came up on his follow-through, but that should not be a penalty (as I understand the rules). It's almost impossible to avoid doing that.

Some I'm a little confused about the elbowing call. The high sticking part I can't figure out at all. I watched the replay on it eight or ten times, and I can't see contact with the stick at all. Before, during, or after the hit. So I'm utterly baffled by that part of the call. Here's the video.

The other curious call was on OV for delay of game. It looked pretty clearly, to me, like it hit the glass on the way out, but that's not the way it was called. (That makes two games in a row for strange penalties on OV. His crosscheck against the Islanders involved him hitting someone with his hands together on the stick. How that could possibly be a crosscheck is beyond me. Didn't think to save the video on it, though.)

Anyway, that's about it for tonight's game. Let's hope we see the team playing even better Friday in Carolina. Like the Islanders game last night, this is one the Caps should win. Let's hope things don't go the way they did in that one.

Isle Chatter

2012-01-17T20:32:00.000-08:00

Tonight's Caps game was one of the worst they've played all season. They weren't blown out of the water by a superior team (which, I'm becoming more and more convinced, is most of the league), they didn't fall asleep, but were just outplayed from beginning to end by a team they should be able to beat. Especially at home. Especially when that other team played the night before.

They were just out of sync all night; there were a ton of giveaways (the scoresheet says ten; I would have guessed several more). There was only one case of running into one another, but there were several other close calls (two or three instances of stickhandling below/between the feet of a team-mate.

As usual, they were badly outshot (and badly outchanced in the first, 6-1). They didn't even manage to outshoot the Isles in the third, which they entered down by two. It's very rare that a team down by two or more doesn't outshoot the opposition. Well, these Caps managed it.

I'm not sure what's going on (obviously, missing Backstrom and Green doesn't help), but I'm beginning to think this team is just fundamentally broken. Hunter might have fixed some of the glaring problems seen under Boudreau, but I'm not certain he hasn't introduced new ones that are as big, if not bigger, than the original ones.

Put simply, they need to do a better job getting, and keeping, the puck. And they need to shoot more. Seventeen shots is pathetic. And they were outshot in every period. Again.

TVo actually did a good job of keeping this from becoming a rout. Two of the goals he had no chance on, and the third would have required a magnificent save.

I hope this is just a blip where every bounce went the wrong way for the Caps, but I'm very dubious.

We won't have to wait long to find out a bit more, though; there'll be a game tomorrow night in Montreal. I wouldn't want to be on the flight up there; that's for sure.

As a side note for tomorrow's game, Rene Bourque (who delivered the dirty hit on Backstrom that has kept him out of the lineup) was traded to Montreal, and will be playing. We'll see what kind of fireworks that leads to. I'm guessing that Erskine will be dressing for the Caps tomorrow.

On a vaguely similar note, Green was put on IR (as I speculated, the other night), but was moved to LTIR today, and had sports hernia surgery. They're now saying 4-6 weeks recovery. Nice to have a better idea what's going on. Get better, Mike. This team needs you, desperately, but they need you 100%.

Update: After thinking about it, I might have been a little bit harsh (not a lot, but a little). In the Caps defense, when outshot in the third last night, they did spent a lot of time killing penalties.

The winds of stasis

2012-01-15T21:11:00.000-08:00

Was out of the house most of the day today, so I wasn't able to watch the Caps/Canes game until night time. It was a fairly frustrating game to watch, but perhaps not as unbalanced as it seemed.

Once again, the Caps were badly outshot (more than doubled, in fact, and that's before you account for blocked shots). The one good thing I saw was that scoring chances actually managed (through each of the first two periods, at least), to be in the Caps favor (3-2 after one, and 9-6 after two). If they can manage to do that with regularity, I'll stop worrying about whether they outshoot the opposition (but I have significant doubts about whether that is even possible, let alone achievable).

But I didn't like them seeming to be content to sit back in a shell when up by one goal. Up by three? Ok, I can deal with that. But just up by a goal? That's just not a way to win a game against a good team.

The cycle game, so far, seems more an end in and of itself to these Caps, rather than a means to an end. That's another thing that has to change. They need to do it more often (they only managed a couple of times, today), and they need to generate offense off of it.

Another tendency I'm seeing, that I'm not liking, is a lack of killer instinct at the end of games. When the other team has pulled their netminder, they aren't looking to see if they can score. It just seems like they're playing really desperate back there, and just looking for wild clears any time they get the puck.

I'm certainly liking the win today, of course, but it really didn't give me good feelings about this team, going forward.

Also, Hamr and WIdeman were together again several times tonight. I'd rather not see those two on the ice at the same time (except, perhaps, on the power play). They were the ones on the ice when the puck went in, though the team was short-handed at the time.

The only other news of note on the blue line was that Dima (Orlov) finally put one in the net. It wasn't on his wicked(ly inaccurate) slap shot, but on a put-in (off the back of Cam Ward, I think) of a bouncing rebound of a shot by Chimmer.

Semin had the other goal, a really beautiful shot from the right circle that hit the bottom of the water bottle. He also put one off the post, earlier in the game.

Laich also had a goal, but it was disallowed due to incidental contact with the goalie (oddly, not called until the zebra herd converged after ruling a goal being scored).

OV had some nice chances, a couple of beautiful hits (he demolished Ruutu, in particular), and generally looked quite good.

TVo also looked very good, but I hope he rests in the next game or two. Nine in a row is five or six too many, in my book.

On the Carolina side, Skinner returned after missing 16 games with a concussion. He looked good, but what surprised me was he took a couple of cheap shots on Caps (including a very dangerous, uncalled trip that sent Wideman into the boards very awkwardly. He was lucky not to be hurt on the play).

The Caps special teams were not great, tonight. The PK, as mentioned, surrendered a goal on four chances (with five shots before the last power play; that's too many). The power play only had one chance, but it had no shots with very little zone time. It seemed like they gave the puck away a few seconds after getting into the zone. Repeatedly.

But they did manage to squeak out another one-goal victory (in regulation, even), so it isn't all bad. The standings points also put the Caps into the division lead (via tiebreakers), and the team's goal differential is finally positive. It's just not looking good, for the future, though.

We'll see if they can do a bit better when the Islanders come to town on Tuesday. Given their relative records, it should be an easy game for the Caps, but the Caps aren't exactly past masters of dominating the games they should win. They usually manage to come out flat, and play down to the opposition.

On the Brouwer-Play...

2012-01-13T18:58:00.000-08:00

The Caps game against the Bolts, tonight, was quite a tilt. I missed the first minute-and-a-half due to DVR issues (started by the game being on the "wrong" channel), but at least set it up so that won't happen again. And I'm glad I tried to turn it on right away, because some times I would just wait for the kids to go to bed. If I'd done that, I would have missed almost the entire game.

The other thing I missed, other than that minute and a half, was the roster shuffling. Kundratek was still up (with both Erskine and Schultz being healthy scratches tonight), and Eakin was called up as well (with Perreault being a healthy scratch; odd, since he had a very good game against the Penguins). I got distracted when I was writing the other night; what I was leading towards was observing that if Schultz is getting scratched in favor of someone making their NHL debut, he probably isn't long for the team (which makes me a little sad. He's certainly not a spectacular player, but he is a young and good one).

Anyway, when I turned it on, the Caps were already on the power play. That PP was not a good one, with the Caps unable to generate even a single shot (and very little zone time). But they kept working, and got another PP opportunity less than a minute later, as Ward was able to draw an interference on Martin St Louis. This one looked much better, although I'm not sure it got more than one shot generated, but that shot, from OV, and through Brouwer's legs, found the back of the net.

Just over a minute later, the Caps got another power play chance when the Lightning defender, Brewer, played the puck over the glass from the defensive end. The Caps put a lot of pressure on, and got the puck down low to Brouwer, who was undefended. He waited a second or two for Rolo to flinch, and put the puck between the wickets to widen the margin (I believe it was the second shot on goal for the PP).

That was it for the first period scoring; shots were even at 8, but scoring opportunities were 6-3 in the Caps favor, so it was a very good period overall. It did even out a bit after Brouwer's goal, but the Caps were still looking good. And it almost felt like they heard my complaining in my last post; they did a good job generating offensive pressure. Maybe not as much of it as I could hope, but it was very good.

The second period mostly belonged to Tampa, although the Caps (and Brouwer) got another goal five minutes in when Laich threw it to the net, Knuble cleared out the defender and goalie, and Brouwer calmly tapped the rebound into the wide-open net. Not often you see a net that wide open when you're six feet out, in the center of the ice. As I said, the period favored the Bolts most of the way, but their goal came on a steal right by the Caps net. Martin St Louis snuck up behind Knuble, took the puck from him, and threw it to the front of the net, where Pyatt moved it past Vokoun.

The shots in the second were 8-5 in favor of the Lightning, but the scoring opportunities were even at four.

I'm less upset about the shot imbalance, because the Caps were ahead by so much. You expect that. Part of the reason the shot imbalance has annoyed me so much the last several games is that the Caps were playing much of the game down.

In any event, the Caps were going into the third with a nice, two-goal cushion.

At this point, I think the Caps sat back a little too much. Like I said, you expect a team down by several goals to put a lot more shots on net, but I'm not sure the Caps got a single shot before they finally drew a power play at the ten-minute mark. And it was a nice power play; no goals, but good movement with lots of chances (including two posts and four or five shots).

But things went downhill pretty quickly after that. Brouwer got a pair of penalties (one of which was a boarding call that I think was only made because he was hitting Martin St Louis, over whom he has a huge size advantage. Predictably, MSL went flying, and that drew a penalty.

They killed off that penalty quite nicely, but Hamr threw the puck over the glass eleven seconds later.

And then, great irritation set in for me, as my DVR stopped recording during the commercial break after the puck left the rink. So I missed Stamkos' goal thirty-six seconds later. I also missed Brouwer finishing off his (first career) hat trick with an empty netter with exactly a minute remaining. And then I also missed Lecavalier's goal with eleven seconds left. Can you believe that? Four minutes (on the nose), and three goals. Ugh.

So it was quite an exciting finish to the game, but, thankfully, the Caps held on for the regulation win.

Pittsburgh mauled the Panthers tonight, as well, so the Caps picked up a game on the Panthers, and are now only a game behind the Cats. If the Caps can keep playing like they did in the first period tonight (I know, big if), then they'll be back in the Cat's-Bird seat in no time.

One other point: I know that Backstrom was put on IR to make room for Kundratek (who, by the way, played well again tonight, paired with his countryman Hamrlik), but I don't know how they made room for Eakin. I'm guessing it was putting Green on IR, but I haven't heard anything about that.

Also, note that tonight was Vokoun's 7th or 8th consecutive game in goal. I hope he's going to get a breather soon. He might only be with us for this season, but we still want him to be fresh for the playoffs. Plus, you have to figure that Neuvy's getting a bit rusty (not to mention irritated. I certainly would be).

King-uins

2012-01-11T19:58:00.001-08:00

I didn't get a chance to watch the Caps game the other night against the Kings until this evening. I watched it until the Kings got their fourth straight goal, breaking my normal rule of waiting until there's a four-goal margin. But the Caps just didn't look good.

When I turned that off, I tried to turn on tonight's tilt against the Penguins, only to find it was on a different network. So I missed much of the first period, but was able to record the rest, so as to watch it after putting the kids to bed.

But, most importantly, I was able to see Chimmer's goal live. Ward made a nice defensive play at the blue line, poking the puck away from Malkin (who got away with two penalties in the game. One was a trip on Laich where he didn't attempt to play the puck, but just took out Laich's skate; and he was able to grab Carlson's stick out of his hands and throw it a ways away). That sent Halpern ahead with the puck, who pulled the defender then hit Chimmer coming up the center of the ice all alone.

From there, the game ended up being a lot of play between the blue lines (but with a lot more in Washington's end than the Penguins').

TVo was awesome, though, and kept the puck out of the net all the way, despite seeing thirty shots (four or five of which he had no business stopping).

The Caps were unable to mount any sustained pressure, with the exception of two shifts by the fourth line in the third period. OV and Semin did have some nice chances in that same period, mostly on the rush (the best chance wasn't on the rush, but the puck was still only in the zone for ten or fifteen seconds).

The two games, combined, have me thinking much more that this just isn't a very good team, though. Even in their wins, I was beginning to wonder if that was the case, and these games are starting to solidify the feeling. They can't really sustain any offensive pressure, they have a lot more trouble exiting their zone than the opposition does. Most of the offense is generated off the rush. I thought they were getting away from that when Hunter arrived, but I think it might be an even bigger percentage now than under Boudreau.

And I think this philosophy of playing defense just by pushing play to the outside isn't really helping. Not that they should allow chances in the middle (those are obviously more dangerous), but that they need to change what they're focusing on. I'm not sure what that should be; maybe focus more on takeaways? Maybe more on winning one-on-one battles in the corners?

Maybe I'm just getting too down after one bad, and a couple of so-so, games, but they aren't going to win a lot of games getting out-shot as badly as they regularly are. And as I mentioned, talking about the Flames game, the large number of blocked shots by skaters is making that look better than it is.

In tonight's game, the team took 27 shots, versus 51 for the Penguins (almost identical to the differential against the Kings). And that Penguins team is one that has just been rocked by injuries. The team regularly getting out-shot by teams playing so many AHL'ers is just disturbing to me.

And, speaking of AHL'ers, Schultz was scratched in favor of Tomas Kundratek. Kundratek, in his NHL debut, was played in relatively safe situations, and did fine in his eleven minutes. But I don't really understand why Schultz was scratched for him. Schultz might not be a great defenseman, but he isn't a bad one, either.

Anyway, the clean win moved the Caps into a points tie with Pittsburgh for the eighth spot in the conference (with the Caps holding several tie-breakers). They'll have another chance to move up (and a chance to reach positive goal differential) on Friday against Tampa.

And, hopefully, Backstrom and/or Green will return for that one (not sure what the odds are).

Will the next big (still) camera have a mirror?

2012-01-09T19:25:00.001-08:00

I was interested to read Trey Ratcliff's essay about the future of cameras.

While I certainly agree with him in principle, I'm not so sure about timing. That is, it's certainly coming, for many good and valid reasons, but he seems to be saying that it's right around the corner, and I think he's a bit early, there.

I'm fairly sure that the next generation (iteration, if you prefer) of top-of-the-line cameras will be SLRs, and I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the generation after that is, as well. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if the generation after that is a mirrorless camera. I would expect it to be full frame (so, bigger lenses and bodies than what we're currently seeing), with a much fuller selection of lenses than any currently available mirrorless system.

I'm kind of looking forward to it, actually (even though I have a new SLR on order). One good thing is that lenses should be quite a bit cheaper. One nice bit about never having a person looking directly through the lens, is that even the viewfinder image (whether delivered to the back of the camera or to an eye-hole through the back of the camera) can be digitally corrected for various lens imperfections. That should lead to fewer tradeoffs needing to be made during engineering, and, therefore, cheaper lenses. We'll see, but I think that's one factor.

Jetpack annoyance

2012-01-08T19:43:00.000-08:00

To avoid getting duplicate medals all the time on my ipad (since I prefer playing on it, but the iPhone is the one with 62 missions accomplished), I tried restoring a backup from my iPhone to my iPad, and playing from there. That worked reasonably well, except that I found that there's a bit of copy protection in there: I wasn't able to buy anything after doing the copy. So you can't do a full set of missions after that; you'll inevitably get stuck when you get to the 'buy an item from the stash' mission. Very annoying.

Not sure what I'm going to end up doing about it.

In the shark tank

2012-01-08T19:19:00.000-08:00

I didn't go into last night's game against San Jose with a great feeling; not only was there the long string of losses and a tie in San Jose, but Backstrom was declared unavailable because of that elbow to the head.

Things started out pretty well though. They played a pretty much mistake-free game for the first period, and managed to tilt the ice in their own favor (though not heavily; like 12-8 on shots). The period ended scoreless, however, so they didn't get much out of that excellent play.

In the second, things stayed pretty quiet for five minutes. But then Demers put in a fluky shot from the point (it deflected off a defender (OV, I think), off the back boards, off of both of TVo's legs, and slid into the net). The Caps responded well, though, helped by a very obvious goaltender interference call a minute later. The Caps won the faceoff, and put on a pretty passing display with WIdeman putting the puck in the net half a minute after the call.

Things continued to look pretty good for the rest of the period (though slightly in San Jose's favor), but then Wideman missed on a lift check and hit one of the Sharks in the face. They looked like they were going to escape the period despite that, but San Jose managed to put one past TVo with eight seconds left. Ugh. Suddenly, things weren't looking so good.

I didn't realize it until a little bit into the third, but things were actually looking even worse than I thought. Green only took three shifts in the second, and never returned for the third. Ugh. Ugh.

They got things off to a good start in the third, with the checking line potting a goal forty-five seconds in (Ward got it, from Wideman and Chimmer). But things quickly went downhill, as the Sharks' top line put one in on a defensive breakdown (Alzner lost his man) only sixteen seconds later. The rest of the game wasn't terrible, but it sure wasn't good, either, as they ended up allowing two more goals (one and empty-netter), and had very little sustained pressure (MarJo's line had one awesome shift, which I believe was in the third, with basically the entire shift in the offensive zone).

Overall, I'd rate it as a decent game. They came out strong, and played really well for almost two periods before surrendering. The power play looked good in its lone opportunity. The PK was so-so, with one allowed on two chances.

The team was definitely missing Backstrom (and, for half the game, Green). While I hope neither is rushed back before they're ready, I do hope they're ready soon. We'll keep our fingers crossed. One good thing is that both Shultz and Erskine are with the team, and can step in for Green in LA (Geeze, I hope it's nothing serious; but it wasn't anything really obvious, and I only remember him getting hit once. Maybe he aggravated his groin pull. Of course, if so, that'll keep him out for a while).

Anyway, tomorrow night's game is in LA. Let's hope we can learn something from Columbus' win there last night or the night before.

New day, new bug

2012-01-06T19:29:00.001-08:00

Ok, extreme irritation here. I was playing Jetpack Joyride again this evening when it crashed and dumped me out to the iOS main screen (this was on my iPhone, not my iPad). Well, that's happened before; not with the latest release, but it's happened. So, return to the program a bit later, and it's at the main game screen. Ok, that might not be unexpected, what mission was I on, again?

The three missions look familiar: reach 500m w/o collecting coins, play 3 games, collect 5 vehicles. Ok, that's not good. Go to the stash. Still have my (485k) coins and upgraded outfits, jetpacks, and vehicles. Ok, that's good. What about badges? Yep, as I suspected, back to zero. Lost badge #013 before I could record it (Badge of Good Luck, maybe?), plus my other 70-ish badges I'd gotten on this device. Grrr...

Guess I'm going to have to restore from backup, and hope it gets things right.

Update: Well, I lost two badges (079 and 013), but the restore got everything else right. Irritating, but I'll live with it, I guess. Oh, and now I see that I managed not to lose the app I'd bought earlier today on the phone. Yay for things going as they should.

Bit of a scare

2012-01-05T20:57:00.000-08:00

I put my phone down on my desk last night, turned to my computer, and shortly heard a crash as my phone hit the floor. "Not again," I thought, as I picked it up. Turning it over, it was definitely not a repeat; the screen was shattered. I'm now annoyed at myself for not taking a picture. It actually did still work, but looked like the screen was literally going to fall apart if I tried using it for any length of time.

So, I needed to get it fixed. Any chance of warranty repair? Nope. How much does Apple charge? Hmm... $149 or less. What about Verizon, if I had their equipment protection? Would be $10/mo, and the deductible would be $169. Huh? The insurance is more expensive than going to Apple directly?!? Yep, it is.

Talked to the guy at the Apple store for a while. The good news is that I got the phone replaced right away. The bad news was that it was, indeed, that entire $149 to do it. Still, not terrible. And getting it right away (literally, I walked out of the store with a new phone), is certainly worth more than a couple of dollars.

The scare came when I got it home, and tried to restore it from my backup; it looked like it had lost all of my app data. Most relevantly, all my missions and medals and such from Jetpack Joyride. After going around and around, it did get that right, eventually.

It turns out that it had lost track of which apps were installed (only about half of the ones that I have had installed at some point), which music was on there, and where the apps were located, but the data was there. So life was good.

Mentioned talking to the guy at the Apple Store. He'd looked into the situation also, and said that the only good thing about the Verizon replacement plan was that it covered theft; Apple wouldn't touch that problem. But with how much it costs, I worked it out that the only way to come out ahead on the Verizon plan is if you end up replacing the phone twice a year. Otherwise, you're out a lot of money.

Iowa's finally over

2012-01-05T07:13:00.001-08:00

After all the talk about the Iowa caucuses over the past several months (it was back in August that Bachmann won that early straw poll, right? Seems like forever ago), the outcome was ... kind of weird.

Romney won, pending recounts, by eight votes. In a way, that's a good sign for him, as he wasn't strongly competing there until the last week or so. But it was no ringing endorsement, either, with such a narrow margin.

Bachmann lost (finishing sixth of those actively competing), and bowed out of further proceedings. Perry also did poorly, and apparently surprised some of his campaign staff by staying in.

Santorum finishing second, and in such a close finish, would have been a huge surprise two weeks ago. But after a significant endorsement or two, and a strong showing in the last poll, it was only a small surprise. He was one, though, that I hadn't really paid any attention to, so now I've had to go find out his positions on a few things.

Mitt is expected to win by a huge margin in New Hampshire; we'll see if that plays out to script. But, either way, it gets interesting after that. I'm mostly curious to see what happens in South Carolina, where, it sounds like, everybody will be competing.

