Cut the Chatter, Red Two

Our Saviour comes through big

2010-02-04T23:14:00.001-05:00

This past weekend, in a nutshell, is why the Leafs hired Brian Burke. When he was hired, the masses rejoiced. Our Saviour had arrived and was going to transform the team from a laughing stock to a Cup contender. For a while, he didn't do much of significance, and then he traded two first round draft choices for Phil Kessel. There were mixed emotions about that one – many thought it was a great move, bringing in a young stud goal scorer and giving up nothing. Others said "Nothing? You call giving up two first round draft picks (and a second!) nothing?" When the Leafs started the season with 3 wins in their first 20 games, the possibility of giving a first overall draft pick for Kessel became very real. People started questioning whether Burke was indeed the right guy. And then came January 31, 2010 – the day everything changed.

The biggest complaint about the Leafs this year has been goaltending – in particular, Vesa Toskala. Ever since the day the Leafs acquired Toskala, there has been talk that he's a good backup but wasn't starting goalie material, and he seems to have proven that in his time with the Leafs. Jason Blake, meanwhile, scored 40 goals in 82 games the season before being signed by the Leafs, and 50 goals in 216 games as a Leaf. He was eating up a ton of cap space for not much production. If Burke managed to get rid of the two of them for nothing, I think it would have made the team better – addition by subtraction. Yet Burkie managed to convince Anaheim to take a struggling goalie and an overpaid non-scoring forward for a quality starting goaltender. Of course, Giguère would have been a very high-priced backup in Anaheim anyway, so maybe it's a push for them.

Then there's the Calgary deal. They sent four players to Calgary and got three back. Let's say for the sake of argument that the Leafs are a contending team in, say, four years. What are the odds that all four of Stajan, Mayers, Hagman, and White are on that contending team? Not very high. So the Leafs gave up a bunch of players that don't likely fit into their long-term plans (well, maybe White) for a former Norris trophy nominee (not even two years ago) and two prospects. Is it possible that Phaneuf was a flash-in-the-pan and his best days are behind him? Well, sure it's possible, but he's only 24, so it's not likely. I heard an interview with a Calgary sports report the other day saying that Phaneuf was no longer "fitting in" with his teammates or coaching staff in Calgary, so perhaps a change of scenery is what he needs to turn his game around. Then again, I can think of a number of players who were sent packing from Toronto only to find success elsewhere (happens a lot in baseball – Jeff Kent, Woody Williams, Chris Carpenter...), and not that many who did it the other way. As Bob McCown wrote, "The list of players who have regressed after landing in The Big Smoke is very, very, very long." But even if Phaneuf never wins a Norris, he's still a very good defenseman.

Now, I'm not saying that the Leafs will make the playoffs this year or win the Cup next year because of this deal. But now the Leafs have a stud front-line scorer (age 22), two top-tier defensemen (ages 24 and 31), a goaltender who's been a Stanley Cup and Conn Smythe trophy winner, and a highly-touted young goalie backing him up. That sounds like a pretty good nucleus to build around, and it's a helluva lot better than they had when Mr. Burke was hired.

Rock destroy Knighthawks

2010-01-24T00:07:00.001-05:00

Holy cow, what a game. This is what Rock lacrosse was back in the early 2000's - Lots of offense, strong defense, outstanding goaltending, smart play and just an all-round exciting game. I'm ready to give new Rock owner Jamie Dawick the NLL 2010 Executive of the Year award right now. Can we please just forget that the whole Kloepfer era happened? I don't know who those guys wearing the Knighthawks jerseys were, but they certainly didn't play like the Knighthawks I predicted would win the east this year. John Grant had a terrible game – he was dropping the ball left and right. He should have been given assists on two of the first three Rock goals, because they resulted directly from balls he dropped. Grant took a stupid and unnecessary penalty in the first quarter (as he always does when frustrated), though he managed to keep his head for the rest of the game. Gary Gait was held pointless, as were the Knighthawks, since Craig Point was invisible (see what I did there?). Pat O'Toole made some good stops here and there, but... well let's just say that he didn't have his best game ever.

Garrett Billings, on the other hand, was everywhere, scoring 5 and adding 3 assists. Other than Billings, the Rock goals were quite spread out, as nine other players scored at least once. Bob Watson was unbelievable in goal, and now has a microscopic GAA of 5.47 after 3 games. The Rock defense was also awesome. I remember reading off the names of the Knighthawks on the floor during their first offense shift – I believe my exact words were "Grant, Williams, Gait, Point, and Bomberry. Ouch." But those five players were held to a combined total of three points. As I said Watson was outstanding at stopping the shots that got to him, but there were an awful lot of shots that were never made because the Rock defense knocked the ball away, grabbed it out of the air, or just prevented the Knighthawks from getting open enough to even take a shot.

It wasn't that rough of a game, until near the end when it was pretty much over anyway, and even then it was only two players that caused all the roughness, both of whom are named Evans. Rochester had nine penalties all night, and only one wasn't by a guy named Evans – that being Grant's roughing call in the first. Shawn got three minors and a fighting major, and Scott got four minors. In addition, both should have been given at least unsportsmanlike conduct penalties, since they wouldn't stop chirping at the refs, even after sitting in the penalty box. I get the two of them confused – since there's two players on the team named "Evans", their first initial should be on their uniforms as well, like the Rock did with the Sandersons – oh, wait. Anyway, one of them asked the penalty box door guy to open the door a couple of times so he could go back out and yell at the ref some more. Lucky for him the door guy didn't do it – leaving the penalty box before your penalty is over gets you a misconduct penalty and an automatic game suspension. I almost expected one of them to pull a Pat Coyle and deck the ref.

There are players in pro sports who are just pests. They're irritating and get on your nerves, but are undoubtedly great players. Scott Stevens was one, as is Sean Avery. Tie Domi as well, though his skill level was lower. In lacrosse you've got your Evans brothers, Mark Steenhuis, and Brian Langtry – Kim Squire was another one early in his career. Quite honestly, I find John Tavares is like that too. In many of these cases, you hate playing against them, but would give anything to get them on your team – Tavares, Stevens and Langtry are great examples of this. For me, the Evans brothers, like Avery, do not fall into this last category. They're great players, no question, and they're passionate and they play hard – attributes that I like in athletes. But playing hard doesn't mean punching people in the head when trying to get the ball from them. It doesn't mean crosschecking the goalie. It doesn't mean hitting a player into the boards from behind and then throwing up your hands as if to say "What did I do?" when you get a penalty for it. And it certainly doesn't mean whining to the refs about every single call that goes against your team. Playing hard and being passionate is great and all that, but it has to be combined with sportsmanship, and I didn't see a lot of that from the Evans boys tonight. Having said that, full props to both of them for taking part in the customary handshakes after the game – I have seen other players lose it completely near the end of a blowout and are either escorted off the floor or simply walk off without shaking hands. I guess there's some sportsmanship in there.

At the end of the game, the Rock announcer said that the Rock would be playing "this same Knighthawks team" in Rochester next week, and I said to my friend "He's wrong. That game will not feature the same Knighthawks team. And if it does, Paul Gait should be fired." The Rock ran roughshod over the Blazers in week 1, only to see a very different Boston team the next week. It will largely be the same players playing, but I suspect the Knighthawks of next week's game will be quite different from the guys who played tonight. That will be an entertaining game, just as this one was.

Jim Veltman – Mammoth Head Coach?

2010-01-19T21:29:00.001-05:00

The Mammoth fired their head coach the other day after a 0-2 start, and GM Steve Govett, who's never coached a lacrosse game in his life, has announced that he will be taking over as coach. We'll see how long that lasts. But if he's looking for a new head coach that does have some lacrosse coaching experience, former Rock captain Jim Veltman is available. The Mammoth had some interest in Veltman a couple of years ago, asking him to retire to join their coaching staff. He declined, played one more year, and then retired to join the Rock's coaching staff. The entire staff other than Veltman was then unceremoniously fired a couple of months into the next year, and it was announced that Veltman would join the front office in an unspecified position. As far as I can remember, the Rock have never mentioned his name again.

Veltman has never been a head coach at the NLL level, but he was one of Glenn Clark's assistant coaches for a short while. He has been coach (for a while, a player-coach) of the OLA's Ajax-Pickering Rock for a while, so he certainly has coaching experience.

If Veltman is hired by the Mammoth, just remember folks – you heard it here first.

Book Review: Memories of the Future Vol. 1

2010-01-17T22:23:00.001-05:00

Star Trek: The Next Generation is one of my all-time favourite TV shows. I watched it religiously when it was on in the late 80's and early 90's and I bought each season on DVD as soon as it was released. I also enjoy former TNG cast member Wil Wheaton's writing, so imagine my excitement when he started writing reviews of TNG episodes a couple of years ago. He wrote an article about every ten years or so – OK, it was more often than that, but that's how it seemed when you were patiently (or not) waiting for the next one to come out. He posted links to them on his blog, and then gathered them all up, did a few more, and put them in a book called Memories of the Future. There will be at least two volumes; each covering one half of the first season of TNG; only Volume One has been released. I don't know how much further he'll go - I asked him on twitter if he was planning on continuing the books or podcasts right up to season 7, but he never responded. Geez, you get 1.6 million followers and suddenly you don't respond to questions? Bastard. I'd respond to you, @wilw.

Anyway, this book is a must for TNG fans. Wil rips each episode apart, telling you what was good and what was bad, which is fun to read because there were a number of really bad episodes in the first season. There is a lot of humour in the episode recaps and technobabble, and I found the behind-the-scenes memories really interesting.

Wil also gives some insight into the whole TV industry and how it works – like when person X is writes a script for an episode, but then their original script is hacked and changed without their knowledge by someone else who doesn't get credit. By the end of the process, the writing of this really bad episode is still credited to person X, who really had nothing to do with how bad it is. It seems unfair, but that's how it works. Wil pulls no punches, naming names on who were the worst writers, directors, and guest actors that he worked with.

Wil is very complimentary to the other cast members of TNG, particularly Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner, who are indeed excellent actors. One person he's not very complimentary to, however, is himself. He seems convinced that he was the worst actor on the set, and that a large contributing factor to that is his youth. A number of times he mentions that if he wasn't such a self-absorbed teenager at the time, he might have done a better job. Of course "self-absorbed teenager" is a redundancy, and Wil himself does acknowledge this at one point, when he tells the story of apologizing to (I think) Patrick Stewart for being the way he was when he was a teenager and not appreciating things as he should have. Stewart tells him that everyone at the time understood that he was a teenager, and that that attitude came with the territory. Of course, some of this self-deprecation could just be modesty – he only makes a point of mentioning when he did a lousy job. Perhaps there were a number of episodes where he thought he did a great job, but he decided to keep the "Wow, my performance was really great in this episode" thoughts to himself.

