A year of repeats

It looks as though Lance is on track to pick up his record TDF win. This should come as a suprise to no one; he's amazingly fit (with freakish lung capacity), and he's backed up by the best support riders, the best technology, and the best training methods. Another amazing repeat story is unfolding in Las Vegas this week, too. It's the Main Event in this year's "World Series of Poker":http://www.worldseriesofpoker.com/, and with only two more days and 27 players left, last year's champion Greg Raymer is starting today in fifth place with $3.8 million in chips. Other notables are "jailbird":http://www.bluffmagazine.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=69 Mike "The Mouth" Matusow in first place with $5.1 million, and Phil Ivey in second with $4.6M. Considering the huge field he had to wade through, it's simply incredible that Raymer is on the verge of another final table this year.

There was a lot of talk about the huge explosion in poker's popularity this year, and how every event was going to be a crapshoot with all these Internet qualifier donkeys, but it would seem that in most events the cream rose to the top, with many big names taking many big events, including both Doyle Brunson and Johnny Fucking Chan winning their record 10th WSOP bracelets.

I have no idea how the main event is going to finish up this year. Phil Ivey is the odds-on favorite (3-1), and Raymer is right behind him (5-1). Matusow is a volatile presence, so a final table involving all three pros would be something, indeed.

No, no, no!!!!

"ESPN - Jagr: Rangers trade 'can happen any minute'(Jagr: Rangers trade 'can happen any minute')":http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/hockey/nhl/01/23/bc.hkn.jagrtrade.ap/index.html Is he suddenly going to not "suck(A -4 on the season? C'mon!!!)":http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/hockey/nhl/players/35/ anymore? I doubt it. Certainly it's an "expected move":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/000023/, but that doesn't mean I need to be happy about it.

*Update:* Gah. "It happened(Report: Caps agree to send Jagr to Rangers)":http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/news/story?id=1716156.

A cause for no celebration

NFL fines Horn $30,000 Between displays like this and the skipping routine of Warren Sapp, professional football has become a bunch of 12 year olds, competing to see who can make a bigger ass of themselves, even after a meaningless score, as in the case of the Falcon's Duckett, who had the gall to celebrate after a score that brought them close enough to the Colts that 4 more touchdowns and a field goal would have had them tied.

I'm sure being a professional athelete is great; to be adored by thousands of people who will delight in your antics, support you even after abusing drugs, raping women, or even killing your pregnant girlfriend. But the celebration is obscene. You're getting these multi-million dollar salaries to _do your job_! I'm sure it would be more exciting for people if after every time I wrote a particularly neat piece of code, I would start dancing around the room, slapping my ass and making throat-slashing gestures at my fellow programmers.

When you score a touchdown, hand the ball to the referee. That's it. Anything else, and you're suspended. Forget fines, because players pulling down the salaries that these guys are probably have $30K in loose change in their couch. But when you're suspended, you're hurting your team, and then maybe the childish behavior will stop.

Hockey night

"Dan":http://feralboy.textamerica.com/default.asp?r=108230 scored us some kickass floor seats for the Penguins game last night, so four of us went to go check out the action. You see a lot more interesting things being down at "floor level":http://feralboy.textamerica.com/default.asp?r=123202 than up in the nosebleeds. First of all, the action moves _really_ "fast":http://feralboy.textamerica.com/default.asp?r=123090. Also, these players are "BIG":http://feralboy.textamerica.com/default.asp?r=123031. Like, "wouldn't want to meet them in a dark alley" big. The other fun was purely just seeing how stuff runs. There were two photographers (both with bad mullets) jockeying for the little porthole where they could poke their camera through for an unobstructed view of the action. The _extra_ interesting thing was the one photographer had a small radio transmitter on his camera, instead of a flash, that would actually trigger a strobe in the house lights for his shots.

The bench was also small enough that the "Hurricaine":http://carolinahurricanes.com/'s backup goalie was "sitting right next":http://feralboy.textamerica.com/default.asp?r=122979 to us. The funniest thing was that in the "little handout magazine":http://www.hooxcards.com/icetimes.asp with the team linups in it, there wasn't a picture of "Jaime Storr":http://carolinahurricanes.com/custom/rad4EA56.asp, so they just had the "Hurricaine's logo":http://carolinahurricanes.com/images/front/primary.gif. We were going to try and get the girls sitting in front of us to ask him to sign his logo, but they didn't do it.

