MattPie

This. My wife joined a few meetups and after not really finding what she wanted, started our own. Last I heard (I kid you not), we run the largest parent meetup in the Philly suburbs or some nonsense like that. She's found a couple really good friends that way that have similar aged kids so there's support and commiseration.

Fun fact: it was originally called Association Football to distinguish it from the various other games called football played at the time (such as Rugby Football, etc.). Association was shortened to soccer as is custom in the UK initially (as far as historians can figure), but as it became more popular it became the default "football". So in short, soccer is right and football is too generic to be meaningful. :)

Huh, our kids are the same age too (maybe I'm misremembering Ink's son's age). She can be a handful, that's for sure but mostly when she's clingy. Otherwise if you just sit and play with her she's pretty happy. Then's there's days like yesterday where all she wanted to do was climb her little slide in the basement, and slide into a dad-hug at the bottom. :wub:

Wookie Peters. I like the idea, I'd certainly give it a listen. I'd contribute if I had anything intelligent to say.

My reply probably belongs in the *locked* Thursday thread... Dude, I feel you. I think our kids are roughly the same age and there are certainly cycles where I feel the same way every damn day. I don't know if it'll apply to you, but RosePie in the last week or three has become a lot more entertaining and MrsPie is in a much better mood when I get home most days. I can only hope this is a trend and not a bubble, and that you find the same thing soon. PM me if you want to vent further.

There's peanut butter that's labelled "natural" that has the hydrogenated vegetable oil and diglycerides like Jif? I suppose there's no specific labelling requirement for "natural" so always check your label.

With the 3-place lottery now, skipping a team is dramatic but doesn't give away the end until the last two. Start at 14, start going down the list. OMG they skipped the Sabres! And you get all that suspense before you get to the top 3. The various "reality" competition shows often take the top 3 finishers, announce the third, and then first (since announcing 2nd implies first).

I wonder if that's an artifact of Kane loving to skate down the wing and shoot, as (currently) possession is based largely on shots right?

I'm guessing Barclay is pretty busy; maybe they just need to get games in when they can.

I hit 1/2 of each of the second round series. I've already missed 1/2 of the East finals too (damn Florida, er I mean officials).

He said small-man, not small-hand syndrome. :) Another one I learned about recently: eating carrots doesn't improve eyesight. It too was British propaganda, but this time WW2 and meant to cover the use of radar to locate German bombers at night. http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/carrots.asp

I like the idea of Tom Brady in the stocks.

Commercial ISPs have a lot more options than residential. You can essentially have as much bandwidth as you want to pay for. If it's not FIOS per se, Verizon Commerical Services will do a more traditional connection with the right bandwidth. Cable will too, for that matter. For instance, TWC has a 300/20 package. Yes, if you wanted you could probably get that at your house but it's not cheap. https://business.timewarnercable.com/services/internet/business-internet/overview.html Verizon advertises 1Mbps to 10GigE service (10,000 Mbps). http://www.verizonenterprise.com/products/networking/dedicated-internet-services/

They're not going on now, they must have, right? :) Another good example were the medieval knight tournaments (jousting, melee, etc., you know, like the Renn faire). Enough knights were getting injured that they put a bunch of rules in place to limit the injuries and the popularity dropped.

Interesting, I wonder what Jack and Samson would have done in the 2005-07 "We actually like goals" NHL.

My bracket is making its inexorable slide from being "OK" to mid-pack, and by the end will be solidly on the second page.

When you're listening to some NHL radio feeds, after the game ends it goes to the "game over" sound loop instead of the radio station's post-game coverage. The loop sounds like one or two people are skating around shooting pucks at a net or something; it's oddly soothing.

The Florida radio team did mention that they've played 7+ games worth of hockey with 5 OT periods...

I don't know if I'd give Netflix credit, see (or rather don't see): Ridiculous 6.

That makes sense, the big G-series was essentailly a Holden Monaro. I'm still a little mad at GM for that one, they brought over a cool but very dowdy car and then used that for an excuse that Americans don't like RWD sedans or some nonsense.

Once the primary reasons to emigrate to Austrailian (or NZ) would be to get a new El Camino.

Another question: is there a more traditional HA playoff of any sort? Is there a "winner" of the HA, and how is that determined?

Remember that (unless appearances are different than reality), most of the "trained professionals" are former players so we're talking high school and knowing how to pretend to not have a concussion so you don't get benched.

I think so: 1st in HA (AHL-equiv) \ - best of 5 ---------> \ 2nd in HA / \ ---- best of 7 -------> plays in SHL next year \ 14th in SHL (NHL equiv) / \ loser \ ---- best of 7 ---------------> \ playoffs for HA 3rd - 7th place / ----------- best of 7 -------> plays in SHL next year 13th in SHL / In short, the last two SHL teams have a playoff against two HA teams as determined by some playoff series'. That's a pretty cool system, really. How often do teams change leagues? Is this a "every couple years" or "every couple decades"?

It's not really in the same class, but the Subaru Outback is quietly gigantic inside. Sloping rear windows: I don't know for sure, but I think that many manufacturers are using varying levels of the "Kammback" design. The link below talks about it, but essentially if you take a streamlined tear-drop shape and cut the long tail off at a certain point, you still get most of the aero benefits without having a car that's 30 ft long. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kammback