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NHL schedule to change for the 2008-2009 season

Pittsburgh during pre-gram warm ups One topic that comes up between a lot of NHL fans is the schedule.

For the most part, it currently sucks. It’s nice to have a lot of battles going on between the divisional teams, but the fact that the current setup only allows games between certain teams once every three years, it can be annoying.

For instance, Sidney Crosby[wiki], the league’s number one guy, has been in the league for nearly three years now, and he finally made it all the way out to Vancouver for his first game ever just a week ago. It was hugely anticipated and lived up to the hype, but it took a long time before we got the chance to face the Penguins, a team that is chalk full of some amazing talent.

As fans, that’s tough, and it goes beyond Crosby. There are others that we want to see on a regular basis, and that’s going to change. It might not be the best setup, but it will be good to know that at least once a season, we’ll see every team in the league.

The NHL board of governors meeting Thursday didn’t go that far, but did decide to change the schedule so teams will play each other at least once next year.

A concession the players will welcome, for sure. New faces, new uniforms and, more importantly for fans, new battles to wage. […]

Colorado’s Andrew Brunette, who’s played in Minnesota and Atlanta, is tired of seeing Oilers goalie Dwayne Roloson – even if he’s a buddy from their Wild days.

“I’m really against eight games with teams in your division. And fans want to see players on the other side of the league every year, in their building. Not every two or three years, that’s just not right. It would be more travel for us, but that’s OK with me.” [edmonton journal]

So this is a great step in a better direction, but nothing is completely perfect yet. There are some teams that will only be played once, so it will place certain match ups in one team’s rink, then the following year will place the same teams in the other team’s arena. Not the most perfect setup that fans would like to see, but it’s better than waiting three years to see said team again.

Fans waiting for Sidney Crosby One thing that desperately needs examination is the structure of the schedule. The Canucks have had a very strange go so far, especially at the beginning of the season where there were nearly a week between games, and that happened about twice. Now there are numerous, back to back nights on the road where the team is in one city and in another for the next night. On top of that, there are weeks with four games in seven nights. Or it’s eleven games in fifteen nights. Either way, that’s a lot of travel, bouncing around time zones in some situations.

What happens when that occurs? Playing that often on the road wears a player down, and the team is suffering from it. The flu is making its way around, and it goes beyond just players. Recycled air on the charter flights spread the illness, and I’ve heard from friends that people working at the games inside GM Place have been getting sick as well. True that it is flu season, but I find the coincidence fairly interesting.

To go even further, players want the schedule to change just a little bit more.

Paul Kelly, the new executive director of the NHL Players Association, also addressed the league’s owners during a late-afternoon session to open the board’s two-day meeting at an elite resort on the Northern California coast. […]

Kelly even said the players would entertain the notion of an 84-game season — allowing every team to play a home-and-home series against one division in the other conference each year — if owners agreed to reduce the number of preseason games. Bettman said the owners could be open to the notion, but it hasn’t been formally proposed yet. [si]

I’m down for that. The idea calls for shaving off some pre-season games, and that wouldn’t be horrible either. As long as the players are up for it, I think it’s a good idea. Just don’t extend the season any further into the spring than it already has. As a fan, I’m always up for more hockey.

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Setting up our Brother MFC-9440CN printer

Had to put Brother in the corner I’ve finally gotten around to getting our Brother MFC-9440CN printer setup. As you may or may not know, we’ve been given the opportunity to test drive this sucker out. And let me tell you, this puppy is a honking piece of machinery. By that, I mean that it’s large and heavy. We don’t have much room to spare in the apartment, so it’s on the floor in the corner of the dinning room/area. It’s secure and slightly raised off the floor, but generally in a good space.

Setting up the printer to work with our iMac was a bit tricky, but that was only because I thought the printer was supposed to have wireless capabilities. The single ethernet port on the back should have been a clue, but I swear someone told me it had wireless. No big deal as I had a spare cable to run from our router to the printer. Once I downloaded the driver for it, we were in business.