Plus, Newt said some fairly incendiary things (I know, not a surprise for him) about a scorched-earth attack coming against Romney. We'll have to see how that part plays out, and if it has any real effect. I guess he never got that Reagan message about not attacking fellow Republicans.

So, in the end, Iowa didn't really make anything clear (except that Romney isn't well liked, and that the shine was off Bachmann (unfortunate, that, as it would have been entertaining to see her stick around)). We'll just have to wait for the next couple of rounds of primaries to see if things become more clear.

Flame on!

2012-01-05T06:44:00.001-08:00

I watched the Caps/Flames game the other night, but I almost feel like I didn't. I was only half-watching the first half of the game (needed to keep the kids out of trouble), and don't remember a whole lot from the second half.

I did see all of the goals live, which was something.

It was really nice to see the team come out and take an early lead, and then extend it. In fact, the Caps dominated the first period pretty well, with an 8-4 shots lead and a 4-1 scoring chance lead. The second period was slightly in favor of Calgary, with them having a 9-8 shots deficit, but a 6-3 scoring chance lead. But the Caps had taken a 1-0 lead in the first on a pretty power play goal by OV from MarJo, and stretched that margin in the second with a not-so-pretty power play goal from Brouwer stuffing in the rebound on an OV shot and a nice play with Backstrom passing from behind the net to WIdeman in front for the score. The latter play was actually created by MarJo, too, by him taking both defensemen out of the play on the initial rush.

I'm starting to feel less good about the Caps play, overall, though, as it feels like they're giving up too many shots. They're blocking something like half of the shots they're seeing, so it looks better, but I have my doubts about how sustainable that is as a winning strategy. Yes, it worked great for Montreal in the playoffs a couple of seasons ago, but that felt a lot more like a fluke than anything sustainable. Hopefully, I'm worried about nothing.

The power play was pretty good, scoring on two of their three opportunities, but that was only on four shots, so it wasn't quite as good as it looked.

The penalty kill was very solid, stopping all four chances, and giving up only three shots.

TVo, through the night, was looking very good. The one goal he allowed was on a good play by Calgary (maybe helped by a blown coverage by one of the forwards (Ward was closest, although I'm not sure if that was his man)), so we won't hold that one against him. He also had some very, very good stops on Calgary's one or two breakaways.

And OV, again, looked like OV from a couple of years ago. It's a lot of fun to watch. And Backstrom has remained quietly dominant.

Backster did take an elbow to the head in the third, and only played two more shifts the rest of the way. Hopefully, that's just a migraine and not a concussion. The latter would be a serious blow to the team, and apparently tests yesterday were inconclusive. We're keeping our fingers crossed. On the plus side, Rene Bourque, who delivered that blow, got a five-game suspension. Let's hope that dissuades him from trying to scramble the brains of other players.

In any event, the team's about to embark on a pretty rough stretch, with days off today and tomorrow, but then five games in nine days. And those five start with San Jose, in the Tank, where the Caps haven't won since 1993. Ouch. It isn't a lot of games, but still, ouch.

Where is my 'Happily Ever After'?

2012-01-02T22:38:00.000-08:00

Over New Year's Eve, we caught a commercial for 'Once Upon a Time', and was intrigued. Wasn't too sure what it was about, but what we could make out sounded very distinctly up my alley. And, happily, the commercial was to say that they were doing a marathon of the episodes that had been released, leading up to a new episode. Happy day.

So, I turned on the DVR to record those episodes. I've only watched two, so far, but it's definitely intriguing.

How do things go wrong in a fairy tale? And can they be set right? And what does revenge at all costs really do for the seeker?

It's looking at all of those (and the third is, of course, the most interesting of the three), and a few other things.

As I said, intriguing. Hoping to find time to watch more of it, soon.

A Very Muppet Movie

2012-01-02T22:09:00.001-08:00

I went to see the recent Muppets movie a couple of weeks ago with a friend.

It started out pretty decent, with big, energetic numbers, although showing the ensemble players being tired afterward kind of spoiled some of the effect. Doing that was kind of funny, but in a way that went against what they were trying to do. It kind of defeated the purpose of having the big, ensemble number, I guess.

But it quickly went off the rails when Gary and Walter left town. It just didn't feel like a Muppets production from there on. It's partially because it was trying to be dark for quite a while. It also played up how they were setting up various parts to get the gang together, and such. I have a very low tolerance for such fourth-wall-breaking lines. They work in spoofs, and that's about it.

And I think that kind of points to why the movie didn't really work for me. It was trying too hard to be serious.

At least, I think that's what it was. What is certain is that it didn't have the original Henson magic. It was decent early, and had a few moments later. And that's about it.

In any event, it didn't do much for me.

Skatin' in Ohio

2011-12-31T19:34:00.000-08:00

Tonight's Caps game definitely didn't play out the way they would have drawn it up in Columbus. They started strongly, and played very well for the first five to ten minutes. They didn't convert any chances, but things were looking good. But then they started sitting back too much, and suddenly the Blue Jackets were threatening a bit.

The period ended scoreless, with Columbus holding slight edges in shots (13-8) and scoring chances (3-2). That actually slightly understates Columbus' edge, though, as the Caps were way ahead in blocked shots.

And then the Caps seemed to fall asleep, or something. The second period started out bad, and ended putrid. The Jackets put two pucks in the net, the second with half a minute or so to go. They were only (hah! only) outshot 15-10, but the scoring chances were 7-2. And, again, the Caps led in blocked shots by a large margin, so again, the shots edge (and possibly the scoring chance edge) is understated.

Moore and Pahlsson did the honors, on scoring; both at even strength (the first power play didn't come until 9:34 of the third)

But the Caps came back in the third. Hunter shuffled the lines again, swapping OV and MarJo. The team started slow again, not doing much for the first few minutes, but they got some nice pressure four minutes in leading to OV finding the twine (I'm a little confused, because NHL.com lists it as unassisted, but I thought Wideman passed it to him. Looking at the replay there, it still looks like that was the case). Then Dima got in a fight with Clitsomea minute and a half later, leading to two minutes of 4-on-4. And the Caps definitely took advantage of that, with both Semin and Wideman adding tallies.

The Semin one was really nice; as he was getting the puck and skating into the center of the ice, I was thinking, "That's where I want the puck: on his stick". Before I'd even finished the thought, he'd put it over Mason's shoulder, and into the top corner. On replay, it looked like Mason never saw it; he was screened by the defenseman.

As I mentioned earlier, the first power play came in the middle of the third. And it went the Caps way, as Methot was whistled for holding OV.

And OV made him pay, taking a nice feed from Dima (who was skating behind the net) for a gorgeous rocket of a one-timer slapshot into the top corner. Given that it was coming from the middle of the circle, Mason never had a chance to react to it. And given that it went all the way into the corner, it probably wouldn't have mattered if he had. It was quite nice.

The Caps mostly settled back into playing defense for the rest of the game, which generally torques me, but it was a winning strategy tonight, as Columbus never got it into the net.

Overall, I wouldn't really call it a good game, as they were outplayed for at least half of the game (badly, for most of that), but the result was certainly nice. OV is looking better than he has in a season and a half, and is being more creative and varied. TVo looked very good, coming up big when they needed him. Wideman had a very nice game, with two or three points.

Schultz played almost ten minutes, with no drama, so maybe he's out of Hunter's dog house. Eakin was called up again, with Beagle and Perreault both unavailable. He only played 9:43; I didn't notice him doing anything particularly bad, but I seem to recall his line getting penned in the D zone several times. He only played two shifts in the third.

Ward might have gotten into the dog house; he was dropped to the fourth line, and played less than ten minutes (and the same two shifts in the third as Eakin and Hendricks).

Special teams was certainly good tonight; both units were perfect, though that's only two chances, combined. Definitely wouldn't read anything into it, especially since they were going against Columbus, who's near the bottom of the league on both sides of special teams, but it was still nice to see.

Anyway, they've now got a small winning streak to take home to face Calgary on Tuesday. Let's hope it can be continued.

Bug, worse

2011-12-30T22:23:00.001-08:00

The power off bug on the iPad is even worse than I thought. It happened again last night, when the battery died while I was sleeping. What really irritates me about it is that I had quit the game entirely before going to sleep. Not sure where that leaves things, as far as who is driving the bug.

It's very frustrating, though, as I'm playing hugely better on the iPad than on the iPhone, of late (not sure why, but my average distance per game is close to double). My record longest is also significantly longer (8900 vs 6800, IIRC), but my longest distance in a single run of a vehicle is longer on the iPhone for five of the six vehicles.

Sabre-rattling

2011-12-30T20:29:00.001-08:00

I wasn't able to see the Caps game against the Rangers the other night; I wasn't feeling well and the DVR either missed it (maybe it was on the alternate channel, I didn't check) or erased it before I could watch it the next night. So I had mixed feelings about the result (love the win and score differential, but would have loved to have watched it).

Still, it sounded like, from the summaries I read, that the Caps got really lucky that they didn't give up more goals, especially in the first (where they had their traditional slow start, it seems).

Tonight, they got off to a much faster start, drawing a penalty in the opening minute and scoring a minute and change later on the power play. In fact, they completely dominated the entire first period, with shots 11-2 and scoring chances 7-1. They were lucky to get that one goal, as it went in off a defenseman's stick, but they did deserve to have a lead.

It was a very chippy period, with two fights, both fairly innocuous (though Ehrhoff managed to get injured in his fight with Brouwer somehow; I didn't catch how. Maybe he hit his head on the ice when they went down?).

As these things usually do, things evened up a lot in the second period. It started great, with a beautiful passing sequence from Semin to OV to Hamr back to Semin then to Backstrom for the slam dunk into the open net. It was the sort of thing that we'd see regularly for a while, but not so much this season. It also marked Hamr's second assist of the last eleven days (and of the season. Yikes).

But, towards the end of the period, the Caps started getting trapped in their own zone far too much, with Buffalo dictating. That was bound to bite them, and fifteen minutes in, it did. Hecht put in a rebound of a Vanek shot, as both Laich and Alzner failed to tie him up on the doorstep.

But they managed to stop the bleeding there, and keep the one-goal edge going into the final stanza. By this point, shots were even; I think the Caps had an edge of one or two in scoring chances, but I can't remember the numbers. So it was pretty even.

The third period was similar to the second, with Buffalo holding an edge, but not managing to dictate play like they did towards the end of the second. Things started looking a whole lot better fourteen minutes in, though, as Backstrom broke into the O zone on a 2-on-1 with OV. He had it next to the boards on the right-hand side, and shoveled it, backhand, over to OV, just left of center. With Miller playing shot all the way, OV had most of the net and got all of the puck with the one-timer into the middle of the goal. It was another very pretty goal, and ended up sealing the deal for the boys in red.

From there, it was all desperation play by the Sabres, with the Caps playing very little on offense, but they managed to prevent any really long build-up sequences. So, as I said, it proved to be enough.

As I alluded to earlier, it was a very strong game for the defense and for TVo. The offense was a bit more mixed, as they didn't have any completely dominant shifts (I'd really like to see more zone time and cycling), but did put together some very nice sequences off the rush. And the power play did convert one of its two chances. The PK also killed off the only opportunity they gave up, so it was a pretty good game all the way around.

That makes two pretty good games in a row, and they'll get a chance to make it three tomorrow against Columbus. Given the state of the Blue Jackets, showing up and playing hard should pretty well guarantee a win, although we'll see. It would be a long way from the first time they failed to show up, if that were to happen.

Congressional wealth

2011-12-27T15:27:00.000-08:00

I was very happy to see (well, hear about via NPR, then read) WaPo's discussion of the wealth of Congressmen. Well, happy to see that they're noticing the problem.

And I think, as a human interest story, it was a good one, but missed many of the important issues that bear on why so many Congressmen are so wealthy.

In particular, it completely missed on mentioning the rates that incumbents get re-elected (around 96%, last I heard), and how gerrymandering is affecting that rate.

One knock-on effect of that, is that, because Congressmen and Senators get very out-sized returns from their investments (as I mentioned previously), those who stick around for a little while quickly become very wealthy.

I was quite surprised to see that about 8% of Congressmen have little or negative net worth (home excluded); I expected no more than a dozen for the entire body. I would be willing to bet that those are pretty much all first-term'ers.

(As an aside, I found Rep Kelly's comment about the "death tax" pretty offensive. Nobody has said, or even suggested, that you shouldn't be able to pass a pretty substantial amount on to your children. The debate has been about the exact percentage, and on amounts over how many millions of dollars. Suggesting that you can't pass anything on, when the tax doesn't even kick in until your estate clears several million dollars is assinine, at best. And that's a tax that's barely over 1/3. Yes, you are being taxed twice on the money (well, most of the time; not actually all the time). One could argue about the fairness of that, but what about the fairness of codifying a (roughly) permanent aristocracy by not having a tax at all? That's the choice.

And keep in mind that $1M is already 22 times the national median income. So even if the tax were to become 100% for amounts over $1M, which nobody has suggested, you would still be able to pass on the amount an average person earns in 22 years. Calling that nothing should be damned offensive to at least half the population.)

Bug, confirmed

2011-12-27T06:29:00.000-08:00

Well, it appears that the bug that reset my missions and such recently is reproducible. At least, I ran the battery down to zero again yesterday while playing, and everything except possessions and coin count was lost again.

This is especially annoying as I had beaten my personal best again on the iPad (not by a lot; something like 8400 instead of 8100, but it's still irritating). At least I hadn't put any effort into achievements since the first reset.

Anyway, if you have an iPad 2 (this has never happened with my iPhone, although I haven't run that down since the latest upgrade), even with the latest version of the game, it looks like you better not run the battery all the way down. And now I've checked; syncing the iPad right afterwards doesn't help either.

The picture is the profile page, afterwards. Note the picture of the avatar, the coin count, and the best score. Time to get in touch with Halfbrick, I guess.

Takin' it easy

2011-12-26T21:07:00.000-08:00

Wasn't able to see most of the Caps game tonight; I forgot to check which channel it was on, and don't have the DVR programmed on the alternate channel. I turned the game on late, just to make sure the DVR wasn't running out of space, and saw that I wasn't, but I wasn't getting the game either.

Plus, when I got the game on, there was a minute left in the second period, and that the score was 4-0. Ouch.

So, I watched the rest of the period, got to see an apparent Perreault goal (later credited to Hendricks), And I set the recorder to get the rest of the game (breaking my normal rule of turning off when the margin reaches four goals).

After we got the kids in bed, I went back to watch the third, and found a few things that surprised me. The Caps apparently didn't show up for the first period, giving up all four goals in that frame. Neuvy gave up three of those (on six shots), and was pulled. And things started going wrong fast, with Hamr getting a delay of game penalty only nine seconds in (and yes, the Sabres scored on the resultant power play).

What probably surprised me the most, however, was seeing the stats as of the end of the second. They were actually pretty close across the board. The penalty kill hadn't, allowing two goals in three opportunities, and the power play wasn't, not scoring in their three chances. Mixed things about the power play came out, though, from the announcers and stats provided. It had allowed a couple of short-handed chances (that went off the post), but had gotten seven shots in those three chances.

But the rest of it looked pretty close. The Caps were ahead in shots, by one; behind in scoring chances, but closer than I expected at 11-9. Those are really the most important things, in terms of predicting success or failure going forward, and that wasn't bad. It certainly didn't sound like a recipe for a three-goal margin.

But you could certainly argue that the Caps were closing the gap in garbage time, and that the game was basically decided while things were markedly uneven. And I wouldn't be terribly surprised if that was the case.

What I do know is that the Caps came out in the third and played pretty well. Not nearly well enough to make up a three goal margin, but not too badly. And they took a couple of bad penalties (actually, the tripping call on Laich was a horrible one; the guy just lost an edge); the one by Perreault was really terrible (especially given that it wasn't a particularly hard hit), and came at a horrendous time. I wouldn't be surprised if that penalty keeps Matty P out of, at least, the next game. Not smart.

On the plus side, Sasha Minor did draw a tripping call, cashed in by Sasha Major (assisted by Backstrom, of course, with a very nice screen by Laich). So the power play didn't end up completely futile, at least.

And the PK did stop the last two penalties. So there was that.

But the root of the problem is, of course, that the Caps still think they can win all their games by playing hard in the last period. And that will never work, in the long term. I wish that message would finally get through; it isn't exactly a new phenomenon.

The Rangers are coming to visit on Wednesday, let's hope that the Caps show up at 7:05.

Tradition, cntd

2011-12-25T22:27:00.001-08:00

My wife and I traditionally watch Love, Actually sometime around Christmas time, as it's a perfect Christmas movie. Well, not perfect for having the kids watch it with you; it has an R rating, and, while I always forget that, definitely deserves it. This year we watched it late on Christmas Eve, and, as always, enjoyed it greatly.

I don't have too much to say about it, other than it being a fantastic movie, but did want to mention that it has a Dido song in the middle. Usually, that song catches me off-guard (I always forget that it's there), but this time I was looking forward to it starting. Also, this was the first year we watched it on blu-ray; the DVD was finally retired.

But I love movies of this sort, that tie together a lot of threads, and do it both subtly and blatantly. It's fun to catch new ties that I hadn't noticed before. Four Weddings and a Funeral is similar, in that vein. (Which reminds me; I haven't watched that one in quite a few years. That should be remedied.)

It's like Greased Lightnin'

2011-12-25T21:40:00.000-08:00

After the Caps game ended, I finally relented to watching a movie with my daughter, and pulled out Bolt. I didn't know too much of what to expect; my only knowledge of it was from a trailer I'd seen before it came out. It looked funny, with significant likelihood of the hamster stealing many scenes, and that was enough for me to buy it (once I found it pretty cheaply, that is).

Oh, I think I knew some of the basic plot, too. I knew that he was a TV dog who didn't realize that it was SFX giving him super powers; I don't think I knew why he was outside of the TV show.

Basically, then, I knew almost the entire movie. The plot isn't exactly deep; Bolt needs to find "his person" (owner, the Miley Cyrus character), and finds out, in the process, that he isn't so super-powered. And yeah, the hamster he finds along the way stole many scenes (almost every scene he was in, in fact).

One thing that took me a while to spell out, in my mind, were the parallels to Inspector Gadget (Penny and her dog save her father). I realized there was something there I was missing as soon as they named the Miley Cyrus character, but it took me a while to figure out what it reminded me of.

Was the movie good? I enjoyed it quite a bit. As I said, not deep, but funny, frequently silly, and a little bit of feeling (though mostly of the sappy, Disney sort). I'll watch it again, sometime. Probably with my daughter, as she also liked it. Actually, before the end credits had finished, she was asking me to replay it, which is a first, for her.

Bedeviled Anew

2011-12-25T21:17:00.000-08:00

I didn't get a chance to write about the Caps game against the Devils from the other night.

It was not a very fun game to watch, as the Caps were badly outplayed in the first (though, thanks to Neuvy, escaped with no score) and completely dominated in the second (and lucky to end down by only three goals). How bad was it? They got their first sustained pressure of the game in the last minute of the second period (and yes, that includes the three power plays. I think NJ got more chances on those power plays than Washington did. And more offensive zone time. Sad). And I'm glad they did, because if they hadn't, I probably wouldn't have watched the third, at all.

And I'm glad I did watch the third, as they outplayed the Devils handily, getting nine shots against only four allowed. And, wonder of wonders, three of those nine found the back of the net. That was enough to guarantee a standings point.

And the Caps continued to outplay the Devils in the overtime, but were unable to bury any of their shots, so they went to the shootout for the second time against the Devils this season. And, unfortunately, the result was the same as last time, with the Devils scoring twice on the shootout (and Neuvy was beaten by the third, as well, but Parise put the puck over the net) while the Caps failed to record a shootout goal.

So the Caps had their second loss of the season after going into overtime (both on the shootout, and both to New Jersey), but, as badly as they were outplayed through two, it almost felt like a victory. Not a satisfying one, though.

And Chimmer continued his annus mirabilis, getting two of the three goals, with Laich getting the third (they were not playing together for most of the game, though, so we can't make a comment about it being their line being awesome).

All in all, we're left with a bit of a "two steps forward, one step back" kind of feeling, as the Nashville game felt like progress, and this one felt like regress.

I'm definitely hoping for a much better showing tomorrow night in Buffalo, though; I can't take much more of this suckage. I keep telling myself that the end result will make the pain worth it, but it's hard to be sure of that, with the way things are going.

Happy Holidays

2011-12-25T21:15:00.000-08:00

Looks like I'm a few minutes late to say Merry Christmas, but I hope everyone reading this is having a nice holiday filled with friends, family, and good cheer, regardless of your denomination.