Wil was also doing weekly podcasts called "Memories of the Futurecast", where he would read part of his review of one episode a week. In many cases, he'd expand on the stuff in the book, or mention memories that had come up since the book was written or that he didn't include in the book for whatever reason. Those were pretty cool too – Wil is a good storyteller and is also pretty funny, though I find sometimes that the funny loses steam fairly quickly. In one or two of the podcasts he mimicked a conversation between himself and some pretend person - the first two or three lines were pretty funny, but then he kept going and the next seven or eight lines were just not. More is not always better. It's kind of like my seven-year-old: "if I say or do something and daddy laughs, then obviously if I do it every ten seconds for the next hour, it remains funny." Wil doesn't go that far, but there have been a few times where he starts one of these jokes or "conversations" and after the second or third line I think to myself "OK, that was funny, but stop there. Please just stop there." and he doesn't. These long drawn-out jokes don't appear in the book though, just the podcast.

The one thing I don't like about the book is the language – there's a fair bit of cursing and some sexual language and stuff like that. This is true of all of his podcasts actually, he's quite the little potty mouth. It doesn't bother me directly - I'm no language prude, and some parts of this book are quite hilarious because of the language. Example: when talking about Q giving them the whole Farpoint thing as a test, Wil explains why this will not be a problem: "in Starfleet, we save the universe and fuck the green alien chick before breakfast. We got this one." My problem is that my 10- and 7-year-old sons are both TNG fans (ironically, Wesley Crusher is their favourite character along with Data) and I think they would get a big kick out of some of these stories, but it's just not appropriate for kids that age to read about anyone fucking green alien chicks, or any other colour of alien chick for that matter. Perhaps I can find some stories that the boys would like and read parts to them.

As I said, if you're a TNG fan, you owe it to yourself to check this book out, or at the very least, find the reviews through his blog. I am anxiously awaiting volume 2 and any subsequent volumes.

Weirdest. Lacrosse game. Ever.

2010-01-16T16:44:00.001-05:00

The 2010 Rock home opener was last night at the ACC, and it was a great game – it was very physical, the score was close throughout, and it went to overtime. There was a lot of fighting and tons of penalties. It was also rather weird, in that there were a number of things that happened that I don't think I've ever seen before, but more on that later. The Rock won it 8-7, with rookie Garrett Billings scoring the winner in OT after a beautiful behind-the-back pass from Colin Doyle. It was very nice to Doyle back in a Rock uniform after being traded away three years ago in one of the worst trades in Rock history.

Doyle is known for being a scorer and team leader, and you will never find a better clutch player anywhere, but he's a pretty tough dude as well. He doesn't fight much – I'm sure his coaches won't generally let him since he can't score from the penalty box – but it happens, and five minutes into his Rock return, he got involved (and held his own, I thought) with Boston's Paul Dawson, who's known to be a good fighter. Of course, Boston losing Paul Dawson for nine minutes (roughing + facemasking + fighting major) is a little easier for the Blazers to take than Toronto losing Doyle for nine. But after Doyle and Dawson were in the box, and before the next whistle was even blown, four other fights broke out around the benches. The refs let them all go until the players decided that they had had enough and just walked away, and then all eight players were given game misconducts. Luckily for the Rock, Boston lost league MVP Dan Dawson and a couple of other offensive guys, while two of the players the Rock lost weren't likely to see much floor time anyway. The unmistakeable message from the Rock was "You will not touch our captain." I am not a fan of fighting in lacrosse or hockey, and I think starting four fights was a bit extreme, but I did stand and applaud as the Rock players headed to the dressing room after standing up for their teammate and captain.

As rare as a Colin Doyle fight is, there were a number of things in that game I don't think I've ever seen in a lacrosse game before – and I've seen every Rock home game but one in the last nine years:

Four separate fights on the floor at the same time
Eight players ejected at once
Coincident facemasking penalties (I'm not sure I've ever seen facemasking penalties at all, actually)
Goaltender leaving the crease penalty
Unsportsmanlike diving penalty
Dan Dawson fighting – Dawson pounded the snot out of Pat McCready, who's a decent fighter himself. I suppose being 6-foot-5 and consistently punching downwards helps

The first quarter alone must have taken 45 minutes to play. Things settled down after that, mainly because neither team could afford to lose more players. Losing Dan Dawson really hurt the Blazers offense, while the Rock defense was decimated – all four Rock players tossed were defenders. There were times when both Doyle and Manning were playing D - I figured that they just got caught on the floor during a quick transition, but then realized that they had to play defense because almost half of their defenders were in the dressing room.

Bob Watson now has a GAA of less than 7.00 after two games, which is pretty unbelievable. He made some pretty key saves in OT, but throughout the game, Cosmo was even better. If not for some of Cosmo's acrobatics, this game would have been over long before it was.

So the game was pretty weird, but in actual fact, the whole Rock experience was a little different too. Two for the Show were not there (sorry, have to dry my tears before continuing... (snif) OK, I'm better now), and for the first time ever, none of the players (save Whipper) had nicknames. The attendance was only about 11,000 – I was surprised at how low that was. I was expecting 14-15,000 or so. They did have the same "hostess" as last year – the pretty girl who gives stuff away, and she had a helper this year. I question the wisdom of asking fans trivia questions for prizes during play, which caused me to miss a goal, but then I suppose that's my own fault for not watching the game. The fact that I let that draw my attention away from the game it itself a little weird, considering it was a really good, albeit weird, game.

Roberto Alomar and Richard Nixon

2010-01-15T00:27:00.001-05:00

On my way home from work today, I was listening to a Prime Time Sports podcast from the other day, the day after the Baseball Hall of Fame announcement. During the show, Richard Griffin of the Toronto Star made perhaps the dumbest comparison in the history of, well, anything. They were discussing the fact that some players are not voted in to the Hall for years and then are voted in, when nothing changed in the meantime to suddenly make them HoF-worthy. Griffin said:

Richard Nixon in 1960 was no different than the guy in '68. He was not elected in '60, he got to be President of the United States in 1968.

He's comparison the election of a President with the selection of a player into the Hall of Fame. This is not just an apples-to-oranges comparison, this is apples to Volkswagens. And I don't mean Beetles, because they're sort of round like an apple, I'm talking about a Touareg or one of those big old bus things. And one that's not red. Or green. Or yellow.

I don't know what the population of the US was in 1960 or 1968, but it was well over a hundred million, most of whom were eligible to vote. A large percentage of them are less than fully informed on the issues and where the candidates stand on things. There are about 500 professional baseball writers who can vote for the HoF, and they all follow baseball in great detail because it's their job. You and I may not agree with them all of the time, but they are better informed on baseball than the majority of voters are on politics.
When you vote for the President, you choose exactly zero or one of the candidates. There are only a handful of candidates, and usually only two that have any real hope of winning a Presidential election. Not only will people vote for you if they want you to be President, but they may vote for you if they don't want the other guy to be President. Perhaps people thought Kennedy was a better choice for President in 1960, but that Nixon was a better choice than Hubert Humphrey in 1968. The HoF voters can vote for any number of eligible candidates, so voting for one doesn't automatically mean that you can't vote for someone else. If you think Andre Dawson and Tim Raines are both worthy, you can vote for both of them. If you don't think Dawson is worthy, you don't vote for Raines to try to keep Dawson out.
You elect a President for what you think he is going to do. You elect a baseball player to the HoF for what he's already done.
Does he really think that Richard Nixon was no different in 1968 than in 1960? He may not have served as a Senator or Congressman during that time, but things happened during his life that changed who he was. Plus the country changed, so even if he wasn't right for the country in 1960, he may have been in 1968. None of that means anything when electing someone to the HoF. What Alomar did during his career will not change between now and a year from now.

I'm not sure what surprises me more – that a professional journalist would make such a meaningless comparison, or the fact that none of the three other professional journalists / broadcasters on the show called him on it.

Rock 2010 season opener

2010-01-09T22:17:00.001-05:00

Just watched the Toronto Rock – Boston Blazers game on TSN2. Dave Randorf and Brian Shanahan did the announcing, and did a fine job. Randorf isn't that familiar with lacrosse or the NLL, but is doing a far better play-by-play job than many other lacrosse neophytes I've heard in the past. The video is very clear (apparently in HD, though I don't have HD), and the whole thing is just very professional – much better than the Score did a few years ago. After a couple of years without it, it's great to see Rock games on TV again. All the games are streamed live on the internet, but this is just orders of magnitude better.

One thing I hate about watching lacrosse on TV is that the announcers always feel like they have to explain all the rules – over and back, shot clock, crease violations, stuff like that, during every game. I understand that lacrosse is a niche sport and they're trying to build interest among those watching who may be unfamiliar with it, but it's still annoying to those of us who already know it. Another thing I hate is that lacrosse doesn't get the high-paying advertisers, so we get lots of the short-infomercial type commercials – MicroForce, Slap Chop (we actually have one of these, with a different name, and it works really well), Palm Wallet... (Having said that, the second half of the game had less of these than the first half.) Of course, lacrosse is on TV rarely enough that I'm not going to complain about it. Uh, except now.

First Rock goal of the season: rookie Creighton Reid? Unassisted? After a bad play by Dan Dawson? What planet are we on again?

Rock rookie Garrett Billings scored four in the first half of his first ever NLL game and one more in the 4th. Hominuck, LeBlanc, Reid and Billings each scored in their first Rock game. Beautiful.

Remember when I said that the return of Colin Doyle might help Blaine Manning rebound from last year? Manning has a hat-trick in the first half and another goal in the 4th, while Doyle had a goal and seven assists.

Troy Cordingley said at half-time that they're doing all the "little things" well, and one of the things he specifically mentioned is getting on and off the floor quickly. How did he manage to coach Josh Sanderson in Calgary last year? Sanderson is an outstanding player, but during his time in Toronto, he was always brutal for taking his time getting off the floor.

