Sabre Dance

Oof! These are wrong on so many levels.... (for instance, third jerseys are worn only at home and would be team color, not white). I was never a fan of the red and black - the only reason the team picked these colors is because at the time the hottest-selling sports jerseys were Chicago Bulls shirts (and that was only because of Jordan...and the winning). NHL should go back to home whites and road colors. That way, when a team comes to town, you get to see their colorful jerseys, not the plain old white things..... I'm still ambivalent about alternate jerseys - too much like a money grab and (especially lately), the designs look like sh...er, crap.

It is entirely possible that the Patriots have been doing this for so long that neither they nor the NFL really consider it "cheating" anymore. Goodell may have just been picking on Brady in order to make it look like the league was trying to control it. Frankly, the NFL to me is barely worth watching now. To much gambling money, too many injuries, too many egos. I know college football has its own set of issues, but at least the atmosphere of the games is fun and the rivalries are intense. I do hope the Bills do well since so much civic pride in involved, but I do not care about the rest of the league. I do think it will be interesting to see what kind of reaction the Patriots and Brady get around the league.

After a moderate hiatus from reading (no problems, except lack of time), I decided to go with the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" series. Just starting that now... I have been reading Stephen King since day one. I read "Carrie" well before the original movie (with John Travolta) was even released. And I've read almost everything of his since then. I love the way he can write about a very normal-seeming world and slowly, incrementally change it into a living hell. I think "The Stand" was his magnum opus. I read the book while staying at a friend's cabin out in the woods for a few days. We had no TV and no phone; it was easy to imagine the outside world going to pieces while we were "safe" out in the woods. The early part of the book when civilization was going to hell scared the crap out of me. King is really good at writing about prisons - "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile" (besides being turned into awesome movies) were excellent at realistic depictions of prisons...well, as realistic as I want to know about as I'm not planning on being in one EVER. He also gave one of my favorite interview quotes ever. When asked about why he was so good at writing such convincing horror stories, he replied, "I guess it's because I have the heart of a twelve year old boy.... in a jar on my desk."

This is an extremely minor thing compared to some of the other resent issues posted, but it's the end of the day, I'm tired and I want to complain. I hate it when people who have been in my line of work longer than I have still don't know the basics. They try to get by with that "Shucks, I didn't know that!" attitude when they know better. And they KNOW I know better, which makes it worse. On the bright side, I scored tickets to see Sir Paul McCartney in row 3. Woot! :thumbsup: :D

Pegula has made moves intended to correct the foundering. The Sabres are still a last place team until the new season starts and the record gets re-set to 0 - 0. Their team looks better on paper, but until the puck drops...

Hmm...I've always thought that if a culture was intelligent enough to create faster-than-light travel, they'd also be smart enough to stay out of sight and observe the human race, but not interfere. (the "Prime Directive" as it were). No, I think all the visitations we credit to extraterrestrials are actually our descendants travelling back in time to "fix" issues they imagine may need fixing. (If we can postulate faster-than-light travel, time travel shouldn't be all that much of a stretch.) We as humans just can't resist messing with things that we just shouldn't be messing with, even our future selves... ...oh, and Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster did live in the past, but appear occasionally through a warp in the fabric of time. That's why they're not there when people go looking for them.

I think Ryan also brought him in hoping that some of his nastiness and attitude rubs off on the rest of the defense. That's one of the things the Bills' have been deficient in for a number of years. Rex seems to like "in you' face". We'll see what happens... :angry:

Adobe. One of our remote applications uses Adobe Reader (or Acrobat) to open data entry forms. Every time Adobe sends out an update to Reader, it resets all of the settings to their default, which renders our forms incapable of working correctly. Over the past six months, I've spent at least 50% of my time working with remote sites to change all of their Reader settings so that our forms work again. On top of that, Adobe keeps adding more security features most of which have to be turned off for our forms to work (which kind of defeats the purpose). We're working to migrate our forms to another platform which doesn't require Reader, but the rollout on that is at least a couple of months away. Meanwhile, I sound like a frickin' parrot on the phone..."Disable setting A, enable setting B, etc. Puke :sick:

I went with Marcus - Gorges could be right up there, but we can always blame the goalie if a bad goal goes in when Gorges is on the ice. Foligno not only has to live up to the expectations the Sabres and their fans had for him from day one, now his brother is playing great and is team captain. I'm sure that will bring a lot of family pressure to bear. Time will tell how Marcus will react, but based on past performances it is more likely than not he will fall short. If he is still having issues later in the season, maybe he will be sent to join his brother if GMTM can swing a decent deal.

For those who prefer the milder smokes, I've had a few Oliva Serie Vs that were pretty good. Also, I've never met a Rocky Patel Vintage cigar that I didn't like... :thumbsup:

Yes, I can certainly see that - but there were no pedestrians on the bike path. Oh, well...

