The Habs game last night was fantastic. There was no “trap”, no “left wing lock” or whatever you want to call it. Lots of good solid work down low, and very little play in the neutral zone. By contrast, the leafs game was a snore-fest (at least the bits that they showed between periods in the Montreal game).

So, since I wasn’t at work yesterday, apparently the rumour that was going around was that I was dead. Turns out that I’m not. I don’t think anyone was serious about it, but it was good for a laugh or two. Well, ok, really only one laugh.

My thoughts are a little scattered today apparently, so I won’t trouble you with attempting a more coherent post. I think I’ll leave furniture discussions for another day, though I will post a link to an interesting story on a Segway test drive.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Don’t mess with the dead, boy, they have eerie powers.” - Homer

Erin was in the hospital today for a little day surgery. The whole miscarriage thing hadn’t gone quite according to plan, so they had to perform surgery to make things right. Erin was quite scared, but she handled it well, and is feeling pretty good tonight. I think we’re both going to stay home from work tomorrow. Erin to rest and recover, and me to make sure she’s ok. Erin’s mom is here to support her too, which is good. She flew up on very short notice, and we both appreciate her dropping everything to come out here.

I’ve put up a link to the playoff pool thing on the menu (I almost said “right hand side,” but I guess it isn’t necessarily there…) In addition, I added a search box. For those of you using Netscape, neither of those things will be there I guess, because I’m too lazy to update the netscape template. Oh yeah, by the way, there’s an RSS feed for this page now, available at this link. If you don’t know anything about RSS, you can read more about it here.

Plus, the Terry Pratchett quotes are back.

So don’t go complaining that I didn’t do a Simpson’s quote today - I’ve been a little busy.

That’s right, it’s playoff time again. As has become the tradition, a playoff prognostication contest will take place. This year, I’m going to post my picks here, so the whole world can laugh at me.

Boston (1) vs. Montreal (8) - You all know my prediction here. Montreal will win this series. Between Theodore’s fantastic goaltending, the emotional boost of having Saku Koivu back in the lineup, and having a healthy lineup for a change, I don’t think there’s any doubt…

Philadelphia (2) vs. Ottawa (7) - Ottawa faded pretty badly at the end of the season, and I think the Flyers are going to handle them easily

Carolina (3) vs. New Jersey (6) - I’m going to pick the “upset” here. New Jersey is a hot team, and so I’ve got to pick them. Not really much of an upset though, since NJ had the better record.

Toronto (4) vs. New York Islanders (5) - Yes, the Islanders finished strong, and yes, they’re a much improved team from last year. Despite the fact that they’re playing the Leafs, and I can’t stand the Leafs, I have to pick Toronto. Yashin will do his disappearing act, and the Leafs will show Osgood a lot of rubber.

Detroit (1) vs. Vancouver - Vancouver has been playing with a lot of passion for quite a while. Hasek has looked listless. The Red Wings have only won one game in the last ten. Yes, they’re well rested, but I don’t know if that’s such a great thing, with the way they’ve been playing. I’m picking the upset here, feel free to ridicule. I just think the Canucks will surprise the Wings, who are hoping to coast to the cup. Vancouver will win this series, and Hasek will not retire.

Colorado (2) vs. Los Angeles (7) - I like LA, but Colorado will be ready for them. Roy is a man on a mission this year, and Sakic is one of the best playoff performers in recent memory. Colorado will win.

San Jose (3) vs. Phoenix (6) - I’ll admit I don’t really know either of these teams really well, but I like the grit on San Jose, so I’ll pick them.

St. Louis (4) vs. Chicago (5) - Chicago will win this series, and St. Louis will be looking for a goalie in the off-season again.

Just to recap. Montreal, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Toronto, Vancouver, Colorado, San Jose, Chicago. Post your predictions in the comments. I’m keeping score based on series predictions. A seven game win is the same as a 4 game win, unless at the end of the playoffs there’s a tie, in which case win/loss record comes into play. Predictions for the second round will be forthcoming after the end of the first round, and so on. My unofficial prediction for the finals by the way is Montreal over Colorado in six games - Patrick will lose game six in Montreal, and retire.

