Lileks mentions in passing "He Who Gets Slapped", with Lon Chaney and Norma Shearer.
Ah, that film holds a special place in my heart. Other than being one of a number of amazing films Chaney made, that was the first film I used as a reference in a paper I wrote *way* back in grade seven honours English class. I remember getting back a nastygram by my teacher on that paper, scolding me for using "obscure references no one had ever heard of". My already low estimation of that teacher dropped another dozen rungs that day.
Outside of his really really early stuff, and maybe not even then, I don't think Chaney made a film that could be viewed on only one level.
And if you're feeling really psychologically stable that evening, check out one of the Chaney/Browning movies--West of Zanzibar and The Unknown are a pair of really unsettling films.
Check them out, and find out that "horror film" can have a significantly different meaning....
Chain requirements on the I-80 in the Sierras? check!
I-280 turned into parking lot because of first light rain? check!
Toes turned into blocks of ice? check!
All conditions met!
Chuq's been on my case to start up the goalie handicapping postings I've been doing for the past few years on the Sharks mailing list we run. That will start "real soon now", since I hope my schedule will be only mildly insane.
Right now, let's take a 30K ft look at the goaltending in the Western Conference.
Okay, you can stop looking now.
I'm beginning to see glimmers of hope from what had started to look like a pretty splah season in the west
The current top team in the west are the Canucks, the Red Wings, and the Stars. No big surprises here, and the only story is when Cujo is going to get traded from the Red Wings to a team in the Eastern Conference who needs to have a goalie to push them over the top.
Hasek is back, and Detroit has him. What else do you need to know? In pre-season, Hasek looked like he could have used a couple more weeks of warm up, but when the season started, he was there. He's sporting a 2.00 GAA and a .914 save percentage. And he's still showing that he has a Slinky for a spine. Hasek comes into the season with (my guess) 8-10% body fat, and it always amazes me that he doesn't completely wear out during the season. Give credit to genetics, training, and his backup, Manny Legace.
If I were in a fantasy league, and needed to pick a backup goalie, Legace would be the one. He's going to play 15 games ( at least) this season, and Detroit doesn't have to hold its collective breath when they put him in. How many teams can say that? Legace has the right attitude to be a backup--he's ready to go in when needed, and he doesn't have any aspirations to be the #1 goalie in Detroit. Since he plays a significantly different style than Hasek, he's the perfect complement in the duo. The only way these two aren't going to keep Detroit in the running for the cup is if Detroit decides to get very old very fast.
Dallas belongs to Marty Turco--all he has to do is come up with a performance that's close to what he did last year. Turco's an interesting combination of steady and passionate--he's a known quantity in goal, but he's also known to be intense as well as cranky.
Turco's save percentage is currently below .9, and that's due to one stinker in Detroit. Other than that, his GAA and SV% have paired nicely. If Dallas is going to insist on keeping the shots on goal down, that's going to cut down on wear and tear on Turco, which is good, given his late season injury. I think that he wasn't anywhere near 100% when he came back for the playoffs, and rather than spectacular, he was just very, very good. And against the Ducks at that time, it wasn't good enough. Turco's not huge, so he's going to rely on positional play to keep the pucks out of the net. However, he can rely on pure athleticism, and go to the ice with the best of them. And unlike a lot of the larger goalies, the cutdown in pad height isn't going to affect him.
Turco's partner in goal for the second season is Ron Tugnutt. Tugnutt has watched a bunch of his contemporaries sail off (or be pushed off) into the sunset, and he's still ticking along. Tugnutt's major problem in the past was ability to keep his weight and stamina up--he comes into camp lighter than his "official" weight, and it goes down from there. During his time at Columbus and earlier in Ottawa, a number of pundit felt he had dropped below 150 lbs, which left without any reserves, much less strength to play goal. Like Legace, he can come in any point during the season--he did the job while Turco was down last Spring--and do the job. What he can't do is three games in a row. Let him play 15 games a season, and Dallas will be in the running for the Jennings.
