HiR:tb Toots (@warwalker)
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By junior on November 6, 2008, at 1:09 am Mike and I have decided to strike out on our own for National Novel Reading Month 2008 – the gang over at defectiveyeti are reading Lolita, but Mike and I (having both read the book) have instead selected Charles Dickens’ Bleak House as the book we’re going to read together.
Mike’s already got his summary of the first 3 chapters up, and he has set a target to post on Tuesdays and Thursdays about his progress in the book. I am going to try and follow the same procedure. Staying true to form, I don’t have a detailed first post ready yet, and I’m already behind schedule because I am much less reliable than our friend from the Left Coast.
According to wikipedia, Bleak House is Dickens’ ninth novel, and it was published in twenty monthly installments beginning in March of 1852 (Dickens often serialized his novels; if he were alive today, he would be writing for LOST, and that show would not suck nearly as much as it now does). I haven’t read much more of the plot synopsis at wikipedia, because I don’t want to ruin the story for myself, but as i understand it, Dickens was moved to write the book as a result of his experiences working among England’s lawyers. If I’m not mistaken, it is a commentary on the bureaucratic absurdities and injustices that Dickens observed in the courts.
I have no doubt that the book will strike somewhat of a chord in me for those reasons at this particular point in my professional career.
It’s going to be a bit of a change for me; on the weekend, I read the two Dirk Gently novels by Douglas Adams. Adams is always such an easy read, and his tone is light and airy, almost conversational; the contrast between Adams’ direct style and Dickens’ Victorian, meandering prose is startling to my eyes at the moment, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it shortly.
I won’t cover the same ground that MIke did in his excellent synopsis of the first three chapters. My own thoughts are that Dickens showed himself most distinctly in Chapter Two, which is the reader’s introduction to Esther Summerson, who (I presume) will be one of the book’s protagonists. In a very short chapter, Dickens manages to introduce the (apparently) orphaned Esther, depict her guardians as loveless and severe to the point that (in the space of only a few paragraphs) the reader manages to start developing a healthy dislike for them. It then transpires that Esther must leave, and Dickens takes pains to show that Esther is so genuine and good-hearted that she feels as though it must be her fault that her departure is not evoking much of a reaction at all in others. She finally departs, leaving behind her only real solace, a doll in which she had hitherto confided her insecurities and private upsets. Dickens is a master at working the emotional levers, and the connection between reader and Esther is near immediate.
I am hoping that the book will produce one of Dickens’ signature characters, someone like the execrable Uriah Heep, the lowly but noble Barkis, or the hopelessly deluded, optimistic and prolix Micawber (all from David Copperfield ), Sydney Carton from Tale of Two Cities, or (possibly the most enduring character ever) Ebenezer Scrooge himself. I have to confess that I’m always terrible at remembering plot details once I’ve read a book (or seen a movie, for that matter); for me, it is always the characters I remember. That may be one reason that I’ve reacted so positively to Dickens’ work in the past, as he seems to invariably be able to capture the essence of a type of person that we’ve all met and imbue one of his characters with all of those traits.
As an aside, if memory serves me correctly, Mike and I made each other’s virtual acquaintance at around this time last year, in the midst of our mutual participation in last year’s NaNoReMo at dy; thus ends the first year of our virtual correspondence. I have very much enjoyed getting to know each other through teh Intarwebs, learning a little (from a guy who knows a lot) about photography, and following along with Mike’s attempts to retain all of his digits, to refrain from going barking mad at work, and of course with figgy’s growth and development. Virtual fist bumps to Mike; I look forward to continuing our correspondence and commisseration. My best to theVet!
By junior on November 4, 2008, at 11:40 pm Sitting here watching the returns from south of the border. None of the networks seem to want to call it, but Ohio has gone for Obama, Florida is definitely trending in that direction and California is a mortal lock to go Democrat. I’ll say it: the United States has elected Barack Obama as its next President.
So congratulations, America, on picking the right guy for the job.
Here’s hoping all of your people can respect the choice. Here’s hoping that your political discourse will move forward from this day in a spirit of tolerance and respect. Here’s hoping that ideas and principles return to their rightful place of predominance in the media coverage of your political discussions.