Other notes:

The edges of the carpet looks like they don't fit near the edges. The time-delay video of the conversion from ice to lacrosse floor was very cool.
There were an awful lot of empty seats right behind the benches.
Boston should have won their challenge in the second quarter – the ball didn't cross the line before the player stepped on the crease line, so the goal shouldn't have counted.
Is Troy "potty mouth" Cordingley really a first-grade teacher? Wow.
A couple of times Boston players looked like they wanted to fight – kudos to the Toronto players for not responding.
Both Boston goalies are former (very capable) backups for Watson in Toronto. Watson outplayed them both, though Cosmo really pulled it together in the second half.
The NLL has a new stats provider this year, but they had problems in the second half of the game. Last year, Pointstreak was usually a couple of minutes behind the game, but right now, ten minutes after the game ended, the web site still says it's 12-5 in the third, and has for half an hour or so.

Anyway, it was a great game, and it was surprising how different the Rock team looks compared to last year. I'm sure it's not entirely because of Doyle's return, but they seemed to be brimming with confidence, and playing smart. Looking forward to the home opener next Friday!

Oooooooh, Roberto!

2010-01-07T18:46:00.001-05:00

The baseball writers of America put their heads together recently and came up with this year's list of inductees into baseball's Hall of Fame. The HOF is a place that honours what should be "the best baseball players of all time", but the players in the Hall are more accurately described as "the most popular baseball players among baseball writers". For the most part, the lists are the same, but there are some players not in the Hall who should be, and some who are in but shouldn't be. I wrote about the mystifying voting procedure last summer.

Anyway, the only player to get inducted this year is Andre Dawson, who I think is deserving. It took eight years for Dawson to get in, and when asked about that, he came up with this bit of brilliance: "If you're a Hall of Famer you're eventually going to get in"....mmmmmmkay. It's actually the other way around, Andre – if you get in, then you're a Hall of Famer. On the other hand, if you're not a Hall of Famer and you get in, then you are a Hall of Famer. Reductio ad absurdum. QED.

Of course, it's more interesting to talk about those who didn't get in than those who did. Bert Blyleven missed again, this time only by five votes. I'm not sure about whether or not Blyleven deserves to be there. He was a very good pitcher, no question, but he only won 20 games once, and only made the All-Star team twice in a twenty-two year career. He also lost fifteen or more games seven times. Blyleven's numbers remind me of Don Sutton – when Sutton was inducted into the HOF in 1998, many said that he didn't deserve to be there. The argument was that Sutton was a very good pitcher for a very long time, but I don't think that's what the Hall of Fame is for. Sutton also won 20 games only once, and Blyleven looks the same – long career, good numbers with some great years, but never outstanding.

Roberto Alomar, on the other hand, was outstanding. He played in twelve consecutive All-Star games and won 10 Gold Glove awards. He only played in Toronto for five years (was it really only five?), but was one of the most talented players (arguably the most talented position player) ever to wear the uniform. He could hit, he took walks, didn't strike out a lot, he could run, he could steal bases, and boy, could he play defense. Watching Roberto play second was just a joy – I remember going to games at Skydome with a bunch of friends and mimicking the Alberto shampoo commercials when he did something spectacular: "Oooooooh, Roberto!". He only missed by eight votes – you might say he was within spitting distance of getting in (I'm afraid I can't take credit for that one). I'd love to hear the voters who didn't vote for him explain why not, but he's pretty much a lock for next year.

As for the spitting incident itself, there are writers (Marty Noble is one such ~~moron~~ writer) who have admitted that they have not forgiven Alomar for that, although the umpire who was involved has. Look at the numbers people, look at the All-Star appearances, the Gold Gloves, how important he was to the teams he played for (if not for Roberto Alomar, the Jays would still be waiting for their first World Series), how he was the best second baseman in baseball for a decade or more, and how he lowered the ERAs of all kids of pitchers thanks to his defensive prowess. And after a sixteen year career of that calibre, you're going to deny him Cooperstown because of a one-second loss of control? A loss of judgement? A brief, sort of periodic total breakdown of judgement? Some kind of judgement failure? Some kind of failure to, you know, have judgement? (Sorry, faded into a Tragically Hip thing there)

Other players who missed out: Barry Larkin, Lee Smith, Jack Morris, and Tim Raines. Larkin and Raines should definitely be there – I might even have put them in before Dawson. Smith isn't a lock but I would support him, and Morris is in the same boat as Blyleven and Sutton – very good for a long time, but probably not HOF material. Having said that, I'd put Morris in before Blyleven or Sutton – and Sutton is already there. Oh, and Mark McGwire didn't make it either, but he never will. Even without the whole steroid issue (which should be a non-issue since he took them before steroids were illegal in baseball), he just wasn't a good enough all-around player to make the HOF. In case you're curious, I think Bonds and Clemens should be in (they were both locks before they ever touched steroids), and McGwire, Sosa, and Rose should not.

In other baseball news, one of the best pitchers of the last twenty years retired on Wednesday. When Randy Johnson was on his game, he was right up there with Clemens and Maddux as the best in baseball. Nobody had a nastier stare, and the fact that he's taller than half the NBA made him even more intimidating. Any season where a pitcher has 20 or more wins and 6 or fewer losses and had an ERA under 2.50 is accurately described as incredible – and Johnson had three such seasons. Ten All-Star games, five Cy Youngs, World Series co-MVP, even a no-hitter and a perfect game. And given the era in which he pitched and the fact that he was a power pitcher, it's amazing that he was not even mentioned in the Mitchell Report, and I have never heard any suspicions of him using steroids. A guaranteed first-ballot Hall of Famer. Of course, I thought Roberto Alomar was too.

Meaningful statistic FAIL

2010-01-06T09:17:00.001-05:00

I looked up my 2009 running stats on the Nike+ website this morning and saw this:

The comparison under the total is technically true, but is off by two orders of magnitude. Even if the Leaning Tower of Pisa was 6 kilometers high, this would still be true. It's like saying "With $1 million, you could buy at least forty iPods!"

Privacy on Facebook

2010-01-03T07:35:00.001-05:00

Attention Facebook readers: You might want to click the "View Original Post" link at the bottom of this note. Facebook sometimes messes up the formatting. Irony: Writing about Facebook in an article available on Facebook and telling people to go somewhere else to read it.

Facebook is one of the world's most popular websites, with over 350 million users. An awful lot of those people share all kinds of information on Facebook that they wouldn't normally share with people, and a lot of them seem to have forgotten who they've added as friends when they update their status. I've seen people who post status messages like "Woohoo! Got laid tonight!", forgetting that mom, Aunt Mary, and the boss are all reading this. Privacy, or the lack thereof, has always been a big issue with Facebook. Thanks to some recent changes to their privacy policy and settings, an awful lot of people are sharing an awful lot of information with the world that they probably don't really want to share, and may not even realize that they are sharing.

Gail and I attended a "Facebook 101" seminar at a local school a couple of months ago. A local (Oakville) parent started looking into Facebook privacy, and was appalled at (a) the amount of information available by default to the world, (b) the number of people who don't know this, and (c) the number of kids joining Facebook and not considering the ramifications of what they post. He started doing this seminar so that parents unfamiliar with Facebook (and even those who are) were informed about the privacy aspects. There were a number of parents there who had older kids than ours, and whose kids were on Facebook. Some of them didn't really have a good idea what Facebook was or what their kids used it for. After the meeting, I checked on my privacy settings. I was aware of most of the information given in the seminar, and I had already changed my privacy settings, so I didn't have to make many changes. I then started poking around my friends' settings and their friends and so on just to see how much information I could glean about these unknown people, to see if what this guy had told us was really true, or if he was more of an alarmist, pointing out the extreme cases. Fairly quickly, I came across a fair amount of information about people I don't know, the best example of which was the page of my manager's teenage daughter, who I have never met. Her privacy settings were set wide open. Despite the fact that I was not her friend, I could see who her friends are, pictures of her, where she went to school, and even her her email address, home address, and home and cell phone numbers. I immediately emailed my boss to tell him, and a day or two later her page had been locked down. Even my very limited research told me that this was not an isolated case, and that the guy running the seminar was not an alarmist at all.

Facebook has recently changed its privacy policy as well as the privacy settings. The settings are much more straightforward than before, and it seems easier to lock down your personal information, but there are three huge issues with Facebook's privacy policy:

As I said, it's easier to lock down your personal information - or at least it's easier to lock down the information that Facebook allows you to lock down. There are now some pieces of information (for example, your networks, sex, what city you live in, and your list of friends) that Facebook now considers public information, which means that you cannot prevent people from seeing that information. It is more than a little disturbing to me that Facebook has decided that they have the right to decide that for you and won't allow you to change it.
The old default security settings weren't bad, for the most part – your friends and people in your network could generally see most of your information. There were some pieces of information that were available to everyone, but not everything was. But the second big change was to the default security settings – the new settings mean that by default, everything is globally visible. If you had modified your security settings before the change those settings were kept, so security-conscious people didn't notice any difference. But the vast majority of Facebook users had never touched their security settings, and are now sharing all of their information with the world.
When you install a Facebook application, the application developers get access to all of your information, even if you've marked it as private. Even worse, the application developers get access to all of your friends' information as well. (This has always been true, but you used to be able to turn it off. Now you can't.) This means that every time you install an application on Facebook, my information (assuming I'm on your friends list) is sent to the developer, and not only do I not have any control over that, I am not even informed of it. The application developers are then free to do whatever they like with the information. Technically they are subject to Facebook's terms of service, which says that they are not allowed to use the data in any manner inconsistent with the user's privacy information, but there's no way for Facebook to police that.

If you don't like these rules, you can just delete your account, right? Well, sort of, but that still doesn't solve the problem. First off, Facebook doesn't give you any easy way to delete your account. There is a way to "deactivate" your account, but there's no "delete" button there. Apparently if you search hard enough you can find a way to delete it, but does Facebook actually delete your information from their servers, or just make it harder to find? Secondly, even if they do delete it, they still have backups of everything, so the information is all still available to them. Thirdly, (and this isn't specific to Facebook) if someone on the internet can see your data, then they can save it to their hard disk, and nothing Facebook does can delete that. At the seminar I mentioned, the guy showed pictures that were taken at a frat party back in the 90's, where two obviously drunk guys were standing at a party next to a stand-up cardboard cut-out of Hilary Clinton, and one of them had his hand on her breast. That guy, years later, became a speechwriter for Barack Obama, and when that photo re-appeared, he got into some serious trouble, jeopardizing not only his job but his entire career. Think about that when you post those pictures from last weekend's kegger.

I read a comment online somewhere that said something like "Facebook shouldn't be sharing information about their customers". Another commenter responded succinctly and summed up everything: "You are not Facebook's customer. Advertisers are Facebook's customers. You are the product." The more public information Facebook has on you, the more they can offer advertisers.