In Vancouver, Cloutier and Hedberg will be sharing duties this season. While Cloutier is currently the go-to guy, don't be surprised if Hedberg sneaks into the #1 slot by the end of the season. Cloutier shows that playing with emotion is a double-edged sword-he's going to be into the game, but he's done some amazingly stupid things--I was watching the Van/Phx game, and Cloutier was insisting on taking on Sean Burke at the 20 minute mark of the third period--and he needs to stop channeling Billy Smith and get that energy focused on goaltending. Cloutier's too streaky, and can get into funks that are killers. And he's usually good for one orthopedic injury a season.
Hedberg, on the other hand, is Mr Rock-Steady, especially compared to Cloutier. He has a good work attitude, and right now what he needs to work on is gettng past the "no one has seen the game tapes" scenario that he hit last year. That, and playing for a truly abysmal team in Pittsburgh. Remember--Pittsburgh is the same organization that told Patrick Lalime to take a hike after he pulled them out of the doldrums. I'm sure Ottawa sends flowers every Valentime's Day. Hedberg's got a good style--he just needs it to be refined.
If Vancouver keeps up the goalie coaching with Hedberg, they're going to have a one-two punch that's going to surprise the league.
Well, this is coming from the previous writing--why don't I see more long term relationships that *aren't* romantic between men and women?
My longest running friendship has run through numerous bad relationships, one failed marriage, multiple runs at graduate school, and more ups and downs over almost 30 years than either cares to remember or admit. We can tell each other that we are utterly and completely full of shit, and get away with it.
And that friendship is with a guy.
Now, this has led to some interesting moments, like explaining to his wife exactly what I'm doing at his university apartment at 3AM--we're watching the astrology report on the AP wire service teletext on tv, of course!--when his wife is 60 miles down the road.
Or explain--"Sorry, not available tonight--we're going out and chasing trains through central Indiana" to a series of boyfriends who were trying to figure out what *that* was the secret code for.
Or when you get "that look" from people who expect at some point we were going to have a "Why Miss Murgatroyd, without your glasses, you're beautiful!" moment, and we'd be sending out the engraved announcements. Nope, didn't happen. Besides, *he* wears the glasses, so that's not going to work.
So, yeah, you have to deal with a whole bunch of people doing the "yeah, right" at the both of you, and you shrug and move on.
The thing is, when you subtract the snogging from the relationship, there's a lot you just don't even think to worry about. You can talk about all sorts of stuff, and get a viewpoint that you couldn't get otherwise. And you get away from the "us vs them" mentality that can happen when everyone in your group is using the same washroom at the bar.
So, what's so rough for people to understand? Is it that we're all so acculturated to "everyone pair off" that any variance just doesn't enter into the equation? And holy objectification, Batman!--the times I've heard from women that he's "just waiting his chance" to jump me, because "all men are that way"--jeez, would you listen to yourself? If men are the enemy, why the heck are you so focused on getting a date with one for Saturday night?
You know, maybe if this was more common, we'd all be a lot more relaxed.
Okay, first, my apologies to anyone out there whose name is Mary-Ann--I don't mean you personally--really...
Anyway, this came wandering out of my subconscious while attending the marriage of two absolute sweeties, who are completely and utterly in love, and who are getting married for all the right reasons. This was my first wedding since mine, which was a long, long time ago, thanks.
And before that, there were a whole bunch of marriages that happened for all the wrong reasons.
First thing--this was the late 70's/early 80's when the worst thing we had to worry about was herpes, and we weren't much worried about that. And second, being an independent kind working in tech, well, let's just say I didn't have to worry about what I was going to do on Saturday night. One piece of data--my online screen name was "Red Sonja", and there was a darn good reason for it. I'm not the one you take home to mother. I'm the one your mother warned you about!
Then it started happening. Guys I used to date suddenly started "disappearing", and the next thing I knew, I was being introduced to their wife. Hmmmm.
So, all of a sudden, I seem to be the "n-1" girlfriend before a bunch of guys went off and got married. To really, really nice girls. To really, really *dull* girls. They all seemed to be rose-beige, brown-eyed, brown-haired clones, whose major talent balanced between having babies and "doing good cocktail party".
Yes, you *do* know the type. As far as I could figure, they had exhausted the "A" list guys, and were working on the "B" list so they could get that important "MRS" degree.