Full, ordered list old jetpack missions

2011-12-22T21:58:00.001-08:00

In my shorthand, though it should make sense if you've played before.

play 3 (1)
reach 500m, no coins (1)
collect 5 vehicles (2)
collect 2 tokens (1)
10 hi-fives, 1 game (1)
slide 50m on face (2)
1500 coins (1)
10 lights,1 (1)
smash 5 (1)
buy item (2)
get stomper x3 (1)
cash 3 tokens (1)
finish 3-400m (2)
near missile (2)
200 coins,1 (1)
reach 500m, no veh (2)
travel 3km (1)
use head start (2)
travel 750m hog (2)
5 tokens (1)
10 near misses (1)
gravity 30 (1)
300m on foot,1 (2)
5 spin prizes (3)
finish 5-600m (1)
300 coins,1 (2)
'porter 300m,1 (1)
3 tokens,1 (2)
15 hi-fives,1 (2)
reach 1km, no coins (2)
final blast (3)
5 near missile (2)
rub roof 300m,1 (2)
2km in vehicle (1)
reach 1.5km (2)
250m hog,1 (1)
10 tokens (2)
75 hi-five (3)
500m 'porter,1 (3)
500 coins,1 (2)
1km on foot (2)
15 lights,1 (1)
1km w/o mg pack (3)
300m bird,1 (2)
1-1.1km (2)
10 near miss,1 (2)
knock down 25 w/stomper (3)
rub roof 1km (2)
2500 coins (2)
500-550m (3)
300m gravity,1 (2)
15 tokens (3)
smash 10 (1)
50 lights (2)
4 tokens,1 (3)
1200m 'porter (2)
400m stomper,1 (2)
100 near miss (3)
gravity 50 (1)
750 coins,1 (3)
25 hi-five,1 (2)
1500m no vehicle (2)
1750m no coins (3)

And it seems that my iPad went back to the new missions after completing that set. Maybe they kept that set for a first pass through the game?

Jet-ing strangeness

2011-12-22T19:44:00.000-08:00

Played Jetpack Joyride earlier on my iPad. Battery died while playing. Ok, nothing unusual (well, hadn't happened before on iPad, I think, but many times on iPhone).

After it charged, I brought the game back up, and it had lost almost all of my stats. But it still had my items and my coins. Ok, that's weird. Weirder, while I was looking through the stash, I saw several achievement indicators go across the top of the screen.

Wait, which mission was I on? Brought up the mission list. It was the first three missions from the original game. Huh. But didn't I see...?

Yep, I saw the latest additions to the game in the Stash (Santa suit, etc).

So I'm not sure what's going on. Just for grins, I'm playing the original mission set, so I'll be able to post them again, in order, with difficulty levels for all of them. Soon.

Update: I forgot to mention; I don't mind losing most of what was lost. If the coins/possessions had been lost, I'd have been a lot more upset. All that I miss are a few of the achievements that were tough (germaphobe, in particular, but also tee hee two (now a secret achievement?) and bullseye), my longest run (was over 8km, and I've only gotten over 7km three or so times), and the list of tokens (but only because my odds of getting duplicates have now gone up).

Second update: Just noticed that the nice icons aren't (all?) there, as well.

So, I guess tax hikes aren't so bad after all, are they...

2011-12-21T07:34:00.001-08:00

It looks like a lot of people will be getting a small tax hike, in the form of the payroll tax holiday going away on January first. How we got there is kind of interesting. As near as I can tell, Republicans wouldn't agree to a one-year extension unless it was amended with a bunch of irrelevancies (most notably fast-tracking the Keystone XL pipeline).

So a compromise, two-month extension was agreed to, that would extend it long enough to negotiate a longer-term agreement. The Senate promptly passed that, with 89 or 90 votes (I forget), but the House decided that negotiating wasn't good enough. No, they needed to reject the Senate bill, and send the issue to committee, so they could negotiate.

Huh?

So, once again, we see that 'public service' stops at the doors of Congress, as everyone went home for the holiday.

Merry Christmas to the 160M or so who are affected by the payroll tax holiday. *sigh*

Update: Supposedly, the House Republicans caved earlier today, and will be approving the agreed-upon two-month extension. We'll see what happens when the two months ends, but I suspect it'll be as ugly as the last few days have been.

Jetpack Medals

2011-12-21T07:15:00.000-08:00

I still don't have a complete list, but I thought I'd list the medals that I have (yes, the names are predefined, they aren't randomly generated. I have a couple of them on more than one device). I'll probably update this as I get more.

003: Sleepy Badge of Naps
005: Funky Badge of Jazz
007: Not So Lucky Badge
008: Prestigious Badge of Bacon
010: New Badge of Double Digits (Update)
012: Dogs Badge of Walks
013: Super Lucky Badge (Update)
016: Shiny Badge of Completion
017: Shiny Badge of Achievement
018: Momentous Badge of Age
020: Shiny Badge of Courage (Update)
021: Tipsy Badge of Celebration
022: Shiny Badge of Persistence
023: Shiny Badge of Resilience
024: Shiny Badge of Skill
025: Shiny Badge of Accomplishment
026: Shiny Badge of Dexterity
027: Shiny Badge of Technique
029: Shiny Badge of Finesse
030: Shiny Badge of Aptitude
031: Shiny Badge of Talent (Update)
032: Shiny Badge of Sparkles
033: Shiny Badge of Greatness
034: Golden Frothing Badge
035: Shiny Badge of Deliciousness (Update)
037: Shiny Badge of Insight (Update)
038: Shiny Badge of Love
039: Shiny Badge of Creativity
040: Crisis Badge of Midlife
041: Shiny Badge of Brilliance (Update)
042: Badge of Meaning
044: Shiny Badge of Superiority (Update)
047: Great Badge of Achievement
048: Great Badge of Excellence
049: Great Badge of Courage
050: Great Badge of Persistence
052: Great Badge of Skill
053: Great Badge of Accomplishment
054: Great Badge of Dexterity (Update)
055: Ominous Badge of Assassination
056: Great Badge of Technique
057: Great Badge of Prowess
059: Great Badge of Aptitude (Update)
060: Great Badge of Talent
064: Great Badge of Curiosity
067: Great Badge of Creativity
071: Great Badge of Superiority (Update)
072: Special Badge of Honour (Update)
073: Special Badge of Completion
075: Special Badge of Excellence
076: Special Badge of Courage (Update)
078: Special Badge of Resilience
079: Special Badge of Skill (Update)
080: Special Badge of Accomplishment
081: Special Badge of Dexterity
084: Best Badge of Birth (Update)
085: Special Badge of Finesse
086: Funny Green Badge (Update)
087: Special Badge of Aptitude
088: Special Badge of Talent
090: Special Badge of Greatness (Update)
091: Special Badge of Deliciousness
092: Special Badge of Curiosity
093: Special Badge of Inspiration
094: Special Badge of Love
096: Special Badge of Brilliance
097: Special Badge of Delight (Update)
099: Devastating Badge of Bradman
100: Badge of the Centurion
101: Shiny Badge of Spotted Dogs
102: Awesome Badge of Awesomeness (Update)
104: Glorious Badge of Glory
106: Great Badge of Greatness (Update)
108: Familiar Badge of Imagery
111: Prestigious Badge of Prestige
112: Honourable Badge of Honour (Update)
115: Historic Badge of Fruit (Update)
116: Historic Badge of Sensei (Update)
117: Historic Badge of Raskullyness
118: Historic Badge of Zombies
120: Historic Badge of Racing Rockets (Update)
121: Historic Badge of Blasting Off (Update)
122: Woody's Badge of Programming (Update)
123: Sierra's Badge of Art
124: Muscat's Badge of Design
125: Last Badge of the Collection(?)

And yes, that last one does have the question mark in the game. I didn't add it.

And apparently my early guesses about the names were wrong. At first I thought it was done mad lib-style, as <ADJ> Badge of <Noun>, but you can see that isn't totally the case. Later, I thought they chose all of the <ADJ> badges to be sequential, but that also isn't true. It looks like someone took the time to individually name all of them. That must have been quite the pain.

So, ~~sixty-eight seventy-three seventy-five~~ eighty down, if I'm counting right, and ~~fifty-seven fifty-two fifty~~forty-five to go. Dunno if I'll keep playing long enough to get there, but that's the results of ~~7900km~~ 11000km of progress over about ~~4300~~ 4950 games.

Feel free to add any others in the comments, and I'll update the main list.

Other update: Fixed some formatting after the list, it should now make more sense.

Later update: Had miscounted at the beginning, but now have an accurate count.

Thoughts on old Jetpacking

2011-12-20T21:11:00.000-08:00

I mentioned that there were originally 62 missions arranged with 15 levels of progress in Jetpack Joyride. I meant to put together a list of them, so I'll put that at the end of this post. I should point out, though, that my list isn't in order; I never got around to sorting it.

And I should mention two small downsides to the new approach of picking missions of the game. Both are results of random selection: you can get a mission more than once, and there's no synergy between missions. To expand on the latter point, in the old set, you'd generally end up with relatively compatible missions at one time (and, I think, the better you were as a player, the more true this was). With the current picking, it's impossible to determine. Neither of these is a big deal, but they're slightly annoying.

One other bit of oddness comes out of the randomness (although it's possible that this one results from upgrading to the newest version (a much smaller upgrade, that mostly just adds some Christmas window-dressing and better mission icons) in the middle of the set of missions). Last time, I ended up with two difficulty stars left over after I completed the Barry level. We'll see if that repeats; it was odd. And no, those two stars did not carry over into the next mission set.

And one more note on the new mission set. I ran into one last night that says something like 'Travel 500m without touching floor or ceiling'. Unlike most missions with similar phrasing, this one can be done anywhere in the game, not just to start the game.

And one final thing on the big upgrade: there's also a new achievement, Dragon Fruit. Equip the Fruit Jetpack, and find Mr Cuddles.

Anyway, on to the list of all 62 original missions (in shorthand) with difficulty where I remember it:
Play three games (1)
Knock a hole in the wall five times (1)
ditto, 10 times (1)
Slide 50m on your face (2)
Fly 500m w/o coins (1)
ditto, 1km (2)
ditto, 1750m (3)
Travel 500m w/o vehicle (1)
ditto, 1km (2)
ditto, 1.5km (2)
Collect five vehicles (2)
Collect 2 spin tokens in one game (1)
ditto, 3 (2)
ditto, 4 (3)
Collect 200 coins in one game (1)
ditto, 300
ditto, 400
ditto, 750 (3)
Collect 1500 coins (1)
ditto, 2500
Collect 5 tokens (1)
ditto, 10 (2)
ditto, 15 (3)
Travel 300m in stomper, one run
ditto, teleporter
ditto, gravity suit
ditto, profit bird
Travel 250m on hog, one run
Travel 400m in stomper, one run
Travel 500m in teleporter, one run
Travel 2km in vehicle
Travel 1200m in teleporter (3)
Travel 750m on hog
Change gravity 30 times, one run (1)
ditto, 50 (1)
Knock down 25 scientists
Collect stomper 3 times
Cash in three spin tokens (1)
Win prize in final spin, 5 times (3)
Use bought head start (2)
Use bought final blast (3)
But something from stash (2) [can be another mission]
Travel 1km w/o machine gun jetpack
Reach 1500m
Near miss from missile
five of them
Ten near misses from zappers
ditto, in one game
and 100 (not one game)
75 high fives
10, one game
15, one game
25, one game
Brush 50 flashing lights
15, one game
Finish between 500 & 600
300-400 (1)
1000-1100
500-550
Rub roof 1000m
300, one game
Walk 1000m
300, one game

Be wehwy, wehwy quiet, we'h huntin' predatuhs

2011-12-20T19:48:00.000-08:00

Tonight was another very uneven game for the boys in red. It got off on a high note, celebrating Knuble's 1000th NHL game. Then they proceeded to play a nearly perfect first period, one of the best they've played all year. After goals from Backstrom and Ovechkin (playing on separate lines), they went into the dressing rooms without allowing one in return. The power play even looked good; no goals, but four shots.

Chances were 8-2 in favor of the good guys, and Neuvy was looking excellent.

The second period saw the Caps outplayed by a fair bit, which wasn't helped by the quartet of minor penalties (two of which were very stupid, and another was a rare mistake by Alzner). They were especially out-hit, including one shift by Tootoo where he threw two Caps to the ice in impressive fashion. But they managed not to break under the pressure, with the PK looking especially good. Chances in this period were 4-2, bad guys.

The third period continued with very good play from Nashville, as they flat-out dominated the first half of the third period. They kept Washington penned in, and scrambling, and scored one to pull it back to a one-goal game.

But Washington broke out in the second half, triggered by Semin's beauty of a wrister from the left side ten and a half minutes in. It was a nice rush, with MarJo pulling the defense and leaving a drop pass for Semin. Semin skated in a little bit, then planted the puck all the way in the far side, top corner (really, he couldn't have placed it better by hand).

Brouwer rounded out the scoring with his first power play goal of the season three minutes later, tipping in a Wideman shot. That one also got MarJo his second assist of the night (no goals for his 100th game, but we'll take those assists any day).

In all, it was a very good game. Actually, what was depressing was that Locker said, right after Brouwer scored, something to the effect of it being their largest lead of the night. That was true, but the depressing part was thinking back to the last time they had a three goal lead. Now that I've looked, it was six weeks ago, against Carolina. Ugh.

Let's see if they can find a way to do it again on Friday, when they visit the Devils.

Who is Hanna?

2011-12-19T19:50:00.000-08:00

One good thing about the Caps crapping the bed a couple of weeks ago (this game, I think) was that it gave me time to watch a movie. Having quite a few recent options to choose from (thank you, Black Friday/Cyber Monday), I decided on Hanna. I wasn't sure if I could really buy the premise, but I was certainly curious to see the execution.

For those unfamiliar, the premise is that a guy has raised his daughter from early childhood to be an assassin (with a specific, personal target). He was a spy, so some of it wasn't completely outlandish. To further that, he raised her in a remote location near the Arctic Circle (how remote? They had to hunt for their food). So far, so good.

But the big question is, how is she going to carry this out?

To get back to the important stuff, they did an excellent job with the little details, but the larger, plausibility issue wasn't really so great. But Hanna's interactions with other people (and technology) were very good.

I liked that, when she first meets someone to talk to, she sounds like a recorder. She remembers her lines, but can't make herself sound natural. And her knowledge is encyclopedic, but rarely useful (unsurprising, since much of it came directly out of an encyclopedia).

One weird thing that just occurred to me. Her first time in a place with electricity she gets a bit freaked out. The problems with that were two-fold: one, she didn't seem at all uncomfortable at the place where she carried out her mission (which was earlier in the movie), and two, we didn't see that again. People don't recover from something like that quite that quickly.

Also, she didn't seem to have any trouble with cars, which she also hadn't seen before (well, not since she was a toddler, at least).

And the other two problems were pretty big ones. The first was her ability to fight. If they want her to be able to believably fight grown, trained men, they needed to do something more than they did. They had a bit of an explanation for her being strong enough to do that sort of thing, but it wasn't introduced until about three-quarters of the way through the film. That's too late. Plus, no offense to Saoirse Ronan, who was otherwise excellent (and I do believe she worked really hard on the fighting part), but she didn't seem all that believable at fighting. Not that she didn't look competent; she did, but she didn't seem sufficiently outstanding to be outclassing trained guys so much bigger than her. I actually think, to make this believable, that they needed to do some special effects or very fancy choreography, and they didn't.

The last big thing that just didn't seem right: the whole film was set in motion by Hanna turning on a transponder that told her target where her father was. There wasn't any explanation for how or why he would have a transponder that was detectable (apparently world-wide; I did mention how remote they were) and that identified him, specifically. It's fairly easy to ignore, I guess, but I just don't see any explanation.

Anyway, to get back to the good parts, I did think Ms Ronan was excellent. Eric Bana was also good as her father, as was Cate Blanchett as the target.

And, as I said, they got lots of little details right. The boy staying awake to listen to his sister talk to another girl. Hanna's reaction to a boy showing some interest in her. They also spent a lot of time working on accents and languages, and it showed.

Overall, this movie felt more like a foreign film than a US one; I'm surprised, looking now, that it made as much as it did in the US. I'm glad that it did, though. I wouldn't mind seeing more films like this made, although I hope they'll put a little more emphasis into the big details, before worrying so much about the little ones.

Of course, one does need to question why there are so many movies being made recently about assassins. You'd think they'd be considered the lowest of the low, yet they're being glorified. Something's definitely wrong with that picture.

Need a towel? There's an app for that...

2011-12-19T19:38:00.000-08:00

At least, if you're a Steelers fan (search for 'Terrible Towel' on the iTunes App Store). I find that hilariously silly.

How did I find out? Apparently, it's available for free, today only. No word on how to use it to make rat tails.

Caps last two

2011-12-19T19:18:00.000-08:00

I didn't get a chance to write about last Thursday's game until yesterday; saw it late Friday and was busy on Saturday (and when I wrote this yesterday, I wasn't able to post it).

It was mostly a good game. The first period was mostly good, but with a few serious breakdowns. Unlike many of the recent games, though, they got great goaltending from Neuvy when those happened. I imagine that Coach Hunter was pretty upset about those breakdowns, though, because a team with aspirations to contending for the title can't have those.

The second and third periods had the Caps taking control, putting a lot of pressure on the Jets, who kept getting bailed out by Pavelec. The Caps didn't get a lot of chances in the third, but they managed to give the Jets even fewer. What's more, with a little over a minute left, OV (with help from Johansson and Backstrom) managed to finally get one past Pavelec.

That ended up being the only goal of the contest, so the Caps left town with a pair of points.

In Saturday's game, I was a bit apprehensive when the paper mentioned that Colorado was 25th in the league. Why did that make me apprehensive? Well, it seemed like every time I looked at one of their scores, they had won. So they must have won just about every game I'd noticed, and I was definitely going to be noticing this one.

One slight disappointment was that Giguere was in net; I'd hoped to see Varly again, even knowing that his season has been incredibly up and down.

The first period was pretty good for the Caps, as they held slight edges in most categories that one would care about. And that was despite losing the face-off battle 15-3. But the one category that you'd definitely care about where they were losing was on the scoreboard.

McLeod put a soft wrist shot from the blue line off Carlson's skate and into the top of the net. Neuvy didn't seem to see it until it was past him, which is fairly damning on a soft shot from that far out with no screen. He had a good night outside of that shot, and the team should be able to score three, but that was still a terrible goal to let in.

The second period did not go well for the Caps either, as they were outplayed by a fair bit from start to finish. They did have a definite bright spot as Semin got a breakaway, putting one over Giguere's shoulder to tie the game.

Unfortunately, they again failed to use that as a confidence builder, allowing another go-ahead goal less than a minute later.

That was it for scoring in the second period, leaving the Caps going into the third period down yet again. Did that motivate them to play harder for the last period? To show desperation? Not until the last minute or so, as they were outplayed pretty badly up to that point. Neuvy kept them in the game, but he can't score goals by himself.

I was very surprised to learn, at the end of the period, that the shots were even, but the play certainly wasn't. A large percentage of the period was played in the Caps end, and far too much of it with the 'lanche holding the puck. Kudos to the Avs, as they played very well; it was a very frustrating game to watch.

One part of that is that, while the Caps are a very young team (not as young as the Avs, though), the Avs seemed much, much faster in the game. At times it felt like the team, especially Erskine and Hamr, were just cones to be skated around. As I said, very frustrating.

Adding to the frustration was that the power play was atrocious; they couldn't even bring the puck into the offensive zone. You can see the futility there by noting that they got only one shot on the four power plays (although one of those, at the end of the game, was only fourteen seconds long).

And the face-offs were terrible. I mentioned the first period, which was horrifying, but the margin only increased over the remaining two periods (though not by much).

Let's hope that the team learned some lessons from the game, and applies them tomorrow night against Nashville. And let's hope that that leads to a better result than the last game against the Predators.

Oh, when the tanks, come rollin' home, oh when...

2011-12-15T08:23:00.000-08:00

I must admit to having rather mixed feelings about the recent news that the troops in Iraq are, in fact, coming home. I'm very glad for that (and for the troops themselves, especially), and have wanted it to happen for nine years or so, now. And I'm pretty surprised, because, despite Obama's campaign promises, I didn't really expect it to happen. But I also feel some cynicism because of the large number of State Department-led people (some of whom would be hard to classify as anything other than troops) who are remaining indefinitely.

I guess the most important part is to remember that it is a significant step forward. And it will greatly help the budget situation as well, because the State Department's whole budget for Iraq is only (HAH!) $5B.

So let's applaud this for what it is, and continue to hope for a complete pull-out, as well as a complete pull-out from Afghanistan.

Water, water, everywhere, but...

2011-12-14T07:10:00.001-08:00

I read, some time ago, about the problems of Jefferson Co, Alabama, where the court ordered that the sewer system be constructed such that no spillage would occur (I believe that was the phrasing). What that resulted in, shortly, was

In Alabama, Jefferson County residents pay $50 a month for a sewer system whose construction generated millions of dollars in fees for JPMorgan Chase & Co. Now it’s getting a court-appointed receiver, according to Bloomberg. And al.com reports that former Jefferson sewer boss Jack Swann is destined for a lengthy stay in a prison to be determined later. To make matters worse, the sewer system is over-engineered yet difficult to operate.

Now, a couple of years later, there is even more fall-out:

But the real victims of the financial collapse in the US state of Alabama's most populous county are its poorest residents - forced to bathe in bottled water and use portable toilets after being cut off from the mains supply.

The whole saga is more interesting, because a significant part of the problem was the financing (arranged by the great, philanthropic JP Morgan Chase):

The saga of the bankruptcy in the county of Alabama's biggest city, Birmingham, includes a long thread of corruption and fraud as a sewer system upgrade originally projected to cost as little as $250 million wound up saddling the county with unsustainable debts worth billions.

Bad bond and refinancing deals and construction problems helped inflate the debt balloon.

The one bit of good that might come out of this is that JP Morgan Chase might not get back a large amount of the money the county owes them. The description (which I can't find, unfortunately) I read of the original debt was that it involved credit rate swaps. Essentially, they were trying to hide how much debt they were generating by getting into obscure derivatives that, if everything went right, would keep the payments low for a while. Getting into those kinds of transactions, without knowing exactly what you're doing, is a fool's game, so, to a degree, the county deserves what it got.

