what is this excitement you speak of?
brad - 2/8/10 - 4:34 am

I'm extremely giddy about the trade the New Jersey Devils made last week. They picked up the 2nd top goal scorer since the lockout in Ilya Kovalchuk. Ilya is set to be a free agent at the end of the season. Atlanta is the only team he's played for since he was drafted in '01, and they couldn't come to terms with him for a contract renewal. So it was either let him leave and get nothing, or trade him and get some sort of talent in return. The Devils, who are desperate for goal scoring, laid low and jumped at the right moment, shipping off 2 players, a prospect, and a draft pick for Kovalchuk and Anssi Salmela. Salmela is a defenseman that NJ traded to Atlanta last year, so it's amusing to see him back so quickly. The reality is that Kovalchuk could be nothing more than a "rental" player, cause he's still a free agent come summertime and can choose to go to any team who whishes to pursue him. That being said, it gives the Devils a much better chance to win a Cup this year, and will hopefully improve their scoring and power play. Of course, they struggled to beat the Leafs on Friday and fell to the Rangers on Saturday, so there isn't an immediate success. There's still plenty wrong with the Devils game in general. My hope is that the Olympic break will provide the non-Olympians a chance to heal a bit and practice, and work out some of their issues. The Devils have 5 players who will play in the Olympics (Brodeur [CAN], Langenbrunner [USA], Parise [USA], Elias [CZE], Kovalchuk [RUS]). Paul Martin, who has been out with an injury for awhile now, will miss the Olympics for the US team; however, he will be healthy by the time play resumes in March. So it's looking good on paper for the last third of the season. It just needs to translate over to the actual game.

Oh that Super Bowl. The Saints and Colts were looking like they were going to keep trading scores until the very end. The 2-pt conversion after the replay looked good to me, despite some disagreements. It did change the game, but the fault lies in the technician who calibrated Manning's laser-rocket arm in the 4th quarter. Either that, or Porter has laser eyes. And he knows what you're thinking. Good game overall. I wouldn't have minded seeing Petyon win another trophy, because I am a Peyton fan, but I'm glad my boy Drew Brees got to hoist it up this year. In the end, I'm a Lions fan that couldn't care either way, haha. The commercials... you know, they aren't ever going to be as good as they were in the late 90's and early 00's. Sure there's a couple that were worth a chuckle or two. Maybe I've just lost touch. In any event, I ate pizza, and devoured what may be the most delicious dessert I've had in my life, the Domino's chocolate lava crunch cake. Sweet sassy molassy it was good. It was tiny, but well worth it. They party I was invited to was cancelled, obviously, due to the snow. (More on the snow further down.) Oh yeah, almost forgot, the halftime concert was good. It would have been infinitely more satisfying if they would have played this beforehand, haha.

Keeping with sports, I saw a replay of the last set of The Australian Open the previous weekend. I still enjoy seeing Federer-bot 2000 destroy his opponents. Good for him. It's rare that I don't cheer for the underdog in a competition like that. It's Feds or nothing! Other sports tidbits - Oakland and VT both won their games this past week, and are now 18-8 (12-1 1st) and 18-4 (5-3 4th) respectively overall and in their conference.

Went to a job interview last Monday. Found out they only paid $13 an hour for what I've been doing at $35 an hour on my own. Yeah, thanks but no thanks. This past weekend I applied for a job that matches exactly what I was doing before at SSL. It had only been open for a day, so hopefully I'm in there on top and come this morning they know they don't need to accept any more resumes because I fit the bill. Because I am awesome. Wink wink.

Did one night of IT work for the old boss. Also did an hour of freelance work for a lady. That hour is equivalent to 39 chicken soft tacos. I did not buy any tacos with that money, but the thought of 39 tacos stacked in a pyramid was a tempting idea. I also attempted to update someone else's website for some extra dough, but the only thing I could extract from the notes was "what the hell am I supposed to do?"

Oh, and I just learned a wonderful tidbit of info. Despite moving over a YEAR ago and updating my address with everyone... INCLUDING my recruiter... over a YEAR AGO... the recruiter mailed my W-2 to the old house. This means it's either sitting there or it's been thrown out. And the recruiter already told me over the phone that "they won't have the software to reprint the W-2 until March". Good thing I found that out the day before it dropped almost 30" of snow. I haven't begun to dig out my car yet.

Oh, by the way, it dumped THIRTY INCHES OF SNOW. Well, I measured 27" in my "backyard" area, then measured 29" in an open area where no trees were in the way. This tops the 18"-20" we got back in mid-December. And it's supposed to snow again on Tuesday, 2"-4", and Wednesday 1"-3" more. Not that this affects me and my unemployed behind. It can snow all it wants, I don't need to go anywhere. If anything, it prevents me from thinking about the occasional fast-food run.

Mish and I went over to E&C's to see their new baby girl Cassidy. I'm still completely terrified of babies, despite the distinct size and weight advantage, haha. Mish enjoyed herself way too much, as she does with every single baby she gets her hands on. I started to think how the hell I'd ever handle the situation if I was responsible for my own spawn, but then I relaxed knowing that isn't happening any time soon, thanks to the power of never leaving the house. It's a good thing, trust me.

