HOLY CRAP! Stevens fired - Laviolette in as Flyers coach.  Is Richards' 'C' next?

Let's see.  The Flyers got rid of Lupul last year to bring in Pronger.  Some say it was also a way to send a message to the Old City Gang as they're known.  More on Pronger later.

My buddy Marcus will forever disagree but Carter is so overrated - no I don't want to give back the 46 goals he got last year - or whatever the total was - but he's a bad passer and a horrible back checker.  If he doesn't put the puck in from below the dot which is where he's usually shooting from - the puck goes the other way and right now the other team is capitalizing.

Richards - the Flyers captain.  I don't know.  I like the guy - like his style and he generally has some skills but far too often he either tries to put the team on his shoulders and go into the zone 1 on 3 or 4 OR he's indecisive until the last minute and makes some kind of terrible no look pass to the other team.  A captain is supposed to lead by example.  He tried against Vancouver.  The example he set for the team - DUCK!  He needs to be stepping up his game - without trying to go one on four.  Closed door meeting after the game?  Why won't this guy talk to the media?  He's the captain for Christs' sake!  He's a good scrapper so I shouldn't get on him for the fight.

Coburn?  What the heck happened to this guy?  HORRBILE!

Parent?  Been decent but lately has been making some bad mistakes in his zone....looks lost at times.

Has anyone seen Gagne?

Is it just me or has Giroux's magic disappeared ever since JVR landed on the team?  And it's not like JVR is lighting things up either.

Hartnell - always looks like he's giving 110%.

The Flyers record with Blair Betts in the lineup is incredible.  They need to shoot him up with something to get him on the ice again.

And I can't believe I'm saying this but right now - Briere is one of the hardest working - grittiest guys on the team.  He's leading by example.  Take note #18.

Yes, it's easy to criticize when a team is doing bad.  I know my buddy Pete is probably thrilled to get stone faced Stevens out of there.  Not that I think you do a lot of criticizing Pete!  :)

Isn't it odd how the team has just looked ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE the last few games?  The games weren't even fun to watch.  Emery has been flat.  No sustained pressure.  The rare fight or two over their eight period scoreless streak had the decision going to the other team.  Did they know this was coming?  Is this another "choking situation" where some of the players complained to the GM about the coach?  Did I already ask why Richards won't talk to the media?  And although benign on the surface, are Pronger's comments a sign of more shake ups to come?  I'm not saying Pronger should be captain.  We don't know what players ae like in the room.  Maybe Richards is the best captain there is/was/ever will be.  Well, ok maybe that's pushing it but I think you get my point.

I just wonder now how Stevens' Calder Cup Kids who were supposed to lead this team to greatness will fair now that their mommy isn't there to coddle them anymore.

Tired of people drooling over Obama.


It's actually too late now because I already sent the email but I'm going to ask your opinion about this anyway.

The following letter to the editor was posted in the Morning Call on Sat Nov 28: http://www.mcall.com/news/opinion/letters/all-bartlett1119.7091919nov28,0,1141771.story

I generally don't read the paper but for whatever reason this happened to catch my eye as I was crumbling papers to get my wood stove going.  I am getting sick of uninformed people who seem to simply hate anything Bush and drool over Obama.  That's the impression I got from the womans letter.  It was more of a "poor Obama" letter than explaining why she agreed with any of the issues about which she spoke.  So I decided to do something I've never done before - I wrote to the editor myself.  That text is included below.

I'd appreciate any thoughts you may have.

This is in response to the letter written by Becky Bartlett on Sat Nov 28.

Miss Bartlett,

     Perhaps if the elected Democrats in Congress would have blindly followed the President (and Pelosi) there would be no need for any of this debate.  The government would have taken complete control of the banking, housing and auto industries.  We would have pulled our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan to make way for the next generation of Jihadist training camps.  Cap and Trade would have passed.  Health Care Reform would have passed and you wouldn't have to be bothered by those annoying once a year cancer screenings.  Gitmo would have been closed and the detainees sent.....where I don't know but at least Gitmo would have been closed.