And they all seemed to be named Mary-somethingorother. I just started referring to them as the "Mary-Anns", because they all seemed to come out of the same hopper.
And, what happens? Weeks to months later, a bunch of these guys, who married "nice" girls who couldn't out-tech them, and who didn't give them any shit, were on the phone (or at the door) to me, wondering what I was doing that weekend. The record was one week. One week. Aren't you supposed to be otherwise occupied at that time?
Was this the "60-day special" Indiana divorce after a really, really bad decision? Nope! They were still married, and were going to stay so for the forseeable future. But they had married someone more because they were an "appropriate accessory" to a newly minted PhD than because they were the right person. So they married someone who they *couldn't* talk to in the morning. Heck, they couldn't talk to them anytime--other than they were married to the person, they didn't have anything *to* talk about!
What an absolutely stupid reason to get married.
So, what's the fix? Abject apologies all around and a discreet cut and run? Nope--go look for "n-1", and see what can be rekindled.
I may be a lot of things, but I'm no one's side-dish, thank you...
I do have to wonder what happened to all them. Did one of them finally break out of the ennui and run like hell, or did they just wander on, playing the game and agreeing to not pay very close attention?
misbehaving.net has made a bit of a splash in the blogosphere. I'm reserving judgement on the site and where it's going until I have more data.
Chuq and I talked about my rather splah reaction. The "technogrrl" gestalt and I just aren't a good fit--I'm a middle-aged tomboy who just so happens to have been working with computers over the past 28 years. I've never felt comfortable with the SWE or WIC style groups, and they aren't comfortable with me. Go deal....
Note to SJSU football team: Terrell Owens is *not* a positive on-field role model.
Tatiana the cockatoo didn't get the memo, either...
...that daylight savings time ended last night, and so they decided that 5AM PST was a darn good time for me to get up and feed them breakfast.
You know, three satellite systems, with pretty much anything you can get in North America, and there is *still* nothing on at 5:30 AM on a Sunday morning.
We're moving into a new office building in a couple of months, so today, a bunch of us went and checked out the new digs. My office is on the corner of the building where there is a skybridge to a companion office building. Because of that, and some "architectural detail", the office is not your standard rectangular shape.
It has been remarked that if anyone was going to have a non-linear office, it would have to be me....
We were seriously cranking towards a product announce this past week, and I was amazingly busy.
How busy?
Busy enough that I didn't play fetch nearly enough with Manon, our calico.
Busy enough that I didn't cook dinner *once* this week.
Busy enough that I almost missed my monthly manga order to Westfield Comics! Luckily, they sent an ack, and tragedy was averted.
So, after a week of this, I received the email that said product would be shipping, and when I should expect to see the customers show up to the e-commerce site.
I sat back, thought "babies, it's Showtime!" (yes, All That Jazz is not a good role model--thank you for asking), and got that little zing of adrenaline.
Damn--times like that, I *love* this job....
So, yesterday my brother calls, wondering if Aunt Laurie would help her nephew with his bio homework. After about 15 minutes on fungi and autotrophs vs heterotrophs, I told him (this not being the first time I've been called up from 1800 miles down the road to help out with bio homework) how he can look up this sort of information on Google.
So, we had the talk about search engines. Then he mentioned that he was learning about designing for searchabilty in his web design class at his high school.
He's a sophomore.
Two things:
1. If you made a buck by being able to manipulate GoLive, HotMetal Pro, or whatever during the boom years, forget about ever getting back on the gravy train again--you have pre-legal working age teenagers who have already passed you by.
2. I am really, really, effing old....
As I pointed out to a co-worker today, playing goal is excellent training for becoming a program manager, because a goalie has to look at a frozen chunk of rubber heading towards them at highway (or far, far above) speeds--and let the puck hit them.
Yeah, you'd like to catch the puck, but that isn't always possible. So you stop the puck any way possible, and that means you get bruises in interesting places.
There are days in program management that pucks would be preferable to some of the other stuff you have to body block. Easier to figure out where to put the ice, anyway.
I asked Chuq to bring home a gallon of local cider from Foo Camp.
Chuq brought home Scott McCloud instead. Yippee! Yes, I have a full collection of Zot!, which is a damn fine piece of work, and you ought to go out right now and buy the collection. After that, check out the website, and take in the current goodies.