The easiest rule of thumb for internet security is: if you ever put anything on the internet, whether through Facebook, YouTube, a blog, a message board, or even email, whether it's information, pictures, or videos, whether it's intended to be publicly visible or not, you must always assume that it will be accessible by everyone - forever. Facebook is proving this – if you post information or pictures on Facebook and expect that only the people you allow to see it will be able to see it, you're wrong, and it's not because of some glitch that may or may not come up in the future, and it's not because someone might squirrel the information away and publish it themselves later. It's because Facebook is less concerned with your privacy than with how much they can make by selling it.

Here are a couple of related articles: one from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and one from Jason Calacanis.

NLL 2010 season preview

2010-01-01T22:08:00.002-05:00

Lacrosse season is almost upon us once again! Here are my predictions for each NLL team – I will revisit this posting at the end of the season to see how I did.

Attention Facebook readers: You might want to click the "View Original Post" link at the bottom of this note. Facebook sometimes messes up the formatting.

East

Boston Blazers

In: Matt Abbott, Dave Cutten, Ryan Hotaling, Mike Kirk, John Ortolani, Matt Smalley, Mike Stone

Out: D Carter Livingstone, F Jay Thorimbert, D Dilan Graham, D Curtis Ptolemy, F Bryan Bendig, T Jason Bloom

Burning question: Will the Blazers suffer the sophomore jinx after an impressive inaugural season?

Comments: With Cosmo in net and no significant changes, I don't see any reason why the Blazers shouldn't at least contend for a playoff spot in the East again this year. However, I think the Knighthawks and Rock improved more during the off-season.

Prediction: Fifth

Buffalo Bandits

In: D Chris Driscoll, F Frank Resetarits, F AJ Shannon, F Jon Harasym, D Darryl Gibson, G Angus Goodleaf

Out: D Pat McCready, D Clay Hill, G Mike Thompson, D Phil Sanderson, D Rich Kilgour, F Cory Bomberry, F Brian Croswell, GM Darris Kilgour (though he's still the coach)

Burning question: Will Tavares ever age?

Comments: For a team that went to the division final last year, there are a lot of changes on the Bandits roster. Mike Thompson was a better-than-average backup goalie, but he's gone and they have a rookie backing up Ken Montour – if Montour falters at all, the Bandits might have a problem. Losing Sanderson, Kilgour, and McCready will hurt, but Chris Driscoll was one of my favourite Rock players over the last few years, and Darryl Gibson is a solid defender as well. The Bandits have been so good for so long now that it's hard to count them out as long as Tavares and Steenhuis are around.

Prediction: Third

Orlando Titans

In: D Mike Ammann, D Steve Ammann, D Michael Evans, F Dan Hardy, F Ryan Learn, F Kenny Nims

Out: F Jamie Rooney, T Keevin Galbraith, both Titans fans

Burning question: The Titans went to the finals last year, and are likely to be in contention this year as well, but will anyone in Orlando care?

Short term prediction: Second

Long term prediction: The Titans will last a year, maybe two, in Orlando before either moving again or folding for good.

Philadelphia Wings

In: F Dan Teat, F Bill McGlone, F Kevin Huntley, F John Christmas, D Bob Snider, F Jason Crosbie, F Josh Sims

Out: F Athan Iannucci, F Merrick Thomson (for a while), F A.J. Shannon, D Rob Van Beek, F Jon Harasym, F David Mitchell, D George Castle, D Benson Erwin, T Matt Bocklet

Burning question: Does gaining Dan Teat and Jason Crosbie make up for losing Athan Iannucci and Merrick Thomson? (Answer: no.) Bonus question: Iannucci will miss the entire 2010 season, but will he ever again live up to the expectations he set in 2008?

Comments: If the Wings were counting on Athan Iannucci to help them rebound from a lacklustre 2009, they had to change their tune during the offseason when he announced that he would miss all of 2010. They picked up a couple of scoring threats, notably Dan Teat, but did nothing to help their defense. Maybe they're hoping to win a lot of 21-18 games. Then just before the new year arrived, the Wings put Merrick Thomson on the Physically Unable to Perform list, and haven't said how long he's out for. That's bad news for Wings fans.

Prediction: Sixth

Rochester Knighthawks

In: F John Grant, F Scott Evans, F Andrew Potter, G Aaron Bold, F Peter Jacobs, D Regy Thorpe, GM Curt Styres

Out: D Sandy Chapman, G Ben Every, D Troy Bonterre, D Pat Cougevan, F Ken Millin, F Dean Hill, D Bill Greer, GM Regy Thorpe

Burning questions: Is Grant fully recovered? Is the Gary Gait experiment over?

Comments: After a disastrous start, the 2009 Knighthawks (minus John Grant and Scott Evans) made the playoffs, losing to the Titans in overtime. Adding Grant and Evans should bring the Knighthawks back into contention. Then again, the 2008 Knighthawks, with Grant and Evans, didn't make the playoffs.

Prediction: First

Toronto Rock

In: F Colin Doyle, D Phil Sanderson, D Pat McCready, D Sandy Chapman, F Mike Hominuck, D Creighton Reid, D Brendon Doran, D Anthony Lackey, F Garrett Billings, F Stephan LeBlanc, D Drew Petcoff, F Kim Squire, GM Terry Sanderson, coach Troy Cordingley

Out: F Lewis Ratcliff, F Luke Wiles, D Chris Driscoll, F Craig Conn, F Matt Carroll, D Peter Lough, F Michael Fleming, D Chad Thompson, F Mark Scherman, F Bill McGlone, F Jason Clark, F Jason Crosbie, GM Mike Kloepfer, coach Jamie Batley

Burning question: I had this entry already written when the Rock had to go and trade for Colin Doyle, so now I have to write it all again. The original burning question was "Who are all these new people and why are they no better than last year?" Now it's: "Can the Rock find the old Blaine Manning now that Colin Doyle is leading the search party?", although having just gone through the In and Out lists, the "who are all these new people" part still definitely applies.

Comments: Can't tell the players, or the captain, coach, GM, or owner, without a program. Stepping up the defense (which they have definitely done) was absolutely necessary, but someone other than Colin Doyle has to score goals. Blaine Manning has dropped in productivity (both in numbers and visibility on the floor) since Doyle left, so he needs to find his way again. If Watson gets hurt, the Rock are in deep trouble in net – I just don't think Steve Dietrich is up to the task of being a starting NLL goalie any more.

As much as I love seeing Doyle back, I wouldn't call the Rock a lock for the playoffs quite yet. Four of last year's top six scorers (Ratcliff, Wiles, Crosbie, and Conn) are gone. If Doyle's offense replaces Ratcliff's, and Hominuck replaces Crosbie, we're still down over 100 points from Wiles and Conn. Then again, Blaine Manning may rebound from a few off seasons with the return of Doyle, and Garrett Billings is a highly rated scoring prospect. Kim Squire's career was cut short due to personal problems off the floor, but if he's managed to exorcise those demons, he can be a very exciting player to watch. The defense is a lot better, but the goalie tandem of Watson and Dietrich is probably the oldest in the history of the NLL.

Prediction: Fourth

West

Calgary Roughnecks

In: T Rob Van Beek, F Carlton Schuss, D Rob Kirkby, D Craig Gelsvik, F Craig Conn, G Chris Levis, coach Dave Pym

Out: F Curt Malawsky, F Kyle Goundrey, D Greg Hinman, D Kyle Couling, G Pat Campbell, coach Troy Cordingley, assistant coach Terry Sanderson

Burning question: Where Terry goes, Josh has been sure to follow, and so GM Brad Banister probably has Terry Sanderson's phone number blocked. Is Josh even allowed to talk to his dad?

Comments: Malawsky is now an assistant coach, but they've got Craig Conn to replace him, and they've also brought defenders Rob Kirkby and Craig Gelsvik back from retirement. But it's rare that a team lose the head coach (and an assistant coach) in the offseason following a championship win. We'll see how much of Calgary's success from last year came from the coach. I suspect a fair bit of it did, but this is still a very talented team.

Prediction: First

Colorado Mammoth

In: F Ilija Gajic, F Alex Gajic, F Chad Culp, F Cory Conway, F Cliff Smith, D Ryan McFayden, D Kevin Unterstein, D Matt Wilson, F Shaun Dhaliwal, F Peter Veltman, T Brad Richardson

Out: G Gee Nash, F Dan Carey, D Jim Moss, F Gavin Prout, F Andrew Potter, D Ray Guze, D Matt Leveque, F Tyler Crompton, F Matt Danowski, F Chris Gill, F Gary Rosyski, T Tim Booth, T Bryan Safarik, T Mike Ward

Burning question: How will the Mammoth deal with the loss of the only captain in team history? Bonus question: Are there any more Gajic brothers?

Comments: Lots of changes for the Mammoth. Alex Gajic and Cliff Smith were Colorado's first round draft picks. But the Mammoth weren't happy with having two of the top five picks, they parted with the only captain in team history to get the #2 overall pick Ilija Gajic.

This might be the first step in a rebuilding process for Colorado, who had six years of dominance before finishing with their first-ever sub-.500 season last year. It's not like the team will suck this year, but I don't see them finishing any higher than third.

Prediction: Fourth

Edmonton Rush

In: T Brodie Merrill, F Gavin Prout, F Derek Malawsky, F Ryan Powell, D Scott Stewart, D Ryan Ward, G Matt Disher, GM/coach Derek Keenan

Out: F Ryan Benesch, D Callum Crawford, D Scott Self, F Dan Teat, GM/coach Bob Hamley

Burning question: Is this the year the Rush finally don't suck?

Comments: Adding Merrill, Prout, Powell, and Malawsky certainly adds to the possibility of a non-last-place finish – this would only be the second time in five seasons.

Prediction: Third

Minnesota Swarm

In: F Ryan Benesch, D Scott Self, D Callum Crawford, D Alex Turner, F Sean Thomson, F Brock Boyle

Out: D Ryan Ward, F Chad Culp, D Ian Rubel

Burning question: The Swarm have been a pretty decent team over the last few years - even winning the East two years ago – but have never won a playoff game. Is this the year?

Prediction: Fifth

Washington Stealth

In: F Luke Wiles, F Lewis Ratcliff, T Tyler Codron, F Joel Degarno

Out: F Colin Doyle, G Aaron Bold

Burning question: Where the fuck is Everett, Washington?