It’s been eight years since you chose the wrong guy; an anti-intellectual frat boy who revelled in his ordinariness, and whose lack of credentials for the job were obvious to everyone. Eight years of watching you – a nation once renowned as the Great Crucible of the democratic experiment – ignore your own dearest and best principles. Eight years during which the respect of the world for your country waned as a result of Mr. Bush’s outrageous and immoral adventures, all of which it pained us to see taking place at the expense of the great majority of your own people.
You have taken the right first step to recover from the damage you, as a people, have done to yourselves. To quote David Foster Wallace, I wish you way more than luck.
p.s: Step 2 involves getting rid of this Sarah Palin person.
Update: 11:00 p.m. EST. It’s official, and something like a million people in Grant Park in Chicago are chanting “Yes We Can.” I have chills running up and down my spine. Congratulations and all the best.
By junior on November 3, 2008, at 10:18 pm One of the things I didn’t know about Ron Wilson is that he is, and has been for some time, a bit of a tech nerd. Here’s a link to an AP story from four years ago, when Wilson was still coaching the San Jose Sharks.
“I’m the type of guy who’s always got to have the new thing,” he said.
And Wilson’s technological savvy is all over the best season in franchise history for the San Jose Sharks, who have reached the Western Conference finals in Wilson’s first full season as their coach.
Wilson and his assistants, Tim Hunter and Rob Zettler, constantly invent new ways to make the Sharks better and smarter. They compile obscure databases, dissect game tapes and preach strategy with rinkside computers, personalized scouting reports and a wealth of digital, wireless gadgetry.
Constructive criticism: for those of you unfamiliar with the term, this is the kind of criticism that does not necessarily require use of either the word “suck” or “douchebag”. It is to be encouraged, if only because in these troubled economic times, there has been a significant decline in research into innovative methods by which one might insinuate that a person is physically unable to distinguish his ass from his elbow; as a result, non-constructive criticism can tend towards repetition and monotony.
As the Glorious Revolution continues, here’s my attempt to offer a little constructive criticism about the local mittenstringers’ coverage of the Toronto Maple Leafs organization: instead of writing every other column about how the team’s fans are a bunch of gullible assholes whose offensive output, defensive liabilities and startling body odour have apparently produced, through natural forces too overpowering to resist, an Inevitable Vortex of Fail™ magically resulting in on-ice disappointments, columnists like Messrs. Berger, Cox or Simmons might want to consider mashing out a few monosyllables on the subject of the Leaf coaching staff’s use of computer technology.
According to a recent story by Mark Zwolinski, Ron Wilson, Tim Hunter and Rob Zettler are playing a leading role in the integration of this type of technology into NHL coaching:
Tablet PCs, hard wired into a Sling Box streaming device, will be mounted at both ends of the bench, lending a bit of Bill Gates wizardry to Leaf games.
“It’s all about getting information into a player’s hands quickly and efficiently,” Leafs assistant coach Rob Zettler said, making it sound easy.
Zettler, along with fellow assistant Tim Hunter, and head coach Ron Wilson, integrated the technology into their bench area while all three formed the San Jose Sharks coaching staff between 2002-07.
Zettler and Hunter are able to access real time video replays and real time stats from the Tablets, and relay them to players during games. The information is basically quick hit knowledge – the kind of live information flow common to a stock market trading floor. But under this new Leafs coaching regime, there’s much more to the high tech approach than bench monitors.
The coaching threesome utilizes the OS-X computer operating system for their laptops. Much of the video and stats streaming they do is also available on a Smart Board – a large, touch-controlled screen – built into the video room, coach’s room, and dressing room at the Air Canada Centre.
The real cool tool, though, is a vast stats database compiled by Wilson over his 15 years as an NHL coach.
The database contains everything from where the most goals are scored from, to individual players’ on-ice tendencies.
The point is that Wilson, Hunter and Zettler seem to be blazing a bit of a trail in this way, continuing a process that the three of them began while with the San Jose Sharks. Evidently – unless the trio are personally ponying up for the new hardware – MLSE has embraced the idea and is financially supporting its implementation.
Zwolinski’s story is good, as far as it goes, and it’s not my present purpose to criticize his article, but I would love to know more about exactly how and when the technology is used. I would love to hear from either a current Leaf player or a former Shark, someone who has experience receiving the tutelage that Wilson, Hunter and Zettler are trying to provide. I’d like to be given a concrete example about a specific situation in which the technology was employed and whether the immediate access to the information in question had an appreciable effect upon the outcome of a game. Do the players find it useful, and if so what limitations do they see in it? Tech nerds like myself would also love to see some discussion with the software developers and IT nerds who are physically implementing the system to get a sense of what they were asked to provide, where they feel they fell short, and what developments they foresee in the future as the hardware used to do the job improves in performance and accessibility.
