Wayne Gretzky had a pretty emotional news conference the other day, after watching the “liberties” that Hamrlik took with Fleury. Can’t say that I blame him at all. The funny thing about it is that I haven’t ever really considered Wayne a great Canadian Patriot…The guy lives in the US after all. It just seemed a little odd to me. Don’t get me wrong, good for Wayne, and hopefully he’s created the “us vs. the world” attitude in the locker room, because that should fire the boys up really well. It just didn’t seem to fit my mental image of Gretzky. Don Cherry I expect that from, Wayne Gretzky, I don’t.

Another interesting thing happened on Monday night. The wireless bridge (SMC 2655W EZ Connect) and wireless network card (Orinoco Silver) arrived from NCIX. Boy was it easy to set up. All I did was plug the bridge into the wall, run an ethernet cable to it, and plug the network card into the laptop. Windows XP recognized the hardware, installed drivers and stuff, all while I was getting changed in the other room. I was greeted with a “Windows has found a wireless network” message, which I clicked on, chose to connect to the network, and I was browsing the web. It went even easier than I thought it would. Good stuff. Last night I set up the encryption and MAC filters, so that nobody can simply “sniff” the traffic between the WAP and the laptop, plus they can’t connect to the WAP either. I know the 64 bit encryption isn’t perfect, but at least it’s better than nothing.

There is something strange about browsing the web with no cables connected to your machine. For example, last night I wanted to look something up on IMDB about a show that we were watching (just to confirm an actor’s name) Normally I’d have had to walk into the computer room, boot up the computer and wait for a bit, then do my search. Not so last night, I just picked up the laptop, and did my search. It was still kinda strange.

The game tonight is pretty late, so I don’t think I’m going to host. If they win, the next game is Friday at 1:00. Bummer? Not really, cause I booked Friday off a while back. That means that I will be hosting that game, assuming of course that Canada wins tonight (Go Canada!)

Simpson’s quote of the day: “What did he say? What did he say? Was it about me?” - Moe

I promised that I’d post my game when we got back from the cruise. Here it is, a month later, and I still haven’t posted it. It’s a two meg zip file with an installer inside it, though most of that space is due to supporting libraries, so updates should be relatively small (around 100K) if I do any. You can download it here.

Once you’ve run the installer, you can run it from the shortcut that it creates, or find the Galaxy.exe file that got installed, and run that. A “blank” game will come up, so you have to choose “New Game” from the menu. Once you’ve set up the players, the game is pretty simple. Players take turns sending ships from planets that they own to other planets (unconquered, enemy and even their own) You can do this two ways - either type the planet letters, or click on them. When you’re done your turn, click the end turn button, and the next person does their moves. After everyone has entered their moves, the ships are actually sent out. They fly two squares per turn, and they fly in a straight line (ie pythagoras has a hand in the game’s math) When a battle takes place, you’ll see the fleets numbers go down in turn, until only one is left standing (either the attacker or the defender) There are no “winning conditions” so the game can continue even after one player has taken all the planets. You can save your game at any time, and you can load a previously saved game if you want.

There are likely some bugs in it still, but overall I think it’s in decent shape now. If you have any troubles, email me at this address.

The subject of my post tomorrow will be Gretzky’s press conference, so tune in tomorrow, cause you won’t want to miss that…Ok, you might want to miss it. Tune in tomorrow anyway.

Simpsons quote of the day: “Milhouse, we live in the age of cooties!” - Bart

The Simpsons was pretty good last night - they took a trip to Canada (or “America Junior”) When they arrived (via first class motorcoach) the soundtrack was the revised Bob and Doug MacKensie theme (by Rush) so, now I can’t get it out of my head. Could be worse I suppose.

Relatively small crowds for the first two hockey games at my place, but I suspect that will change tonight. I just hope the Canadians can put on a better show than the past couple of nights.

Saturday night Erin and I went to my parents place an played some cards - I was kinda sick of sitting around the house, so out we went. I think that the problem is brian williams - that guy is really annoying. I wish CBC would just realize that he’s awful, and put him on the latenight shift, instead of the prime-time shift. That way they can move good ole’ Ron McLean to prime time, where he rightfully belongs. Oh well, I suppose mr. williams won’t be around much longer, he’s gotta be approaching retirement age. (As a side note, I did a search on IMDB to see how old mr. williams is - there are 7 actors that come up when you search for that name, and one of them is a porn star - at least judging by the titles of his films…)

I found a really neat paper (got the link from Slashdot) with predictions for the next 59000 years (ok, so most of them fall within the next 50 years or so…) It’s a neat little read. The paper can be found here.

Simpsons quote of the day: “Watch it, Smithers. That sponge has corners, you know.” - Mr. Burns

Canada plays Sweden in their first mens hockey game of the Olympics. People are coming over to watch the game. The game starts at 5:00, but I don’t think we’re going to start watching until 5:30 or so (on a PVR delayed basis) Other than that, nothing much new here. Things are picking up at work, so I’ve got a lot on my plate over the next couple of weeks. Should be a busy time.

Apparently Sale and Pelletier are being awarded a gold medal (kinda like Sylvie Frechette, except that this time the judge isn’t admitting anything) Seems like a band-aid thing to me. I doubt it’ll work. For those of you who don’t remember the Sylvie Frechette Synchronized swimming thing, She was ranked second after the judging because one of the judges accidentally pressed the wrong button or something. The judge immediately said that her score was a mistake, and Sylvie was awarded a Gold medal (so there were two gold medalists in that event that year)

Simpsons quote of the day: “When you participate in sporting events, it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how drunk you get.” - Homer

I think the game is at 8:00 on Sunday - I could be wrong. Either way, I think the plan is to watch it closer to real-time. Gotta work in the morning after all. I’ll update the comments on this post with any changed details for those of you who can’t make it tonight.

I thought about copying and pasting CmdrTaco’s proposal to his (now) fiancee, changing the relevant parts, but I figured only a couple people here would get the joke. For those of you who know what I’m talking about, fill in the joke yourself. For those of you who don’t, please pretend you never read this paragraph.

As for Valentine plans - I think Erin and I are going to curl up on the couch and watch Moulin Rouge tonight, and that’s about it. We’re so old :)

A couple of weeks ago, a light burned out somewhere in the house, and we were all out of light bulbs. When we went to the store, I spotted these “GE Reveal” Full Spectrum light bulbs, so we thought we’d try them out. Turns out we really like them. They give off a more natural feeling light, which makes everything feel kind of warmer or something. My Grandpa was a big fan of full spectrum lighting. Anyway, the end result is that we found them at Zellers for less than Safeway (which is a relief, cause they were pretty expensive at Safeway.) They’re still not cheap like the 24 pack of generic light bulbs, but they don’t need replacing that often, and supposedly they help with Seasonal Affective Disorder, not that I feel depressed during the long 11 months of winter. (For those of you who aren’t from Saskatoon, that’s a joke - we actually get 11 1/2 months of winter, but we like to round down…Ok, so that was a joke too. I’m not very funny. Blame the French judge.)

Simpson’s quote of the day: “We could buy all kinds of important things, like… love!” - Homer

The hockey game is going ahead on Friday night at our place - you’re invited to join us. The game starts at 5:00, but that’s when I get home from work, so I suspect we’ll have it recording on the PVR, and start watching it at 5:30 or so (skip some of the more annoying “Then I Ate the Bowl” commercials :)

Let me know if you’re planning on coming so that Erin and I can have an idea of how many people to expect (for party favours? I doubt it.)