Comments: Colin Doyle tied Josh Sanderson's league assists record (though he was later eclipsed by Sanderson and Dan Dawson) and won the league scoring title, and Rhys Duch set a new rookie scoring record, but overall, 2009 was a disappointing season for the Stealth. The Stealth now have Lewis Ratcliff and Luke Wiles but lost Doyle – numbers-wise, this is a net positive for Washington, but losing a player like Doyle is more than just numbers. Still, I think the Stealth are in pretty good shape for 2010.

Prediction: Second

Long Term Prediction: The Stealth had a decent team last year but couldn't draw flies in San Jose, which has a population of almost a million people. So they moved to Everett, a town of about 100,000 people 30 miles north of Seattle. This is like the Rock moving to Barrie, except that Barrie is 25% bigger than Everett. They have a class-A baseball team called (I'm not making this up) the Everett AquaSox. The Stealth will continue to have the lowest attendance in the league (though it might still be higher than in San Jose), and will be gone before you can say "Columbus Landsharks". Though maybe I'm wrong and they'll get lots of people driving down from southern B.C. to keep the numbers up.

Overall Standings

East

Rochester
Orlando
Buffalo
Toronto
Boston
Philadelphia

West

Calgary
Washington
Edmonton
Colorado
Minnesota

People think Y2K was a bust, thus proving it wasn't

2009-12-21T21:55:00.001-05:00

I read an article recently about a significant virus or some other kind of security problem that people were being warned about. One of the comments on the article said something like "Yeah, well they warned us about Y2K as well, and that was a bust." I have read similar comments before and even heard similar sentiments from people I know. The truth is that Y2K was a real problem that would have caused real chaos if it hadn't been fixed in time. However it was fixed in time, and the fact that no significant problems occurred on January 1, 2000 is a testament to the amount of planning and work that went into fixing it. The fact that the general public thinks it was a bust proves that it was successful.

I know that there were Y2K problems in the database server that I worked on at the time (and continue to work on), and I know that they were fixed beforehand. Our problems were fairly minor, but I know of other problems that were not. Gail worked for a large steel company at the time (still does, kinda), and some time in the late 90's, they did some Y2K testing. They simultaneously reset all the clocks on all the computers in the plant to 11:30pm December 31, 1999 and fired 'em all up again. A few seconds after the clocks hit midnight, everything shut down. The problem was eventually traced to an exhaust fan deep in the bowels of the plant, which decided that it hadn't had any scheduled maintenance in a hundred years, so it shut down. All the systems that depended on that fan to be running also shut down, and the failure cascaded upwards until nothing was running.

If they hadn't done the testing, the plant would have shut down a few seconds after midnight on New Year's Day, and it might have taken them a couple of days to find the problem and a couple more to get a new fan installed. This is assuming that the fan was the only problem. When every hour not producing steel costs your company hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars, a five-day outage would be devastating. Now think: what if that same brand of exhaust fan was used in your local power or water treatment plant? Could half your city live without power or running water for a week in January? What if a similar failure occurred in an air traffic control system? Or some safety-related subsystem in a nuclear power plant? Or the computer controlling the respirators in your local ICU?

The fan was fixed or replaced and the test was repeated. I don't know how many times they ran the test, but when the real December 31, 1999 arrived, the plant kept producing steel like it does through every other midnight. Many hours and dollars were spent in advance to make sure that the problem was solved before it happened. This was done in countless other factories, businesses, hospitals, airlines, and such (not to mention every software development company) so that when January 1, 2000 arrived, all the hardware and software would handle it.

The people who were expecting nationwide blackouts or planes to start dropping out of the sky at midnight were surprised to find that the number of actual problems was very small. Many people assumed that this meant the whole "Y2K problem" was overblown or some kind of industry hype. It wasn't. It was a real problem with an absolute deadline that could not slip. It was solved in time thanks to the combined effort of thousands of software developers (who, admittedly, created the problem in the first place) and IT professionals who put in a lot of effort so that people would never know there was a problem.

This, of course, is part of the thankless world that IT professionals live in – if they do their job properly, you don't notice them. You might even mistakenly think that they do nothing. Every morning, you arrive at work and check your email or internet connection and find that everything is working properly. How many of those mornings have come after nights where the IT staff were up until 4am fixing some network or hardware problem? I'm sure you don't know, but I'll bet that it's more than zero. Tell ya what – next time you see your sys admin walking through the halls at work, say thanks.

The big trade and the other big trade

2009-12-15T21:27:00.002-05:00

This week was quite a landmark week in Toronto sports. Roy Halladay, quite possibly the best pitcher in Toronto Blue Jays history, and Colin Doyle, quite possibly the best player in Toronto Rock history, were both traded – Halladay left Toronto while Doyle returned. Halladay's trade was expected and, I suppose, logical, but saddening, while Doyle's return is a cause for celebration.

I am really going to miss Roy Halladay. He is the best home-grown pitcher the Jays have ever had, and rivals Roger Clemens for the best overall pitcher in Jays history. He won a Cy Young, and finished in the top five in Cy Young voting five times. His stats over the past few years have been staggering; according to Wikipedia, "From 2002-2008, Halladay has a .698 winning percentage, 113 wins, 9 shutouts, 37 complete games, and 7.14 innings per start, all of which are the best in the American League in that time frame." Think about it – no AL pitcher (and only one NL pitcher) won more games during that time span, and Halladay played for some pretty mediocre Blue Jay teams. And 37 complete games in seven years – nobody else even has 20. Last year Halladay had nine – the only other pitcher to have more than four was Zack Greinke, the Cy Young award winner, who had six.

But the stats aren't the whole story. Halladay is simply a joy to watch. I loved watching an opposing hitter look at strike three from Doc. Rarely did you see the batter argue that it wasn't a strike; more often, you would see the "Holy crap, that was a nice pitch" look on his face. Doc was widely known for his work ethic and his stamina (the complete games I mentioned above). He first came up looking like a star and then totally forgot how to pitch. He was sent all the way down to A ball, a move which would destroy the confidence (and likely career) of lesser mortals, but Halladay worked his ass off and used that opportunity to rebuild his delivery. When he made it back to the majors, he became untouchable. And in this era of an athlete's fall from grace becoming commonplace (Kobe, the Steroid Kings of baseball, even Tiger), you will never find a classier athlete than Doc anywhere. The deal isn't finalized yet, so it's not clear who the Jays are getting in return, but it looks to be at least three good prospects that the Phillies don't want to give up. I figure if Pat Gillick wants to hold on to them, they're likely players we want to have.

Colin Doyle was the Toronto Rock's best player for many years. He won five Championships with the Rock, was named Championship Game MVP three times, and League MVP once. He was first or second in team scoring every year that the Rock existed, including their year as the Ontario Raiders when Doyle won NLL Rookie of the Year. Almost three years ago, Doyle was inexplicably traded to the San Jose Stealth and the Rock's fortunes departed with him. Of the three seasons he was in San Jose, the Rock missed the playoffs twice, while the Stealth made the playoffs all three years. Doyle is a scorer – a powerful forward who can plow through defenders on his way to the net – but he can also be a playmaker. Indeed, Doyle hasn't finished with less than 53 assists since 2002, putting him in the top five every year. He, like Halladay, has a strong work ethic and is a fan favourite. He has the ability to make those around him better, and thrives under pressure. Doyle was the captain of the Stealth and is the logical choice to succeed Chris Driscoll as captain of the Rock. As good a player as Lewis Ratcliff is, Doyle is better and I think the Rock just made a big step forwards towards making the playoffs for the first time in three years.

A day like no other

2009-12-11T21:45:00.002-05:00

Here are some things that happened to me today, all of which are out of the ordinary:

For various reasons, I left home almost an hour late. Actually, leaving late isn't all that unusual, but rarely that late.
Because the car had a flat yesterday and was in getting fixed, I drove the van to work.
The van doesn't have an iPod adapter, so I did not bring my iPod. Instead I listened to CDs (actual disks!) and the radio.
Because my TimCard is in the car, I used cash at Tim Horton's for breakfast.
A friend at work borrowed my kids' Lightning McQueen RC car last week - she made an awesome Lightning McQueen cake and used the car as a model. She returned it today so it was sitting on my desk all day.
I played in a band at work – me and two other guys played guitar, another played keyboard, and four or five more sang Christmas songs. I can count the number of times I've played the guitar in a band – counting today, three.
I had a full turkey lunch, complete with veggies, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, and dessert.
It took me two hours and fifteen minutes to get home from work (in the van, without my iPod). This was obviously annoying but strangely, I wasn't as pissed off when I got home as I usually am after such a long commute.
I had a peanut butter sandwich for dinner.
I came home to an empty house. It was movie night, so Gail and the boys were over at the school. I went and joined them after "dinner".

All these weird things happened in one day. It seems very surreal when I look back on it.

Sorry, must cut this article short – I need to take the rhinoceros out for a walk.

Driving in winter

2009-12-10T19:54:00.001-05:00

If you're not from Ontario (I used to think it was just the Toronto area, but apparently Ottawa suffers from this as well), it might interest you to know that there are three types of winter drivers:

"Oh, it's snowing. I guess I will slow down a little, put my headlights on, and pay a little more attention to the road and other vehicles. No need to panic."
"Snow, schmow. I have a 4x4 and winter tires, so I can go as fast as I want, regardless of the weather or traffic conditions, and I will always be able to stop or turn whenever and wherever I want."
"OMFG there's like little white thingies falling from the sky! I better slow down to like half the speed limit just in case my car slips on one and I spin out. I knew this guy once? In school? Who was driving? In the snow? And he spun out? And he like died and stuff! Oooh, I know! I'll drive slow in the fast lane to force other people to slow down too – just to make sure that nobody else gets hurt by these White Flakes of Death. Stop honking at me people! I'm trying to save your life! And you're making me nervous! I better slow down some more."

Thankfully, the majority of drivers are in group 1. But considering this is freakin' Canada, there are a surprising number of people who seem to forget everything about driving in snow the moment the last flake melts in the spring.

A Kind of Magic

2009-12-02T19:48:00.001-05:00

My sister Trudy is a little over two years my junior. As kids, we got along pretty well. We had our share of physical fights – I remember giving her a bloody nose once while waiting in the car for our parents to come out of a store – but they were usually pretty minor. There was a while during our teen years where we didn't get along all that well, usually because I stuck to the rules and didn't get in trouble while Trudy rebelled and did, but she also had a lot more fun on Saturday nights than I generally did. But by the time we hit our twenties, we were buds again and we remain friends now.