Well, the people responsible are all gone from office, but now we see how the fallout continues for a lot of undeserving people, years later. This is what comes of "do whatever you can to win the next election" governance. In this case, the "do whatever you can" involved trying to hide a body (the size of the long-term debt) that wasn't quite dead yet.

Beware low-flying objects

2011-12-14T06:26:00.001-08:00

I was pretty apprehensive about last night's Caps-Flyers tilt, because the Caps are still in transition and because the Flyers would certainly want revenge for the game a few weeks ago. I felt a little better shortly before the game, after finding out that Giroux and Pronger were out (not that I wish ill on them, but it certainly improves the Caps odds for them to be out).

Things started out fairly well; kind of like the game the other night, where the Caps weren't generating a lot of offense (though better than the other night; shots were about the same, but six scoring chances as opposed to one), but were looking very solid, defensively. Perhaps more importantly, they weren't getting penned in their own zone for long periods of time. But they did allow a fairly bad goal sixteen minutes in to put the Flyers in the lead.

The second period didn't go nearly as well, and the 3-0 score differential gave a pretty decent indication of the Flyers' dominance. They got penned in a couple of times, and let in a couple more bad goals (it was a terrible night for Vokoun; I wasn't surprised to hear that he had been replaced after the end of the period. I believe Simmonds' goal was the only one that Vokoun shouldn't have stopped).

I managed to keep the game on until the end of the second period (I thought I might as well turn if off when the fourth goal went in), and did see one good shift because of that. There were some signs of life in the third period. Halpern did get a goal, which was good, and the seventeen shots was also a good sign. But they didn't get any closer to winning the game.

So, it seemed like this game was going to be a good gauge of where the Caps are in their recovery, and that gauge indicates a tank half-full, at best. Hopefully Thursday's game against the Jets will go a bit better.

Jetpack addenda

2011-12-12T19:10:00.001-08:00

I mentioned that missions have become fluid. In a minute, I'll give the list of missions for my second pass through. But I forgot to mention a couple of other tweaks. The odds on final spins seem to have changed a bit (I say seem to have, because it could just be normal, random variation); added tokens and head starts seem more likely (the former by a lot, the latter by a bit).

In general, the game also seems a bit more difficult. Part of that is the greenhouse area, just because of the color scheme (the yellow zappers don't stand out as much as against the other backgrounds). I thought, perhaps, that threats might have gotten a touch closer together, but now I think that probably isn't the case. I suspect there might be slightly fewer horizontal zappers, though (they're less dangerous than the vertical or diagonal ones). But I'm not completely sure. I do know that I'm not doing as well.

Hmm. I seem not to have copied down all of the missions the second time, so I'll just mention some of the ones I hadn't seen before:

Travel 450m w/o harming scientists (2)
ditto, 700m (3)
70 high fives (3)
ditto, 55 (2)
20 flashing lights in one game (3)
1400m on hog (3)
275 coins in one game (2)
9 tokens (3)
1200, no coins (2)
3 groups of coins in one game (3)
reach 1750m (2)
reach 2400 (3)
travel 8km (forgot to copy down difficulty)

Joyriding on jetpacks...

2011-12-10T20:01:00.000-08:00

I've been playing Halfbrick's Jetpack Joyride for quite a while now. I'm not great at it, as my best game is a little over 7km, but I have played all of the missions over fifty times.

Well, they decided to upgrade a couple of days ago, and this was a much bigger upgrade than any of the previous ones. Previously, "winning" consisted of going through 62 missions (you can solve up to three of them in one game) of varying difficulty.

In this upgrade, there were some cosmetic changes (most notably, adding a greenhouse section to the previous corridor, lab, warehouse, and aquatic areas).

But the big change was to the mission set, which had not been modified in previous releases.

My first time through, here are the missions I went through:

Go 250m in Lil Stomper (1 star)
Go 500m without collecting any coins (1)
Brush by 50 flashing lights (2)
Collect 2 spin tokens in one game (1)
Get 5 high-fives from scientists in one game (1)
Finish a game in 500-600m (1)
Fly over 50 zappers [it says, in one game, but it isn't] (2)
Smash the wall 5 times (1)
Destroy the profit bird (1)
Reach 900m w/o machine-gun jetpack (3)
3 Near misses from missiles (1)
Collect 300 coins in one game (2)
Travel 250m on foot in one game (1)
Get 100 high-fives from scientists (3)
Travel 150m in Mr Cuddles in one run (1)
Collect 7 spin tokens (2)
Travel 750m without collecting any coins (1)
Brush 12 flashing lights in one game (2)
Fly over 90 zappers [again, it says 'in one game', but doesn't mean it] (3)
Destroy Crazy Freakin' Teleporter 5 times (2)
Play 10 games (2)
Rub roof for 300m in one game (2)
3 Near-missiles, one game (3)
Buy item from stash (2)
Collect 3 tokens in one game (2)
Travel 350m w/o hurting scientists (2)
Go 4km (1)
Travel 350m in Lil Stomper, one run (2)
Have 10 near misses with zappers (1)
Travel 1000m w/o machine-gun jetpack (3)
Get 10 high-fives in one game (1)
Get 7 groups of coins [this is even easier than it sounds] (3)
Travel 400m on foot in one game (1)
Win 7 prizes in final spin (3)
Destroy Hog (1)
Brush 15 lights in one game (2)
Go 6km (2)
Rub roof for 500m in one game (2)
4 Near-missile (2)
30 high-fives in one game (3)
Go 1100m w/o collecting coins (2)
Go 300m in profit bird in one run (2)
Buy and use final blast (3)
Fly over 100 zappers [ditto] (3)
Smash wall 8 times (1)
Collect 1000 coins (2)
Travel 1250 on foot (2)
Destroy Gravity Suit 3 times (2)
Brush 17 lights, one game (3)
35 high-fives, one game (3)
Finish 1000-1100m (2)
Rub roof 1000m (2)
Collect 4 tokens in one game (3)
5 Near-missiles (3)
Travel 1100 w/o machine-gun jetpack (3)
Travel 1750m on Mr Cuddles (3)
Fly over 25 zappers, one game {and this time they mean it] (3)
Travel 1750m w/o collecting coins (3)

A couple of things to note here: lots of new missions and there are fewer than 62. A bigger surprise awaited the second time through. The missions changed, although I'll detail it more later.

Maple leaf rag

2011-12-10T19:28:00.000-08:00

Because there should be some happy music after last night's Caps game. The Caps were -2 at even strength as a team, but woke up the sleeping beast of the power play to the tune of four goals to win solidly. What's more, Wideman decided that Carlson was taking too much of the press with a pair of 3-point games, so he decided to upstage that with a hat trick and an assist (hmm... that's what they were saying at the end of the game, but it looks like the third goal was changed to be credited to Laich, who must have tipped Wideman's shot in. So, two and two, not three and one).

Plus, for the second game in a row, OV looked continually dangerous (though unable to actually score, this time), putting eight shots on goal.

The game started out ok, with the Caps not putting any shots on net for the first ten minutes, but doing a good job of keeping the Leafs from threatening (even with Ward's really stupid "closing hand on puck" penalty. He has not had a good last four-five games, with some very poor decisions in the D-zone leading to goals against, and several bad penalties). But a couple of minutes later, after turning up the offensive play a bit, they got their first power play and, thirty-three seconds later, their first score. The rest of the period was played pretty evenly (maybe a slight edge to the Caps), but without any scoring.

The second period got off to a good start, with the Leafs taking a 'too many men on the ice' penalty ninety-eight seconds in. Eleven seconds later, Wideman had his second goal of the night, with a long shot from the point with Reimer on a screened-in porch. Eleven minutes later, the Leafs got within one on a weird sequence. TVo was hugging the post, and a shot bounced up from the outside of the net, onto and over his leg, and sat behind him for a second until Kessel could skate around the net and tap it in. A bit of a fluke, but not a good job of hugging the post. There really shouldn't be any room there.

The Caps finally did something on a 5-on-3 six minutes later, when WIdeman faked a slap shot then put a pass through a lot of traffic (blind luck that it made it through) to Backstrom on the doorstep, who put it over Reimer then watched the thin part of Reimer's stick push it over the line. Very bad luck for the Leafs, especially as it occurred with one second left on the first penalty, so they still had to kill the second (though they did).

The third period was not as good as the first two. The Caps decided to stop trying for offense for a while, so, predictably, they spent too much time in their own end and eventually gave up a goal to Franson. That got them back to trying at both ends, though, and they picked things up a bit.

Carlson was involved in a bunch of penalties at the end, taking a high stick with a bit more than two minutes remaining (that pretty much killed Toronto's chances of winning), and then getting into a "fight" with fifteen seconds remaining. The power play on the high stick finished out Washington's scoring, though, with Carlson passing to Wideman, whose slapshot from the point was deflected into the net.

In the end, it was a pretty nice game, with the power play clicking like it hadn't in quite a few weeks. The penalty kill, while only called on twice, was also good.

Even strength was a bit less even; I'd like to see more shots and, again, much fewer giveaways. But they mostly did a good job of making it difficult for Toronto to enter the zone and had some good cycling shifts. So it was far from a perfect game, but definitely one showing progress.

A much bigger test will come on Tuesday, as they face the Flyers again. No doubt they will be looking for revenge after the manhandling the Caps gave them earlier in the season.

Playing to completion

2011-12-07T20:46:00.000-08:00

The Caps, tonight, played one of their most complete games of the season (not their most, but top 5, I think), downing the Senators 5-3. They came out strong, forechecking well to keep Ottawa from getting anything set up in the offensive zone. They also were constantly threatening, putting up fifteen shots in the first period. Unfortunately, that hard work didn't pay off, as Anderson did a stellar job in net, keeping the Sens in the game.

In fact, the penalty kill even looked great, getting a breakaway led by Chimera that led to two penalties. Unfortunately, the power play still couldn't solve Anderson, even with almost the whole two minutes of 5-on-3. But they did generate a number of chances (four, IIRC), so I can't say it was a terrible effort. They still weren't moving around as much as they should, but it wasn't terrible.

Early in the second, they finally put one past Anderson off a rebound of Brouwer's shot that Halpern managed to get his stick on, despite being tripped as he was shooting. Instead of giving the Caps momentum, however, they stopped forechecking as hard (or maybe just weren't as successful at it) and played more evenly for the rest of the period. And Ottawa had two pretty goals during that time, put in by Condra and Foligno.

The Caps didn't get too discouraged, though, and came out pretty hard in the third. It took them a while, but they finally managed to solve Anderson on the power play, with a pretty top-shelf shot by Backstrom off the rush. OV, then, finally managed to break through (he'd had a number of good opportunities earlier in the game) with a beautiful stop and shot that went five-hole. That was followed, fifteen seconds later, by MarJo setting up Brouwer on the doorstep for a third goal.

That looked like it was pretty much going to do it (some people started leaving the arena), but Ottawa got a power play (on Semin, increasing his lead for team PIMs) and scored five seconds later on a defensive breakdown and a nice play by Michalek.

That made things pretty tense for a while, especially when the Sens got another power play (on Ward, with his second slashing penalty of the period) with three minutes left. But Carlson managed to clear it all the way down right at the end of that power play (when Anderson had been pulled), and Halpern, on the returning breakout, deflected an attempted pass in right to Carlson. This time Carlson had a second to line up his shot, and stuck it right in the center of the net to provide the final margin with forty-five seconds left.

So, things looked good for the guys in white tonight. More particularly, Brouwer had an excellent game with the Gordie Howe hat trick. Carlson had a goal and two assists for his second consecutive three-point night.

And OV played his best game of the season, I think; he was threatening all night long and had seven shots. He also looked really happy when he scored the goal; we haven't seen enough of him smiling this season. His move to beat the defenseman (Karlsson, who's a very good skater in his own right), was a thing of beauty. He was going full-tilt away from the goal, stopped on a dime, turned, faked the slap shot, and then put a wrister between the legs. The only negative on the night was a cheap shot with his stick to the groin of Neil. Wasn't happy to see that, but I'm more ambivalent if that's what it's going to take to bring OV back.

Semin had a decent game. He got a good opportunity a minute or so in, going in alone on the wing, but lifted the shot high and out of play. He generally looked good after that, although the penalty wasn't a good one.

Dima Orlov looked very good, although I was disappointed when he failed to take advantage of a good hip-check opportunity on a Senator cutting to the net. But he was solid, and even had the second assist on OV's goal.

Schultz actually looked pretty good while he was in, but, for some reason, he was only in for four minutes on the night. Not sure what was going on, there. Alzner and Carlson were mostly the ones who picked up the slack, as they ended up with over 27 minutes on the night. I hope that isn't going to be a regular occurence; they're great, but will get worn down with that kind of workload. Come back soon, Greenie.

Anyway, that's about it for tonight. Let's hope the strong play continues Friday against Toronto, because they're playing very well at the moment.

Panting at the end

2011-12-06T06:24:00.000-08:00

I watched around half of the Caps game last night. It was a very uneven effort, with some great shifts and some terrible ones. OV never did score, but almost all of the great shifts I saw were by his line (well, one of his lines; the combos last night were about as predictable as rolling dice, especially in the early second).

The first of those great shifts was about five minutes into the game, when there was no score. But then, a minute and a half, or so, later, after Perreault got sent off for high sticking, The Panthers put one in the net off of Wideman's stick. That was not good, but it got worse thirteen seconds later when Santorelli came in down the right wing and put one over Neuvy's shoulder (Neuvy should have had it).

Things were really looking bad when, after Brouwer took a rather odd interference call (he dropped his stick when trying to pull it out of the grasp of a Panther, and it slid over to the puck carrier), the Panthers scored again on the power play.

Knuble evened it up a little bit forty seconds later with a slap shot from the right circle (huh? A slap shot from Knuble? yep) that beat Clemmenson.

Early in the second, Florida got another power play marker from Bergenheim. I thought about stopping the game then, but soldiered on (through a few good shifts for the Caps) for another nine minutes until Weiss got his second of the game. Down four, and not looking good any more, I gave up.

From looking at the box scores, it looks like my decision was about right. The Caps did come back to score three goals to lessen the margin, but they couldn't get an equalizer. I imagine the team's going to get quite the chewing out during practice this morning about blown defensive assignments. The fifth goal was particularly bad, as the entire team was following Flash as he came into the zone and skated past the net, with nobody marking Weiss, or blocking the pass over to Weiss. This was also the second goal in a row where Neuvy badly overplayed someone going behind the net (Flash passed from the goal line, before he got behind the net on this one), and wasn't nearly able to get back into position.

I'm really not sure what to take from this one. As I said, there were some good plays, but some really miserable ones as well. Neuvy did not have a good game. He did make some very nice saves, but he also gave up some pretty bad ones. Overall, though, this game wasn't as encouraging as the last two.

I guess we'll see what happens tomorrow night, as they'll see the Senators again, this time in Ottawa.

Senators flee capital

2011-12-03T21:49:00.000-08:00

Tonight's Caps/Sens game was pretty entertaining. The Caps were outplayed in the first, but dominated in the second. So, of course, the Caps got the only goal of the first, while the Sens got the only tally in the second. The Caps also dominated for about the first seventeen minutes of the third, but both teams ended up putting one in the net.

Overtime continued to be very good for the Caps, though, as Laich cleanly won the draw back to Alzner. Karl pushed it up the Chimera breaking in. Karlsson losing an edge made it a two-on-one break with Laich, and Chimmer gave a nice feed across to Laich for the score. Total time? Twelve seconds.

So Laich had the game-winning goal in his 500th career game. Ignoring injuries, Laich is under contract for another 450 or so games for the Caps, so we don't have to worry whether he'll have the game winner for his 1000th. Still, bully for him, and we'll hope for a bunch more GWGs over that 450.

So, how did they look? Mostly quite good. They weren't getting outworked regularly. The breakout was mostly pretty good (although there were several breakdowns at the end of the game). They made Ottawa work to get their own breakout going. There was only one penalty against. There were 35 shots on goal; a nice improvement. Ottawa had the edge on giveaways, but it was quite close.

The power play still wasn't very good; the first two looked bad, while the third looked good. I don't remember the fourth. The third was actually pretty long, too, because they had a long 6-on-5 (about 50 seconds) while that penalty was delayed.

I can't remember too much of the penalty kill. The first shift looked pretty good, but I can't remember anything specific about the rest. Most importantly, they definitely didn't allow a goal.

So Hunter got his first win, the game was still low-scoring, and there were several more encouraging signs. We'll see a little bit more on Monday in Florida.

Lord of the Rings, extended

2011-12-03T20:03:00.001-08:00

I finally ordered the Lord of the Rings Extended Edition blu-ray set recently, and it finally arrived (after getting lost by UPS once) today. I haven't watched it yet (and, given the length of the movies, I might not for a while), but I was impressed with how much is included. Each movie spans two blu-rays (I don't think I have any other movies that don't fit on one disc), and each one also includes three DVDs worth of extras. I was impresed with that. Hopefully the extended editions add enough to allay most of my problems with the movies (I'm buying these almost as much for the visuals as anything else).

My eyes have seen the Morning Glory...

2011-12-03T19:35:00.000-08:00

I, somewhat randomly, picked up Morning Glory recently (it was a lot cheaper than it is now), and decided to watch it last night.

It's a (kind of) romantic comedy about an obsessively workaholic young TV producer (Rachel McAdams) working on a local, NJ morning show who, after losing her job unexpectedly, manages to talk her way into taking over as the executive producer of a national morning show. They hire her because the show is in the dumps, of course, but they give her a chance (Jeff Goldblum does an excellent job in the slightly-more-than-bit part as her new boss).

Finder herself needing a new anchor, she manages to finagle getting an older anchor (Harrison Ford) with a huge reputation (and, she soon finds out, an even bigger ego) to take the position.

Although it's nominally a romantic comedy, I think that's somewhat of a mischaracterization. The film is actually almost all about her relationship with Ford, and the "romance" part between her and Patrick Wilson is kind of bolted on. There's one or two good scenes between the two, but largely ancillary to the plot.

Ford's co-anchor is Diane Keaton, who does a very good job of playing a very unpleasant person. The ego clash between Keaton and Ford is fairly amusing, but also fairly ancillary.

The development of the show from bad to really bad to pretty good is the meat of the corpus, and there are some hilarious scenes in there.

There are also some very painful scenes (to watch) in there, as McAdams' character can't shut her mouth, which gets her into trouble quite a few times.

I must admit that I'm left wondering, for much of the movie, why anyone would ever want to date her. She just doesn't have anything going on in her life outside of work. So her ability to get things done is pretty impressive, but she wouldn't be someone you could talk to. Plus, she works miserable hours (both for length and what part of the day they cover). So, can she become someone that another person would want to be around? Does she want to?

I ended up mostly liking the movie. I think it could have been more focused, but it generally was funny. And McAdams and Ford put in very good performances. Keaton was also quite funny, and Wilson did a good enough job with his part. I'll watch it again sometime, I'm sure.

Admirable You

2011-12-01T21:08:00.001-08:00

We wanted to take our daughter to see Despicable Me when it was in the theaters last year. I think that it's a good thing we didn't, but I wish we had seen the movie.

I finally watched it a couple of nights ago, and I've got to say that I was impressed. It was absolutely hilarious.

The minions were cute, but also kept me laughing constantly. I was dying when they were updating Gru's records for the orphanage as he was being interviewed. And the one being used as a glow-stick? Classic.

Having "The Bank of Evil (formerly Lehmann Brothers)" was also hysterical. Bringing a bit of nepotism into it was also a nice touch.

And Gru's interactions with the girls were very well done. Believable, and showed real progression. It wasn't like flipping a switch. As I said, very well done.

The music was also pretty good; I particularly liked the "Despicable Me" song that came on when Gru was introduced.

Oh, and the acting was excellent. I'm not a big fan of him, but Steve Carell was perfect as Gru, and Russell Brand was also very good as his sidekick. Actually, nobody was less than good in it.

Hmm... I need to look up the studio (it was published by Universal, but it seemed that most of the crew was French (or Canadian), so I'm thinking it was actually created by a smaller group acting under Universal's umbrella), and see if they've done anything before. Regardless, I'll need to be on the lookout for them.

Bruce All-Duck-y

2011-12-01T20:55:00.000-08:00

Boudreau managed to snag a new job already; he started coaching the Anaheim Ducks today.

Not too sure what to make of it; the whole situation is kind of weird. Amazing that he managed to only be out of work about 67 hours. But I think it was a mistake for him to start there so soon; I think it would have significantly helped to make him a better coach if he had allowed some time for lessons from the Caps (good AND bad) to sink in.

Regardless, congratulations and good luck, Bruce. We wish you well 81 or so games a year. (Oh, and kick the snot out of Colorado for us, this year, too.)

Frustrating night

2011-12-01T20:36:00.000-08:00

So, I wasn't able to watch much of tonight's Caps game at all. My recording didn't happen, because my DVR wasn't getting 576 (Comcast Sports Net HD) for some reason. I was able to watch part of it by turning on the SD version, but when I tried to record that for the third period, it tried to record the HD version for some reason (which it still wasn't getting. But, of course, I didn't find out that there was nothing for the second recording until after the game was over.

So, in all, I got to watch a bit less than half of the second period. How was that? Well, the power play, once again, wasn't. But they weren't getting penned in the D-zone. And they were dumping and hitting on the O-zone entry, which looked pretty good. They were totally kicking butt on face-offs (and not just victimizing Malkin, which would be expected. Crosby was destroyed on the dot. Crosby also managed to take 40% of Pittsburgh's draws, which seems like an awful lot).

But, looking at the box score, they definitely weren't shooting enough. Which likely means they weren't spending enough time in the O-zone. They also definitely had too many giveaways. And, for the second game in a row, they allowed a defenseman making his first NHL start to get a point.

