LTS

I am going to buying a ticket for Steven Wilson. He's incredible... one of my favorite's period. I'm just waiting to see if I am buying two tickets or not.

I can't believe people willingly want to talk about this.... again.

Good stuff in here! Good stuff.

Never had the salad.. they look good, but.. it's paying for salad, which I struggle to do... at least at the price point of the other food. So, you are either near Lima or HFL.. they have two. You ever stop in the HFL Distillery to sample their spirits? You aren't supposed to notice the mind control. I am going to have to work on my algorithms. You are not the person we thought you were... first your school story and now you show up hating on pepperoni? What happened to you? Who hurt you?

Nice... the second player this year I recall saying it's not about the money I could get so much as I am getting enough to for me and to help the team. (OEL was the other)

There are days when I wish I could leave this country... This isn't even a rant on Agent Orange, but just a rant about the US. Why the hell do we treat the President like he's irreplaceable and then replace him every 8 years or less? Let's be honest.. we take some buttnutt and elect them to office every 4 years and grant them the power to make us look like crap in the world and potentially ruin the country. We decide 4 years later if they screwed up enough or not to re-elect them, but after 8.. they are gone. All the cost for security, etc. just to protect someone who will only be important for a maximum of 8 years. We know we are going to replace whoever we elect as President in 8 years or less... we know this and yet we act this way. Boggles the mind... truly. I'm certainly trying to be careful in my wording here because I am not advocating for harm to the President. I am just pointing out the idiocy of the situation.

Haha. Yes, there's too much cheese, and I love cheese, but I want to enjoy the pizza, not just the cheese. If all I wanted was cheese I would just eat the cheese straight.

Pizza Junction is the place you are thinking, I am certain. You could only eat a slice of their pizza before you were stuffed. It was novel, but again, too much cheese. Guida's was good... not sure if they have ANY locations left. The pizza place in the town next door was Guidas. It's now Ruck's and that's the pizza we choose all the time. I mean, bottom line, it's pizza. You have to work really hard to make a pizza I won't eat. I can eat Domino's, Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, even Little Caesars... I won't enjoy it nearly as much but it's still pizza.

Yeah. The standard is about 4500 sq. ft. with three. I see that the Orbi you got is AC3000, that's good future proofing. Netgear has had some security issues over the past couple of years that makes me question if I want to use them.

Man... I never thought that. Mark's sucks... Salvatore's is worse than Dominos. We had a place open up near us that was close to Buffalo style, their crust was amazing, they used the margherita pepperoni that formed grease cups, the sauce was pretty good. But they're quality went down hill. We now have a new place in the area and I really enjoy their pizza. They are a little heavy on the cheese, but again, the sauce is close, the pepperoni is spot on, etc. Never liked NYC pizza.. I like thin crust, but not NYC style which just... I dunno... blows. I've had good pizza in other cities... overall arguing about pizza and what city is the best is so subjective it's not really worth it.

What brand/model did you get?

I'm not sure what you need clarification on. But I'll try to answer: pi referred to Evan Rodrigues as: Mexinandian burrito eater poor dirt broke All of which, are unnecessary to describe what he thinks of Evan Rodrigues, and also racially/culturally charged statements about what he thinks of Mexicans. This, despite the fact that Rodrigues, if tracing his most immediate heritage, has a father who is from Portugal, NOT Mexico.

Really? Because Evan Rodrigues father is Portuguese, not Mexican. No way there's a justification for that kind of garbage being posted on here.

I hope the door hits you in the ass on the way out. This has no place here. Your point could be made without the reference to anything of his heritage.

We stack up pretty good...

Yeah.... whoops! We should have picked a better GM is probably true in hindsight... but if you consider the soap opera that occurred during that time period it's hard to think that it was possible to end up with anything but some kind of flawed result. Who even hired the GM? Was it really LaFontaine? That period is so mucked up I have a hard time even applying logic to it. ?