My first impression is that it takes a little long to start the actual print out. The data gets zipped straight over, but the time it takes to actually start printing is a bit lagging by about five to ten seconds. Perhaps adding more memory to it would help, but with its size and weight, you think it’d be a tad faster.

Also, the printer tends to make the paper curl just slightly after it’s done with the final product. That could be a symptom of the type of paper, but it’s interesting to note nonetheless. It’s nothing that can be dealt with, but just addressing things that I’ve noticed at first pass.

Printing out something with color in it has been impressive. The resolution is fairly good, and I’m sure I could set the printer to be even better. I just haven’t got that far. On top of that, I tested out the copying capabilities with the same printout. That’s considerably quick with matching quality. Having a printer is one thing, but the fact that you basically have a copy machine is pretty cool. That alone makes me pretty impressed with this unit.

The one thing about having this printer is we weren’t looking to buy one, and that was mainly because we didn’t have a need or a purpose to really use one. We already have a desk jet and scanner, separately, in the house, but it’s a painful process to get it all to work together in a roundabout, ten step process. Now that we have this Brother, all-in-one center, there might be more uses that we can find for it. I know that we were looking to do some photocopying some time back, and it does get a little annoying when you have to go to the post office to get it done. The quality this machine has is very comparable that you would get a five cents per copy at a store.

This is just the first foray into this printer, but at first attempt, I’m pretty impressed. Now we just need a better place we could put this thing. Would love it if someone gave us a nice set of workspace furniture to “try out” that could make the space in our apartment more efficient, wink wink nudge nudge.

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Editors – an end has a start

If you’re like me, shopping around Christmas time means one thing. Monotonous Christmas music. That same song that you hear from one store to the next. If it’s not the same exact song by the same person, it’s another version by whatever artist decided to put out their own version of a Christmas album.

And then, it gets stuck in your head. You can’t get it out. The only thing I find myself able to do is to go Weird Al on the tune and make up my own lyrics when “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” refuses to leave the spaces between my synapses.

This tune by Editors did the trick the other day, so I hope it might help you as well. They are coming to Vancouver soon with Hot Hot Heat on the double bill at the Commodore Ballroom on February 5, 2007.

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This is winter time in Vancouver

Kat Kam - Dec 20, 2007 @ 16:45

I noticed this from work today. The mountains look so incredible this time of year. Rebecca said it best. When it’s summer and everything is green to the point where you can see every single tree on the sides of the mountains, the mountains seem so close. Then when it’s cold and snow capped, they seem so far away.

As long as the snow stays up there, where it’s far away, I’m cool with that.

Thanks to the KatKam for the picture.

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Nuts and dried fruit goes a long way

Christmas thanks at work If there is one thing that everyone should remember, at least during one point in a year, it’s to thank the folks that work hard, behind the scenes, to make things happen. I only say this because when it happens, it makes those people feel good for all the hours of labor that often wouldn’t be possible unless you had people willing to do the task and not demand a lot of credit.

That might sound selfish, but let me be completely honest. I work in radio, and that’s exactly what I do. It’s not a cry for attention or a need to be just as recognized as those people that are on the mic day in and day out. This is more of a plea for the rest of the world, at least those in the working force who rely on people with technical expertise on a daily basis, to just show a token of appreciation.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve had quite the week already, the twelve hour day I just got done with, or the thought of the tasks looming on the horizon. When someone brought the gift basket into our department from the sales folks, it certainly made me feel good, no matter how many fires I have to put out in a day or how much my brain hurts by the time it hits the pillow.

And seriously, if this sounds at all familiar to you, remember to at least thank those people.

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Registration is open for Northern Voice 2008

MooseCamp session run down 6 Registration is now open for Northern Voice 2008!

This is the fourth, annual new media conference that I had the opportunity to attending last February for my first time. The deadline for speaker submissions has come and gone, so the next step is opening the event up for attendees. NV is in February again this year, and the dates have been set for the 22nd and 23rd. Single day registration is $40, and it is $60 for the entire conference, per person.

Also worth mentioning is the pre-conference party that will be happening on the Thursday night before the event at the Tiki Room. It was last year’s party that introduced me to a lot of people who are common friends and faces, so it’s certainly worth attending. Just don’t call it a “networking thing”. That’s so lame.