So there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of positive about the game. But, given expectations for the game, only losing 2-1 isn't too bad. I hope they do better next game (in fact, I'll be very upset if they're held under 20 shots again), but I'm actually not upset about the result. And there was at least a small glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

I guess we'll see a bit more against Ottawa on Saturday. If the shots go up, and the giveaways go down, we'll know we're on the right course.

Still Singing the Blues

2011-11-29T22:37:00.000-08:00

Didn't get to watch the third period of the Caps game tonight, and was frequently distracted during the first two, but...

The team didn't look much better tonight. They still spent way too much time hemmed in in their own end (ONE scoring chance in the first period??? Yes, Backstrom buried the nice feed from OV, but egads). Way too many giveaways again. Not nearly enough shots on goal.

The effort was a bit better overall, but not hugely so.

The only person who really stood out, in my mind, was Backstrom. As mentioned, he had the goal. He also managed to start a 2-on-1 when down two men. He and Knuble weren't able to score on the break, but they did draw a penalty which negated the second man advantage.

The forwards were a little more involved defensively, I think, but it wasn't a huge change.

Well, as I said, tonight wasn't going to be a big test of Hunter's abilities. He hadn't had enough time to instill whatever changes he wanted, so we don't know about improvements. I was a little disappointed, though, insofar as I expected a large improvement on effort tonight. There was an improvement, but it wasn't nearly as big as I'd thought it'd be.

Anyway, I guess we'll need to wait for Thursday, and Pittsburgh, for a little bit better assessment. To be honest, though, I'm not optimistic about the Caps chances that night. And OY. The Caps are now out of playoff position. Oof! They're only seven points out of first, but that's still depressing. Oh, and seven points out of last place, as well. *sigh*

Lost: Gift of Gab

2011-11-28T19:34:00.000-08:00

I hadn't gotten around to writing about the Sabres game last week, yet. I was only able to watch the first period, and was fairly disgusted at watching the team fall behind 2-0 to a team with a large number of AHL'ers. I later read that Chimmer managed to make it 2-1 (on a penalty shot, no less), but that the team almost immediately gave up another goal, and it got worse from there.

Well, that was very disappointing, but I was still shocked to hear on the radio, this morning, that Boudreau was canned as coach, and that Dale Hunter had agreed to step in as head coach (and not as interim, apparently).

Despite the fact that I've thought, for quite a while, that Bruce wasn't the one to take the Caps to the promised land, I was still sad because he seems to be a great guy, and because he managed to make it fun to follow the Caps again. I do wish him all the best, going forward, and I think he'll be an even better coach down the road (for someone else, unfortunately) for his experience in Washington.

So, don't get too down, Bruce; I'm sure you'll have plenty of offers very soon with other teams.

I'm excited for the Caps, although I don't know what to make of Dale Hunter as the new head coach. I remember his playing days; he was never the best player on the team, but he was quite a good one. And he was certainly the heart and soul of the team towards the end of his tenure, here. If he can get the team to play the way he played, then they very well could go all the way; we'll see.

As a coach, I don't know too much about him. He's been coaching the London (Ont) Knights for quite a few years now, and has been very successful at that. I don't know how much difference the jump from OHL to NHL is, though I know it isn't small. Can he make the jump? I'm cautiously optimistic.

The good part is that he's coming in with a pretty loaded team. All he really needs to do is to get them to play as a team, and to play hard. The bad part is that there's plenty of ego in the room, and I hope they don't tune him out (ignoring his playing credentials, and not respecting his coaching ones). I don't think that'll happen, but it's certainly possible.

So we're in new territory, and we'll have to see how the team approaches that. First test (though a small one, for a variety of reasons) comes tomorrow night against St Louis (who have their own new coach).

The Borrower Arietty

2011-11-26T19:06:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned yesterday, I finally watched Karigurashi no Arietty. It was a little weird, as I put the Cantonese soundtrack in, for the benefit of my in-laws, but I enjoyed it a great deal.

It was a bit quieter and more contemplative than I expected. The trailer had led me to believe that there was a fair bit of action, but it was really only five or ten minutes. And the ending didn't go quite the way I was looking for, although there was probably no way to have it go the way I was kind of hoping.

The basic background is that Arietty is a teenage girl of a group calling themselves The Borrowers. They're basically human, except only three or so inches tall. So when they need things, they "borrow" them from the humans nearby. And, of course, since they're so small, the humans rarely notice what they take (who'd miss one sugar cube, for instance?).

But because of the way they live, and because of general suspicion (not unwarranted), they can't let themselves be seen by the humans. But, of course, the movie opens with Arietty being seen by a boy just moving into the house where (technically speaking, under which) she lives.

Her being seen, and his (and that of the other people living in the house) reaction is what drives the plot.

But I think this movie is more about the journey than the destination. The attention to detail in their world (the stamps they use for decoration, the nails within the walls, the tools they use, the many reminders about surface tension of water) is really what makes the movie wonderful (in the original sense of the word). Well, that and the relationship between Arietty and Shou; that was very well done.

Was it Ghibli's best? Not hardly, but it was a beautiful movie, well-executed. I'll probably go see it when it's released in the US (at the very least, I'll get the blu-ray when it comes out). If there's a subtitled release, I'll go for that. The more I think about it, the more I think I'll like watching it again.

Ranging around

2011-11-25T20:40:00.000-08:00

Today's matinee game against the Rangers looked, for a while, like the first goal might win it. Through the first period, there were only sixteen shots for the two teams, despite five power plays (two of which were pretty short, however). And the shots were even, as well.

But the Caps seem to have lost their ability to break out against the forecheck in the second period, surrendering three in the first eight minutes. They finally managed to answer one a minute later, and then a second, four minutes after that. So things weren't looking terrible at that point, but then Neuvy failed to grab a soft knuckler that deflected towards him. When it fell at his feet, Boyle managed to poke it past his outstretched foot, and into the goal.

So it was back to a two-goal lead going into the third, and didn't improve after that. Richards scored off a very nice feed (although I have no idea how Semin failed to draw a "holding the stick" penalty at the other end of the rush that led to that goal; it looked incredibly obvious, and the puck was right there) to put it back to a three goal margin.

OV managed to cut it to two with a goal where he used the defender as a screen on a one-on-three break (it was immediately following Neuvy's one really outstanding save on the game). I had mixed feelings about this one; I was thrilled to see the goal, but worry that it'll cement a very bad habit. I guess we'll see what happens. In any event, that was as close as it got, as Fedotenko scored the only other goal in the game. I was thoroughly disgusted at that point, and turned the game off. Good decision. Down two to three goals all period, they only managed four shots. Ouch.

This was a frustrating game to watch, though. Once again, the Caps spent way too much time in their own end of the ice, flailing away, unable to beat the two man forecheck (Wideman contributed five of the turnovers there, and MarJo added a really horrendous one, to boot). And they also allowed way too many odd-man rushes.

This team definitely has a boat-load of talent, but have lost the defensive focus that allowed them to do so well last season. If they can't get it back, we don't need to worry about them even getting out of the first round of the playoffs. They also really need to figure out what they're failing to do on the breakout against a two-man forecheck. I think it might be just too many soft, side-to-side passes off the back wall, but I'm not certain about it. And maybe they don't have enough defensemen that can consistently win a board battle? Certainly, lacking Green is not helping this; hopefully, he'll be back soon (good thing that this time it's really a day-to-day injury, not a three week day-to-day, huh, Bruce?).

Well, we'll see how things go against Buffalo tomorrow night, I guess. Maybe they can play well in the defensive zone?

Jason Chimera goes for a swim...

2011-11-25T20:13:00.000-08:00

Those were the words that came out of the receiver when I turned on the game, the other night (the projector was not yet warmed up). My first thought, "Crap, I left the set-top box tuned to that channel". I noticed the horn in the background, and my second thought was that the Caps must be doing well, maybe adding another goal in a blowout. Finally, I got the channel changed before any more words came out.

So I finally got the beginning of the game, and started watching. The Caps were looking pretty good, and the Caps got on the board first only five minutes in. Carlson hit a long pass to OV in the O zone, OV's first touch was a backhand pass to Semin streaking down the other side, and Semin buried it in the back of the net. It was very pretty.

As an aside, though, I had a weird reaction to seeing it. Growing up, I didn't think much of the pure goal scorers, thinking them selfish players unwilling to work with their teammates (not saying that was an educated opinion, just what I thought at the time). In any event, the first thing that went through my head when OV passed that one was that I really want to see him shooting. I always want that to be his first thought (not necessarily to follow through, but to consider it).

Anyway, as I said, odd reaction aside, it was a very nice goal.

The next twenty minutes felt a bit more like Vegas, though, as Ladd, Chimmer, Wellwood, and Backstrom each scored their seventh goal of the season. That was all the scoring for the next thirty minutes, until Little put it past Vokoun with about seven and a half left in regulation. Very disappointing.

Play went back and forth for the rest of the period, but nobody was able to get it to hit the twine. Finally, two minutes into overtime, MarJo, Wideman, and Chimmer combined to put it past Pavelec to win the game. And then I got to see Chimmer's celebration that led to the call I'd heard at the beginning. (Incidentally, I noticed that Chimmer got a number of shifts at the end of the game; Bruce rewarding his hard work, I guess.)

It was a nice finish to the game, and there were certainly positives to take away. I liked that the Caps were never trailing, and did a good job playing a decent amount in the Jets' end of the ice. But they kept letting Winnipeg back into the game; that needs to stop.

Semin had a pretty good game, coming back from his scratch. Orlov got his first point with an assist on Backstrom's goal (and generally looked good, as well; very physical). Carlson, Alzner, and Wideman also added assists from the blue line. OV got on the board. The PK was perfect (Perreault even looked pretty good in his one shift on the PK).

But there were definitely negatives, as well. Vokoun didn't look great. The power play wasn't.

But that's about it until today's matinee game against the Rangers.

Howling for dinner

2011-11-25T20:10:00.000-08:00

[I wrote this four or five days ago, but am finally getting around to posting it.] Last night's Caps game was kind of a "two steps forward, one step back" game.

I haven't talked too much about it, but Carlson seems to have regressed a bit since last season. Part of that, I suspect, is that he hasn't been playing with Alzner lately. Well, tonight shows us his highs and lows. He did get a goal, but he also had a terrible play at the point in fielding a faceoff that gave Vrbata a solo breakaway that resulted in a shorthanded goal.

How about that power play? Well, they did end up breaking an 0 for 20+ streak, but there was that shorthanded goal. Oh, and the other shorthanded goal in the second period (again on a solo breakaway).

All that aside, I was pretty pleased with the game, as a whole. They did a good job of keeping possession, and not allowing the Yotes to set up much (or for extended periods). Most importantly, they were working hard (all of the penalties (except for the delay of game, arguably) they drew were the result of working hard, and putting pressure on the howlers), not just sitting back.

One thing that was kind of weird was that Boudreau seemed to have put his line combinations through a cuisinart (even more so than usual, that is), but couldn't even stick with the new ones he came up with for tonight. The one that really seemed weird was when OV, Backstrom, and Halpern were on together for half a minute or so, although OV and Backstrom were mostly together with Brouwer. But the shutdown line was also Laich, Chimmer, and Knuble and the second one was Eakin, Johansson, and Ward. One thing I liked was that Perreault was brought back from pergatory to play on the fourth line; he mostly looked good.

You'll probably notice, of course, that Semin wasn't in that list anywhere. He was passing nachos all night (aiming for the top corner, if past experience is any guide), as punishment for his glut of penalties. I'm skeptical that it will do anything, one way or the other, for Semin, but it might still be a good idea, just to show that everyone is accountable. We'll see.

One other interesting tidbit: Orlov was finally called up for the game. He looked pretty good in his 11:56, even if he did get stapled to the bench for most of the third period. The one negative was the goal he was on for in the third (he didn't come back out after that), but that seemed more a bad bounce than him doing something truly wrong (to me, at least). My one disappointment was not getting to see more of his slap-shot, that I've heard so much about. I only remember him getting one off on the night. Of course, he only got one shift on the power play, which doesn't help (on the plus side, they did score on that shift, if one second after the PP ended).

Anyway, next up is Winnipeg, tomorrow night. Let's hope it goes a lot better than their last match-up.

Nice weekend

2011-11-25T20:03:00.000-08:00

Interesting, and very busy, weekend last week.

Friday we were able to make it out for dinner and a movie. Saturday I got to play Ultimate for a number of hours (we lost the tournament in the finals, though); got some movies from my in-laws, who flew in from Hong Kong; and watch the Caps craptacular game. And Sunday we were able to sneak out to catch a Cirque du Soleil show (Quidam).

I thought the Friday movie was going to be Clooney's new one, The Descendents. But when my wife saw a review, and figured out the plot, she wasn't sure she was up to it. So instead we went to see Puss in Boots, which I'd preferred (incidentally, this is the second month in a row where the decent choices were frightfully limited. Seriously, it was that or Happy Feet Two (well, I might have looked into The Immortals, but didn't see it when I was looking). Regardless, that ain't much. The only plus is that we saw trailers for several more that look good: Hugo, Arthur Christmas, and, especially, The Pirates! Band of Misfits. The latter looks absolutely hilarious).

So, Puss in Boots. And we didn't bring the kids? Yeah, we didn't (one of them might be old enough). What did I think? Funny, but not as outrageously as I expected (the sense of humor was not similar to Shrek). Some of the tongue-in-cheek, "look like a major saga" stuff didn't work (for me, at least). Other than that? Pretty good. The double-cross was a little bit overdone, and I didn't understand why the commander was giving the egg a pass for his part. But those were the only weaknesses.

Banderas' Puss is very good, as is Hayek's kitty, and Galifianackis' Dumpty isn't too bad (though I'd argue he was coming from a position of weakness, script-wise). The overall story outline is a little uneven; some parts are very good, while others are a bit weak (my wife almost fell asleep at one point), but I thought it was pretty good in toto. Was it worth seeing in 3D? Probably not. I think very little was added to this one (and several of the trailers were particularly obnoxious about 3D effects).

I guess the important question is, will I buy it when it comes out? I'm leaning towards not, although we'll see.

The other bit of amusement about going, though, was that it was the opening night for the new Twilight movie (whatever the heck it's called; vampires that sparkle don't get me remotely curious). I was a little surprised, looking at the lines on the way in and out. There were more teenage girls than any other single demographic, but the line didn't overwhelmingly consist of them, like I would have guessed.

Why did I mention the movies from my in-laws? Well, they generally bring Hong Kong releases (they completed my Wong Kar-Wai collection on this trip, for instance, and have brought many other titles as well), but also brought the HK DVD release of Karigurashi no Arietty, Miyazaki's latest (although he only did production and story work, not direction, this time). I finally watched that tonight, although I'll talk about it separately.

Finally, Quidam. I've seen Cirque du Soleil live a couple of times before (Dralion and La Nouba), and caught a couple of their movies. Generally, they manage to blow my mind. (Incidentally, at the last movie we saw, they were talking about a "Week of Cirque" in Vegas next month. I loved the idea, but there was no way to make it happen. If they do it again next year, I might try.) This one was very good, and I do remember thinking, with not much left, that they hadn't yet managed to blow my mind, when the solo lady on the swing managed to do so. But this was definitely not as good as the other shows I'd seen. That isn't to say that I wouldn't see it again, given the opportunity, but it definitely would not be the top of the list. Still, Cirque is an amazing group that doesn't rest on their laurels.

Leaf blown

2011-11-19T21:27:00.000-08:00

The Caps, tonight, looked kind of like the leaves in my yard this morning: getting blown all over. This is another game where there was just nothing positive to be said.

They couldn't get out of the defensive zone, they couldn't keep Toronto out, they couldn't get into the O zone, and they could rarely stay there once they made it.

The end result was getting absolutely demolished by a team they should have beaten.

Where do they go from here? I must admit, I don't know. They didn't look good in any phase of the game, or for any significant part of the game. The penalty kill allowed three goals. The power play not only didn't score, but allowed a short-handed goal as well.

I don't know how many turnovers there were from the forecheck, but it was not a small number.

The last couple of games, the Caps have not looked like a team widely picked to be one of the top two or three teams in the league. In fact, they've looked like a team lucky to be in the NHL at all.

Hmm... Thanksgiving is coming up soon. How comfortable are you, Bruce?

Wonder about the Constitutionality...

2011-11-18T06:41:00.000-08:00

But I love the idea.

Today, Sen. Kristin Gillibrand (D-NY) took it one step further with a bill that will not only ban insider trading for congressional members but will “empower the Securities and Exchange Commission to prosecute lawmakers for insider-trading cases as well as make insider trading against the rules of the House and the Senate.”

I certainly find it suspicious that Congressmen consistently get above-market returns on their investments, and insider trading is the only way I can explain it. So I'd love to see this pass, though I suspect that as soon as anyone is arrested on this, that they'll claim a violation of the Constitution (Art I, Sec 6, clause 1).

But good for her, for introducing the idea.

Jet-ing to new lows

2011-11-17T20:01:00.000-08:00

Definitely not a great game put together by the Caps, tonight. It started out pretty well, with the Caps taking it to the Jets pretty well. Semin scored a very nice goal on a 3-on-2 with Laich and Chimera about four minutes in, and things were looking great. They continued to look pretty well through the rest of the first, despite Kane tying the game up four minutes after Sasha Minor's tally.

And they weren't looking too bad into the second until Kane scored again 6:38 in. That, by itself, wasn't too terrible, but the wheels were separating from the axles. I forget which of the remaining two goals was which, but the Caps were looking great on the penalty kill on one of them, even getting some play in the offensive zone. But as soon as that zone play was broken up, the Jets turned up-ice and scored almost immediately. The other goal had the Caps get a two-on-zero (Laich and... maybe Halpern) from forcing a turnover at the blue line. Laich's shot didn't even manage to be on net. Terrible. Then the puck was shot up the left side of the ice where the Winnipeg forward blew past Hamrlik like he was standing still, and deposited the puck behind Neuvy.

I was so irritated, I turned the game off at that point. Given that there was no further scoring, I'm not upset at that decision, although it would be nice to know if the play improved, at least.

We'll see, on Saturday, if the Caps can keep the road trip from being a sweep, but it's been ugly, so far.

I tend to get behind...

2011-11-17T09:39:00.000-08:00

Was just catching up on Foxtrot, and ran across this beautiful comic. Took me a minute to get it, but it's perfect.

Government kills private investment?

2011-11-17T08:21:00.000-08:00

I'm still working my way through Mauldin and Tepper's Endgame, but I still wanted to talk about a couple of parts of it that I've already gotten through.

The first thing I wanted to mention is that they talk about how bigger government crowds out industry. I don't know whether that's true or not, but their argument is certainly unconvincing. Their figure 3.5 (p 59) does nothing to convince me, for a couple of reasons. One is that I've seen a graph of the US economy, over an even longer period, showing annual GDP growth versus top end marginal tax rate. I don't know about causation, but they certainly correlate well (that is, higher taxes seem to go hand in hand with higher GDP growth), and that graph (I'll try to find it again) was since WWII, so it covered a much longer period than Mauldin and Tepper's.

Another problem with that is that French medicine is socialized (more or less, I did read somewhere that that is not quite, technically, correct), and run by the government. That means that they have better controls on costs, so there is less GDP growth there, and that's a good thing for their economy.

A final issue I take with it is that it implies that GDP is the be-all and end-all of economic analysis. If you allow corporations to run rampant, the water, food, and air will all end up poisoned, and the cost of added healthcare will more than offset the higher GDP growth. And that's ignoring what happens to infrastructure when nobody will care for it (actually, it's kind of odd to miss this, as they do talk about how bad the US' infrastructure is a little bit later in the book). It also ignores things like worker safety (how much worse would the Upper Big Branch mining disaster have been if Massey Energy hadn't had to consider government safety regulations?

Moving on, I mentioned that they talked about infrastructure a bit later. It seems quite weird to me that communications infrastructure was ignored (yes, not the fault of the authors, I realize); you know, the phone system and internet. I think they're a very important part of any discussion of infrastructure.

Anyway, the reason I bring htis up is they talk about raising gas taxes by 2-3 cents a gallon each month until we stop needing to import oil. And all the funds raised would be invested in infrastructure. I have mixed feelings about this.

First, I wonder if the amount is too low. The good of that is that it isn't a huge shock with a large jump at once. The bad is that we know that it will need to be raised by (at least) a couple of dollars, so that will take a long time to get there. But maybe that time will make it more politically feasible.

Second, I do like using that money to invest in infrastructure. One important part of that infrastructure would have to be public transportation. Because, otherwise, you're just forcing people out of their cars without giving them an alternative, and that would never work.

Well, that's about all I have to say about the book for now; I just wanted to get it down before I forgot what I wanted to say. I'm sure I'll talk more about the book later.

Nash-ing Teeth

2011-11-17T07:58:00.000-08:00

The Caps game a couple of nights ago was an interesting one to watch. It started out very frustrating, as the Caps were getting outworked, outhustled, and outplayed (gee, where have I heard that before) for the first ten to twelve minutes. Over that time, the Caps had one shot on goal, a blast from the point by Erskine, and gave up many scoring chances the other way. TVo was excellent over that time, though, and the score stayed even.

The Caps finally realized they were going to have to work hard to win, however, and did a very nice job of turning it around. By the end of the period, the stats were pretty even, with the Caps even having a slight edge in scoring chances.

The second period continued to go mostly in the Caps favor, but there was still no scoring, as both goaltenders were excellent.