And take a look at the "micropayment" concept, something we'll be seeing more of in the near future. The technology is there, and it's just ready to be adopted and adapted.
My prof of abnormal psychology said that two conditions had to be met for psychotherapy to be effective:
1. The patient must admit that they have a problem
2. The patient must want to get better
The OrgB version of this is the person, who after the dept has had their working styles done (for the record, I consistently score ENTJ and expressive analytic), who really needed to have this done, deciding that this was a good exercise because everyone else now knows how to work with them.
While Chuq's been at foo camp, I've been batching it here at Plaidworks.
One of the things that I will do is let the cats sleep on the bed, rather than have them sleep "in the back offices", where heavens, they have only two futons and multiple office chairs to sleep on.
We have two cats, mainly because we don't want three. One of them is a rescued feral by the name of Archie, who looks enough like a Maine Coon to fool a lot of people. He has the over and under coat, the ear tufts, the fur between the toes, and the Maine Coon "face". Needless to say, he's also a big kitty. He's also a shy boy--a lot of people only see him in motion when he's darting about the house.
Now, Manon, she's 15 lbs of beautiful calico of very little brain. She's a very friendly cat, and will jump on anyon'e lap. She also cannot understand why anyone wouldn't want to be with the cat.
So, when the cats pile in for the night, Manon tends to stick around, while Archie has "things to do", thanks.
However, Manon also thinks that 4:30AM is a fine time for me to wake up and play with the cat, and she comes equipped with a very wet, cold nose. And believe me, there's nothing like that nudging you in the face for a quick wake-up call.
So I petted Manon, and then put her in the back. That lasted 10 minutes--I didn't shut all the doors. One more round of petting, and then back in the bac again--and this time I shut the bedroom door. No good--she proceeded to try and dig her way under the door, while yowling with absolute annoyance that *someone* shut the door.
Okay, it's 5:30 AM. I figure that maybe if I feed her, she'll settle down. So, two cans of MaxiCat later, breakfast is served. All during this, Archie has barely moved in the office chair.
5:45--Manon is back, and this time the wet nose is scented with "Seafood and Tomato Bisque" Urgh. She's also discovered that attacking my feet are great fun.
6AM--time to put the teapot on. Of course, now that I'm awake and moving, I'm not nearly so interesting, so Manon wanders off.
I know that someone with small children is laughing their ass off at me right now.....
I had the current one hand-waxed, and the "it's ten years old" signs of use are still nastily apparent.
Time to start looking at what I want to do with the beast. I've already been warned that it's going to start getting interesting in about 20K miles (helps to have family in the business), and that gives me a year before it's urgent.
Right now I'm inclined towards a Prius, since the furthest single I drive is 30 miles up the road to Cal State Hayward. I do a bunch of small trips to Stanford as well (15-20mi, depending on whether I start from work or home), but it's not like it gets a serious workout. And not having to deal with the fill up the car rodeo is appealing.
But, damn, a Jag sounds really nice....
Back when I was dealing with the IHL, one of the differentiations between an NHL goalie and an IHL goalie was the ability to handle having a goal scored on them. More than a few of the goalies who looked oh so promising, but never made it for long the NHL would think too much and too long about the goal that was just scored, which usually meant they'd get another scored on them within a minute or so. So, instead of being down by one goal, the team now had to deal with a two goal deficit. And the difference between a goalie with a 2.50 GAA and a 3.00 GAA can be measured in the hundreds of thousands of dollars--especially if the goalie had a rep for letting a "softie" in after the first goal.
How does this apply to business?
When you're in crisis mode, it generally doesn't pay to dwell that long and hard about a specific event, and how you could have prevented it while everything is hitting the fan. If you're not actively in the mode of dealing with the "pucks" as they come at you, you're going to let the next "oh shit" moment nail you before you have a chance to stop it. Get the triage going, and review those "game tapes" after the crisis has ended.
I'll admit it--I've had one of those days that punctuate my motto--"Taking multiple pucks in the head is great training for this line of work." I'm an ex-goalie. I say that because, if you give me a quarter, I'll let you put your hand on my right knee, and when I straighten my leg, you can feel the bone scraping against bone--I have no cartilage left in my that knee.