It occurs to me, though, that these technological developments are the kind of thing that the brilliant columnists might want to consider. They might want to discuss the fact that the Maple Leaf organization is taking steps to install the necessary electronics and to ensure that the coaching staff has the twenty-first century tools necessary to give them whatever competitive edge they can thereby obtain. They might attempt to evaluate what results, if any, were produced by this approach when the same coaching trio used this technology in San Jose.
They might examine the larger context within which this particular development is occurring and consider whether such initiatives are reflective of the way that – in a salary-cap environment – wealthy organizations can attempt to employ their resources to maximum advantage; obviously, rich teams can’t just spend their way to success in the modern NHL by simply putting expensive players on the ice, but there is no limit on the amount of money that an organization can spend on other off-ice, management or player support and training issues. They might see parallels between this method of trying to gain the upper hand on more impecunious rivals and efforts that a team might make to build and staff a professional, effective and co-ordinated scouting organization. They might wish to examine what efforts, if any, have been taken within the Maple Leaf organization to pursue objectives such as these.
Of course it’s hard to discuss things like this technology initiative in the course of unwinding another cookie-cutter yarn about how management at MLSE is only interested in maximizing profit by minimizing expenditures and in serving up slop to the foolish sheep who shamble through the turnstiles year after year like characters from a George Romero film. An angle like this doesn’t fit the narrative and the caricature of the penny-pinching suits cackling over their gold-plated success at selling tin-covered mediocrity to the local slackjaws like you and I. It is confusing to them, because it doesn’t fit the conclusions they have already drawn.
It also takes some thought and a little hard work, so they don’t tell you about stuff like this.
By junior on November 2, 2008, at 10:55 pm I happened to be watching the Leafs on Hockey Night in Canada while milling about more or less aimlessly in a “live” game thread on the Pension Plan Puppets site. Basically, I hung out in a virtual basement (I don’t know if it was Chemmy’s or P3’s house) with a bunch of my fellow Leaf fans and we watched the game together. None of us knew what was about to unfold: after a spirited but unlucky opening two stanzas, and trailing 2-0 going in to the third, Toronto seemed more or less resigned to their fate throughout the first ten minutes of the period. Then, boosted by a terrific performance by rookie John Mitchell, they scored five goals in five minutes and twenty-two seconds to win the game 5-2.
Folks in the virtual rec room were pretty excited, and I could see on TV that the fans at the Air Canada Centre were stoked too; they gave the Leafs an enthusiastic standing ovation in the final minute of play. It was great to see the folks in the building – which is often a monument to corporate reserve, especially in the platinum seating area close to the ice surface – get up and wave their arms, pound their hands together, and generally scream their fool heads off because they were excited by their team’s performance.
The events of last night, along with the official commencement of the Revolution of the Barilkosphere earlier this week, have gotten me thinking a little bit about the nature of fan-dom. The Revolution was provoked by the most recent cut-and-paste, written-with-a-crayon-and-little-or-no-forethought, blame-the-fans for the hockey team’s problems article. Here’s a sampling of Berger’s most recent instantiation of this “argument”:
Arguably the worst team in the National Hockey League since the lockout continues to be the most lucrative commodity on skates. Even the tall foreheads at Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment have seemingly thrown in the towel on their annual dissing of Forbes Magazines’ NHL value rankings. Normally, by the evening of the announcement, CEO Richard Peddie is on record suggesting that no person outside the hallowed halls of the Air Canada Centre could possibly have a line on the Leafs’ monetary worth. This is either an effort to keep the tax people at bay, or to avoid laughing out loud at the sheep that form the lifeblood of the company.
Yes, that is YOU, Leafs Nation.
An insatiable willingness to accept whatever garbage is tossed your way each year lines the pockets of the executives you purportedly “hate” [I see that word a lot in my e-mails]. No form of indignity is powerful enough to dissuade you from the uncontrollable love of your Blue & White. You bitch… and moan… and go insane over the always-accurate appraisals of the team in the media. Depending on the hour of day, you either castigate or lionize members of the hockey club — often the same player. The familiar disappointment of missing the playoffs on April 8th is washed away with delusional fantasies by April 9th. And, always, you are there to buy every ticket; purchase every jersey; watch every game on TV; lose your mind over every word written and spoken about the team [the part I like best], and generally cradle the habit you have no power to temper, let alone break. You are, by any measure, the most easily placated fans in all of sport — rivaled only by the zombie-like baseball fanatics on the north side of Chicago.