And a large part of the third period went the same way, culminating in Brouwer getting a goal off a turnover forced by Eakin and Johansson at 15:14.

But things went downhill, fast, after that. On the next shift, the top line came out (huh?) and laid a goose-egg, leaving Shultz with half the ice and two attackers to deal with. And it wasn't, theoretically, an odd-man break. No fault to Vokoun on that one, Carlson on the back side and the forwards should have broken up the play.

Again, the Preds seemed the more motivated team, and managed to score again with half a minute left. And again, it was a defensive breakdown that left a forward with an open net into which to shoot (perhaps TVo was too aggressive taking away the angle of Erat, who passed to WIlson, who scored).

And then the Preds won the resulting face-off and buried a half-rink shot into the empty net to ice the game five seconds later.

So a depressing end to a promising game (and, frankly, a game the Caps should have won).

Let's hope that killer instinct shows up against Winnipeg tonight.

What is socialism?

2011-11-12T20:26:00.000-08:00

I've always been pretty skeptical of social networking sites. I think linked in makes the most sense, because that's mostly business relationships, but even that doesn't seem all that useful to me.

The second part (search for "It's Not Social") of this diatribe does a good job of laying out (much better than I've ever been able to do, plus adding a little more) why I have been, and remain, highly skeptical of how useful these things are.

Win one, lose one

2011-11-12T19:49:00.000-08:00

I was at a bar last night with some friends to watch the Caps game. And we kind of did that, but I must admit that I didn't get much out of it. (Which is ok, the main goal was to talk with friends, one of whom hasn't lived in the area in quite a few years.)

The paper made a big deal out of Semin being benched for much (all?) of the third period, and not playing much of the second either. I think the goal, there, is a good one. Show that everyone, including Semin, is being held accountable, although I'm skeptical of whether it'll actually accomplish anything vis a vis Sasha. But maybe it says something to the rest of the team important enough to overlook that.

In any event, the team seemed to be doing well, and the returns were certainly good. I was shocked (though in a good way, of course), when Chimmer buried that breakaway, shorthanded. And I was amused to see Marjo get another goal from so close to the net. I'm loving that, but it's definitely not what I was expecting from him.

Tonight, I was able to watch pretty close to all of the game. I did miss them saying, at the beginning, that Green (well, he was expected, after last night) and Erskine (didn't hear what happened to him) were out, so I was a bit confused at Laich being on the blue line.

Brouwer's goal was very nice (in fact, thinking about it, maybe he should have gotten a chance in the shootout), and Chimmer did a nice job of vulturing Carlson's goal. I kid; it was well-played. It was nice to see the Caps come out of the first with a lead, for once, and without surrendering a goal, which was even nicer.

But the Caps looked terrible for most of the second period. They did have one really, really nice shift, that ended when MarJo drew a tripping penalty behind the net. I can't remember if they actually got any shots out of that shift, but I loved watching them keep it in the offensive zone for so long. But that was pretty much the only bright spot of the period. They had only two shots, which is terrible. And that's also how many goals they allowed, which is also pretty bad.

A lot of credit certainly goes to the Devils, who played an excellent period, but the Caps just didn't seem to want it nearly as bad as NJ.

In the third period, down another defender with Hamrlik in the dressing room, the Caps actually played better, and generated some chances. Not as many as I would have liked, but more than the second. And they looked much better while doing it, as well. Plus, they didn't give NJ nearly as many chances. Oh, and the top line was especially buzzing. I don't think I'd want to keep Ward up there (I'd rather keep him on the shut-down line), but he did look good there.

But nobody got on the board in the third, so we ended up with overtime. The Caps looked good for the first minute or so of overtime, but the Devils basically took over from there, getting almost all the chances from then on (helped by getting away with a lot of interference).

But again, nobody scored, so we went into the coin flip portion of the game. And that did not go so well, but it is what it is (which is to say, a terrible way to end a hockey game).

So, while the result was disappointing, in the larger picture the Caps did take three of four points in the home-and-home, and that is hard to really get upset about.

Time to start a road trip to Nashville (where I'm sure Ward will be happy to take on his old mates), Winnipeg, and Toronto. I guess we'll find out something more about all the blue-line injuries; and maybe we'll finally get a look at Orlov. We can hope, at least, although Collins is more likely, if they need someone from Hershey.

The mark of Cain

2011-11-12T19:33:00.001-08:00

I've been watching the Republican field mutate and rotate with some degree of amusement. I'm definitely impressed with how up-and-down the polls have been for most of the candidates.

The latest up is really interesting to me. Cain is accused by many women of sexually harassing them, but, it seems, the "values" voters don't really seem to care about that. One would think that, if morals are your main voting criterion, then that would be a pretty prohibitive problem. (To say nothing about all the religious types who make a big deal out of Obama's name, but think nothing of Cain's. Did they stop reading Genesis at the flood? (Thanks for pointing that one out to me, Paul).)

I'd like to try to read the tea leaves here, and predict who I think it will be, but it seems pretty much a toss-up. Cain's 9-9-9 plan would absolutely destroy the country (plus, what other position could one try for, where a complete lack of experience is seen as a plus). Bachmann and Perry seem to have, at best, a tenuous connection with reality (not to mention both being Dominionists). Romney has contradicted himself so many times that I have no idea what he would actually do if he got elected (Kerry got a lot of grief for that, but he's a punter compared to Romney). Paul is consistent, but would also destroy the country (although I do like a few of his positions). Huntsman is the only one I could personally support, but is basically a fringe candidate. I was a bit surprised to see, with the latest poll, that Newt is still in the race; with the way his campaign seemed to implode a few months ago, I didn't think we'd hear from him again. And I'm probably forgetting a couple of people, which would imply, I think, my analysis of their chances.

As an independent with significant liberal leanings, the only one who has a chance of beating Obama is Romney, but I'm not sure if he can actually win the primary. Certainly, things aren't looking good for him at the moment.

As a side note, I haven't watched any of the debates (I tend to get mad at all the lies when I watch political debates, so it's rare that I'll watch a debate), but everything I hear about them says that they shouldn't even really be called debates. In fact, it sounds like they're being produced by the same people doing reality TV shows, which is definitely not a good thing. These things should be issue-dominated, and it sounds like they're getting close to coming to blows on stage. Maybe it makes for good theater (although not the sort of thing I'd want to watch), but it sure as heck isn't good for the political conversation.

I suppose it's just part and parcel of the ongoing culture war that is attempting to rip the country apart by making everything a left-right battle and getting everyone contemptuous of the other side.

Unusual Ubuntu Upset

2011-11-09T06:03:00.000-08:00

I finally upgraded to Ubuntu's latest release, Oneiric Ocelot, a week and a half ago, or so. It was the first Ubuntu upgrade that was a hassle, at all.

The new release of dovecot (an IMAP server) was broken by the upgrade, which caused a loss of all of my email for several days, along with hassling everyone sending me email as everything bounced. Once I figured out that dovecot's delivery agent no longer accepted the '-n' flag, and removed that from postfix's configuration file (and removed all of the pending bounces from being sent), everything was hunky-dory.

Pain in the arse.

Hopefully, nobody else got horked by the problem.

Star-struck

2011-11-08T18:53:00.000-08:00

The Caps did not look good tonight against the Stars, at all. I'm really not sure there's anything positive to say about it. There were way too many odd-man rushes and blown defensive assignments. And way too much trouble moving the puck against the Stars physical forecheck.

They were outworked and outhustled, pretty much from the beginning. I count it as more luck than anything that they were tied through two periods. But the wheels sure fell off in the third, when they allowed three goals in the first eight minutes.

Really, the only positive I can think of was that Backstrom's assist on Semin's first period, power play goal was very pretty.

But there wasn't really any sustained offensive pressure in the whole game (well, I guess there might have been in the second half of the third period; I turned the game off immediately after the fifth goal was allowed).

I can't really even say anything about the officiating, either. I thought Semin's penalty in the first was kind of weird, when he was called for tripping for tying up the guy's stick, and having the guy trip over his own stick. But he wasn't whistled for at least three stick penalties later in the game that I thought should have been called, so the Caps definitely came out ahead on those.

MarJo, I suppose, looked pretty good, and Knuble looked good in very limited time (Tarik El-Bashir had a really good profile of Knuble in today's paper, I should mention). But that's pretty much the limit of what I can point to, and those two weren't even great, just better than the rest.

I guess we'll just have to look forward to the weekend, when the Caps have a home-and-home series against the Devils. Hopefully, they can put their heads back together, work harder, and take both games. And maybe Green will be able to play again; that would go a long way towards helping moving play in the right direction.

A night on the Isle

2011-11-05T19:24:00.000-07:00

The Caps flew north to face the Islanders in Uniondale tonight. Eakin was scratched, which seemed weird (we really want him playing, whether in the NHL or AHL), and Perreault was back in. And the lines were scrambled a bit, with Laich moving up to the second line and Halpern on the third, leaving Knuble, Hendricks and Perreault on the fourth.

The game started out really well, with the Caps taking it to the Islanders, and trying to wear them down via cycling. The Caps got both of the period's goals, with Ward and OV both tallying.

But things went downhill fairly quickly in the second, with the Islanders dominating possession and working the Caps hard. In the third, Caps were doing better, but still surrendered another goal six minutes in. Laich tied it up again on the power play three minutes later, and the Caps were looking great for quite a while. But then the Isles got another from Parenteau on the doorstep, and an empty netter half a minute later, and that was it.

I think the Caps were mostly tired, but it was also a terrible game by TVo. He did have a good first period, but that's about it. Without reviewing the goals to make sure, I think three of the four goals he allowed were soft ones (definitely the first two were).

And the second period was pretty much terrible for the whole team. There were a couple of penalties that should have been called (a delay of game for dislodging the net, I think, and MarJo definitely took a stick to the face). And Halpern's goaltender interference call was a bit weird.

But the Caps just didn't play well enough, is what it boils down to. My comment about not overlooking the Islanders last night? Well, I don't know if that's what happened, but it's certainly possible. Especially when they went into the first break with a two goal lead.

Anyway, Dallas is up next, on Tuesday. I'm guessing Eakin will get sent back down, and I'm hoping Green will be back. I'm also thinking Neuvy will get the nod in goal. I hope the lines don't get scrambled again, but this is Boudreau, so who knows?

Sweeping debris

2011-11-04T20:03:00.001-07:00

The Caps faced the Hurricanes tonight. Green is still out, Brouwer was questionable until gametime (we almost got an Eakin, MarJo, Perreault second line. Boy, would that have been some speed and scoring touch. Plus, a combined age of what? 62? 63?), but Halpern was back. In the event, Perreault was scratched for Brouwer.

The game started out pretty even; the Canes were outplaying the Caps, but not by a huge margin. They did get the first goal, on a deflection of a shot from the point. In fact, that ended up being the only goal of the period.

Things were slightly tilted in the Caps favor in the second period, despite penalties favoring Carolina. Halpern got a goal by literally diving at a rebound to put it in. And MarJo and Brouwer combined on a very pretty 2-on-1 with a nice saucer pass that Brouwer buried in the top corner of the net (very reminiscent of the goal Semin scored on the Rangers in the playoffs last year (game 5, I think); Eakin had the pass that sprang them). The Caps did get a big break on one of those power plays, though, where the goalie blew the whistle when he couldn't see the puck, and Skinner pushed it into the net just after the whistle.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that Knuble looked very good on the penalty kill (well, the whole unit looked good, but he had an especially good night of it).

In the third period, the Caps really turned on the Jets, and just dominated. It was beautiful; lots of zone time, some efficient cycling (especially from the third and fourth lines), and solid play all around. Backstrom had a very nice goal on a 3-on-2 generated by a nice forecheck (OV had the pass), and Eakin scored his first NHL goal on a 2-on-1 with Semin (I think the goalie must have been playing pass on that, because it was an unobstructed wrist shot. The release was really nice, though). Carlson had the other goal (the first of the period, actually), on the power play from Backstrom and OV.

I think the third period was the best period the Caps have played all season; they weren't taking it easy, even when up by four. If they can play like that with any regularity, they'll win a disgusting number of games. I've got my fingers crossed.

Tonight is the front end of the Caps' first back-to-back games this season. Let's hope the Islanders don't put up a huge fight tomorrow night; if not, and Pittsburgh and Toronto lose, the Caps could end up back in first, with 2-3 games in hand. Not likely, but it would be cool. I know, I'm getting greedy. Let's hope the Caps don't try to look past the Islanders, also.

Looking more at the Kindle

2011-11-03T18:44:00.000-07:00

i've talked a few times about Amazon's Kindle before. And perhaps it's a little odd that I have, given that I still haven't bought one, and still don't have any plans to do so (actually, having bought an iPad not too long ago, it's less likely now than it was a year ago).

But I think it's interesting what they're doing, still. They still haven't gotten rid of DRM, so that hasn't helped.

But they did bring out new devices recently. I must admit to not thinking too much of the Touch or Touch 3G (that is, if I was actively in the market for a Kindle, those would not have gotten me to purchase). The only thing they've really got going for them is price.

What was more interesting is the Fire. It won't replace an iPad (the screen is a really big difference. Literally and figuratively), but it does seem pretty nice for a limited-purpose tablet.

But they wanted to brag so much about the browser technology, saying how revolutionary it is. Well, it's interesting, and if the work behind it does, really, go all the way to the browser, that's more interesting, though probably not in a good way. My point in bringing it up, though, is that it really isn't revolutionary.

Ok, enough catching up to the present. The main reason I was writing this article, though, is because of Amazon's announcement today.

What? They're lending e-books for free, now? Yep. Interesting idea to drive sales of devices. Will it work? I don't know, but it wouldn't hugely surprise me.

Of course, you could argue that any Amazon e-book purchase is actually a rental, given their DRM. It won't get me to buy, even though I already have prime membership, but, as I said, it's interesting. I'm curious to see how well it works.

Back to the beginning...

2011-11-03T18:23:00.000-07:00

I previously mentioned reading Michael Lewis. Well, I just got his latest book, and found it rather disappointing. It was all good material, but just about all of it duplicate Vanity Fair articles that he wrote recently.

Actually, now that I was looking at Vanity Fair's site again to find links to those articles, I'm even more disappointed, because even more of it came out of Vanity Fair than I thought (I'd only seen the first two of those before reading the book).

It affects the prose, a little bit, because, for instance, the Ireland section mentions something about Greece without making it a reference back. And the book ends without a real conclusion; it just kind of drops off a cliff.

As I said, it's still good material, so I'm not totally down on it, but it could have been a bit more, I think. And I would have liked if it had gotten into more details of the trouble, with more details about where we go from here. I'm not sure exactly what I mean by that last statement, but, for instance, at the end of The Big Short, I really felt like I had a good handle on what happened with the mortgage crisis. I don't feel like I have that, now.

I'm very tempted to get John Mauldin's Endgame, which reviews indicate might give that level of understanding.

The takeaway, though, is certainly that much of the world is in very bad shape; perhaps even worse than indicated by watching the news. Excessive debt has caused a lot of problems, and will continue to do so for quite a while.

Duck, duck, duck... Goose!

2011-11-01T19:55:00.000-07:00

Tonight's Caps game seemed a bit off, from the start. Erskine was back, which was good, but it led to shuffling the D combos, which wasn't. On the forward side, Knuble got demoted to the fourth line, Halpern was benched, and Eakin was playing off-wing with MarJo and Semin.

The play was not pretty, particularly at the start. The Caps were doing ok, although they were spending way more time in their own zone than you'd prefer.. To make matters worse, there were two defensive breakdowns between Hamr and Wideman that led to goals by the Selanne line.

Actually, this morning, I took a peek back at Selanne's numbers. I've always liked him, and I knew he'd had a good year, last year. So I was wondering how he was doing this year. Answer: pretty good. And tonight he was the wrecking crew with a pair each of goals and assists (I imagine he's probably among the league leaders at the moment). Ugh. Good for him, but I wish he'd picked a different night.

In any event, at the end of the first, the Caps were down 2-0, but looking decent outside of those breakdowns.

The Caps came out looking pretty good, but weren't able to score before Selanne got his second goal, nine minutes in. A cross-ice pass found him alone in the circle with an open net, and he buried it, as you'd expect.

At this point, Anaheim had three goals on less than eleven shots. The really bad part is that none of the goals were Vokoun's fault. He'd actually played well.

But the Caps finally started playing like a desperate team, and working hard. And the checking line was the one to start things going in the right direction, getting a goal from Ward and another from Wideman (with Laich and Ward assisting; if there had been a third assist, it would have gone to TVo, who had wisely iced the puck to Ward).

That left the Caps down a goal with a period to play, so things weren't looking too bad. Not great, but not terrible.

Just over nine minutes in, though, things were looking a bit worse. The Ducks got a power play, which started out looking very good for the Caps. But they got the puck into the zone, and put it in the net in a scrum with Vokoun down.

So things were definitely not going well, but the team was still working hard, and was getting quite a few chances. Two and a half minutes later, they finally buried one of those chances. Brouwer got the goal, assisted by Erskine and Wideman. The weird part of that whole setup is that Brouwers line-mates at the time were Perreault and ... Hendricks, I think.

The team kept working hard, but time was winding down. They did get a power play when Fowler accidentally shot the puck over the glass when trying to clear, but they looked really bad on that man advantage. But they finally managed to tie the game with less than a minute left, after pulling Vokoun. Backstrom did the honors, with Chimmer and Laich getting the assists.

In overtime, the play was fairly even, going up and down steadily. But the Caps were the ones to finally convert, with Backstrom again potting the vulcanized rubber (helped by OV and Schultz).

For the most part, the Caps actually looked quite good throughout this game. The two first-period defensive breakdowns were very frustrating. I wonder if Selanne's second period goal should also be considered a defensive breakdown, although not as bad a one as those in the first.

We are definitely missing Green. I thought we wouldn't be (well, not a huge amount, anyway), because we're so deep on defense (Erskine, for all his flaws, is excellent as a seventh defenseman, if, perhaps, a little expensive for that role). I thought, with Carlson, WIdeman, and Hamr, that we wouldn't have any trouble moving the puck up-ice. But with Wideman and Hamr mostly playing together, we're left with a third pairing that has a lot of trouble dealing with a strong forecheck. And the other pairings have been far from flawless, as well. I'm a little puzzled, really.

In any event, the good part is that the team was working hard through the game, never sitting back on their heels. Even at three-nil, they showed no signs of discouragement, and were rewarded for it.

All four lines looked good, at times. Eakin looked ready to contribute to the big club. I don't think he'll spend a lot of time up (and I'm not sure he should, particularly without significant injuries), but he looked ready for it. His line generated some very nice chances, and he was definitely part of that.

Perreault still looked very good. He was having a bit of trouble with the Ducks' size, but he was still making it work, and playing well at both ends.

Half the defense was on the scoresheet, which is nice. But they also hung TVo out to dry several times, which isn't. I'm not sure what to make of them, as a whole. I definitely don't want to see Alzner and Carlson split up again. Let's chalk that up as a failed experiment (for which I'm still not seeing the reason why), and move on.

The important part, though, is that we got the standings points we needed. And with the Ducks being out of conference, I don't much care about their consolation point. So things are good, I guess.

I just hope that Green's back for the Canes on Friday, the team is just a lot less dangerous without him.

The Prodigious Son

2011-10-31T14:57:00.000-07:00

I mentioned, earlier, that I was reading The Son of Neptune during the last Caps game.

I never got around to writing up much of a review on its predecessor in the series, and nothing at all that made it out of my notes. To sum up my thoughts, I liked the three main characters quite a bit and I liked the idea as well.

What I found interesting was contrasting the Greek gods versus the Roman ones, because I'd always thought of them as interchangeable. I still haven't gone back to any of my greek mythology books, to see whether that perception of mine was due to the books I read, or my misreading of those books, or whether Riordan just made up those differences.

One thing that struck me about the Percy Jackson books is that most of them comprise a mostly-identical retelling of the labors of Hercules. It didn't jump out at me that that was being done in the first book (nor in the second, come to that), but I suspect that the rest of the series will end up being much the same as Jason and the Argonauts. I should really re-read that legend before starting on the third book. (And I originally saw Jason as being in charge of the Argo II, but this one made me wonder if that will, indeed, be the case. Thinking about it, wasn't Hercules part of the crew of the original? Something to think on.)

So, what was good about Son of Neptune? Again, the three main characters are quite compelling. They each have their strengths and weaknesses (although Frank's stated clumsiness is never backed up by clumsy action, it occurs to me now), and they make a good team.

The Roman camp is interesting, and mostly well done. Them having an aqueduct didn't make much sense, given the lake right there, but that was a fairly minor thing. The camp part of it was good, as that fit well with Roman legions.

I also liked that the 'son of Neptune' who would take away Hazel's curse is actually a horse. That was very cute, and well done.

What didn't I like? There were a couple of minor consistency issues (three times I felt like there was a reference back to something that hadn't actually been mentioned, although I didn't check any of the three). There might have been another, more significant one, too, now that I think about it. I believe it was all giants that could only be killed by a god and a demigod working together, and that was only true of one of the two, here (although that one was really funny). SPQR showed up (inevitably) in both books, with slightly different spellings in each (the SPQ part was the same in both, Senatus PopulusQue, which is correct. But the R was Romani in the first and Romanus in the second. The fact that they are different is interesting, but the correct is Romanorum, so both are wrong. The fact that I know that tells you that I saw part of what was going on very early on in the first book). Also, the idea that people would set out to accomplish something with no prospect of being able to finish it kind of bugged me (they had an ill-defined goal taking place somewhere in an area of several million square miles with no way to get there or back). And they didn't seem especially concerned about this prospect (the large area part of it was shown, later, that they knew that, but if they did, they should have showed that concern much more readily at the beginning. So showing it came out as... less than genuine, I guess).