     It's the Democrats in Congress that we should be focusing on -- at least those that are questioning these policies rather than just casting their vote along party lines.  If the majority thought these items were worth passing they would have been passed.  But because people are asking questions -- and the administration is strangely very short on answers by the way -- Democracy is doing its job.

     Thankfully it's not just the Conservatives that are griping about "how he's pushing the mop" or how he's trying to dig "their country out of the hole".  That should tell you something, ma'am.  Perhaps people are realizing just picking up a shovel and continuing to dig is not the answer.

September 11, 2001 - Have you forgotten?

I'm writing this in response to a blog posted by a friend of mine.  Check it out here and then read on.

Have you forgotten?  I'm serious. Everyone uses the cliche "Never forget" but do we really remember how that day changed our lives -- forever? Well, it did change out lives forever but I think some people are forgetting. Not forgetting that the buildings fell. Not forgetting that radical Muslim terrorists flew planes into those buildings and into the ground.  Maybe not forgetting how everyone came together on Sep. 12 and the following months.

But slowly I think peoples memories started to fade.  Politics is back to politics.  On Sep 12 everyone -- everyone -- wanted to go after those responsible.  It became the "in thing" to support going after Bin Ladens head.  We had been attacked on our soil.  This isn't how it's supposed to be.  They threw the first punch so we need to punch back and punch hard - so hard that they can't hit us again.

So we went into Afghanistan to get those responsible beginning with the leader - Osama Bin Laden.  Some conspiracy theorists will question why we were prepared to launch this mission in what seemed like moments after the attacks -- implying the attacks were staged as justification to launch the preplanned attack.  Malarkie(sp?).  During the 1990's the CIA was already active in Afghanistan - trying to find Bin Laden.  How close they ever got to him I'm not sure but apparently they were never given the green light to take him out so I guess it didn't matter.

Why we never got him - I don't know.  Would Sep. 11 have never happened if Bin Laden had been killed?  Possibly.  But then Oct. 11 or Nov 11 or Dec 11 would have gone down in history instead.

These people HATE us.  I don't believe it's all muslims but there is a group of them that is taught from an early age that America is evil and Americans should be killed.  These are the people that put Sep. 11 in the history books.  Have we forgotten?

So here we are, 8 years later.  What has changed?  (My use of that word "changed" is kind of funny given the current president and all the change he promised people)  Anyway, we're still running around trying to get Bin Laden.  Well at least that what it seems like to most but the recent disagreement between Obama and Gen. McCrystal over the need for additional troops -- makes me wonder if we're really trying to win.  The general that Obama appointed himself has stated a need for more troops to complete the mission.  The president apparently disagrees with that assessment.  Has he forgotten?

We're actually going to try some of those radical muslims that admitted they were instrumental in the planning of those attacks.  Military court?  Nope - United States federal court system.  They're going to get the same rights that they profess to hate.  Why is this?  Is it a question of whether we're at war with these people?  There is no question in my mind.  Yet this president, who is reluctant to send more troops to fight the war against the people that brought down our buildings, slipped away to Asia while his appointee for Attorney General Eric Holder announced he's giving these scumbags the full rights of American citizens.  Once again an example of Obama's henchmen doing his dirty work for him.  Supposedly Obama was not consulted by Holder before making the decision?  No?  I find it hard to believe that the two aren't on the same page.

Holder was asked what would happen if the defendants were found not guilty?  His response - "Failure is not an option."  So this is just a little bit confusing.  In the American justice system you're innocent until proven guilty, right?  Holder is somehow implying that the men are guilty and will be convicted - don't worry American public.  Is this great judicial system, which they want to flaunt to the world, no more than a side show?  Apparently the prisoners expressed their desire to plead guilty in a military court and had asked to be put to death.  Now, since they'll be on a world stage, they are going to plead not guilty and use the opportunity to pander their anti-America propaganda.  The US military is going to be made out to be the bad guy.  The defense attorneys, if they are going to do their job, will explain about the "torture" (what a joke) used against these poor men.  They will describe the "horrible" conditions at Gitmo.  Have they all forgotten?