Irresponsible journalism

Ok, so some guy _maybe_ "cost the Cubs a game":http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/playoffs2003/columns/story?columnist=stark_jayson&id=1638390. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they had a chance last game to close it out and didn't. They also will have game 7 to do it. But for the Chicago Sun-Times to "publish his name":http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/fan15.html, knowing what the possible backlash could be, is something I'd expect from "Karl Rove":http://archive.salon.com/politics/red/2001/06/14/blue/, not from a fishwrapper whose only claim to fame is a portly movie critic. Can you imagine the amount of the settlement that he's going to get the first time someone goes to his work and throws a rock through his window? I'll be suprised if he doesn't wind up owning the paper after that, and makes Ebert be his personal hassock. Everybody just needs to relax and think about the larger picture. Unless you own a restaurant in the Chicago area, what difference is going to the series versus not going to mean to you? Nothing, unless you have such a small life that the only identity you have for yourself is dictated by the fate of your city's sports teams. I see enough of that in Pittsburgh ("oh, it'll be the Steelers' year this year, for sure!"), and it annoys me to no end.

Play Ball!

Through my job, I got a ticket for a luxury box at the Pirates game last night against the Red Sox. It was "turn back the clock night", a throwback to the last time the two teams had played, the 1903 World Series. They had all sorts of neat touches at the park, retro uniforms, old-timey music, etc., but the weather just didn't want to cooperate. We still crashed the luxbox and had a great time. That is a cushy setup they have there; you get your own room, your own covered (and heated) seats outside the box, your own bathroom, and all kinds of "free" food. I say "free" because it works like a hotel minibar; they know how much food and how many cans of beer they put in your box, count up after you leave, do the math, and charge you. My company's law firm was the one picking up the tab, so I didn't feel to bad about having 2 $5 cans of diet soda, or an $8 hot dog or whatever it cost. After getting tired of waiting for the game to start, my one coworker (who shall remain nameless) and I headed over to Club Elite. I got the sense that he _really_ wanted to go, and all the other guys who had expressed an interest had bailed, so I didn't want to leave him hanging. We were only there a short while, and then the SLF(Special Lady Friend) got out of work unexpectedly early and came and had a drink with us! It was a nice suprise, although I think it might have made nameless coworker a tad bit uncomfortable, but oh well.

Lemieux a Ranger?

One NYPost columnist thinks so. Far from being someone who's past his prime, I think that Lemieux might be able to bring the team leadership and scoring that's been sorely lacking for the last, oh, I don't know... *5* years or so... *Update:* According to the official Penguins site, Mario released a statement which read:

bq. "I am not considering selling my interest in the Pittsburgh Penguins.

bq. "As I said to our season ticket holders last week, I have not decided whether I will play in 2003-04. However, if I do play, it will be for the Pittsburgh Penguins."

heartbreak (or, the unbearable likeness of being a rangers fan)

ok, so the rangers re-acquired kovalev from the penguins. big deal. so what if you look at the team page and kovalev already is the leader in all scoring categories? who cares? sather fires trottier and goes behind the bench himself. yawn.

as a longtime fan, i've been through the entire range of emotions. the overwhelming joy of them winning the cup. the sense of loss when messier went to vancouver. the dread when lindros came to town, one concussion away from retirement. and i've sat and watched them miss the playoffs for the last 5 years.

yes, kovalev is proven talent... at least, he is when he's in pittsburgh, and most notably playing against the rangers. doesn't matter. they need a team, not the collection of aging, overpaid "superstars" that they have now. sather needs to use his $70 million payroll, cut everyone over the age of 30, and use all that freed-up money to secure some good draft picks and promising young players, like blackburn and lundmark. i know that sather has to placate the n.y. fans who are getting pretty damn impatient with being the team with the highest salary and not even an 8th place spot to show for it, but just suck it up, prepare to suck for a few years, and start fresh. that's the only way to build a strong team that will actually play as a team. the knicks are going to have to learn the same painful lesson over the next few years, too...

wow (or, awash in good luck)

lots of stuff has been happening... i think i'll work backwards. first and foremost, verisign finally got their act together. i had recieved another phonecall wednesday evening telling me that the fax i sent them was fine and dandy, but they still needed an "authorizing signature" to make everything go through. sent that thursday morning, and finally got an email just a short while ago telling me that they have finally reset my password. you can even see my fancy new dns mappings! by the time i get back from this weekend, the dns should be all propagated and stuff, and i'll be able to start developing on my new .net site.

i had to stay a little bit late at work tonight in order to get my latest project out the door. on the walk to the bus, i was going right through the middle of "light-up night". it was a zoo, and the rain was starting to come down and get even colder, so i was happy to get out of there. (btw, what's up with that woman's hair???)

so, after reading my entry about bike-hunting, my homeslice paul hooked me up! he has a gently used trek cross bike (and it was even housed in my building; mutual friend holding on to it for him), so i'm going to take that off his hands, and put some swanky components on it.

wednesday night i watched the penguins lose to the canadiens in overtime. the slf had gotten some really kickass seats, tho. we were in prime puck-catching territory, if not for those snazzy nets.