Expanding on that idea, Mars "prophecy" that set them on their quest was done in a way that I found very funny, but it didn't make a whole lot of sense. Him giving them something to go on, some way to make the quest seem possible, would have been a lot better.

The last thing I don't think I liked is that the victory at the end of the second book is too complete, too pat. I'm not sure why that bothers me, as it generally doesn't, but I think it's mostly that I expected more in the way of sacrifice. There was too much talk of that being important, and too little of it actually happening.

But I definitely enjoyed both books, and am even tempted to re-read them (perhaps along with the Percy Jackson series) to see how things tie together (mostly, to see if there are some things I missed, as I expect that there are).

Canuck"led"

2011-10-31T14:26:00.001-07:00

I watched the Washington/Vancouver game on Saturday, not feeling real great about it. And the game didn't leave me feeling like that was unwarranted. It started out with the Caps getting dominated solidly for quite a while. They were spending way too much time being hemmed in at their own end of the ice, and not nearly enough attacking. When they were able to attack, they weren't able to sustain it for any length of time.

The first period ended with them down 3-1, and that's about how it felt. The shots were 17-10, I believe, and it definitely didn't feel that close. The first goal was a really bad misplay of the puck by Vokoun, where he went to play the puck behind the net and didn't do it well (I really wish he weren't so ambitious; this is the first time it's really bit him in the butt, but it has worried me regularly). The other two goals, IIRC, were both on the power play, as the Caps couldn't seem to do much to slow down that power play unit.

The second period went much more the Caps way. The Caps didn't dominate it like Vancouver had the first period, but they did manage the opposite goal differential, leading to a tie by the end of the period. And, perhaps most importantly, they weren't dominated again. I didn't see the shots for the period, but I believe they went pretty well in the Caps favor.

The third period did not go well at all. I think it was closer, in terms of balance of play, than the first period, but the goals were even more lopsided, with Vancouver getting all three. I turned off the TV in disgust when the third goal went in. I must admit to not remembering too much, specifically; I guess I was putting more effort than I thought into reading The Son of Neptune.

One thing about the game that was a little weird was that Boudreau tried to shake things up a bit by replacing Vokoun after the first period. I don't have too much feeling about whether that was a good idea or not; I thought Neuvy was only ok, but TVo hadn't been great either. I would have been happy if Neuvy had started the game in net; TVo is a workhorse, but he still needs the odd break. And that was the eighth in a row for TVo.

Other than that, I thought the power play looked decent, and the penalty kill didn't. The good part was that the effort was definitely there. The first line regularly looked like a wrecking crew (as they should), in particular. The fourth line didn't, although I still thought Perreault did a good job. I was a bit irked, though, that Boudreau felt the need to tinker, again, and started mixing up the lines in the middle of the game. I was particularly irked at the first and third lines being played with. The former was looking great, and the latter has been doing well all season. I know that's Bruce's MO, but I was hoping that he might be getting past that (finally). False hope, it seems.

Other than that, I thought MarJo and Knuble both looked good (although I must admit to not having a good feeling about Knuble facing Luongo; it was a pleasant surprise when that one trickled into the net). But that's basically where the good news ends.

I'm hoping that, tomorrow night, Bruce gets back to just rolling all four lines, and doesn't tinker as much with the combinations. We'll see. And I'd like to see the start of another winning streak. Duh.

Plumbing the Oil depths

2011-10-31T14:21:00.000-07:00

Last night's [I wrote this Friday] Caps game against the Oilers didn't start out so great. My DVR wasn't recording, but, luckily, I was only a few minutes late turning it on. So when I finally got the game (the box was having some trouble that extended the time a couple more minutes) on, things were turning up. Alzner, of all people, scored less than a minute later. And things continued to look pretty good for the rest of the period, with the Caps getting quite a lot more chances.

Some of the penalty calling was a bit suspect, with some really ticky-tack Caps penalties getting called, while more blatant ones for the Oil were ignored. And a blatant tripping call on the Oil was nullified by a call for diving.

In the second period, things really went off the rails, as many more questionable calls went against the Caps (hitting a puck out of the air, and into the stands, was called Delay of Game, rather than just being considered a deflection? Never seen that one before. Calling slashing on a weak shot that (apparently; the player dropped it but there was no visible damage when it was laying on the ice) broke a stick. That one wouldn't bother me as much if they had made the same call in the third when OV's [I remembered it as OV, others have said it was Backstrom; I am not sure] stick was broken. Calling hooking when Alzner tied up the stick of a forward? It might, technically, be true, but that's another one I've never seen called. It does happen EVERY game (it's kind of like calling palming in basketball). No goalie interference when two Oilers forwards tripped each other, one falling on top of Vokoun and the other across the crease? Actually, that one was even worse, because the ref was right there, and when Vokoun complained, he seemed to be mocked for thinking that that might be a penalty. And there were several elbows to the head and crosschecks by the Oil that were ignored.

It was incredibly frustrating, and again led to multiple 5-on-3 disadvantages. Unsurprisingly, the Oil got two goals on all those power plays. Frankly, I thought the PK (and Vokoun, of course) was doing a great job to keep the game so close.

And, outside of those power plays, the Caps were absolutely dominating the game. They were just destroying Edmonton on possession, and in keeping play in the offensive zone.

It was just so frustrating to see them getting so little chance to play.

Coming into the third, the Caps really turned on the afterburners. It really took a Herculean effort by Khabibulin to keep the Caps out of the net. An Oiler analysis had the Caps advantage 10-2 on scoring chances in the third.

But the Bulin wall was in full effect; he looked fantastic out there. As I said, he kept the Caps off the scoresheet, somehow.

So the game was very frustrating, but perhaps balances out the Pittsburgh game, where the Caps didn't deserve their victory.

In any event, the Oilers definitely have an incredibly fast and talented team. The Caps definitely weren't used to seeing such speed rushing at them. The defense seemed to be continuously getting surprised by that on the rush. And the first goal for the Oil was a very pretty, tic-tac-toe to an open shot. Kudos to them for that.

So we've got a day off before we visit the Canuck-leheads in Vancouver. That should be quite the challenge, despite the Canucks not doing so great so far (or so I've heard). I don't think they'll have any trouble with motivation in facing the Caps. And we'll hope that the Caps feel more hungry after the disappointing result last night.

From a "liberal" rag

2011-10-31T14:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's Social Security article in the Washington Post is really torquing me. It isn't false, but the premise of the article is misleading, at best. It's kind of funny, in a way, because WaPo is frequently painted as a bastion of unabashed liberalism, but this article was all in service to the conservative agenda of cutting Social Security.

The truth: Social Security is in the red, has been for the last couple of years, and will be for, probably, a couple more years. It is also true that it going into the red is due to the recession. And Social Security, without changes, will cause serious budgetary problems in a bit more than 25 years. Of course, Medicare/Medicaid will cause much more serious problems well before then.

Anyway, to get back to the issue at hand, the premise of the article is that Social Security benefits must be cut in order to put the budget back in balance, and the AARP is making that politically impossible.

Why that is misleading: the reason that the recession pushed SS into the red is that too many older people lost their jobs unexpectedly, and started collecting benefits earlier than they would have. Now, because they are collecting earlier, their monthly benefit is smaller. Because of this, over the long term, they will collect the same amount of benefits (on average, at least). So, while it is causing some short-term pain, the change will add just as much back over the lifespan of those who retired early.

I must admit that I shouldn't, but I expect better from the Washington Post.

But yet another example of why "the liberal media" is a myth (perhaps with some factual basis in the past; I'm not sure, but it certainly is not true now, when all the media is owned by very large corporations).

More English

2011-10-24T07:31:00.000-07:00

My wife and I were also able to make it out to see Johnny English, Reborn on Friday night. I wasn't too sure what to expect, beyond it being a spying-related farce, since all I knew was the title and that it starred Rowan Atkinson.

I never did see Bean, but I had an idea about the type of humor from Atkinson's scene-stealing cameos in Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love, Actually.

And this one definitely lived up to that. It was beautifully absurd, with Johnny continuing to succeed, despite himself. There were scenes (particularly the conference table with the prime minister, where a single sight gag was worked harder than a two-dollar whore to magnificent effect) where I just could not stop laughing.

If you like farce, this movie brings it, in spades.

The Darby Match

2011-10-24T07:12:00.000-07:00

Watched much of the Manchester United/City match yesterday; wasn't too sure what to expect, beyond good play.

It started out with Man U playing slightly better, in terms of keeping play mostly in City's end of the field. But, twenty-two minutes in, Balotelli (who I was watching more, because of his beautiful, bicycle-kick goal against Villa last week) converted a nice crossing pass from the top of the box, burying it into the far corner. De Gea made a nice try of it, but missed by a few inches.

The game really turned twenty minutes later, though, when Evans, on a very lazy defensive play, hauled down Balotelli at the edge of the box. Not only was this a very obvious foul, but he was the last defender, so he got a red card for his troubles. The wall blocked the subsequent kick, but the damage to the defense was done. City scored again in the 60th, 69th, 89th, 91st, and 93rd minutes, turning what was a very tense match for a long time into a laugher. The only (tiny) saving grace for Man U was that Fletcher did manage a single goal in the 81st minute.

I turned it off with around 75 mintues left, because my daughter wanted to watch "How to Train Your Dragon" again, and I had promised I would let her earlier in the day. Because of that, though, I have no idea if any of the remaining goals were pretty ones.

We did see typical British humor from the commentators a ways into the game. Balotelli had gotten a yellow card after his goal, when he pulled the front of his shirt over his head, exposing a shirt underneath, reading "Why Always Me?". The announcers, talking about this a few minutes later, commented, "Quite a shy lad, isn't he?" I was definitely laughing at that.

Anyway, the game broke all sorts of records for Man U (first time allowing six goals in a home, league game since 1930, worst defeat at Old Trafford since 1955, first loss at home in thirty-seven games, first time City had scored six there since 1926, etc). The crowning insult, perhaps, though, is that it leaves City atop the league table.

It was quite a statement of a game, and it's now certain that no one will take City lightly for the rest of the season. Good luck to 'em, the rest of the way.

Playing for First

2011-10-22T19:06:00.000-07:00

The Caps ran into the Red Wings tonight; the only two undefeated teams left. Things weren't looking too good initially; the Wings came out roaring and controlling the play. But the Caps managed to tread water until Bertuzzi hit Carlson going back for the icing touch-up. That boarding penalty put the Caps on the power play, and Greenie managed to pot one twenty-one seconds later.

It was, I think, the best the power play has looked all year; they were moving and passing crisply, and got Detroit thrashing quickly.

Detroit didn't seem too discouraged yet, but a minute later Knuble forced a turnover on a nice forecheck. He passed it over to Semin overlapping around him, who passed it on to MarJo overlapping even further. And from only a couple of feet from the goal line, MarJo buried it in the far side of the net. The team continued the nice play through the end of the period, almost converting on another power play.

Green got his second, again on the power play, about five minutes into the period. That was about where things started going off the rails for the Caps. Detroit largely took over possession again, helped greatly by four Caps penalties that resulted in two 5-on-3 advantages. They scored with five seconds left on the first of those 5-on-3s, and things were not looking so good. The Caps managed to keep Detroit off the scoresheet for the rest of the period, but it was touch-and-go with a large assist from Vokoun (who I think we should call TVo). The period was closed out with some nice pressure from the fourth line, culminating when Hendricks' shot from the point trickled between Conklin's pads and Matty P was there to push it over before Conklin had a chance to see that he'd missed it. Very nice anticipation from Perreault, there.

Unsurprisingly, the third opened with Detroit pushing hard, again, and looking very good. But Greenie intercepted an attempted breakaway pass, and threw it across ice, off the boards, to Laich who charged down the outside. He got a stride on the defender and tossed it across the crease to Ward, who was making a beautiful backdoor cut and pushed it into the net to break things really wide-open. From there, it was basically all Caps, with insurance goals from Perreault (who got a gift when the puck squirted out of a face-off scrum to him with no defender on him; but he finished it beautifully) and Backstrom (on a beautiful deflection while charging towards the net).

So, what was good? The power play was excellent, potting two on four chances. The penalty kill was very good, breaking only on a 5-on-3 (I'd be less pleased if that was against a lesser power play, but Detroit's is always good). TVo, as mentioned, was fabulous; although I'd feel a lot better if he was getting less work (though maybe it just feels familiar to him). There were no big defensive breakdowns again (thank goodness, too, because Detroit definitely would have made them pay, if so). And, as you'd expect with that many goals scored, contributions came from up and down the lineup.

The third and fourth lines both looked great again; I didn't expect it to work too well, but Perreault again looked great on the fourth. He keeps it up, and he'll definitely be playing every night. (And hopefully this will be the last time he gets a long break in the middle of a period, with many penalties in a short span.)

And the ability to just keep rolling the lines kept the Caps fresher than the Wings, which might well have been part of all those goals at the end. (Being a younger team also helps with that.) And I'm loving all the goals with traffic; that's something that the Caps have never really been good at (the exceptions being the couple of years with Ciccarelli, and the year after that with Druce (who seemed to learn it from Ciccarelli).

And what wasn't so good? As mentioned, Detroit controlled possession for long stretches of this game. That happens with any regularity, and the Caps won't be winning games. In particular, no offense to TVo, but he can't be expected to be this good for any length of time. Nobody is that good. And the defense seems to occasionally have trouble with strong forechecks.

But that's about the limit of negativity. There wasn't a whole lot the team could have done better. And it was especially satisfying to do it to Detroit (well, the Penguins would have been even better, but only a little bit).

So now, the team has a couple of days off, then is off on a West Coast swing starting with Edmonton on Thursday. It'll provide a bit of insight into whether Boudreau's coaching has gotten better if they can avoid a let-down (not to mention that Edmonton has some really good, young talent that would love to take advantage of such a let-down).

Update: I just noticed that, after breaking out the beat-down stick on Philadelphia and Detroit (damn, that still amazes me), the Caps now have a really nice goal differential. Let's keep this up!

That felt good

2011-10-20T19:23:00.000-07:00

The Caps and Flyers game tonight was quite a roller coaster. The first eighteen minutes or so of the game was being pretty solidly dominated by the Flyers. Their forecheck was so good the Caps were regularly having trouble clearing the zone after getting the puck hiding behind their own net. It was pretty frustrating to watch. The shots were actually pretty even, which surprised me when it was pointed out, because it didn't feel even.

And when Giroux got a breakaway during 4-on-4 play which he buried, I was feeling very down. But at least it was only 1-0.

Well, things started looking better just before the end of the period. A good forecheck on our part got Perreault the puck above the circles; he skated over to the side a bit and, seeing both of his line-mates screening the goalie, threw it towards the net. A lucky bounce off a defenseman put it in the net to tie things up. The Caps had it in the zone again a minute later, and Backstrom drove towards the net from behind. His stuff attempt failed, but bounced right to OV on the doorstep, and he buried it.

So things were looking much better going into the second. The second played out pretty evenly, perhaps with a slight edge to the Caps. But there wasn't any scoring, so I was still on edge. The disallowed goal didn't help with that, either. Having to wait a bit to put my daughter to bed, and hence to wait to watch the third period was not helping my peace of mind.

Two minutes in, all hell broke loose. It started when Hamr had the puck at the point, and threw it towards the net. This one also deflected off a defenseman's stick and found the back of the net. A minute later, on the power play, Backstrom passed it to OV in the middle of the defensive box, and he shot it at the net. This one also deflected off a defenseman's stick (and was helped by a nice screen), and found the top of the net. Just about a minute later, Schultz shot it from the point and Ward got a really nice deflection that put it into the top corner.

By that point, the game was, for all intents and purposes, over. The Caps were pretty much content to sit back and wait for it to end. Normally, that drives me batty, but with a four-goal lead, I wasn't too upset.

Vokoun did have to stand on his head a few times to preserve that lead, but he did hold it until there were only fourteen ticks left, so it was all good.

You'd think I'd be thrilled with a three-goal win, but I'm merely pleased. There was a lot of luck involved, with those shots going off the defense and into the goal. None were nearly as fluky as the one that deflected off Green and in (against Tampa, I think), but any of them might well have been stopped without the deflection.

Also, the Caps did end up with a sizeable power play edge, but the edge should have been even larger. The embellishment call on Semin and the interference call on OV both blew my mind. I think there was one other that the Caps did get away with (although I can't remember, other than that I remember thinking they'd gotten away with one), but there could have easily been another eight minutes of power plays for the Caps. OV was tripped three times in the first period, with no calls, and a high stick that broke Laich's nose was only a two-minute penalty. There were also a couple of hits that looked like elbows to the face.

One good thing: there weren't any huge defensive miscues in this game (well, maybe the out-of-zone breakdown that led to a three-on-one, but Alzner and Vokoun took that one in stride) leading to easy goals. But the puck advancement has not been as good as expected.

The 6-0 start is really nice, but the luck is going to go the other way at some point. Still, can't complain about racking up points at this stage of the game. Really, this team can't prove anything until the playoffs. But it's nice to be in the catbird seat for now.

Update: I forgot to mention how good it felt to be able to hear the cheering from the crowd
when the last two Caps goals were scored. Sweet.

More great moments in sportswriting

2011-10-19T15:25:00.000-07:00

This time, I need to point to the premise of an entire column, titled "Campbell, bad luck seem joined at the hip". The man has made ~$8M playing a game. Nothing against him, but we should all be so unlucky.

More occupation

2011-10-18T19:46:00.000-07:00

I talked a little bit about Occupy Wall Street a few days ago; I should have mentioned this page with lots of charts to show why those people are there.

Finally, one to be proud of

2011-10-18T18:56:00.000-07:00

The Caps really wanted this one; they came out firing, and determined to take it to the Panthers. And they did. They maintained pressure steadily through the period; I was surprised when they finished the period with so few shots. But they did manage to take a 1-0 lead when MarJo slipped it through the pads of his friend, Markstrom, on the power play.

As has generally been the case this season, the third line led the way, shutting down Florida's top line and getting chances of their own. In fact, they started a beautiful sequence towards the end of the period where the Caps kept the puck in the offensive zone for a minute and a half or two minutes. I can't remember if they managed one or two shift changes while keeping it in; but it was a thing of beauty.

Florida, perhaps encouraged by being down by only one, despite being solidly outplayed, came out flying to start the second. I was worried that the team was going to just mail it in the rest of the game, as the Cats kept the pressure up pretty steadily for five minutes or so. But the Caps rocked back from their heels, and started throwing their own punches (metaphorically), playing steadily for the rest of the period.

And in the third, they got things going quickly, with Semin putting one just over Markstrom's arm, hitting the inside edge of the post on the way into the net. That was less than two minutes in, and pretty much set the tone. Despite Florida being pretty desperate, the Caps continued to outplay them for the rest of the period, limiting Florida's chances while generating a number of their own.

And with a minute left, Chimmer put the last nail in the coffin, backhanding one into the empty net from the red line. Hands of stone? I've certainly said it before, but this line is making the most of his talents, and I'm loving to see it. I don't think he'll continue to lead the team in goals for long, but that's ok. If they continue to solidly shut down the other team's top line, I don't care if he doesn't score another goal this season. And if he does continue to score, well, that's just some very tasty gravy.

And to revisit some of my earlier comments, I was concerned that we might be paying too much for Ward, based on one really good playoffs, but I'm loving his game. He works hard, he's a beast on the boards, and he plays smart. I wouldn't call it pretty, but I'm already tempted to get a jersey (though I think I'll stick with my original plan to get an Alzner one, instead). Of course, the season is still young enough for "small sample size" to be a reasonable concern, but I'm not basing it on a few big events, just lots of little ones. So hopefully that isn't the case.

Other than that, Carlson and Alzner continue to be awesome. One thing that was a bit weird was that Alzner was the one getting shots off tonight, but that certainly isn't a major thing.

OV wasn't looking too good for most of the game. In fact, through the first two periods (I think that's when it changed), he seemed disinterested when not on the attack. As in, he would immediately start coasting as soon as the puck turned over, even if it was close to him. He looked much better in the third, so maybe he got a good talking to about his effort. And hopefully, it will carry over to future games.

MarJo looked pretty good, although he didn't get nearly as many chances as I expected. And I was disappointed when, in the middle of the first, he got a clean run down the outside of the offensive zone, but didn't go for the wraparound. I forget what he did do, but I remember that it didn't work.

Perreault looked pretty good, although he didn't get much ice time, either (the least on the team by quite a bit). I wish he'd get more chances; as I said, he looked good when he was out there.

Hamr didn't look all that great when he was out there. He had some nice blocks of shots, but he was kind of all over the zone when playing defense. He's the only Caps defender I saw playing above the circles in the D-zone. Hopefully, he only did it the one time I noticed, because if he's been doing that, then we know why he's been on the ice for so many goals against. He also took a pretty foolish penalty trying to stop a rush when there were already others back.

Finally, let's get to the man of the night, Mr Clean-sheet Vokoun. He looked great stopping shots; he scared me a couple of times with his stick-work (I thought he was going to lose the stick one time he stuck it out), but was fabulous when facing shots. He was even ready to stop a weird bounce off the end-boards that led to a sudden, close-in shot. So I'm glad to see him get the shutout; hopefully the first of many.

And let's also give a shout-out to Markstrom, who got his first NHL start tonight. He lost, but only allowed two goals on thirty-one shots (some of which were really tough). He should be proud of the performance, as should Panthers fans.