The wind is quite nasty today - I felt like I was a mime walking into the wind. Have to love the way it switches directions in the middle of a block too, so I wind up walking into the wind both ways.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Stop him! He’s headed for the window!” - Homer

Despite what Erin will claim (likely within seconds of my posting this) she went out and got drunk last night. She’s sitting next to me yelling “I was NOT drunk” followed by “I’m not yelling either” followed by “you’re making me sound like a horrible wife.”

Now she’s grabbing my nose and telling me “I’d best not post this.” Ouch! That hurt.

You see, Erin doesn’t drink at all, so when she has fifteen or twenty drinks like she did last night, she gets all tipsy and stuff. The worst part of it all is that I wasn’t there to see it.

Now she’s claiming that I was drunk. Whatever. I haven’t had a beer in literally thousands of seconds.

Last night after training was done, I went to the Black Duck for a pint or two of Guiness with the instructor and a bunch of people from work. Anyway, Erin had a going away party for someone at work as well, though at a different bar. She actually did have some alcoholic beverages, which is a rare occurence for her. Last night though, she went a little wild (you know, like those videos that they advertise on TV?) She had as much to drink last night as she had in the past three years, or maybe even more. Ok, so really she only had six or seven girlie drinks - no umbrellas though apparently. I’m giving her a hard time about it (even though I had a few too many Guiness last night.)

When I got home, Erin wasn’t back yet. In fact I was sound asleep by the time she stumbled home. She’s threatening me again - telling me that I need to “fix this sho I don’t shound like a drunkard [hic]” Now she’s hitting me. What a mean person she’s become since she started drinking.

In case you hadn’t gotten the impression, I’m just kidding around with Erin - she didn’t really come stumbling home drunk. In fact if she hadn’t told me that she’d been drinking Cranberry and Vodka last night, I’d have never known.

She’s a really good sport about it all, and I’m lucky enough to have her by my side…

The webMethods training continues tomorrow and Friday, for a total of four days of training. Since there were only nine computers that met the training requirements (512Megs of RAM among other things) I got to take my machine down to the training room on the sixth floor on Monday, and install the training software - Oracle, and the full webMethods server plus development tools. It’s a fairly large amount of software to be running all at once on the same desktop machine, but as a result, I got my machine upgraded to 512Megs of RAM, which is nice. That’s just the back story though.

Anyway, the main thing to know is that Monday afternoon I installed RAM into my machine, and took it down three floors to the training room.

The thing about the training room is that it doesn’t have great air circulation, so with twelve computers, twelve monitors and twelve students, plus the projector, and the heat-lamp style lights, it gets quite hot and stuffy in the room.

Ok, enough background. This morning (Wednesday) I was in the training room checking my email before the course was scheduled to start (at 8:30) Someone came in and asked me if we were moving the computers this morning. I had no idea, figuring that this person was kidding, or at the very least in the wrong room. Turns out that one of the other participants was having trouble breathing in the stuffy training room, so we were going to move all the computers up to the ninth floor, into the board room that’s down the hall from my office. After a lot of hustle and work, we managed to get the computers all set up in the slightly smaller, but better ventilated board room. The monitors are packed in cheek by jowl, the keyboards are sitting on the edge of the table, and we’ve basically got room to put our mice and a drink between the machines. Apparently the air on nine is no better than the air on six though, since the person who was having trouble with the air only stuck around for around 45 minutes all day.

We thought everything was working out ok, but then we got to an exercise where we needed to connect to the Oracle database on the local machine, but for whatever reason, it didn’t want to work without being connected to the network. I’m no Oracle expert, so I don’t know what the problem was, but it apparently had something to do with name lookups or something, so once we networked the computers, all the problems went away.

So, more training to come this week, then things should be back to normal next week, with a more regular posting schedule for this site - maybe I’ll even have time to import all the old comments into the new system.

Since I got a comment posted razzing me for not mentioning the Habs clinching the playoffs last night, I thought I’d explain, while I have a second or two between exercises.

You see, while I was doing that last entry, I was also getting ready for work, and watching the highlights from last night. I didn’t actually know that the Habs had won at that point. At any rate. The Habs Won! Ok, it doesn’t really need an exclamation point. Last night was a very important game though, since Saku came back for his first game since being diagnosed with Cancer. If they hadn’t won, it could have spelled trouble for the playoff run, but they did, so I’m sure this is the next step towards a magical playoff run, culminating in a 25th Cup.

So that’s why I didn’t mention it.