This line of thinking (is there such a thing as a “line of ranting”? That seems to me a more apt comparison) suffers from a fundamentally flawed premise in terms of its economic reasoning – as Sean at Down Goes Brown has ably pointed out. It also attributes certain behaviours to Leaf fans that don’t bear any resemblance to reality; to say that anybody who follows the team this year is having “delusional fantasies” is itself (ironically) a delusional fantasy; to say that expectations for this year’s team are low even among Leaf fans is a massive understatement. Heck, even the Leaf-o-centric media gadflys at Cox Bloc picked them to finish “at or near the bottom” of the entire league. I haven’t heard a single person of any persuasion opine that the Leafs would challenge for the Cup. I can’t even think of anyone I personally know who’s been willing to wager that they’d make the playoffs. Quite the contrary, I think the general perception – at least around the Barilkosphere – was that the Leafs would lose a LOT of games this year; this would happen because the team was thought not to have much talent, and what talent it possessed was believed to be trade bait for prospects and draft picks as part of a quest to rebuild, and maybe to draft John Tavares next June. Click here to continue reading On Fanhood
By junior on October 31, 2008, at 12:08 pm Folks in the Barilkosphere are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore:
Dear Most Valuable Losers,
Yesterday, continuing a long-standing trend, another Toronto reporter took his shot at Leaf fans. This time it was Howard Berger calling us “losers” (screenshot: one two) but we’ve seem the same cookie-cutter article before from virtually everyone who covers the team.
Quite frankly, we’ve had enough.
As fans, we believe that those most deserving of our praise and our scorn are directly inolved in the game, whether it’s on the ice, in the press box or in the executive corridors. Fans don’t pencil in the starting five, make bad trades, or write the headlines of the day and shouldn’t be blamed (or praised) for the totals in the wins and loss column.
Hockey may be just a game but it’s also a passion. If you’re looking for passionate hockey coverage that offers insight and humour and you’re sick of being blamed for supporting a team you’re passionate about, you have a better option.
It’s time to leave the media superstars behind. There’s compelling, timely, wide-ranging content waiting just for you online in the Barilkosphere.
Many have found this better way of following the Leafs, but not every Leafs fan has been so lucky. Please send this message to your fellow Leaf fans via e-mail or postings on message boards and let them know that they do have a choice.
We hope you’ll join us here in the Barilkosphere and become regular readers, writers, and commenters.
By junior on October 28, 2008, at 8:23 pm I am struggling with a lot of thoughts that are all wrapped up with one another these days. Recently, my brother Mike made the decision to change jobs, a career move that is taking both him and his family from Oakville to Chicago, Illinois. I worry about staying in touch with them; I probably haven’t done a very good job of that with them practically right in my backyard, and I’m feeling some guilt about not making time to keep up with lots of other folks right now. There are many I’d like to catch up with: my favourite Taiwanese correspondent, my fellow Heroes, a number of folks from both law school and undergraduate, my fishing buddies, and some of the folk from my pub-going days too. I think those two thoughts are related in that I am wanting to absolve myself of the guilt I’m feeling about not keeping up with friends and thus re-assure myself that I won’t make the same mistake with my brother. Stack on top of that uncertainty about the global financial situation and a big brother’s natural fears about how that will affect his little brother’s plans to cross the border and work in a foreign financial sector, and some unsettling news about the nutbar schemes of a couple of complete arseholes with an apparent easy comfort with evil, all of which gets my protective instincts going.
I am firmly, as the Brits say, at sixes and sevens.
I wanted to spend a little time posting something light and funny tonight, but I think I’ll just tune in to the Leafs/Lightning game and try to settle my brain down by watching a little Stamkos vs. Schenn.
By junior on October 23, 2008, at 8:34 pm Spouse and I went for some lunch to a little burger and sub shop in St. George yesterday. I took a picture of the sign out front (depicted in the photograph below):
I’m not sure what utility there is in a mass transit vehicle that is twelve inches in length; but you really can’t beat the price.