I could go on but I'm getting too mad.  So much of this does not make sense to me.  There is more going on that meets the eye.  This administration has shown that they are not about the change that their leader so brazenly professed this country needed.  It's about more than that -- it's about the change they need to make to further their agenda......what exactly that is has yet to be seen.

We had a president that, if nothing else, kept us safe from further attacks.  He had not forgotten.  He had his faults but he definitely had not forgotten.  But the public grew weary of two wars and a weakening economy and decided it was time for a change. Change for the sake of change.  I love it.  Who is Obama?  What has he done?  What change does he stand for?  What's he going to do besides bring home our troops and close Gitmo, give health care to everyone and grease the palms of the SEIU?  It doesn't matter - vote for him - he's not Bush.  I can't tell you the number of times I heard people say "It can't get worse."  Oh really?

I believe the people in the current administration have not forgotten 9/11 and what it meant to this country.  They simply choose not to remember.  That kind of silver tongued twisting of words reminds me of someone........any idea who?.

Well another Thanksgiving is upon us. The delicious looking bird to the left is ours from 2007. I decided (last minute as usual) to put together a little slide show of pics from previous Thanksgivings at our house. In doing so I decided to try to watermark each image with the date it was from because I figured that would be one of the most common questions posed while watching the show - "oh wow - what year was that from?"

I tried a couple programs and while a couple would definitely do the job I wanted something that would be flexible and that I could use over and over again no matter what the occassion so I kept looking.

What I I found was Batch Photo Watermarker by EasySector. You can download a trial version that allows you to try it out for 50 images before it becomes crippled. I didn't realize this or I would have only tested one or two as I played with all the options.

I did read, however, that you can do just what I'm doing here - post a link to their website - and they will send you a free registration key. I'm hoping I do get a key because from the little I've used it - I'm impressed. It's simple yet powerful. The only thing I'd like to see changed is the ability to extract the date from the EXIF data and be able to modify the way it's displayed more than just the two ways currently supported. Other than that - nice little app!

I'll post again with the results of the free code request.

P.S. EasySector - I hope you read this soon and send my code along - I'm trying to get this slide show put together for tomorrow am!

World ending in 2012? Why? Because the Mayan calendar ends in 2012? Well many computers were going to "end" when our calendar rolled from 1999 to 2000. This was simply because when people were designing the programs, storage was at a premium so they decided to cut a corner and not account for the first two digits of the year. 1900 and 2000 looked the same to a computer - 00.

So why does the Mayan calendar end on Dec 21, 2012 @ 11:11pm UT? It counts the number of days since their beginning date - August 13, 3114 B.C. It goes in cycles of 5,126 years. They use the following units of measure:

kin = one day
uinal = 20 days
tun = 360 days (18 uinal)
katun = 7,200 days (20 tun)
baktun = 144,000 days (20 katun)

July 20, 1969 — the date of the first moon landing — would be written as: 12.17.15.17.0
(baktun).(katun).(tun).(uinal).(kin)

Dec 21, 2012 on the Mayan calendar would look like this: 13.0.0.0.0 People who understand the calendar say Dec 22, 2012 would be written as: 0.0.0.0.1.

So like the much hyped Y2K phenomena, the cycle is just going to repeat.....the date rolls over to the beginning again.With Y2K, the fears were SOMEWHAT justified because so many things relied on computers for calculations - airplanes, satellites, etc. If calculations went awry then perhaps some of these systems would have failed which could have ultimately led to a domino effect of planes/satellites dropping from the sky causing a lot of havoc. Possibly. These computers are based on the Gregorian calendar - not the Mayan calendar.