In some ways, though, once you're a goalie, you never stop being one.
My last game involved dislocating my kneecap--twice--and then tearing the MCL and ACL, spraining my hamstring, and powdering the cartilage behind the kneecap. Undaunted, I waited until the swelling gave me enough "stability" to finish the game, changed into streetwear, walked up the stairs, drove home, and then announced to Chuq that I couldn't put weight on my knee.
That tells you a lot about how to deal with me....
Anyway, while I was decompressing, I remembered an article I use every time one of the professional HR types asks me what I'm like. The article is titled The Vision Trap, and even though it was written in 1992, it's just as good reading today. The author, Gerard H. Langeler, talks about how he worked Mentor Graphics to the top, and then "Visioned" the place into a everything for everybody corporation--which then failed rather dramatically.
One of the aspects he writes about is how he played goal for Cornell (which, produced Ken Dryden and Brian Hayward, which isn't too shabby), and how the goalie personality led him to some, let's say, less than optimal decisions.
There were two beliefs involved--that you have to play a shutout every game, and if you don't, you're a failure. Okay, so let's look at the NHL--if a goalie has ten shutouts
in a season, they're considered pretty exceptional. More than that, and they start whispering "Tony Esposito" and "modern day record". A first string goalie will play 60-70 games in a season.
So, if you're really, really good, you'll have one game in six that's a shutout. In addition, you'd be an first team all-star if you had a goals against average of 2.00. Do the math--that means that even though you have those ten shutouts, you'll also have a number of games where you'll have three goals scored on you--or more! Maybe your team will score more and you'll get the win, but it's not a shutout. And if you've bought into the "if it's not a shutout, I'm scum", you've just eaten away another layer of stomach lining.
Now add to that the "high need for stimulation" (as my cogsci prof would say), and you've got a nasty little dance of continually going for the bigger win, while taking every setback as a personal failure. As Chuq used to say about the close-ups of IHL and NHL goalies in action "are they grinning or grimacing?"--Both!
In addition, the stereotype of the goalie as a quiet loner is just that--your goalie is just as likely to be the most gregarious one on the bunch. But you are likely to find out that your goalie can out-stubborn a cat.
So, in Mentor Graphics' case, the inner goalie "visioned" the company for a ride that had immense highs (have to toast those neurons!), but couldn't be sustained.
Is the goalie personality always a bad thing? Heck no! If you're able to keep both behaviours off the ends of the bell curve you have someone who can keep you on the leading edge while taking personal responsibility seriously.
For the goalie themself? It's knowing where you are, and being aware of the direction you're headed.
When the first thing you think of, when you see an article about "Howlin' Pelle Almqvist" in the local paper, is if the Hives came out of Ballard or Poulsbo.
Now, could the deity in charge arrange it such that Ron Santo can be present at all the games?
No, last week has not been a demo reel week. Today is the first I've been able to resurface for any amount of time.
Now that I have some quiet time, I can look back and not only take a look at what was going on system-wise, but what else was going on, people-wise. The code and hardware can change, but reactions and roles seem to fall across some fairly well defined categories:
1. "Staunch the bleeding, open the airways and get the drip started"--there are people who will jump right in and start putting the fixes in. When you have an acute situation, these are great people to have. The goal at that moment is to get the situation stabilized, so the next group can get in and work:
2. "How the heck did this happen, and what can we do to make sure this doesn't happen again?!?"-- These are the forensic experts, and you have to love them. They're working on a parallel track to the first group, pouring through all the data, doing the analysis, and finding the root causes (does anyone ever have a system go south with only one problem? really?). They're going to put in the permanent fix after the crisis passes.
3. The Ombudsman, or "Hi, I'll be your Swiss Embassy today"--this may be a program or engineering manager, but this is the person who handles all the groups, does the translation from engineering to english to marketing to sales to IS and back again. They know enough about how each area does its work to be able to attend all the meetings, synthesize the information, and tell each group what they need to know. Note I said "need to know"--too much information can be just as bad as not enough information. And that information had better be timely and kept in sync.
