The CFFL draft was last night, and I think I did ok. My team looks solid, if unspectacular, but there’s a decent amount of research behind some of the lesser known names. I feel like I could be poised for a big comeback after the startlingly bad season I had last year. To this day, I still can’t figure out how my team was nearly the worst in the league, while some other teams (I’m looking at Chad here Jason…) had such a stellar record while having virtually nobody of note on their roster.

Some of the picks that were made were pretty baffling, so we’ll see if there’s a method to some of the madness.

The draft wrapped up fairly early, so I got to hit up poker night. I played like a buffoon on a couple of hands, and managed to split some pots that I had no business being involved in. I did lose out badly on one split pot, when I flopped a full house in an omaha based game (I held A K 10 5 and the flop came down AA5) only to be beaten out by a guy holding A9 when a 9 hit the turn and I couldn’t redraw on him. Then there was the hand when my AJs got beaten by A6s when a flush hit (same guy ;) It was fun, and I broke even up until the last hand, where I was dealt a pair of aces to win the spare change - $2 for me.

Tonight is football night. I’m looking forward to taking in some football, and the season looks to be shaping up to be pretty exciting. Time will tell there though.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Quiet down old dudes, or I’ll jam this bus into a river!” - Otto

The switchover to Shaw from expressvu went really well, and everything worked pretty smoothly for over a month until last Thursday, when the firewire recording started getting a little bit flaky. Like really flaky. Like it records maybe one out of 10 shows that it’s supposed to record. Frustrating for everyone involved.

I watched the hockey game last night, and when the overtime penalty was called, I thought that Mike Peca would wind up scoring a short handed goal on a bad giveaway. I was close I guess ;) It was strange - Carolina stopped skating once they got the powerplay and seemed to be trying to slow the game down - something they hadn’t been doing throughout the game. I can’t explain it, but if game 6 (and 7 if there is one) are as entertaining as parts of game 5 were, I won’t complain either. There were some parts of the game where it seemed to have degenerated into a trapfest between the bluelines by both teams. It’s hard to believe that Carolina only had 24 shots, because I thought that they carried the play for a lot of the game (including the 2 shot third period…)

Tonight is football draft night. I’ve done some preliminary research, and have a bit of a strategy in place for how to build my team, but I’m not sure if it matters much in the grand scheme of things. My team looked stacked last year (and looking back at it now, it still looks pretty solid) and yet I missed the playoffs while teams that looked particularly weak (and still do) made it. Luck of the draw seems to be the order of the league ;) But I’m not bitter.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “You mean the mob only did me a favour to get something in return? Oh, Fat Tony, I will say good day to you.” - Homer

For some reason, I fired up Yohoho Puzzle Pirates last night, as well as Three Rings’ new game, Bang! Howdy. I played Bang! Howdy for about 10 minutes before deciding that I was done with it for good. Not my cup of tea. It’s like a turn based party game with only three minigames, and I thought it was crappy. Puzzle Pirates hooked me back in again though - they’ve got some new puzzles, even though I didn’t get to play any of them because I’m not a subscriber. The only downside was that I was lagged out terribly. I don’t know if I should blame the network connection, or the fact that the Mac Mini is horribly under-RAM’d.

I honestly don’t understand how come 512Mb of RAM isn’t enough to run the OS at a decent speed. I checked last night, and I had 1.3Gigs swapped out to disk. Keeping in mind that I was running puzzle pirates and like two other programs in the background at the time. My old windows XP 1 Ghz laptop that had 384 Megs of RAM had no problems with Puzzle Pirates, so why is a new Mac choking on it like that? Brutal. I guess I have to upgrade the RAM, but it irks me somewhat that it’s a slow as it is. It feels a lot like running Windows 95 on the minimum requirements of 8 Megs of RAM. There’s a lot of “Oh, you want to do something? Wait 30 seconds while I swap out most of the OS, and wait without any feedback telling you that the machine actually registered your click. Shore is purdy though

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Ay, ay, ay! Es Homer Simpson. Me ha molestado! Oh!” - that Spanish Bee Guy

Last night’s hockey game was interesting. The Oilers played their game fairly well 5 on 5 in the first period, but in the second period, I thought it looked like they got caught up trying to play the Hurricanes’ game. Power play ineffectiveness will be the storyline of why the Oilers didn’t win the cup (unless they manage a miracle and do win it - don’t hold your breath Jason…) I’m just glad that Markanen has played as well as he has - the built in excuse of losing your goalie to injury doesn’t hold water when you score 3 goals in 3 games.

I’m officially no longer a Bell Expressvu customer. We cancelled our account a month ago, and they shut off service yesterday. I swapped in the cable, and we haven’t missed a beat - other than some problems with recording a couple of channels over firewire that decided to show up late last week and seem to have sorted themselves out. I’ve also got the full high def setup working properly now - just in time for a little football. Woo hoo! Football season is here. Erin’s probably dreading it :)

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Don’t you ever, ever talk that way about television.” - Homer

So, I’m back from a bit of a break. Two weeks ago, I was pretty sick, then went on a field trip at work. Last week, I was on training all week. This week, I’m here. I’m going to try and post every day, but I make no promises.

Football season is starting up this week, and I’m looking forward to it. The CFL is really hard to figure out this year, and virtually any team could wind up winning it all, with a few lucky bounces. I’ll go out on a limb and predict that Winnipeg and Edmonton will miss the playoffs, but beyond that, I have no idea how the league is going to shape up. A key injury or two will likely mean the difference in making the playoffs and missing them for two unlucky teams. Once you get to the playoffs, it’s anybody’s game again - three wins, and you’re the champ.

Hockey is still going on though, and might still be going on once football season has kicked off. That is, unless Carolina can manage to win the next two games. While the Oilers definitely deserved to win game three, I hated Smyth’s game winning goal. There has to be a happy medium between the “toe in the crease” and the way the game is called around the crease today. In my mind, Smyth interfered with Ward’s ability to make the save pretty directly. Can’t complain about it though, because that’s the way they call the game now. I know that’s how we used to score a lot of goal in virtually every video hockey game out there - turn off penalties and run the goalie :)

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