The work continues here in Juniorvania; we have completed our work on the eastern front, and have begun focussing our efforts to the north (the front of the house). My entire body aches, and as soon as I am done at the keyboard, I am going to go put a bottle of Motrin in a bowl, pour some milk over the pile of tablets, and eat them like Rice Krispies. I spent the better part of today’s work session cutting out the numerous stumps from various trees and shrubs in the eastern portion of the front garden (most, if not all, of which were cut down long before we got here). As a result of these labours, I am now prepared to swear an affidavit to the effect that the reciprocating saw is, without a shadow of a doubt, the greatest of man’s inventions. The wheel, though sporty and sure to attract a lot of buzz, runs a distant second to the blessed miracle of the reciprocating saw.
On an unrelated note, I must again marvel at Mike‘s diligence and industry: though he is on vacation and travelling afield, he has nonetheless managed to continue to post daily. I think I will excuse myself now and go make myself a dunce cap and sit in the corner for a while; he makes me look very, very bad by comparison.
Tomorrow night, we are off to see the Ticats/Stampeders game at Ivor Wynne. It’s the Cats’ last home game of another lost season. I am getting used to a lot of losing – Spouse and I (courtesy of Joe) were down to the Air Canada Centre in Toronto on Tuesday night to see the Leafs defeated (in a shootout) by the Anaheim (don’t call us Mighty) Ducks. It was an interesting enough game; the Leafs were awful in the first period, so awful that we witnessed one of hockey’s greatest rarities: George Parros scored on a breakaway. No, that’s not a typo. The notably mustachioed habitual pugilist was the benefactor of a communication breakdown between Leaf defencemen Tomas Kaberle and (rookie) Luke Schenn. Still, getting the breakaway is one thing, but actually putting the biscuit in the bucket is quite another. I don’t think George’s mom has ever seen him score on a breakaway, even in road hockey. Anyway, I suspect some choice profanities were uttered by Ron Wilson in the Maple Leaf locker room during the first intermission, as the team was wholly different in the second and third stanzas. Antropov tucked a rebound home in the second to draw the Leafs to within one, and they pressed throughout the third for the tying marker, failing to click on a 38-second 5-on-3 advantage. When the Ducks iced the puck with about a minute to go, though, I turned to Spouse and said I felt the Leafs were going to tie the game. Not fifteen seconds later, they did. Overtime solved nothing, so the game went to a shootout, unfortunately for the Leafs (they’ve been terrible at this aspect of the new NHL since its inception). Curiously, Wilson chose to pull Toskala (who’s 0-2 in shootouts already this year) and insert Curtis Joseph. Tough assignment for Cujo; he had to have had more than a little trouble getting ready to face the first shooter, having sat on the bench and opened the door for his mates for the previous two and a half hours. The first Anaheim shooter? Teemu Selanne (gulp). CuJo whiffed on Teemu’s quick wrist shot and got beaten by a Corey Perry deke, while both Leaf shooters missed the net; game over.
On the Ticat front, as mentioned above, it’s been another lost season. The Ticats were only recently officially eliminated from the (highly egalitarian and scrupulously inclusive) CFL playoffs, but in reality it’s been a foregone conclusion since around the August long weekend. Cat fans are focussing on the new QB in town, Quinton Porter. He’s shown some poise and a great arm while standing in for an injured Casey Printers. Porter seems to have developed some chemistry with his wideouts, something Printers has seemed unable to do. Suddenly, Prechae Rodriguez seems all-World at times and Scott Mitchell has also managed to make some great catches with Porter on the field. The young QB has played well enough to set up a bona fide QB controversy brewing by the time training camp starts next summer. I am hoping to take my camera, and my 800 mm lens to the game tomorrow night. I’d like to try to get some good close-up shots of the players, and try my hand at sports action photography. As for the outcome of the game, I anticipate watching a lot of Stampeder touchdowns tomorrow – as well as Porter has gotten the offence going at times, the Cat defence, especially the secondary, seems prone to coughing up huge passing plays. I am sure that Calgary QB Henry Burris is grinning like a Cheshire cat in anticipation this evening, and has found that he just can’t stop rubbing his hands together.
By junior on October 23, 2008, at 1:03 am Oh, I really have been a bad blogger, and a bad Internet friend. Looking at the two previous posts, it occurs to me that I’ve posted exactly once in something like 45 days. That’s not good. No, that just won’t do.