4. "Concerned Party" or "Are we going to survive this?"--the client or clients--this is the face you see, even though they're playing their own part elsewhere. That's something you always need to be aware of--they may be the ombudsman for another concerned party.
....and some types I'd be just as happy to not have around
5. "Missing in Action"--when the going get tough, these guys submerge. If you know they're going to do this, and if you're paying attention during minor oopsies, you can usually predict that they're going to go incommunicado during the crisis, to return just in time to be part of the group doing the final communication with the client. If the client has figured this out, it's perfectly okay to allow them to asking probing questions of the invisible man--it's grand fun, and likely the "man who wasn't there" will be oblivious to the skewering.
6. "Shrieeeeeekkkkkk!!!!" Or, our friend the hysteric has come to call. Nope, we're not all gonna die, but they may make it sound like a viable alternative. These people are a special case where you have to be very careful about the timing, type, and amount of information. If you handle it correctly, they'll quiet down. If not, they always seem to have the "reply all" key warmed up and ready to go. The trouble is, while you can make a good guess at some who will fall into this pattern, one will come screaming out of the woodwork at the wost possible time. Unfortunately, these people can drain energy at the worst possible time during the crisis.
7. "Who can I blame for this", along with their little friends "How can I make sure I'm not blamed", and "Can I use this to make a political rival look bad?"--I'd rather have a dozen "missing in action" than someone who's attempting to make hay from a bad situation. They are most easily identified by their refrain "who's at fault for this?" in the first criss meeting. Luckily, these people have usually identified themselves in a previous bad patch, and you can mitigate the situation by choosing your information sharing wisely. It never hurts to have pre-emptive meetings with the boys in the carpeted wing before Iago shows up with the interpretation.
Moral of the story? Not only do you need to manage the situation, you need to manage the situation going on around the situation. With any luck, what got your here will be fixed, but you'll still have to deal with the people around you after the crisis is a hopefully dimming memory.
...or behind the bush, or on the roof, or just about anywhere but standing a half mile in front of you, yelling and setting off fireworks, just so you know they're there.
That's something my father used to drill into me. While that wasn't specifically meant to apply to business, it's a good analogy. The trick here is to be aware of what's going on around you, but not blast to itty bitty pieces everything around you, because that will just let everyone know where you are.
The business application, of course, is that it's the stuff you don't notice that will end up blowing your proverbial head off. Can you plan for everything? Nope! Can you learn tactics to minimize the damage after the first shot from the tree? Yes!
When it's not hockey season, the noise in the background is likely going to be a home renovation show. HGTV Canada has a killer show, "Holmes on Homes", that for some reason, hasn't been picked up by one of the US networks.
It has evrything--nasty bad house problems, usually caused by a general contractor who's skipped, and Mike Holmes, Canada's gift to serious home repair, who combines serious attitude with serious upper body development.
This is a show that would draw in the "not interested in home reno" viewer while the home reno fan gets their fix. Someone is seriously missing the boat on this one.
Whoever doesn't call or send me spam before Tuesday. That's a vanishingly small group, and dropping by the minute.
Today, the Panthers picked up Steve "I'm just visiting this reality" Shields for the proverbial bag of pucks. The fun is just beginning.
If there is a current goalie/coaching combination that has a better chance for providing sheer entertainment value, I can't think of one.
Keenan's well-known for attempting to bully his goalies by pushing their emotional buttons, and he's not going to know how to do it. Keenan's effecacy in this tactic has dropped dramatically since the statement by Mike Richter that it was a good thing for Keenan that NYC had a waiting period for handguns, and it hit an all time low when Arturs Irbe pulled off the "I am poor Latvian goalie trying to put bread on table for family" schtick while repeated skewering Keenan on HNIC (This was a truly wonderful set of performances missed by those of you who didn't have access to CBC back in Keenan's Vancouver days. I think CBC used to have Irbe on post-game just to get the latest chapter on air.). But Keenan insists on going back to the same poisoned well, and he's going up against the zen master of "space cadet".
Keenan's going to find out that you can't hurt what you can't hit, and that is likely going to drive him to his usual end-game behaviour--lashing out and attacking everything around him, while at the post-game press conferences his voice wanders from tenor into whiny mezzo.
If you're interested in the game behind the game, this is one to watch.