I'm getting used to the RSS reader. I've also found a bunch of other sites to follow, which is good and bad. Good because I'm exposed to more things I like, bad because there's the need to "keep up" and mark everything as "read". I realize this is all internet speak for "I don't have a life outside my house", but in the small world I've secluded myself into, these things matter, haha. I'm also pissed about the new Facebook layout. Basically they said, "eff your preferences, you'll see what *we* want you to see". It annoys me when I have to adjust to surfing a site I visit on the regular; it annoys me even more when a site is redesigned to be less customizable. There's probably some 3rd party developers waving money in front of them saying "make sure they see my app!", and in turn I have to suffer with more useless bullshit instead of simple status updates I've come to enjoy. Oh, there's more! The "status updates" only option is still there, but not only is it buried in the menus, they don't even include ALL the status updates! I've compared the "news feed" to the updates, and they blatantly leave some of them out. I know, who cares, it's online extracurricular bs that doesn't matter. Still, it'd be nice if they didn't feel the need to "improve" their site every 6 months.

Eddie Olczyk is extremely amusing when he does color commentary for the Chicago Blackhawks on CSN. When he does his NBC national broadcasts or Versus broadcasts, he has that scripted "professional" feel to his comments, where he knows he has to act a certain way to maintain his good standing with the larger channels. But when he gets on the local broadcast, it's more like a college tv station, and it's fun. I don't have the volume on all the time when I find CSN Chicago streams online, but the past few times I've listened, there's been multiple times where he's cracking up, cracking jokes, or something he says gets picked up by a mic. The arena was playing "Welcome To The Jungle" and in a distant voice I heard "I love that song!!!" before the faceoff. I dunno, I find certain things like that hilarious. I like discovering people who have fun personalities in the world of sports, whether it's the players themselves, coaches, staff, or media. People like Ian Moran or Brett Hull who would never disappoint when they were "mic'd up" during a game. People like Chris Bosh who made a fun video for NBA all-star voting one year, or Steve Nash who's love of soccer and video making combined to make a fun video that I am posting next week. And of course, Chico Resch who does color for the Devils, and his "Chico Eats" segment, where he samples food inside or around the arena. I enjoy fun stuff mixed in with my sports, because it's something that doesn't happen often enough that it's overdone. Unless it's Ochocinco, but even then there's some funny things that he still does. But only some of them.

On an imageboard I visit, every so often someone drops a "nostalgia" thread, where you start posting pictures of things from back in your childhood. Toys, cartoons, video games, foods, anything that may have been long forgotten by now. Depending on the age of people posting, you get a hodgepodge of results. Well, someone dropped the "play place" nostalgia down, and I was stoked that anyone remembered. There was a place called Major Magic's back in the day. It was in line with the Chuck E. Cheese theme, with pizza, games, and the animal robot band. I don't know how many there were, and what states they were in, I only knew of the one somewhat near me growing up. I honestly don't remember if I personally had my birthday there (I had to have at *least* once), but I know I was there for many other people's parties, haha. The concept was simple: sit down, eat your pizza while the "band" played, then get your bucket of tokens from mom and play every video game in the place. Once they got boring, go to the skee-ball or other ticket games, and then redeem them for cheap plastic stuff from the "store". What made MM's better than CEC was the arcade had many, many more games. You got the 4-player TMNT, the 4-player Simpsons, the NBA Jam, and all the classic Atari and NES games. (I was obsessed with "1942" for awhile.) Not to mention some money bubble hockey. I was ecstatic every time I rolled up there as a kid. The place that came up next was Discovery Zone. Yes, a giant warehouse full of tunnels, plastic ball pits, and stuff to climb all over. That's it, just a giant indoor jungle gym that served food on the side. But it was AWESOME. I only went there a few times, but I made the most of those trips. And then for me, there was a place that combined both the arcade of MM and the tunnels of DZ, and that was called "Caesarland". As in, Little Caesar's had a place to compete with, stocked with their money pizza, a ton of great arcade games, AND a crazy jungle gym type deal. What I remember the MOST is playing hide-and-seek at that place. Why? Because it was actually semi-difficult. You could sometimes hole up in one of the passageways, move around very stealth-like and never be found. I only have vague memories of it, but it was the ultimate in play places as a kid. Good effin' times. And it NEVER was about the food at any of these places. NEVER. It was the fun to be had. See, this is why we need a device to hook up to our brains, so we can extract the images and video we have locked up in there!

Finished up recoding my Blink 182 Lyrics site. Now I have to finish some lyrics for it as well. I was also informed via Jaime that Angels & Airwaves have a new album being released on Flag Day this year. (That's in 6 days, for those not familiar.) I still like their sound. The new single sounds "par" for the course, but I look forward to seeing if there are more gems from Delonge. The first album was amazing; the second album had a little drop off but was still really good. Then again, I like the sound, not too many do.

Enough rambling. I'm sure there's more I could pack in here. I'm starting to get interested in SEO guidelines and how to get my sites ranked back at the top of Google searches. It's slightly confusing and not confusing at the same time. The empire is rising... watch out, internet.