You know the excuse is coming. I will try to make it brief. If you’re not interested in it, please skip to the next paragraph. Still here? I’m touched! I’m feeling the love, sensing your concern for my well-being, dedication and industry. See, here’s the thing: Spouse and I had this two-part charity event to run on the 18th and 20th of September. That took up a lot of our time in late August and early September. The following week, we took three days off so that we could mount a five-day home improvement blitz and attack some of the jungle vegetation that seemed to have taken rather serious root in the southern portion of Juniorvania (i.e. behind the house). When we got back to work late that next week, there were of course a bazillion things that needed catching up on – stuff we hadn’t been able to get done in the weeks before our event and stuff that had come up while we were away for three blessed days of vacation. It behooved us to make sure that the paymaster remained inclined to fill our purses on a biweekly basis, so vocational concerns had to predominate for a time. There followed (in rapid, almost dizzying succession) a weekend trip to this event at Wit’s End, a week-long jury trial a trip to Sudbury for Thanksgiving, a trip to the vet (not theVet, but “the vet”) for Popeye (he has a tumor, but he’s fine), and (interspersed among all of the foregoing) a number of evenings spent watching the various political debates related to election campaigns both here in Canada and south of the border. On top of all of that, David Foster Wallace had to go and fucking kill himself¹ and so I felt I had to spend every moment of free time that I had reading – or re-reading, in some cases – his essays. As for this writing this blog, I felt like I had lots to say, but not enough time to sit down and organize my thoughts properly – so I avoided posting anything because I felt I didn’t have time to be comprehensive. Now I have so much to tell that I’d have to write for a week straight just to get it all in. Sigh. Hoist by my own petard once again.
I’ll get to all that stuff – the eventing at Wit’s End, the backyard blitz, our trip to Sudbury, even the charity event – but tonight, the spirit moves me to tell you of something even more awesome. Why is it so awesomely awesome? It’s tractor-related, which is the best kind of awesome, because it involves gasoline, a motor, and sharp whirling blades. Feast your eyes on this:
As you can see, the People’s Lawn Tractor has formed an attachment to the 10p utility cart ($229, unassembled)! Spouse and I went out and picked one up the other day. Spouse and I have this week off, and we have been once again,  instead of “vacating” as one might properly understand those on vacation to do, been throwing ourselves into physical labour by way of attempting to improve our surrounding environment. This week’s target was the eastern side of the house, an area that could only be described as “not badly overgrown” by way of comparison to the front of the house; with respect to all other areas, it is – or was – in fact positively primeval. I mention this because we quickly found that “improving” meant “cutting shit down”, the major down side of which is that the shit which has been cut must then be disposed of in some fashion². Now, disposal of surplus vegetation has, in the past, been accomplished principally through use of a fortuitous combination of the instrumentality of the People’s wheelbarrow and the generous capacity of a steep (and deep) ravine near our western borders. The said disposal has also principally been accomplished by my father-in-law Harold, who spent pretty much three solid days humping the said wheelbarrow back and forth between the backyard and the aforementioned ravine, disposing of various pieces of trees, all of which had been declared redundant, expendable and anti-social. When confronted with the need to replicate Harold’s detritus transportation exploits, Spouse and I immediately had an insight and determined that motorized assistance was required at once.
Thus did we find ourselves yesterday at the local John Deere dealer flashing plastic and loading a cardboard box loaded with one potential trailer into the Probe. I spent the early portion of the afternoon assembling the plucky little vehicle; today, we put it to work. Over and over again, we loaded the cart with branches (pruned), vines (removed from the entire eastern portion of the house), leaves (they’re frickin’ EVERYWHERE) and (in certain cases) entire shrubs deemed too diseased, too voluminous, or just too damn annoying to remain. Over the past few days, we have excavated a lot of vegetation; to give you a hint just how active we’ve been, the current tally concerning capital equipment depreciation reads as follows:
Over and over again, we drove our little tractor west towards the ravine (now known as “The Gulch”),  executed a quick turn and backed the whole apparatus up to the edge. The 10p cart has a great little mechanism that quickly releases the bed of the cart from its locked position and (if you’ve stacked the contents just right), the dumping action is automatic and strangely exhilarating. If ever anyone needed proof that flying a desk 9-to-5 causes one’s physical dexterity and co-ordination to do a cannonball into the nearest toilet, I would commend to that person the image of the comically inept manner in which both Spouse and I have found ourselves reversing a vehicle that’s pushing a trailer. It goes a little something like this: large circle; slowly forward to straighten everything out just so; driver turns to survey the objective; driver begins a confident, but slow reverse; trailer begins to yaw undesirably; driver confidently makes incorrect and overly drastic steering adjustment; trailer now yaws alarmingly; driver stops and curses, pulls forward again to straighten everything out just so – rinse, lather and repeat.