Robtuse?

No complaints so far today? OK, I have one... I was driving home from work the other day on Fuhrmann Boulevard. I wondered why the two cars in front of me were going so slow. I finally saw that two bicyclists were riding on the street (and this is the very narrow portion of the road without the parking spots along the side). The cars were going slowly as there was not enough room to safely pass the bicycles. There is a bike path about ten feet away from the road, which is 1) away from traffic; 2) nice and safe and 3) cost a bunch of money to construct. Please tell me why these bicyclists felt the need to purposely ride in traffic and hold up a number of cars (not to mention risking their own safety) when a safe alternative lay just a few feet away? Harrumph!

Sabre Dunce. No, wait - that one may be truer than the real username. :blink:

IMHO, the Brady suspension is a warning shot across the Patriot's bow. Nothing much ever came of the Spygate situation several years back, but many have speculated that the Patirot's continued success (despite their many changes in personnel) is somewhat suspicious in origin. I think the league is letting the Pats know that they are being watched now and if they step out of line just a little (which is what this "Inflategate" is, really), they are going to get their pee-pee slapped but good. Yes, Brady is an excellent QB (which galls me to admit). Belichick is a very good coach, but he coached other teams before the Pats and did not have the same level of success. Rumors have been passed around that members of the Patriots team have found booklets hanging in their lockers which list their opponents plays in great detail, including the terminology. Who knows if that is even remotely true, but the fact is that the longevity of the Pats' success is unusual, especially in this era of free agency. I fully foresee that after Brady retires and Belichick goes on to coach another team (or retires), the whole story will come out. I don't think Brady, Belichick or Kraft like to lose and it will be revealed that they engaged in a lot of hanky-panky to remain winners. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. (Demented, perhaps, but not wrong :blink: )

As sort of a corrollary to the left-lane bandit issue, I've noticed an odd thing happening over the last few years - if you are approaching the entrance to a building that has double doors (i.e. two doors next to one another), I've always gone through the door on my right. Those inside the building coming out used the door on THEIR right, my left. That way, everyone moves along smoothly. Starting about 3 or four years ago, I began to notice more and more people exiting the building using the door on their LEFT, my right. This means the door opens out, usually right into my kisser. I have to stop to let the person come through the door before I can enter. :blink: Why do they insist on using the "wrong" door? (I first thought it might be a right-handed, left-handed thing, but if you are right-handed, you'd naturally reach for the door on the right, no? Weird.

Unless I am mistaken, the "sirens" were actually just recordings of sirens. I imagine when they changed the after-goal music, the sirens went as well.

Bingo - very good! I watch that movie every year around Independence Day...

"The Buffalo Sabres, having borne the brunt of the league's tyranny, now and forever more select Jack Eichel". 15 words. Kudos to anyone who guesses the source of the original quote that I've paraphrased above...double kudos if you know the person uttering this quote.

I'm old enough to remember when Clarence Campbell was the NHL commissioner (well, president actually) and HE was booed by fans when presenting the Cup. John Zeigler, who was about as boring and whitebread as they come was also booed. Nobody likes the Commish. Well, what if the captain from the reigning Cup Champion presented the trophy to the captain of the new champs. They could have a designated emcee and have the commissioner just hovering in the background, "officiating" as it were. Much better.

WildCard thought "tanking" had something to do with strappy T-shirts...

Maybe it never happened in the SC Finals, but I could have sworn that years ago, teams played their first two games back-to-back, had a day off to travel, then played two more back to back. (Of course, if they needed any additional games there were days off in between for travel.) A seven game series would then only take 11 days, not 15 (or more). Of course, I'm old and my memory is probably just fading.... :blink: Anyway, the Hawks hung in there until game 7, then put up a stone wall defense. I think Tampa will find scoring difficult. The only way the Bolts come out on top is if Chicago has any more injury problems. Hawks in six, but game 6 will be a double-overtime affair (and Toews scores the winner on an assist from Kane).

Perhaps the Montreal Maroons or Toronto Arenas. Yeah, the Original Six only works if you believe the world was created in 1947... :rolleyes:

In other words, the Sabres set up Nolan to fail from day one and then used it as an excuse to fire him. So, hiring Nolan (and Patty Lala) was basically just a public relations move to quiet the natives while the tank was being planned and executed. Maybe it was this kind of manuevering that made LaFontaine take a walk. Maybe even a reason Babcock passed on the HC job. Who knows? Here we sit just a month or so away from the draft and we have no coaching staff. The team tanked hoping to get the #1 overall pick, but had to "settle" for #2, and then slighted the player they hope to draft at that position. Not quite Hockey Heaven...at least not yet.