LTS

Been monitoring this thread. So, curious. The NHL put a team in Anaheim when there was a team in LA. These two arenas are less than 36 miles from each other. Both teams appear to be doing quite well and are in a warm weather city. That said, I think the league will seek the opportunity to attract a FULL viewing market over a partial viewing market when they choose to expand/relocate a franchise.

Canadian pull-ups?

Would you say they are generational or clutch players?

I only meant if he actually gets signed. :)

it doesn't seem to let me have access. No biggie.

No worries. I understand what you are saying. It's hard to say. I might be more along these lines. That said, I'm not arguing that drugs altered their state of being and allowed them to create differently. We just don't know if they would have been able to do it without drugs. There artists who kick the drugs and generally I think people say it usually ruins their talent. I'm not sure if that's the case. It might be different, but not necessarily bad. For example, Aerosmith. They are straight, people like to say they suck now compared to when they were on drugs. They don't suck now, it's just different than it was then.

Hahaha... this is killing me. What a joke by EA. I'm glad I haven't even purchased a next gen console. I went back to PC gaming and have been happy. The only game I routinely played on 360 was NHL13 (skipped 14) and then this garbage comes out? Wow. It's pathetic. If I was a potential consumer I wouldn't even consider touching the game until those supposed patches are put in. By purchasing the game now you are only justifying the mediocrity (if it's even that) of the production team and reinforcing that you'll settle for less now with the hopes that something comes along later. Wimpy said it best, "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today." In this case, you buy the game today.. EA will make it worth your money later. In theory.

According to capgeek the Bruins are $809k over the cap right now. They are going to have to jettison some people aren't they? I know Leino won't get a huge contract, but he's get paid at least $1m right?

Good old PubMed. Forgot about that and thanks for the link. I forget, is there a way to read the research or do you need a subscription? I can see the abstract and it sounds rather routine. (ie. continuing to investigate, learning more, etc.) I understand. I wasn't critiquing you either. These kinds of releases always appear prematurely in my opinion. They are easy for the media because everyone wants to believe things are just around the corner. They may be close(closer) to finding a cure. Hard to say I guess.

Yes.. and that was 3 years ago. I'd love to see a follow up on where things stand with that today.

Just curious why you think the last statement? I understand that, technically speaking, we are all products of our experiences. So, yes, technically drug use would have some impact on the development of a person and once used could be claimed to help make them who they are. However, to assume that without drugs they would not have been the same or perhaps even better is a bit of a stretch isn't it? I'm hesitant to paint drugs as some kind of creative release mechanism and the means by which some individual was able to "make it".

A potential drawback to this is the increased scrutiny the organization will be under to perform now they've been given so much money. Journalists will be salivating at analyzing every expense to see if it makes sense or if they are being wasteful. The general public will see some article in a few years asking why the disease is not cured now that they just received so much influx of cash. I'm not saying it's justified but I'm waiting to see it happen. It doesn't mean it's a bad thing either. Just that this comes with the territory. Just as people may be turned off by the organization if the trend continues. We have a tendency to hate anything that is popular for too long.

See.. now you're just being silly.

Halak.

Buckethead is not amused, or maybe he is. There's really no way to tell.

Exercise is there (not enough of it however!). I do play hockey and because of everything that is going on during a game your brain focuses there and you forget about everything else. I also coach youth sports because it takes the focus away from you and onto the kids. It's an incredibly rewarding experience. I also game quite a bit. For me gaming is a great way to just calm the mind. I know people look at it in different ways. There's absolutely no doubt there is an immense amount of visual stimulation in gaming. At the same time it's easy to lose yourself in them. I don't play first person shooter games often. I don't mind them, but most of the time in general online game play they suck. I did play competitively quite a few years ago on the PC when CounterStrike first came out. That was more entertaining because we actually planned strategies and stuff. No need to compare, like people have varying pain thresholds so to are the thresholds for how people react to depression and its impacts. It's all serious to me, so never worry that your level isn't important enough or severe enough to discuss or act upon. I do LOVE being outside and in the middle of nothing. I live near Mendon Ponds Park (for those in Rochester) and I love walking in the park when I get a chance. There's so much space. Nature has never stressed me out. I've never blamed nature for anything. In my opinion, nature is perfect. There generally is no wasted energy. Things happen because they must happen. It's like seeing two trees come together and if they are equal enough they stop battling and just agree to grow together. It's almost perfect harmony for me. So, to see that natural order and be a part of that really resonates with me and is soothing. Even though my mind is free to wander during those times it is positively influenced by things that I take to have no negative meaning. They just exist, as I exist. The struggle with mental illness is I think the fear the people have to realize that everyone may have some form of some mental illness. The fear that being diagnosed with some mental illness might make you inferior or be treated that way. People are afraid to face their own mortality and their own shortcomings. So, it's easier to ignore it than perhaps realize they themselves share something in common. In addition, I do think there's a fear of mandated medication, treatment, etc. by the government. That somehow, just because you have some mental conflict that you are a threat to society. I can't blame people for that. We fear the unknown and mental illness is highly unknown at this point.