My back, shoulders and arms are all aching as it is from the sheer magnitude of the project (and, no doubt, the extreme indolence that has previously been a prominent feature of the exercise program for each related muscle group). I can’t imagine how I’d feel if we’d been moving all the shite we’ve cut down by hand. I love my tractor and his new friend, the 10p cart.
Spouse loves the tractor too!
————
¹More precisely, I found out about DFW killing himself in this time period. He actually did the deed on September 12th, 2008, but I was so freaking busy with all the above-mentioned shite, I didn’t even hear about it until nigh on the end of September.
²I am assured that “piling the shit on the lawn and leaving it there” is not an option. I know, I was surprised too.
By junior on October 5, 2008, at 10:31 pm Sorry ’bout the extended period of radio silence there – we are not avoiding spies here in Juniorvania, and be not afraid that I have sawn off my blogging digits. The cause of my virtual muteness has been much more prosaic than any of that; the last two weeks have been crazy busy at work and around the ol’ homestead. The charity auction Spouse and I were organizing went well, and 36 hours later we did the 36km bicycle ride that is associated with the event. Later that afternoon, we began a five day home improvement blitz with the help of both Spouse’s and my parents, focussing our efforts for the time being in the back 40. Pictures, of the “before and after” variety, have been taken and will be posted at a future date.
Meanwhile, things couldn’t have been busier at work last week; we had spent a couple of days away from the office focussing on our charity event, and the messages, emails and letters kept on piling up while we were gone. So the week before last was a bit of a scramble trying to catch up.
It was busy, and last Saturday we were at Wit’s End. That’s not just the way we felt, it’s also the name of the eventing venue that we visited for an FEI World Cup event last weekend (I took a bunch of pictures and will post some later this week). I spent last Sunday writing all day on a work-related project, and during the week, I was still finding it hard to get caught up at work. Every night when we got home, I would stare at the computer for a few minutes, then go pass out on the couch; I just didn’t have it in me to spend more time trying to make sentences at the keyboard. There have, of course, also been a number of debates to watch in the evening over the last week/week and a half.
I had hoped to spend a little more time posting about all of this frenzied activity today, but a portion of Sunday’s unallocated free time had to be dedicated instead to a home repair project. It seems that on Friday night, the People’s Mailbox was the chosen venue for “Mailbox Baseball”. The shiftless rural ne’er-do-well who was in the batter’s box evidently walloped a monster homer, because we couldn’t even find the thing anywhere along the road when the search party was dispatched earlier today for the express purpose of retrieving our battered postal receptacle. End result: an unscheduled trip to Lowe’s, an unbudgeted expenditure from the capital improvement fund ($34.99 for the extra large model and about 12 bucks worth of adhesive number decals to denote the Juniorvanian addressing co-ordinates on each side), and an hour-and-a-half worth of sawing (wood for the base), screwing the thing on to the roadside post, and cleaning up after myself.
I am unimpressed by the athletic prowess of the brainless prats who felt the need to trash my property. All I can say is this: it’s a good thing Spouse and I remembered to collect the mail from the box on Friday evening when we arrived home from work, because there was (quite unexpectedly) a sizable government refund cheque sitting inside the mailbox. Had we forgotten to get the mail that night (we’ve done that before), our mailbox and our happy little windfall would have been golfed away to God knows where, and we would have been none the wiser about the missing revenue.
By junior on September 18, 2008, at 9:25 am Not far from the borders of Juniorvania, the little village of St. George will be hosting its “Apple Fest” this weekend. Locally, everyone is about as amped up about this as country folk get about anything. The enthusiasm is charming, dare I say “quaint” (without meaning to be condescending in any way) to these eyes used to city-scale hype about city-type events.