So while all this doomsday stuff is interesting to read about - I still haven't seen anything that makes me think anything is going to happen. I welcome any evidence to the contrary.

One of the many things that currently occupies my time once everyone has gone to bed is online surveys. I've gotten myself hooked up with a company called Opinion Outpost. It didn't take all that long to get my account set up and start receiving surveys. It did take a little while to (and I'm still not done) set up my profile responses. These are essentially dozens of questions in different categories (Personal Health, Vehicles, Shopping, Travel, etc. The theory is that the more information you provide here - the more likely you are to receive surveys that you'll qualify for. If I were to guess I'd say that I qualify for maybe 50% of the surveys at most. I just qualified for a video survey Saturday but I didn't have the time to complete it. It was to watch a 15 minute video segment (I think from a movie) and then I was going to be asked questions about it. It was for 60 points. Points on this site can be turned into cash anytime you accumulate 50. 10 points equals $1.00. The image here is of the first check I received and I just hit 55 points again and requested another check. I requested the first one on 2/14/2009. They sent it on 3/5/2009 and I just received it today, 3/9/2009. Also, I must say that many times I don't respond to the survey in time and it has already been closed. So I could potentially be making more $$$.

Well, I made my third attempt at making maple syrup yesterday. The weather was decent.....the kids were sick (we had planned to go skiing at Jack Frost)....I had the ambition. I was able to coax JT outside to go up to the campsite with me. I knew I had some cinderblock up there so we hopped on the 4-wheeler with some rope and headed up. We found 5 blocks so we made two trips. The winter wheat is starting to turn green so I didn't want to do too much damage (too much weight might cause the wheels to dig in more than normal?). We decided to set up by the wood piles so that while it was boiling I could so some splitting. As we started laying it out on the ground we realized we were going to need some more blocks. A quick phone call to Bubba and we had a few more and were in good shape! The following pic was taken at around 1:30pm and shows what we came up with.



As I was standing there, taking in the scenery, I decided to take the following shot which shows the make-shift fire pit, the 4-wheeler, the remaining sap and in the distance, my truck full of wood.



Here's how much sap we started with (plus what was in the pot). I actually had another bucket full that I had to dump out because I never got to boiling it. What a shame!



So I kept myself busy by splitting wood and feeding the fire.....splitting wood and feeding the fire. JT, Dylan and Malcolm came over at one point and wanted to go for a ride on the 4-wheeler and of course I oblidged. Time passed and before you knew it - it was time to go to Nana and PopPops house. It was actually perfect timing because the rain started moving in. It was just a very fine drizzle but I started shutting down the operation. I actually had about 9 quarts of raw sap left in the bucket at the time but since it was a week old I decided to dump it. I carried the pot in the house and set it on the stove. I'd get back to it after our visit.

So once we got home and got the kids in bed, I resumed the operation. The shot below was taken just before 10pm. This is what was left of just about 11 quarts of sap.

The thermometer I bought seems like a nice one (lots of labels at various temps) but when I get down to as little syrup as I have it doesn't register correctly.  It's because there is a mark part way up the stem which is where it registers the temp.  I dipped a spoon in when I thought it was getting close and when it started to kind of stick on the spoon I figured it was ready.  

I initially filtered it using coffee filters as can be seen below -- taken at around 11:10pm.

With Christl's help I had it all done except what was left in the last filter.  I tried squeezing what was left with a spoon as you'd do to a tea bag.  Well I pushed a little too hard and GUSH!  The filter ripped and a bunch of gunk dropped into the jar.

So I dumped the syrup back into the pan, warmed it up again and this time I just used cheese cloth.  The finished result - as seen below @ 11:47pm.