Truly. Becoming desensitized to the world around you. Being free from your own mind. Thank you for sharing that. To that end I think it has a lot to do with anyone who sees the world so dramatically different. We are social creatures and we seek to be accepted and part of the group. For those who see things differently it's harder to be accepted. Many times my way of expressing thoughts turn people away. The things I see are not seen by others. The way I approach certain scenarios is different and I notice that people struggle to understand that. I'm not sure rationality goes away. It's just trumped, extremely hard, by the blackness. When I'm not feeling well I know I am being ridiculous. You tell yourself there's no reason to feel like this. You tell yourself that there are happy things. You tell yourself that your family matters, that your friends matter. The problem is that it doesn't do anything for you. It doesn't register. They are like the words of some unknown scientist performing an observation on my life and jotting them down in his notebook. They are true, but have no meaning to me. There's no connection to it at all. We have all seen some act of kindness that has filled us with great feelings. Let's use the puppy scenario (who doesn't love puppies?). During those bad periods you look at that puppy and you say, "Damn he's cute. I should probably smile about it. I should laugh a little bit at his antics. I should pet him. Look at him, he's all full of life and happiness." Then you say, "So I smiled, I laughed, I pet him. I'm not happy. I'm nothing. What the hell is wrong with me? Why am I like this? Why can't I enjoy the puppy as much as everyone else? Why is life so mean to me? Why can't I just enjoy this one simple thing?" Usually about there the stress begins, the issues begin, your mind begins racing at about a million irrational thoughts per second and it tires itself out. I'll begin yawning.. all I want to do is sleep. I want to sleep and hope that sleep brings more comfort. I'm thankful that these days those bad periods happen extremely infrequently. They have still shaped who I am. I speak about them because I accept them and I let myself know they are real. It's somewhat therapeutic to be certain. I've never been medicated because I never wanted to lose the parts of my mind that make me who I am. I've read this about a lot of others as well. I've read about those who have and then stopped and how dead the world feels. I don't want that. On good days being alive to the world is something fantastic and I would hate to lose that. I read the "study" a few months ago about the mass shooting and the ties that they all supposedly had to these drugs. I don't want that. I don't want to feel like the world isn't real, to have some kind of filter put in place that reduces its importance to me. I've never had thoughts about wanting to harm others. I've never blamed them for my lot in life. I don't know if those who commit mass shootings had those thoughts prior to medication. I'm just convinced that nature made me this way and so I can use natural means to combat it. One last thing.. I mentioned how the pressure to perform might actually harm Robin Williams. Right after posting that I came across this article. Take it for what it's worth. - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11030100/Robin-Williams-friend-reveals-actor-resented-having-to-do-new-Mrs-Doubtfire.html