So now we wait for the first game of the season with the Flyers, on Thursday. They're only one point behind the Caps in the standings, and probably deserve their record more than the Caps do. So it should be a pretty tight game, likely going into overtime again. But not if the Caps play like they did tonight. Time will tell.

Capital battle

2011-10-17T20:46:00.001-07:00

The Caps played the Sens Saturday night, and it started out the way you'd expect with a 1-3 team playing a 3-0 one. The Caps jumped out pretty early to a two goal lead, dominating play to get there, and stay there for most of the people.

Things went a bit off the rails at the very end of the period, with a bit of a defensive breakdown and a Senator with the puck on the doorstep. Vokoun saw it in the players feet, and tried to jump on it, but missed and the Sen was able to pass it back to a teammate who lifted it over Vokoun before TV could get back in position. So they went into the break only up a goal, but having pretty seriously outplayed the Sens.

And, well, I can't say things went too terribly after that, because no goals were allowed, but they did not play well. They did not continue to dominate the play; in fact, the edge on that went to the Sens. It wasn't anywhere near as bad as the Penguins game, but the Caps didn't really look good for more than about thirty seconds at a time the rest of the way. Perhaps the third line and the Carlson/Alzner pairing excepted. Oh, and Vokoun, who was excellent.

I'm really not sure what to make of this team; they're really not doing anything well with consistency. Well, the first, second, and fourth lines aren't (though all have shown flashes). Hamr has been pretty bad so far; I hadn't realized just how bad. He's been on the ice for seven of the eleven goals the team has surrendered so far. I'm guessing that he's just failing to mesh with Green (or he doesn't get the Caps system at all, but that seems even less likely). The only real point of optimism here is that Hannan looked pretty bad for a while when he first arrived last season, also, but played very well for the rest of the season. I'm hoping Hamr can similarly turn it around.

One thing that I can't figure out is why Perreault was out again. He played quite well his first two games, but was replaced by Beagle against Pittsburgh (and how'd that work out for us?) and by King (?!?) against Ottawa. King actually wasn't a complete disaster in his seven minutes, but I still don't understand why Perreault wasn't the one out there. I mean, if Asham was on the ice, I might've understood it, but he was in Pittsburgh.

And I should also mention that Brouwer moved up to the top line, as I was hoping. Let's just say it wasn't all that I had been hoping for. It would probably work better if we could get OV and Backstrom to cycle more; as is, it's not been a great fit.

Anyway, I'm hoping the team can start establishing some consistency; I think it might start by making the third line the de facto first for a bit. That is, give them the most minutes. Heck, maybe give them cushier zone starts than we'd generally prefer, and see if that lights a fire under some of the guys on the top two lines. Because while 4-0 is really nice, it's been achieved with large dollops of luck, and playing the way the Caps have is more likely to result in 0-4 than the current record. There was a lot of talk recently about accountability. Is that actually going to happen?

We'll see, when we get back into things tomorrow night against the Panthers (who, it must be noted, just took two from the Lightning).

Occupy the street

2011-10-16T18:52:00.001-07:00

A friend pointed me at this commentary on Occupy Wall Street. And, looking at it, there's some good stuff and some not-quite-as-good. The first thing that jumped out at me was this paragraph:

Great CEO White Lie = “We are acting in the best interests of shareholders.”

This is sort of true, and sort of not. They actually are trying to act in the best interests of shareholders, but only from a very short-term perspective. Long term, yes, he's right that unemployment (and, by extension, all those layoffs that briefly raise margins) will absolutely kill the economy, because they'll eliminate demand for whatever product or service the company is making or providing.

Following from that first part being a lie, he suggests:

If OWS really wants to change corporate structure and impact the economy, talk to shareholders.

There are several problems with this. The first, and most important, is that the majority of stocks are held by the top 1% that OWS is protesting (yes, just about 50% of stocks are held by 1% of the population. It is that bad). So talking to family members who own stocks is all but pointless. The second problem is that a huge percentage of the remaining stocks are held by mutual funds, so all voting proxies are held by the fund itself. Guess who runs just about all of those funds? Yep, back to the same 1%. Third, corporate governance is damned near a sham, as far as stockholders are concerned. Getting a measure on the ballot isn't a trivial matter, and getting a large percentage of stockholders to vote for it is even harder.

What it really comes down to is finding conscientious people to put on the board, and to get them there. And yeah, that's absurdly tough. Proxy votes are always, do you vote for such-and-such? They aren't, vote between these people. Then factor in that very few people have heard of these prospective boardmembers, and you're left with a nearly impossible situation.

He does finish that section by suggesting going to the shareholders meeting. That can be difficult, but does give you, by far, your best chance. So I'm definitely behind that one.

The second part is "Push to Make All Financial Institutions Partnerships". I'm not sure this is the best, or most feasible, solution, in terms of "can it be done", but I do like the idea. The moral hazard that pushes everything towards privatizing profits while socializing losses cannot be allowed to continue, and that would be one way to eliminate it.

Of course, it does nothing to address the problem of currently-outstanding CDS', which can still sink the economy at a moment's notice. What's that? There's still a gun to the head of the economic system? You betcha. Nobody knows how many, and for how many dollars, but it's entirely possible (even likely, I would speculate) that there are currently enough CDS' outstanding on every major financial institution that if one of them goes down, paying out those policies could wipe out one or more other banks, in turn wiping out even more of them. There's a number of related problems here. The biggest is that companies were able to issue these bets (because that's exactly what they are: high-dollar gambling) without actually having the cash to pay them out. The second is that it is a completely opaque market. And the third is that the institutions issuing these policies are depository institutions, which can wipe out all of their depositors, not just the people willing to make these gambles. It's possible that requiring the institutions to hold enough cash to pay out a sufficient percentage of their outstanding CDS's (my thought is something like 40% of the total or enough to pay out all of any one class of CDS, whichever is larger. But I'm spitballing that, I don't have the background to know if that's good enough) would be enough to solve the other two problems. Of course, the short-term problem with doing that is that it's likely that most of the "too big to fail" banks have already issued more CDS than they could cover with their entire portfolio.

Getting back to the original, the third section is "Limit the Size of Student Loans to $2,000 per year". I have no idea what relevance this has for Occupy Wall Street, and do wonder about what it would accomplish. It would push the cost of college down; I have no doubt about that. How much? I'm not sure. And he says it won't affect the ability of low-income students to afford college. I'm highly skeptical of that claim, but I'm not in a position to know.

What I do know would help the student loan situation is to stop allowing those loans to be used for for-profit schools. The situation in those schools is absolutely horrid, and undereducated kids are sucked in, bent over, and pounded hard. They end up unprepared for the job market with huge loans that they can't even get away from via bankruptcy. Most of the people going to those schools are affording it almost entirely with federally backed loans. It's just a wretched situation that helps nobody (except the people running those schools, who get to pocket nice profits. Oh, and the politicians they lobby, who get a cut of that money).

Update: I just realized I missed the bottom two paragraphs, where the author suggested that people like him will figure out ways to create and operate for-profit institutions. First of all, ignoring that I'm not sure it's really possible to do higher education better on a for-profit basis (there are certainly a number of traps one could easily fall into), but for-profit universities are not (as a whole, I've never seen a breakdown to see how much variation there is from one school to the next) doing a better (or even, as good) job of preparing students. So color me skeptical here, as well, but the possibility is there.

Ground Birds

2011-10-13T20:21:00.000-07:00

Tonight's game in Pittsburgh was really ugly. I was looking forward to the third line kicking some more butt, but they started the game and were hemmed in their own end quickly. And that was pretty much how the rest of the first period went, as well. The Caps just could not sustain any possession thanks to the Penguins' brutal forecheck (and the Caps inability to help one another), and were lucky to escape the period with only one goal against.

The second was much more even, with the Caps getting a lucky goal when Knuble crashed the net and the defender pushing him off the puck also managed to kick the puck between the goalie's legs. Pittsburgh was still playing better, but it was at least close.

Going into the third, the Caps got a nice goal in the first minute when OV deflected Greenie's shot into the top corner. It actually went in and out so fast that it was initially called a "no goal", but replay clearly showed it going in. Unfortunately, the Caps again lost any ability to keep possession at that point (along with their desire to attack, apparently), and basically tried to play defense for the rest of the period.

Unsurprisingly, Pittsburgh did manage to tie it up with a bit less than four minutes left, even if it did take them a power play to finally do it.

The Caps finally started to get some offense at that point, but not to much result, as they only generated one more shot (making three for the period. Sadly, that matched their total for the first period).

The overtime period didn't start out a whole lot better, until Staal took down OV trying to carry into the zone (the first non-offset penalty on the Pens all night). Vokoun skated off immediately, and they actually managed to set up the offense for a little bit until Pittsburgh got enough of the puck off a rebound to stop play. The Caps never managed to get the offense set up again, but half a minute later, Backstrom carried into the zone and threw a nice saucer pass over to Wideman, breaking in on the right. Wideman rifled it, wide side, just over Johnson's leg for the winning goal.

So, while I'd like to complain about again giving the other team a standings point by going to overtime, the reality is that the Caps were the ones who didn't deserve that standings point, let alone two. Not that we'll turn them down, of course. And we can just chalk both of those points up to Vokoun, who was outstanding. I hope this is the most rubber he sees in any game for the rest of the season, but I'm glad he was there, standing strong.

In fact, to further the point about how much rubber he was seeing, he faced only one fewer shot in the third period than the Caps generated for the entire game. The five-to-one disparity in minor penalties didn't help that, but it's still mighty ugly.

And, in a side note, the Avalanche buried the Senators tonight, 7-1. I was hoping we'd get a lottery pick for Varly, but things aren't looking too good, so far, for that to happen.

And I almost forgot; Beagle was on and got convinced to face off against Asham. He looked pretty good, briefly. Then Asham landed a solid punch and knocked him right out, I think. It was pretty ugly; I really hope he's ok. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if he's concussed, but I hope that's nothing more than my paranoia speaking.

Now, we'll get to face the Senators on Saturday; let's hope things go much better than they did tonight.

Greased Lightnin'

2011-10-10T19:18:00.001-07:00

This was a really frustrating game to watch. The Caps were absolutely dominating this game, from start to finish. They were keeping the play in the offensive zone, the checking line was bottling up Stamkos and St Louis (and scoring), MarJo was flying, and yet the score kept being tied.

The first goal allowed was a total fluke, as the puck was thrown to the front of the net from the corner, it bounced off the back of Green's leg, and into the top of the net. Definitely getting things off on the wrong foot for Vokoun, making his team debut. The second was a bad play by Vokoun on a shot from about the same spot that went in off of him. Then the defense forgot to mark someone right between the circles. Then there was a pretty nice deflection where Vokoun was utterly screened. Finally, Tampa got another one with around seven minutes left from about the same spot in the corner (same end of the ice, too, for what that's worth).

Really, the Caps should have won this game by at least three; it was that lopsided. But the complete fluke, along with the bad (regulation) game by Vokoun, sent the game into overtime at five apiece.

To review the Caps, the Chimmer-Laich-Ward line was freakin' awesome again. They kept the Stamkos/St Louis line off the scoreboard and mostly in their own end, and even tossed in a pair of goals (both by Chimmer. What are the odds?). I'm definitely loving that line, and hope Boudreau doesn't start feeling the need to toy with it. They don't try to do anything fancy (one goal was off a deflection from Laich's power move to the net, the other off a strong forecheck led to a juicy turnover), but they're working hard and just dominating play.

MarJo had a great game, getting a very nice goal (on his second shift, I think) and an assist, as well as drawing two penalties. He keeps playing like that, and he ain't never getting sent down again. And, with him driving, the second line looked very good. And Brouwer got a goal deflecting a shot from Sarge, so that was good to see.

With MarJo back in, Perreault was dropped down to the fourth line, along with Hendricks and Halpern (hmm... Haliceault line?), and they mostly looked good as well. They assisted on Wideman's goal, and I believe they weren't on for any against, and that's what you're looking to get out of a fourth line. Matty P looked a bit out of his element (that is, he looked like he was having to think about where he was supposed to go more than usual), but actually did a good job. Was glad to see it, because I wasn't sure how good a fit that was for him.

Overall, the top line was actually the weakest one for the team. I hope that doesn't happen too often, because they shouldn't ever be the drag on the team. I wonder if they were just trying to hard to throw their bodies around, because they did have some very nice hits, but...

And I forgot to call out Backstrom for his excellent game the other night. He still looked pretty good tonight, but the line just wasn't getting it done. Some of that was bad luck; they did have some very nice chances that they couldn't quite convert. But they just weren't driving play like I'm used to them doing. Or maybe I'm just getting hung up on their lack of finishing tonight; I certainly hope so. But they definitely weren't at the top of their game.

Anyway, overtime was a bit of a mess, with MarJo doing a nice job drawing his second penalty (which, incidentally, should have been his third; a high stick he took was missed). The power play didn't look great, as it allowed a chance the other way, and a possible second one was called on account of a hooking penalty. The penalty kill was decent, although Vokoun was excellent on the ensuing penalty (and the penalty after, as they got called for too many men right as the first penalty was expiring).

So we ended up with a shootout. Hendricks started, and I figured his trick was about at the end of it's life, but it worked again as he left Roloson undressed. OV followed, doing the wide left move that is, I think, his strongest approach. But he couldn't quite keep the puck from rolling when he went backhand, and put it into the side of the net. Semin went last, after Vokoun stopped both intervening Tampa shots (a bit contemptuously on the second, I thought). And he just screamed straight down at the net, only veering a little bit after he got Roli to half-heartedly try a poke check (he was going fast enough that the poke never actually came, but Roli had changed his grip for the attempt, which left almost the entire side of the net empty).

So the Caps take the second game on the gimmick. I'm liking their four points, so far, but wishing they weren't giving the opposition points, especially with both game inside the division.

So, once again, we see a lot (actually, a LOT) of potential, but some really uneven play as well. I gotta think, with the way Boudreau usually treats his goalies, that we're now going to be seeing Neuvy against Pittsburgh on Thursday.

And I really hope the top line can put it together. While the rest of the team bailed them out tonight, the team just ain't going to go far without eighty or ninety goals out of that top line.

Oh, and special teams... I actually thought the power play looked better tonight, even though they didn't convert at all. They were doing a much better job moving around, and pulling the defense out of shape (except for that last power play, in overtime), and that's what's going to lead to goals.

The PK was excellent. They allowed a bit more zone time on the first penalty, than I would prefer, but were killing it in the second. And they did a good job hanging in against a tough power play in the overtime. So I'm pretty pleased with that.

So, two down, eighty to go. And Pittsburgh is on tap.

College Volleyball note

2011-10-08T20:40:00.000-07:00

I've always enjoyed playing volleyball (never been great at it, but a decent setter), but don't get to watch it too much. Looking for a soccer game earlier today, I instead caught a little bit of an Illinois/Ohio State women's volleyball match. I didn't notice right away, but Illinois (ranked #1 overall. How did that happen?) was well on their way to crushing OSU, ahead 20-14 in the third game (after winning the first two). But I wanted to write about the next point.

Emily Danks was serving (very well; she even had an ace a few points later), but Illinois still returned it with a spike. OSU got the spike up in the air, but weren't able to do much more than get the ball over the net. This pattern repeated several times (with the center-back player, whose name I missed, getting most of them). That's a really bad plan for winning a match, but it worked for them this time as they finally managed to get a misplay by Illinois that sent the ball out of bounds.

I'm really not doing the play justice, but just wanted to mention it, as it's one of the best volleys I've ever seen in a match. And OSU did manage to run off six points in a row, but it was a last gasp, as they were still swept in the match.

In any event, it might be the first time I've ever cheered for OSU. And might well be the last, come to that.

Green-Winning Goal

2011-10-08T20:02:00.000-07:00

Finally finished watching the opener on a bit of a delay. A very uneven game, all the way around. The defense looked pretty good, but it had several very large breakdowns leading to someone all by themself on Neuvy's left with no defender in sight. I suppose there's a small caveat that all of those breakdowns occurred with Carolina having a man advantage (three power plays and once with the goalie pulled).

But, while it's easier to have that sort of breakdown with an extra person to keep track of, it's even more important to not let it happen, as evidenced by the three goals allowed on those four plays (and the fourth was inches away).

So, three goals allowed, but Neuvy can't be faulted with any of them. He played a very solid game. Nothing spectacular, but he was in position and didn't allow any soft goals.

We've already covered most of the defensive side, but I wanted to note that Carlson had quite an up-and-down game. He took both of the penalties that led to Staal goals on the power play (two of those breakdowns), but, in between, he had a really sweet break-out pass to spring Semin in alone for a tying goal. Green looked very good (apart from being part of the breakdown on the first Staal goal), and finished with the overtime goal.

On the forward side, I liked the line selection. I'm not sure I wouldn't rather see Brouwer with OV and Backster, but that's a minor quibble (especially since Knuble looked very good on that wing). The very expensive third line (Chimmer, Ward, Laich) looked very good, wearing down the top line by making them work hard in their own end. The second line did pretty well; as mentioned, Semin had the Caps first goal and mostly played well (he did take a bad penalty at the end of regulation, however). Perreault also looked very good on that line, with several excellent chances (and even one or two good back-checking plays). The fourth line pretty quietly did their job as well.

Laich also had a nice goal off a missed shot by OV (although it took a 5-on-3 to get it).

Chimmer surprised me with a goal where Ward's pass sprung him behind the D, and he potted it over Boucher. I was less surprised to see, on the replay, that his shot went off the shaft of his stick. We'll certainly take it, though. And if he can consistently get chances like that, I certainly won't complain about his lack of finishing ability. (Still confused about the contract extension, though.)

Special teams? The PK did not look very good, for the most part. Two goals surrendered, which is bad enough, but also got pinned down for a minute and a half on one power play (though they managed not to surrender a goal on that possession, somehow).

The power play had two goals, but still did not look all that great, overall. The results were good, but the methodology wasn't. They still need to move around more (although I think they did improve on that a little bit); both goals were somewhat fluky. The first, as I mentioned, was a missed shot off the boards that bounced right to Brooks (nice hands by him, though); the second was a shot from the point that trickled through.

Anyway, as I said, an uneven game, but, happily, we'll take the win. I'll feel a lot better when the D starts meshing better, although the talent is certainly there.

Oh yes, and I should mention that Beagle, who I did not think should be playing (would have preferred MarJo on the third, with Chimmer bumped back to the fourth), still had a pretty decent game. In particular, he had a couple of nice forechecking plays, so we'll look for that to continue.

Plus, we'll hope that OV's thumb isn't in too bad a shape after the slash he took to get the 5-on-3.

So, overall, definitely some things to work on, but a good result.

Wild-carded

2011-10-07T20:10:00.001-07:00

Writing that last reminded me that the Cards and Phillies were playing game five, so I turned that on for the last two innings. A 1-0 score was not what I would expect from those teams, although I guess it isn't a complete shock, with Halladay and Carpenter pitching.

Well, that was the score when I turned it on, and that was the final margin, as well.

Everyone was afraid of the Philies in a short series, with their incredible rotation. But it turns out not to have been quite good enough. Although I'm not disappointed, you can certainly count me among the surprised.

And I'm somewhat amused that Howard came up for the final out, as I've been hearing all season from Philies phans that he's such a great clutch hitter (hence, those enormous RBI totals). I am sorry that he hurt his ankle, however; I hope it isn't serious.

Anyway, congratulations to Carpenter and all of the Cardinals, I'm looking forward to seeing them playing the Brew Crew.

And I'm amused to note that all three Central division teams advanced, and that the one non-Central team is Texas, who probably should be in the Central division (just based on geography).

Can't buy me love...

2011-10-07T19:36:00.001-07:00

Just a quick note to congratulate the Tigers on knocking the Yankees out of the playoffs. Even if they didn't lead the league in spending by nearly as much this year, I'm still glad to see them go.

The final countdown

2011-10-07T19:08:00.000-07:00

We're on the eve of the opening game of the season for the Caps, and I haven't really had much of anything to say about them in quite a while. I missed most of the preseason games, catching only the final one against the Blackhawks (well, most of it; somehow, I missed the first ten minutes, despite the DVR being set. Not sure what happened).

Despite this, I'm pretty excited about the upcoming season. McPhee made a number of very nice moves this offseason (I think I commented individually on pretty much all of them). I'm slightly skeptical of the signing of Ward, but hoping my skepticism is merely paranoia. I wonder, too, if Brouwer is worth the first-round pick; but again, I hope so. The rest are all good moves, in my book.

So we're left with a team that is deep, absolutely loaded with talent, and a legitimate pick for the Stanley Cup. There's a lot of years of playoff failure to get over, there are still questions about Boudreau's ability to coach in the postseason, as well as his ability to inspire discipline in his players. The new acquisitions should help with that latter (and the former, come to that).

So things are looking, right now, about as good as they've ever looked for the Caps. So I'm really just trying to keep from getting too excited when we've still got the whole season to look forward to.

The only big questions marks are at second center, where MarJo's so-so preseason did not inspire confidence (though Matty P's excellent one helps mitigate that. Perhaps, between the two of them, they can hold down the position), and with the salary cap, as the team will be riding that line all season. The downside to the latter, of course, is that it limits their ability to deal with the former (if necessary) at the trade deadline.

Looking at the team schedule, the only thing that really jumps out at me is that February and March are going to be absolutely brutal. Thirty games in fifty-nine days. As I said, brutal. Hopefully, they can find a little bit of time to rest in January and April.

So, as I said, a lot of reason to get excited, but we don't want to get too excited too soon. We want this season to stretch all the way to June.