I’m really looking forward to this year’s conference. With my day job, getting back into the fray of blogging and podcasting can be a bit of a challenge. That’s doesn’t stop me with doing my best to pay attention to what’s going on with the rest of the world, or Vancouver for that matter.

NV07 - Blogging 101 #6

So much has changed in the world of new media, social media, online communities, and so on, just since last year. Last year, Twitter was all the rage. Now we have Facebook. What new things will people be talking about? What has stayed the same?

Still, the forces of blogging and podcasting are still driving hard. Always looking forward to what other people are doing to breathe new life into something “old”.

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Doing the I.T. thing at the South Pole

Here is something completely geeky, but I find it incredibly fascinating. Slashdot had a link to this article with Henry Malmgren, the I.T. manager to the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station[wiki]. It’s a long read, but worth it to see how things operate down there, especially on a much heavier, tech level than most people probably think.

And truth be told, yours truly is working in this realm of responsibility with my day job, so I guess that’s why I find it even more intriguing. Most of the time, the biggest concern is making sure that equipment doesn’t over heat, resulting in failure. This guy, on the other hand, has to make sure everything stays warm enough so things don’t seize up from the -25F temps.

It’s also satisfying to know that the same crap happens no matter where you are in the world.

What takes up most of your time?

Information security has really come to the forefront in our priorities. Right now keeping up with security vulnerabilities and patches and things like that is taking a good third of our time. That’s a change from even two years ago. [computerworld]

It takes a strong person to want to do this type of job that essentially experiences nine months of “winter”, slightly less amount of time seeing the sun rise, and works six days a week, a minimum nine hours a day. Granted that there isn’t a lot of other things to do at the bottom of the world, but you really have to be a solitary individual that enjoys fixing people’s network problems while constantly trying to keep your toes warm.

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The Crazy Canucks #53 – Pittsburgh night in Vancouver

Late to post it here, but we recorded and posted this one on Monday night.

There are only four of us in this episode, but Alanah shall return again soon. In the meantime, we all gathered together before the game tonight against the L.A. Kings to get you some of our thoughts on the last few games that have been.

Record as of this episode: 16-10-2
Northwest Division: 1st
Western Conference: 2nd

We hit the last few games to give our thoughts on how they went, but a lot focus comes back to the recent game in Vancouver against the Penguins. There was a lot of build up to the game, and we all feel like it lived up to be quite the event. We also look ahead to the coming games while looking even further at the new schedule that will take affect next year. We also hear from a listener in Seattle about his thoughts on the NHL expanding more into the Pacific Northwest.

40:48 minutes
The Crazy Canucks

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Ten minutes to sum up the first Vancouver TransitCamp

Session Discussion I really haven’t paid as much attention during the first Vancouver TransitCamp as I probably should have, but there are some people here today that have some wholehearted thoughts and views about transit when it comes to Vancouver. Some sessions have been filled with a lot of great ideas being shared, stories of woe, and elements of tension. That’s what happens when you present arguments in any atmosphere. Disagreements can and will happen, just like buses not showing up when you want them to.

There was a small representation from TransLink here today, and I’m not sure how they took an event like this. It’s freeform and open end topics that allow people to speak freely about whatever topic, transit related, they want.

On the flip side, I also mentioned that there were people here on the other end of the spectrum, fighting against some things that TransLink and related entities are trying to do, such as the Gateway Project.

More importantly, I love the idea of the transit system in Vancouver creating identity. I would love nothing more than some of the t-shirts that I’ve seen here today. The buttons were very creative, but the shirt that DaveO made read, “I remember the days before SkyTrain” was the best, attendee submitted concept that I saw. Also, the guy falling on the track and getting electrocuted was pretty awesome.

In the end, there are a lot of people here with a lot of ideas. Some are crazy, some are not thought through with enough foresight or hindsight. That’s where things like these events, in a BarCamp[wiki] type structure, make sense. When you are allowed to enter an open forum with little to no restrictions as to what you can or can’t say or do, you never know what might develop in the end.