Michael Phelps - you know what I find kind of disturbing about all this........even Bill OReilly missed to boat on this one.  I watched a replay of one of his shows from late last week in which he had guests on discussing whether or not Kellogg's made a FINANCIAL mistake by firing Phelps.  

It's sad that it's all about money anymore.  No one is questioning the negative impact this is having on kids that look up to the guy as a role model/hero/whatever.  That's the kind of standard these guys should be held to - act like a role model for the future generations.  Instead of talking about that, everyone wants to know if sponsors will be hurt financially.

Like it or not - it's against the law what he did.  So you can argue whether or not the law is just but IT'S THE LAW.  You cannot have a society that chooses which laws to follow and which ones to ignore.  

Sad.

Feb 1, 2009 - It goes without saying - this was a blast! I just wish someone else knew how to drive so I could have gone for a ride!

JT doing what JT always does....pushing the envelope.  Wonder where he gets it?

Feb 1, 2009 - I almost forgot to post this one. This is just a quick shot of Dylan helping me cook breakfast on the wood stove. That day we had panacakes and bacon.....all cooked on the stove. Gotta love it. Also, can you believe how big Dylan is getting?

Feb 1, 2009 - Christl helped me bring in a load of wood again.
This time I tried stacking it differently so that we could fit more and it
seems to have worked nicely. Admittedly I didn't take my time stacking
the "lincoln logs", as Dylan referred to them but they did the trick nonetheless. As of today, they're still standing...although the front one is only about two or three levels high at this point. And while on the subject of wood - NO - the heat has still not run. This is an amazing streak without the heat running......dating back about an entire calendar year. The recent warm weather is really making me want to get out and bring some more wood down. Next order of business - I NEED TO FIND A TRUCK!

January 25, 2009. The pond has been frozen for a couple weeks in a row and the skating has been great. JT was rippin' around as usual. Dylan was a pleasant surprise - not only asking to join us but doing a great job of joining in the games. Normally he has a tendency to shy away from the games but to his credit he hung in there.....sometimes playing goal, sometimes 'D' and sometimes up front. We had a near record turnout today despite not having the changing hut from two years ago.

OK - I just got done venting to Christl about this but decided it wasn't enough so I decided to post this........

http://uk.reuters.com/article/autoNews/idUKTRE5136YP20090204

I'm sure you've heard about this program - analog tv is going away.  What is analog tv you may ask?  Well, I don't even think Granny had analog tv there at the end.  If you don't have cable and/or a box on your tv used for changing the channels, you probably have an analog signal.  Yeah, not many people.

So for whatever reason, the government decides to get involved in this (this started under Bush) and try to "help out people" by issuing $40 coupons to help people buy digital sets.  Ok, I don't agree 100% but I'll deal with it...ignoring how much money has been spent on advertising and printing and mailing those coupons.

But now.....NOW.....they're delaying the cut over.  Why?  WHY?  Because "about 13 million" people are holding expired coupons AND the government has run out of these coupons and millions of people are waiting for coupons.

Now the silver lining to this story is that the government was somehow able to raise something like 19 BILLION - BILLION with a 'B' dollars by selling off the old analog airwaves.  But - how much has been and will be spent on this whole freakin' program?

I'm sorry - this is not food or clothing or even child care or something essential.....this is T.V. we're talking about.  And I don't want to hear any arguments about not understanding the program or not knowing about it.  If the tv is so important then they've most likely been watching tv.  And if they've been watching they've seen the commercials.  No TiVo's involved so they can't be skipping over commercials.  The deal is simple.- you go to the website - https://www.dtv2009.gov - fill out a form which consists of your name/address, how many coupons do you want (you can actually request TWO) and that's it.  You then have 90 days to use the coupon(s).  Oh, and for those without internet access......1-888-DTV-2009.  And I'd like to see a report of the number of coupons that were requested via the online order form.  The people can pay $20 a month for internet access but can't afford a one time $40 converter box?

Ok, I'm kind of calmed down now.  Comments welcomed.