When we were kids, we liked to perform "shows" for my parents, as many kids do. Mostly they'd be puppet shows, where we'd move my dresser out a couple of feet from the wall and stand behind it - it was too hard to kneel down and perform with the puppets over our heads, so we just stood and said "pretend you don't see us". Occasionally there were "gymnastics" shows, where we'd do tumbling and tricks, which usually involved running across my room and diving onto the bed. But at least once there was a magic show, where Trudy and I performed some amazing feats of magic to the delight of my parents. Well, "delight" may be a bit strong, but they did laugh.

I'm sure most of the tricks we did were card tricks that were set up beforehand – rather than "pick a card, any card", it was "pick the top card, look at it, and put it back here". I don't remember any of the tricks in any detail, except a sleight-of-hand trick that ended up being the last trick of the show – it wasn't the finale, but it was the end of the show nonetheless. I had been teaching Trudy for weeks (well, at least a day or two) (or maybe half an hour) how to take a small item, roll it around in her hand, tell the audience she is about to make it vanish, and casually slide it up her sleeve. She could then show them her empty hands and bask in the crowd's wonder and admiration. She wanted this to be her trick, not one that we performed together, so she really worked at it, concentrating on putting the item – a plastic letter with a magnet in the back for sticking to an easel – up her sleeve as smoothly as possible.

The show was moving along nicely, and it was soon time for Trudy's disappearing letter trick. I stood to the side while Trudy stood in front of the rapt crowd (mom and dad), and took out her magnetic letter. She carefully showed them the letter, and then put her hands together, magically rolling the letter between her hands. She then said in the standard mysterious voice used exclusively by magicians:

I will now make this letter go up my sleeve.

I don't know which one of us shouted first – Trudy because she realized what she had done, or me because she'd messed up the trick I'd spent so long teaching her. Our parents, admirably keeping their laughter under control, tried to tell her that it was OK, she could just keep going, but Trudy was inconsolable. I remember being angry with her at first, but I have a vague feeling that I quickly came around and agreed with my parents that she should just keep going and forget about it. Of course she didn't. The show pretty much ended there, as Trudy left the "stage" crying.

To this day, Trudy hates magic shows.

Star Wars In Concert

2009-11-29T23:26:00.001-05:00

I've been a Star Wars fan ever since I first saw the first movie during the summer of 1977. When Gail and I started dating in early 1992, I found that she too was a big Star Wars fan, and immediately decided to marry her. Well, maybe not that second, and that may not have been the primary reason, but it was a significant contributing factor. Consequently, our kids are now big Star Wars fans as well, so when my friend Lisa sent me a link to a stage show called Star Wars In Concert [warning: web site plays music with no warning], I was immediately interested. When I showed Gail and the boys the trailer on the web site, they were excited as well. The show was this past Thursday night at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, and we were definitely not disappointed.

The show is a montage of clips from all six Star Wars films on a three-storey crystal clear hi-def screen, behind a full live orchestra performing the music from the films. For some of the music from The Phantom Menace, there was also a full choir behind the orchestra. What's more, Anthony Daniels, the actor who played C-3P0 in all six films, introduced each segment, and James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader, provided some voice-overs. When I read that Anthony Daniels would be narrating, I expected that he had recorded some stuff that would be part of the show, but was surprised that he was actually there. He only broke into the C-3P0 voice once, though his natural voice is similar enough anyway.

The music of Star Wars is not just pleasant sounds in the background of the movie; it is an integral part of the whole experience. The "Imperial march", Luke staring out at the twin suns of Tatooine, the Jawa theme, the slow acoustic guitar when Vader/Anakin dies, Darth Maul's haunting choir, even the cantina band songs are all so powerful, so meaningful, as part of the film experience that Star Wars without the music would be just another pretty decent sci-fi movie. My whole review of this show can be summed up in one sentence: Watching the movies on that screen with the music being performed live, right in front of you, was just unbelievable. The orchestra was amazing, and there were a couple of cameras on them as well, so we got to see close-ups of some of the performers in between movie clips. As a music fan and a sort-of musician myself, I love watching world-class musicians play, and these are some of the best. Daniels was very good with his introductions as well, even coming out at the end in a Leafs jersey with his name on the back. I'm sure he wore a Habs jersey in Montreal and a Flyers jersey in Philadelphia, but the crowd still loved it.

Gail is still kicking herself for not bringing our camera, but luckily Lisa brought hers so she and Gail took a bunch of pictures, one of which you can see above. Before the show, there were some memorabilia booths set up around the ACC, containing props from the films. We saw a Naboo backdrop next to a Queen Amidala costume, though the crowds around them were so thick that we couldn't get close enough to take a picture – and since we hadn't seen Lisa yet, all we had was my silly little camera phone. As expected, there were also little booths selling trinkets and shirts and stuff. I don't usually go for the souvenirs at these shows since they're way overpriced ($10 for a tiny little lightsaber thing that glows – you can probably also buy them at the dollar store), but we got the boys a $40 t-shirt each because we figured the show was so unique that they are unlikely to get the chance to see anything like it again. Plus the designs were cool – one is Darth Vader's head made out of musical instruments, the other is Boba Fett's head made out of musical notes and symbols.

Tickets were kind of expensive but it was a very unique show, and the boys loved it as much as we did. If you're a Star Wars fan, and you get the chance to see this, do it.

Chrome vs. Firefox revisited

2009-11-22T17:51:00.001-05:00

Attention Facebook readers: You might want to click the "View Original Post" link at the bottom of this note. Facebook sometimes messes up the formatting.

Back in May 2009, I wrote an article comparing the Chrome and Firefox browsers. Since then, it has been by far the most viewed page on my blog. From the day it was posted until today (almost six months), that particular article has accounted for about 80% of all pageviews on my blog. I've had days where 110 people visit my blog and 103 of them view that page and that page alone. I use mybloglog.com to track which pages are viewed the most and how people find my blog, and here's a piece of the results for one day. Note that this is a fairly typical day. I don't know why mybloglog can't collapse all of the "chrome vs firefox" entries into one.

Anyway, after about six months of using Chrome pretty much exclusively, I decided to revisit this comparison and see how much of it is still valid. To that end, I reset my default browser back to Firefox for a week.

Note that I am comparing the "generally available" versions of Chrome (3.0.195.27) and Firefox (3.5.5), not development or beta builds.

Advantages of Chrome

Chrome starts up almost instantly, while Firefox takes several seconds before it's ready to go. Both are still faster than IE for me.
Chrome updates itself completely silently. Firefox tells you there's an update available and asks if you want to install it. Actually doing the install is pretty painless, but it asks you if you want to install the update when you start the browser, which is usually when you are trying to do something with it. Frequently I don't want to wait while it installs an upgrade and then restarts itself, so I end up trying to remember to do it when I'm done. I have no idea when Chrome updates itself, because it does it silently in the background and then the changes take effect the next time you shut it down and start it again.
Chrome searches your bookmarks and previously visited sites extremely quickly, so when I start to type a URL, it comes up with probable matches really fast. For example, I don't have twitter.com bookmarked, but I can get there using <CTRL-L>tw<ENTER> because by the time I hit enter, Chrome has searched my previously visited sites and autocompleted "tw" to "twitter.com". Until I started using Firefox again, I did not realize how cool this feature was and how quickly I came to depend on it. I would visit a site and not bookmark it, and then the next day if I wanted to find it again, I could type whatever part of the URL I could remember into the address bar and it would just find it for me.

Advantages of Firefox

Chrome still doesn't have plug-in support. If this isn't number one on the "must get this done" list for Chrome, someone needs to be fired. Yes, I know this is at least mostly working in the dev builds.
When Chrome isn't going really fast, it seems to be going really really slow. I had a situation on my computer recently where everything seemed to be taking forever – compiling was taking 20-30 seconds per file (rather than the <1 it should take), and a test that was running at the same time was taking minutes rather than seconds. I looked at the task manager, and the two processes taking up the most CPU were Chrome and our stupid virus scanner that grinds my machine to a halt and IT won't let me configure it despite the fact that it prevents me from doing my job efficiently (but that's a rant for another day). I shut down Chrome, and within a few seconds everything sped up noticeably (though not as much as it should have because of the stupid virus scanner). I am going to keep an eye on this, but it may be a showstopper.
Perhaps related to the previous problem - every now and again, usually when my machine is very busy, I enter a URL in the address bar, hit enter, and nothing happens. I have seen pauses of 30+ seconds before it even changes the status to "resolving whateverhost.com". Firefox doesn't have these complete blackouts, but just goes really slow in those situations. I rarely see this or the problem above (#2) at work, but it happens a lot at home – I think it may actually be related to the VPN I use.

Dead Heat

When I first started using Chrome, it was quite a bit faster than Firefox, especially on javascript-heavy web sites. But when I switched back to Firefox for this comparison, I didn't notice much of a difference in speed, certainly not enough of a difference to consider it a Chrome advantage.
Bookmark support has been improved in Chrome to the point where this is no longer an advantage of Firefox. Firefox supports keymarks which Chrome does not, but Chrome's searching of bookmarks is so fast this is hardly necessary, other than the magic %s searching thing that Firefox supports. XMarks support is still missing though (it's in beta).
On a site with lots of Flash (i.e. games), sometimes everything seems to slow down to a crawl after 10-15 minutes or so. Sometimes it speeds up again after a while, but other times I have to just give up on the game. This happens in both Chrome and Firefox. Don't know about IE.

The Result

For now, I'm going to stick with Chrome, but as I said above, I'm going to keep an eye out for machine slowdowns and see if closing Chrome fixes them. If that continues to happen, I will have to go back to Firefox.

I kind of miss the plug-in support from Firefox, but Chrome is still pretty peppy and quite honestly, I feel like Firefox is starting to pick up the bloat that IE has had for years. Chrome still feels small and sleek.

I'm surprised that adding plug-in support is taking as long as it is, but I also understand that this basically amounts to allowing the general public to add executable code to your application on the fly. Getting this right and making it usable and flexible while remaining robust is difficult.

Best. Workout music. Ever.

2009-11-18T09:33:00.001-05:00

I went for a run this morning, and my iPod played an amazing selection of music for my listening and distracting-me-from-thinking-about-the-pain-in-my-legs pleasure. It started with Alanis Morissette's Thank U, which is not a bad song, but I skipped it because at least half of my runs start with that song. It seems like the randomization of either the Nano or the Nike+ software really sucks for the first song – the first song is always one of about five, and it's mostly Thank U. The rest, however, was great:

Neon Crossing, Our Lady Peace
Load Me Up, Matthew Good Band
Down to the Waterline, Dire Straits
Coming Home, The Tea Party
Beautiful People, Marilyn Manson
Gravity, Max Webster
The Trooper, Iron Maiden

Beautiful People is a pretty good song, but I don't know much Marilyn Manson, so you can take them out of the equation. Other than that, each and every song is among my top 3 favourite songs by that artist.