The way I look at it.. the Buffalo Sabres engaged in a dramatic rebuild that was hampered by a few events: 2010 - 2011 - A new owner - Pegula 2012 - 2013 - A new coach - Rolston 2013 - 2014 - A new GM & Coach - Murray & Nolan (LaFontaine and much more mess) 2014 - 2015 - Change in lottery system odds - Edmonton wins McDavid from the 3rd spot 2015 - 2016 - A new coach - Bylsma 2015 - 2016 - Change in lottery odds and top 3 picks available - this hasn't hurt Buffalo yet 2016 - 2017 - A new GM & Coach - Botterill and Housley The Sabres had already drafted poorly leading into Pegula taking over. The top picks leading to that point were: 2007 - 31st overall - TJ Brennan 2008 - 12th overall - Tyler Myers 2009 - 213th overall - Zach Kassian 2010 - 23rd overall - Mark Pysyk When Pegula took over, he left Regier and Ruff in place. They had been making the playoffs up to that point. There's a lot to be said for what potential pitfalls were set upon the organization as the new owner took over. Clearly it's not been good as they have not made the playoffs under a full year with Pegula as owner. That said, he's a new owner who has shown his propensity to make mistakes and is also apparently learning from them. The impact of those mistakes on the timeline should not be dismissed. With Regier still making decisions they pick: 2011 - 16th overall - Joel Armia 2012 - 12th overall - Mikhail Grigorenko 2013 - 8th overall - Rasmus Ristolainen The 2013-2014 season can and should be seen as a huge mess. It's little doubt the Sabres were going to finish dead last given the front office insanity. No need to rehash it but it brought the Sabres Nolan over Rolston and ultimately put Murray in a seat. I'm not sure we can fully quantify what the impact of that season was on the Sabres, but i think it's safe to say that it makes their rebuild far different from other teams. All of that aside, the Sabres lost the top pick to Florida, but it did net Reinhart which still appears to be a good thing at this point. The decision to have Murray lead resulted in an attempt to rebuild faster. In so doing, Murray created an atmosphere of little competition (unlike Botterill). However, he was also dealing with limited talent with which to move. The only way to get established players is to trade away futures, and he did. Whether this was his decision or the decision of the owners who didn't accept a longer rebuilding process, we don't know. Either way, it was the decision. It was a path chosen and once that happened there's no going back. The Sabres were further hampered when the odds for the top overall pick were altered leading into the McDavid draft. If the Sabres win that draft are they better today? Yes, I think that's the case and not because McDavid is incredible. I think Murray built a team of Canadian system hockey players that was designed with the hope that you get McDavid. Instead he had to draft Eichel, the prodigy of the USA Hockey system. He brought in Bylsma, although not his first choice, and clearly he did not mesh with the players. Basically, creating a locker room problem. Everything since that has been a change in direction, again, and that's just the way it goes. But I don't think we've seen other teams have the same level of change that the Sabres have had in the front office where you can easily compare them and say that the rebuild failed. It was more than just THE rebuild. As I see it, the Sabres are on attempt #3 to rebuild a winning roster. That's system number 3 in 7 years of not making the playoffs. From an overall standpoint. Pegula has made poor decisions leading to his teams continued or prolonged status as non-contenders. From that overall standpoint I would say the Sabres rebuild has failed. But I don't think it is comparable to other teams, and certainly not a single player in the overall theater presentation of "As the Sabres Turn..." You can play what-ifs, all day long, but what-ifs are not what happened. Going back to page 64 and choosing option B doesn't mean that when you get to page 96 you don't also fall of a cliff and die like you did when you originally chose option A and went to page 87 and were run over by a bus and died. If we all had the capabilities to live our lives in the middle of fragmented timelines we'd have evolved into multi-dimensional beings that had no need for hockey.

I'm never eligible. Sigh.

Well, if you think about it. Extremism drives viewership and engagement. The middle is boring. So, what's going to get covered? People really own think in terms of their own experiences. As such, if they're not exposed to a moderate way of thinking they will only view the world in us vs. them terms. This problem is compounded when people refuse to go out and broaden their own horizons and instead get their information from agenda driven media outlets because what they really care about is sitting down and binge watching something on Netflix for the next 12 hours or talking about some television show for countless hours. I don't see this changing in the future. It's on a rising spiral of who can yell louder and make more extreme positional statements. Yesterday I saw a sign about "An EPIC event". I don't even recall what it was for.. but really.. an EPIC event? Where do you go from there? What's bigger than EPIC? We need to dial it back, as a society. We need to lower the focus on controversy so it reduces people focus on being controversial. It doesn't ever go away. But people pushing those extreme agendas can certainly be pushed back into their corners and be marginalized.

I realize you follow it. I welcome your point of view. My response was only meant to point out that I don't see many sports teams doing anything that monumental so I give the Sabres an average grade relative to their peers, that's all.

@Randall Flagg this is the best post I think you've ever made. It's certainly one of the best posts I recall reading overall on this board. It really doesn't even matter how much or little I agree with it. The amount of care, thought, reasoning, and effort that went into making it are commendable. I'm not going to try and break parts of it down. But perhaps you are seeing Jason Botterill attempt to build the Sabres using the same Penguins logic you pointed out and hopefully have a few more tools to use. I don't see Eichel at the level of Crosby, or Reinhart at the level of Malkin. I see them different. But the Penguins also never had a D like what Dahlin is supposed to become. I am giving a usage pass to the past season. First, there is only so much you can do with the roster. Second, I'm convinced the point of some of it was to give themselves a shot at the #1 pick. This season is where I think we need to pay far more attention to those things. It'll be interesting. Again, incredible post... absolutely incredible (and yes, I read the whole thing).

You have such a way with words and timing. That's perfect.

How many sports teams... anywhere do this? That's a lot of different ways to be going if they were all able to do it. I don't go on pinterest... soooo I guess I am good? I don't even think in negative space. I took a photo once and the commentary on it was.. great use of negative space. I said thanks and moved on. I know what it is... I just never think about it.

My analysis stopped with my initial post. It's all I can surmise. ?

Yep... pointless drivel. The dude is scum.. probably not any worse than 95% of the politicians he interacts with either. But he got caught. Who the hell knows, perhaps the Democrats arranged for the drug trial to fail so there'd be a stock sell off reaction that would allow him to be arrested for insider trading so it could open up the race in this district. It sounds crazy... but in the world of politics I almost think any level of insanity is possible. He's still the hoser who put himself in this situation and is a complete tool releasing a statement like that.