I think it's natural to be disappointed because we look at this from a selfish point of view. We see him as leaving the world with one less talent, we see him leaving his kids, his wife, without the man they need. I think that's a natural viewpoint to take. I think it's impossible to understand fully because those who commit suicide cannot come back to tell us just how bad it was. Those who get to the brink and are saved may not have been as bad off as those who are not saved. We can't say for certain. I think anyone who has felt the desire to commit suicide, attempted it and failed, etc. are in a better position to understand how deep the rabbit hole goes but it's not to say they can fully appreciate the actual depth because they never hit the bottom. For someone like Robin Williams it's safe to say that he battled this for a long time. He was 63, and that's a lot of years of living with and battling against the illness. It's hard to picture anything from another person's viewpoint and truly understand the feeling that they feel. Each situation is bound to be different. Ultimately, it becomes too much to fend off and mentally and physically you can't take it anymore. The only option is to end it. I suppose another way to try and personalize it would be to think of yourself in a situation where you have an incurable condition that results in death. You're going to die. This is not avoidable, no miracles, no hope, no anything. You might come to surrender to that thought and you'd say, I will live each day to its fullest and do all I can in my time remaining. Now, consider this additional fact, for the last 3 months of your life you will be completely debilitated, you won't be able to move, you won't really be able to interact with the world, you'll always feel exhausted and you're mind will continually be working against you. You'll be in physical pain that is so horrible you just continually scream out in agony. Do you want to live at this point? At the most severe points of depression most of what I described above can be experienced. Your mind has been working against you so hard that you have no energy left to fight it. You withdraw from everything and you just want to sleep. But sleep isn't enough because your mind torments you then as well. Your sleep is awful, you start the downward spiral. It's manufactured stress. Your digestive system works against you. Your eyes are too tired and light bothers you. You don't want any form of stimulation, noise, smells, they all begin to bug you. Your nervous system fails you and you become numb and in pain at the same time. Your heartbeat is irregular and none of your systems feel as though they are operating in harmony. Instead, your body feels like its pulling you apart. At some point it's all too much. We should be grateful for those who pull out of that. It can happen and it's a strange thing. It's like searching around a completely black room the size of Jupiter and by chance you find the exit. It's a pretty amazing feeling. But you never escape the darkness fully. It's there to pull you back and you have to continually battle it, one way or another. You have good days, weeks, years, and then boom, there it is again, consuming you. Everything in the world working against you, you doubt yourself and everything. For what it's worth, this is my quick way of describing most of my life. I've been to the edge and was saved. it was a purely random act by someone (I do not even know who, to this day) who alerted someone else to my feelings and approached me about it. It wasn't what this person said to me that mattered. It was that someone had mentioned me to them, and for whatever reason that let me find the door. After that I used to think anyone who committed suicide was ultimately weak and I was very mad at them for doing it. I used to feel amazing about having overcome such darkness. I felt this way for a long time, over a decade. It was great. And then.. one day, trigger, boom, blackness approaching. I then realized that it never goes away. It's there, a part of you, forever and no matter how small it is, the fuel to help it grow will always be around. No matter how hard anyone tries to keep it from igniting, it can happen. So, I have a totally different view on it these days. I see the death of Robin Williams as a great loss for the creativity of society. It's a great loss for his wife and kids and those lives he directly touched. At the same time, his life of battling is over, that constant reminder that the blackness is there and could come back is over. The stress of dealing with it is gone. He's no longer going to suffer. In some ways, that's the best news we can get. The outpouring of support is immense for him and I think people would like to believe that had Robin Williams been able to see that he would have regretted his decision. I think otherwise. I think Robin Williams would have felt even more pressure to continue his battle. He would have added to his depression the thoughts that he will let millions of people down if he stopped performing. If he stopped battling his inner demons. As far as we know, it was that ongoing support for his talents and the love of those around him that kept him here as long as it did. We should be grateful he battled as long as he could. He will be missed, but his work will never disappear from existence and all those he touched will in some way pass along his lessons to others. His movies and work will continue to impact people for many more years and those people will look upon his work and maybe even learn more about him because of it and they will be touched and carry on those lessons.

If it buys as much as $1 million does today I'll take it!

Well, I think it will always be outrageous :) It's still insane to me. And I think that's it.. I just don't see the economy staying strong enough to support that growth rate. And by economy I mean the US economy...

Here goes the NHL again.. player salaries are jumping up tremendously. They got themselves in trouble before with this. Insane. They better hope their growth continues because if that cap number doesn't keep going up there are going to be some teams with delicate budgets. No way Subban is worth $9MM. Just can't get there at all. He's good, potentially will be great but not $9MM great.

MattPie - absolutely. I believe the labeling requirements on beer are stricter (for whatever reason) it needs to have it's originating location. it doesn't appear to be the same with the whiskey. A lot of people are surprised when they realize where the beer actually comes from.

So, I just jumped in here and may have missed if this was ever mentioned, but I'm not a die hard whiskey fan (I'm trying). I found it interesting: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/28/your-craft-whiskey-is-probably-from-a-factory-distillery-in-indiana.html It goes on to discuss how many small batch "craft" whiskey distillers are nothing more than marketing companies that are buying from a set of recipes and then bottling the output. Pretty sketchy. A long list of the distillers and bottlers is referenced in that article, that list is here: http://recenteats.blogspot.com/p/the-complete-list-of-american-whiskey.html Still determining if some of the one's I like are listed there or not.

There's a model there named "Lotta Hintsa" Really...

This is a decision and question that will be decided 9 games into the season. If it's decided before that we should all be concerned.