C/C++: Five Things I Hate About You

2009-11-16T21:46:00.001-05:00

Jeff Attwood said recently in a StackOverflow podcast that if you can't think of five things you hate about your favourite programming language, then you don't know it well enough. I started writing C code in about 1988 and C++ in about 1992, so I think I can say I'm familiar with them. I know that C and C++ are different languages, but there's enough overlap that I'm going to group them together. Here are five things I hate about C and C++.

Lack of portability. Pure C or C++ code is generally portable, but we continually run into thing like "standard" libraries that aren't standard. Libraries for things like file I/O and threading can be vastly different on different platforms so if your application has to run on multiple platforms, you have to write the same code several times in slightly different ways. There are functions that are defined in a different header file on one platform than another. Preprocessor macros that have a leading underscore on one platform and not on another. There are functions that exist on one platform that don't exist – or work differently - on another. The C language has been around almost forty years, and we still have to have #defines in our code to cover stricmp on one platform and strcasecmp on another. We don't use exceptions in our code because different compilers deal with them differently, and we just started using templates because all the compilers we use finally support them in a similar enough way that they're usable. I suppose technically these are problems with the implementations rather than the language itself.
Undetectable number errors. How many times have you done x-- on an unsigned type only to find that you "decremented" it from 0 to 4294967295, and everything went haywire? Doing this is completely legal and the only way to prevent it is to manually check for 0 before you decrement, and make sure you do it in a thread-safe way. PITA.
Lack of memory checking. If you allocate fifty bytes and then access fifty-one of them, that's totally fine. Accessing that fifty-first byte may work, giving you random data, or it may crash. Writing that byte may work, overwriting some other variable and creating a terribly hard-to-find bug, or it may crash. Or even worse: it may overwrite some unused piece of memory, thus having no effect, most of the time (i.e. during development and testing) but then crash or overwrite memory occasionally (i.e. in customer deployments).
Braces aren't required for if statements. (and while statements, and for statements) This is just asking for trouble. I've trained myself to see and fix things like this:
```
if( condition )
    statement 1;
    statement 2;
statement 3;
```
and some editors and IDEs will automatically re-indent, making the problem obvious, but you can still miss them sometimes. In my code, I almost always put braces anyway, except for the occasional thing like this:
```
if( condition1 ) continue;
if( condition2 ) break;
```
Named structures and typedefs are different. This has confused me for years. You can have a structure with a name, and also typedef it to another name, or you can typedef a structure without a name. For example, all of these are legal:
```
// defines a structure called myStruct. You have to type "struct myStruct"
// to use it
struct myStruct {
    int a;
    int b;
};
```
```
// also defines a structure called myStruct, but you can use "myStruct" 
// as a type now. Or you can continue using "struct myStruct". The two
// names do not have to be the same.
typedef struct myStruct {
    int a;
    int b;
} myStruct;
```
```
// No different from the second example
typedef struct {
    int a;
    int b;
} myStruct;
```
The second and third examples are exactly the same, though I remember having to go through a bunch of code and change typedefs of the third type to have a name after struct because the debugger (CodeWarrior, if I remember correctly) didn't understand them unless the struct had a name.

Halloween at Fern

2009-11-02T23:27:00.001-05:00

Fern Resort is one of our favourite vacation spots. Is it as luxurious as a Carribbean all-inclusive or a Las Vegas casino resort? Well no, but the food is always great, the people are nice, there's lots to do, and most of all it's comfortable. We all know the place well enough and we feel safe enough there that we can give the kids more freedom than they're used to, which makes them happy. It also means that Gail and I have some more freedom as well. We've been there every summer but one in the last ten years, and our week at Fern is something we all look forward to all year. We also went once during the winter, which was also a lot of fun.

This past weekend we tried something new – Fern in the fall. They had a special deal on for Halloween weekend where both kids were free, and they were also discounting the prices by 10% or so, and because we've been there so often in the past, we get an "alumni" discount as well, so it ended up being quite reasonable. They also had some special Halloween things happening, including a costume contest, so Gail got quite excited about that and spent part of a couple of weeks making costumes for the four of us.

The middle of summer is obviously their busiest time, and that's when we generally go. When we were there in February a couple of years ago, we were amazed at how different it was when there were only about 70 guests instead of the usual 370 or so. This time, we arrived on Friday just in time for dinner and when we walked into the dining room, we were stunned by the number of tables set – maybe ten. We found out later that the actual count of guests for the weekend was 35. We asked how that compares to a normal Halloween weekend, and Mike the sports director said that they usually get around 100-120 people. He figures that the economic downturn is responsible for some of it, plus the fact that Halloween was on the Saturday night caused some people to stay home so they didn't miss trick-or-treating. The lack of people made things much quieter than we're used to at Fern. I think we might have been the only guests staying in the Main Inn - although that had its advantages too. We asked on arrival if one of the big suites was available and one was (I suspect that they both were), so they upgraded us. The fact that it was a suite was very nice, and while the balcony overlooking the pool would be great in the summer, we didn't spend much time (read: zero) there this time. There were a few programs that ended up being cancelled because nobody showed up, so the sports director and youth director had more idle time than they are used to. It seemed that our family and one other family were involved in the programs, but I don't know what the rest of the guests did all weekend. Other than bingo, the dance on Saturday night, and meals, we didn't see them at all.

One of the neat ideas they had was a pumpkin carving contest – there was a pumpkin on our table when we arrived, and we had all day Saturday to carve it in whatever way we wanted. They awarded three prizes: most humorous, most creative, and scariest. We brought a bunch of templates and idea books and such, but we ended up just drawing a face freehand. We also forgot to bring all of our pumpkin carving equipment, so we had to borrow a steak knife and a couple of spoons from the kitchen. Gail had the idea of painting the pumpkin black so that the face would really glow when lit, so we brought some spray paint and after cutting out the face, we went outside and painted it on the grass (we'll have to check next August to see if there's still a black spot there). The small crowd worked to our advantage, as we won the scariest pumpkin award, which was announced at dinner on Saturday night. We were happy enough with bragging rights (though bragging rights among people you don't know aren't worth much), but the dining room manager came around and told us that our prize was a bottle of wine plus a chocolate monkey (an ice cream drink with chocolate and banana) for each of the kids. When we told them we didn't drink wine, they brought us a cocktail each – a Caesar for me (thanks for introducing me to those Jeff!) and a Smirnoff Ice for Gail.

The most popular non-food-related event was bingo, which happened a couple of times on Saturday and once on Sunday. Gail won a $5 gift shop voucher at one game, and Nicky won twice – his prizes were vouchers for Fern t-shirts.

We began brainstorming costume ideas a month or two ago, and the boys kept returning to Harry Potter. I half-jokingly said that one kid could go as Harry and one as Ron, I could be Dumbledore and Gail could be McGonagall. Gail thought about it for a minute and decided that it wouldn't be all that hard to make robes for us, so over the three weeks before Halloween, that's what she did (though she lost a week of that with a nasty cold). Saturday night after dinner we all got dressed and went over to Fireside (the building next to the Main Inn), where they had set up a haunted house / trick-or-treating area. About half of the rooms on the second floor had ghouls, goblins, or witches in them, scaring kids (and me in one case) and handing out goodies. Some of the goodies were your standard mini chocolate bars and such, but there was also some stuff from the bakery – some really good iced shortbread cookies and a big cupcake. Obviously the kids ended up with far less candy than on a typical Halloween, but they didn't seem disappointed. We were also fine with it, since we normally end up throwing out at least half of what they bring home because they forget about it by mid-November.

After the trick-or-treating, they had a costume party and dance over at Mary Lou's, where Gail and I danced (I was very warm in the Dumbledore beard and hair, so I didn't dance much – and had to pull the beard down off my face to drink my beer), Nicky danced a little, and Ryan stood off to the side - he kind of wanted to dance but was just not able to pluck up enough courage to actually do it. He never actually said any of this, but I know that's how he felt because that's exactly how I would have felt when I was ten. The time came to hand out the costume award and once again, they had prizes for different categories. This time it was most creative, scariest, and overall best costume. Most creative went to "Mother Nature", a young girl who had stuck little paper butterflies and birds and (real) branches and leaves all over herself; a very clever costume. "Scariest" wasn't that scary but was also creative – a boy of about twelve who made himself into RoboCop with lots of cardboard, duct tape, and flashing lights. The award for best overall costume went to a strikingly handsome man dressed as Professor Dumbledore. (sigh) No, there wasn't another Dumbledore there, I am talking about myself. My prize was another Fern t-shirt voucher. I got the t-shirt (actually upgraded to a long-sleeved shirt) but Gail really deserves all the credit – she made my robes and hat (as well as the robes she wore), bought the hair, beard, and glasses, and even coloured my eyebrows – all I did was wear it. And as cool as my costume was, I think Gail as McGonagall was even better because she looked the part (though much younger) more than I did, and didn't hide behind a fake beard.

So we were at Fern from Friday dinner until Sunday lunch and won three t-shirts, $5, and a round of drinks. And we had great food all weekend, and stayed in the nicest suite in the place, and played some games (throwing eggs at the archery targets was particularly fun), and for all that we paid about 25% less than the normal price and the kids were free. A great weekend all around.

Tool review: Microsoft Network Monitor 3.3

2009-10-29T21:42:00.001-04:00

I have used Wireshark for packet sniffing and analysis for a number of years, starting back when it was called Ethereal. A little while ago I was using it to look at broadcast packets that our clients send out, and decided that it would be great if Wireshark could interpret our wire-level protocol and display meaningful information about the packets. After a bit of searching, I found that you can add plug-ins to Wireshark, allowing you to do whatever you want with the packet data. I found some detailed instructions on how to do this, beginning with:

Install a version of the Microsoft C/C++ compiler
Install a particular platform SDK
Install Cygwin
Install Python
Install Subversion
Get the Wireshark source
Configure the source
Build Wireshark

Once you're done all that, you can start looking at building your plug-in in C. I set up a Windows XP VM and spent a day or two doing all of this, but never got to the point of actually creating the plug-in. A few days later we had a team status meeting, during which I mentioned this project. A colleague, Peter, asked if I had looked at Microsoft NetMon, saying that he believed it allowed you to add your own parsers as well. I downloaded it and took a look. Thank you Peter, for saving me days, if not weeks of development time. In less time than it took me to set up the VM in preparation for writing a Wireshark protocol analyzer, I had analyzers written for the majority of both our UDP and our TCP protocols.