It would seem that not all of the local zeal, however, produces sound policy-making. There is a certain purveyor of meats not far from here that is advertising (on a sign in front of the store) “Apple Sausage $1”. Now I’m not here to besmirch the good name of sausage generally, and I have nothing in particular against your common apple and it’s reputed physician-repelling properties (when applied in a quotidian manner); neither can I argue with the price posted, which seems quite reasonable. I have to wonder though, in all good conscience, whether it is appropriate to combine these two special goodnesses in the manner advertised.
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Roll of Blog
The Barilkosphere
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Revolution: The Storming of the Gondola Continues
One of the things I didn’t know about Ron Wilson is that he is, and has been for some time, a bit of a tech nerd. Here’s a link to an AP story from four years ago, when Wilson was still coaching the San Jose Sharks.
Constructive criticism: for those of you unfamiliar with the term, this is the kind of criticism that does not necessarily require use of either the word “suck” or “douchebag”. It is to be encouraged, if only because in these troubled economic times, there has been a significant decline in research into innovative methods by which one might insinuate that a person is physically unable to distinguish his ass from his elbow; as a result, non-constructive criticism can tend towards repetition and monotony.
As the Glorious Revolution continues, here’s my attempt to offer a little constructive criticism about the local mittenstringers’ coverage of the Toronto Maple Leafs organization: instead of writing every other column about how the team’s fans are a bunch of gullible assholes whose offensive output, defensive liabilities and startling body odour have apparently produced, through natural forces too overpowering to resist, an Inevitable Vortex of Fail™ magically resulting in on-ice disappointments, columnists like Messrs. Berger, Cox or Simmons might want to consider mashing out a few monosyllables on the subject of the Leaf coaching staff’s use of computer technology.
According to a recent story by Mark Zwolinski, Ron Wilson, Tim Hunter and Rob Zettler are playing a leading role in the integration of this type of technology into NHL coaching:
The point is that Wilson, Hunter and Zettler seem to be blazing a bit of a trail in this way, continuing a process that the three of them began while with the San Jose Sharks. Evidently – unless the trio are personally ponying up for the new hardware – MLSE has embraced the idea and is financially supporting its implementation.
Zwolinski’s story is good, as far as it goes, and it’s not my present purpose to criticize his article, but I would love to know more about exactly how and when the technology is used. I would love to hear from either a current Leaf player or a former Shark, someone who has experience receiving the tutelage that Wilson, Hunter and Zettler are trying to provide. I’d like to be given a concrete example about a specific situation in which the technology was employed and whether the immediate access to the information in question had an appreciable effect upon the outcome of a game. Do the players find it useful, and if so what limitations do they see in it? Tech nerds like myself would also love to see some discussion with the software developers and IT nerds who are physically implementing the system to get a sense of what they were asked to provide, where they feel they fell short, and what developments they foresee in the future as the hardware used to do the job improves in performance and accessibility.
It occurs to me, though, that these technological developments are the kind of thing that the brilliant columnists might want to consider. They might want to discuss the fact that the Maple Leaf organization is taking steps to install the necessary electronics and to ensure that the coaching staff has the twenty-first century tools necessary to give them whatever competitive edge they can thereby obtain. They might attempt to evaluate what results, if any, were produced by this approach when the same coaching trio used this technology in San Jose.
They might examine the larger context within which this particular development is occurring and consider whether such initiatives are reflective of the way that – in a salary-cap environment – wealthy organizations can attempt to employ their resources to maximum advantage; obviously, rich teams can’t just spend their way to success in the modern NHL by simply putting expensive players on the ice, but there is no limit on the amount of money that an organization can spend on other off-ice, management or player support and training issues. They might see parallels between this method of trying to gain the upper hand on more impecunious rivals and efforts that a team might make to build and staff a professional, effective and co-ordinated scouting organization. They might wish to examine what efforts, if any, have been taken within the Maple Leaf organization to pursue objectives such as these.
Of course it’s hard to discuss things like this technology initiative in the course of unwinding another cookie-cutter yarn about how management at MLSE is only interested in maximizing profit by minimizing expenditures and in serving up slop to the foolish sheep who shamble through the turnstiles year after year like characters from a George Romero film. An angle like this doesn’t fit the narrative and the caricature of the penny-pinching suits cackling over their gold-plated success at selling tin-covered mediocrity to the local slackjaws like you and I. It is confusing to them, because it doesn’t fit the conclusions they have already drawn.
It also takes some thought and a little hard work, so they don’t tell you about stuff like this.