Writing parsers

As a packet sniffer, NetMon is not really much different from Wireshark, though I find the interface a little more intuitive. This might be because I'm running on Windows, and Wireshark has always looked to me like a Unix program that has been ported to Windows rather than an application written for Windows. They both support both capture and display filters. NetMon has colour filters as well – particular packets or conversations can be coloured based on the filter results. You can view packets as they are captured, save them to a file, and load them back in again later.

But writing a parser is orders of magnitude easier than writing a Wireshark plug-in. You simply tell it what ports your protocol uses and what the protocol looks like in a proprietary language (called NPL – Network Monitor Parser Language) that's vaguely C-like but very simple. Some properties of this language:

it handles bitfields, ASCII and Unicode text, and binary data, as well as various types of numeric values (8, 16, 32, or 64 bits, integer or floating-point, signed or unsigned, big- or little-endian)
you can define your own data types
there are a number of special data types built-in; if your packet contains a 32-bit IP address, for example, you can just specify it as IPv4Address and it will get interpreted and displayed as expected
you can make structs which group pieces of the data together, and arrays which hold collections of the same type of data
you use while loops and switch statements to modify behaviour. For example, your protocol might have a byte that indicates the type of packet, and then the structure of the packet depends on the value of that byte. No problem.
you can indicate both storage format and display format, so if you have a byte that's 0 for a request and 1 for a response, you can display the words "request" and "response" rather than just 0 or 1. The rest of the code can reference this value by name and get 0 or 1. The display string can be as complicated as you want, even referencing other pieces of the packet by name.
it supports conversations, and there are variables that have global, conversation, packet, or local scope

The help file installed with the app describes each of the language features, and I found a document that describes an example protocol in great detail.

Drawbacks

The biggest drawback of this tool is the parser editor. It's not very powerful – it makes notepad look feature-rich. I use Ctrl-Backspace (delete previous word) and Ctrl-Del (delete next word) a lot, since it's supported in Windows Live Writer, Word, and emacs, but support is spotty – sometimes it works, sometimes it deletes the wrong word.

The main feature it's missing is undo. It doesn't even have a single-level undo. If you hit backspace one too many times, you'd better remember what that last character was because it's gone. An editor that doesn't support undo is pretty much unacceptable in this day and age, and I lost data more than once because of it. Once you realize that you can't undo mistakes, you end up clicking Save a lot more often, and do things like copy the file to a backup file before you make big changes. I checked my files into source control and started checking them in periodically, which is a good idea anyway, but if the parser stuff wasn't so damn cool, the lack of an undo feature might be a showstopper. Emacs supports Ctrl-A and Ctrl-E to get to the beginning and end of the current line respectively, and sometimes I instinctively use those keystrokes in editors where they're not supported, like this one. Unfortunately, Ctrl-A here means "select all", so doing that and then typing something is disastrous because there's no undo, so you just lost your entire file. You need to quit the file (do not save!) and then reload it, losing whatever changes you had made. Even a single-level undo would save you from that.

The compiler has some problems as well – there were a number of times where I got compilation errors that were badly written or vague enough that I didn't know what the problem was. It would point to what looked like a valid statement and say that it was unrecognized or invalid, and it turned out to be because of a missing (or extra) semi-colon on a different line, or a language rule that wasn't obvious.

Once you've made the changes to your parser, you have to save it and then click "Reload Parsers", which reloads all 370+ parser files it knows about. Surely there could be a way to just reload the one that I changed? Now, there are dependencies between files, so changing one file might require that a different file be reloaded, so reloading them all is the safest but it's slow. Ideally, the tool should be able to figure out the dependency tree and only reload files that depend on the ones changed. And the tool should prompt me to save if I have an unsaved file and I click "Reload Parsers".

If anyone from the NetMon dev team reads this, here's a bug report: If I load a parser file, then paste some code into the file, it's not marked as "dirty" until I actually type something. Also, if I load a display or capture filter from a file, this generally means "replace what's in the textbox with the contents of the file", not "insert the contents of the file into the textbox at the current cursor position". I can see how that feature might be useful in combining filters, but it should not be the default.

As powerful as the NPL language is, there are things it simply can't do. In my case, some of our packets can be encrypted or compressed, but the NPL language can't decrypt or decompress them. It would be nice to be able to write a small plug-in that could do these types of things, but it's not supported. The Wireshark approach would work for that.

Experts

For those analysis needs that are not satisfied by parsers, NetMon supports things called "experts", which are external programs that can read the data from a capture file and analyze it in whatever way it wants. It sounds similar to a parser except that it's written in C or C++ (or C#, I think) and has the limitation that it only works on saved files, so you can't look at the results in real-time as you can with a parser. I've stared to write one of these to solve the decompression/decryption problem I mentioned above. There doesn't seem to be a way to decrypt the data and write it out into a new capture file, but I can at least decrypt, parse, and display the data. I can reuse the parser code I've already written, since the program is dealing with pre-parsed information, but I have to grab each field individually and display it, so I essentially have to rewrite all the display code in C.

Summary

Overall, this is a very cool utility and has replaced Wireshark as my packet sniffer of choice. The documentation is pretty thorough and it includes some good examples. If all else fails, the parser code for all the other supported protocols is right there. There is a help forum to which I've posted a couple of questions and gotten quick and helpful responses. I wrote a while ago about how cool Windows Live Writer is, so kudos to Microsoft for yet another cool utility.

Amazing stats of the day

2009-10-29T13:22:00.001-04:00

Before their win over Anaheim on Monday, i.e. over the first eight games of the season, covering almost 485 minutes, the Toronto Maple Leafs had played with a lead for a grand total of six minutes.

The last time Mariano Rivera gave up runs in different innings in the same game was June 1999, and he has never done it in the post-season (ref: Ed Price). His career postseason stats are unbelievable:

Division Series: 34 games, 51.1 IP, 0.35 ERA, 0.58 WHIP
League Championship Series: 30 games, 45.2 IP, 0.99 ERA, 0.83 WHIP
World Series: 20 games, 31 IP, 1.16 ERA, 0.97 WHIP.

Sure, he gets worse as the post-season goes on, but his "bad" is everyone else's "amazing". It's people like him, Andy Pettitte, and Derek Jeter that make it harder and harder to hate the Yankees. But I'm doing my best.

PMH 5K Run 2009

2009-10-20T12:47:00.001-04:00

Last year, I participated in my first 5k run, and almost killed myself doing it. This year, I decided not to let that happen again, so I've been training since July. As a result, not only did I feel fine the day of and the day after the race, but I beat my time from last year by almost five minutes. I finished 5km in 27 minutes 18.5 seconds, a pace of 5'50"/km. I was the 458th person (out of 2552) to cross the finish line, though that's misleading because some people that finished ahead of me may have had a slower overall time. Unfortunately, that's the way they order the finishers, so in terms of absolute time, I don't know where I placed. I was 284th out of 930 men. They originally listed me as "Male under 24", so my ranking there is meaningless as well, but doing the math myself, 25 out of 87 men in the 40-45 group finished with faster times than mine (one beat me by over ten minutes). These numbers assume that most people are listed in the right groups, though Nicky and both of my parents were also in the wrong groups, so who knows. I've emailed the people who do the stats, and they have already replied saying they can fix them, so I'll check again before I post this and see if it's been updated. Update from next morning: They've moved me over to the right group, but some other things must have changed too, because now I'm ranked 30th out of 88 men 40-45. Whatever.

It turns out that I wasn't training quite as thoroughly for this race as I thought I was. I used my Nike+ iPod and it decided that the route was 5.49 km. Since I finished in 27'18", that gave me a pace of 4'58". I'm assuming the route was actually 5 km even, so I guess my iPod measures a bit long. It looks like those runs I did that were reported as 5.2 km weren't even five and the 4.4's were probably about four. The iPod reported after the race (with a message from Lance Armstrong!) that this was my longest workout to date, which means that none of the runs I did in practice was as long as the real race. Apparently the iPod gives you the ability to recalibrate it, so right after the race I should have selected "Calibrate" and then told it that I had just run 5.0 km, but it's too late now. Sometime in the near future, I'll have to drive around the block and measure exactly how long it is, and then run it and do the recalibration. Regardless, it was close enough that it didn't really matter. I wasn't in pain at the end of the race – I even had enough left in the tank to increase my pace (not quite sprint, but I definitely ran faster) over the last 50 metres or so.

This year Ryan and Nicky joined in the fun as well (Gail was away at a scrapbooking weekend). They walked the course with my parents and finished in about an hour. They seemed pretty excited about being part of the team, and having special t-shirts, and the sensor on their shoe, and especially getting a medal at the end (Nicky said that the 5K on the medal means that it was 5 karat gold).

To all of those who sponsored me, a huge Thank You! I raised over $300 myself, and our team raised over $3000 for gynecological cancer research at PMH.

I Believe in Our Saviour, The Brian

2009-10-19T21:03:00.001-04:00

So the Leafs haven't started the season so hot. In fact, they can't really be any colder than they have been. Every part of the team is having troubles, and word on the street is that this is the worst team in the league, which means that the Leafs might have sent Boston a first overall draft pick in exchange for Phil Kessel. There's been a lot of talk about some of Burkie's deals, and the fact that he is so obviously building a team full of fighters and tough guys. But surely there's a method to his madness: his teams in the past have always had tough guys protecting his skilled players and allowing them to do their job. Nobody was going to run Teemu Selanne because they knew Chris Pronger or Brad May or someone would be on top of him in a second. This gave Selanne a little extra space, which he used to his advantage. That's the strategy that Burke is using in Toronto as well – get a bunch of tough guys to protect the skilled players. Of course the problem is that there are no skilled players to protect. That's why Colton Orr is only averaging 7 minutes a game – he's got nothing to do, so he's always hanging around Phil Kessel's house.

But if you are planning on purchasing a fifty-karat diamond, wouldn't you get the state-of-the-art security system installed first? You're not going to buy the diamond and then leave it on the kitchen table until the security system gets installed a week from Tuesday. You make sure that the security system is in place and working flawlessly before you go pick up the diamond. So when Phil Kessel returns and Burkie trades Lee Stempniak, Jason Blake, and a third round pick to Washington for Alex Ovechkin, he's already got the protection in place.

Of course, that trade isn't going to be quite that easy. Might have to bump the draft pick to a second-rounder.

Please note that this article might be one of the only ones written this season about the Leafs and Brian Burke that didn't use the word truculence once. Go me.