MattPie

Good info on Ennis. Further, Ennis is probably the least "TM" player on the roster (based on the Ducks stereotype; big forwards).

The Chet.

I hear Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants is a great movie.

THURSDAY night game. :( Also: it was a lot more fun playing Miami, in Buffalo, at the end of December, what seemed like every year, when both teams were good.

MODO, so sorry about the relegation, that really sucks. I often wondered how relegation worked at the team level. It's kind of a cool idea in terms of making teams play hard, but once you go down it seems like it'd be really hard to get back and stay back as the first year back in the big league you'd almost surely be near last. Is there relegation protection for teams that come up for a couple years? Otherwise it seems like you'd have a few "bubble teams" that are constantly bouncing between leagues (although I suppose losing players each time you go down would hurt the chances of popping back up the next year). As for the players, even if they all didn't become FA, it'd be really hard to pay and recruit new players to the team. How does drafting work, for that matter? It seems like once you go down, it'd be really difficult to get talent to make a run to play in the SHL and stay there again.

Yep. Most other places, excluding Chicago is a sad imitation of Brooklyn style, which is that thin, floppy nonsense. I hear out west it's all thin cracker-like crust. One variation is (and I don't know how prevalent) Sicilian crust. These are usually square and thick-crust; not the same as Buffalo thick crust, however. We made pizza today from a Wegmans Organic dough-ball and it's the closest thing you'll find to Buffalo-style. I'm trying to think of a bread that has a similar texture but I'm drawing a blank. Dense with air bubbles, chewy, a bit of yeast to it, and perfectly capable of holding up the weight of the toppings. Another note: green olives on pizza are as common as unicorns outside WNY.

I drink almost-exclusively local beer, and to a lesser degree spirits. When given the option, I stop and get cases of beer directly from Victory so they've only been transported a few hundred feet prior to the trunk of my car. I used to do a lot of growlers (ultimate re-use, not even recycle) but that's more expensive. Are any of them any good? Although shipping them would negate the benefits.

Only one, I'm tempted to keep the name secret so I don't have to fess up when I'm last.

It's not a pretty solution, but the last few work laptops I've had I stuck some velcro on the lid so I could stick an external drive to it when I'm using it. It's nice that I can pick up the laptop and move it without breaking connectors with dangling drives. :)

With those odds, I don't think Moulson is scoring there either.

Man, I can't believe someone else made that dad-joke. :)

The Robert of Guhle I'm trying to work a "Moon over Buffalo" joke to go with the above, but I just can't make it happen.

I tend to agree, but I don't think it's coming very soon. If nothing else, the long-term sports contracts keep people locked into having cable. It'll be interesting to see though, since I don't know that there's enough money out there to maintain the amount of stuff that's on cable if people have to pony up real money too watch it. I have a hard time believing the NHL reaps $1B (that's roughly what NBC is paying out, right?) via a la carte. There are a lot of people (many here, I bet) that like to watch the Sabres but aren't going to spend $170 or even $50 per season to do it. Even at $50/yr, you'd need 20M subscribers to get those numbers. To but that in perspective, the Blackhawks average 205,000 viewers per game.

I wonder if there's an import/exchange thing going on here. There are tons of places that serve better burgers than McD's, but (last I checked, a few years ago) nothing that'll touch the ~$1-2 for the basic and maybe $5 for the fancy stuff. You can get great burgers, but they're going to start around $6-8.

The NHL wants TV providers to carry NHL Network, they're not going to give them a pass. The only way TV channels get picked up by a provider is enough people call to tell their TV company they want it.

I vary between using a real set of silverware at work and plastic, but I almost never only use the plastic stuff once. Wipe or wash it off quick and it'll do for awhile. I do re-usable bags at the store often, but I've been worse about it lately than before; I can only figure it's me being tired all the time. :) I recycle pretty rigorously. I very rarely buy water in a plastic bottle; I do for pop but that's a bad habit I'm hoping to kick.

I brought up Mike Wilson as an example that, if we were talking about this in 1997, he'd be on your list of players that were drafted 11-20 4 years prior and playing in the NHL. My point was that some of those guys are at the "make or break" stage where this may be one of few seasons they play in the NHL before they wash out.

Isn't Schaller 59?

Nice mat. Almost all the camping I've done in the last 5-7 years has been motorcycle camping, which is like heavy backpacking in terms of weight and space. I wish I could get something that plush! I have a 1.5" Thermarest that the last few times has been OK but not great. I'm a side sleeper as well, but usually end up on my stomach when camping. Another avenue that works surprisingly well is a cheap mat I bought at Sam's Club a bunch of years ago. It's gigantic when "packed" but fairly comfortable to sleep on (2.5" self-inflating, I think). Most recently, I slept on it in RosePie's room for a month so MrsPie didn't wake up for every night time squawk.

That's about right, they've done junior, they've done a year or two in the AHL, and they're getting their shot. If you can say the same thing in 2018, that'll be something. Mike Wilson (the first name I looked up) played 58 and 77 games for the Sabres in the 3rd and 4th years after he was drafted, so he'd have fallen into the criteria. That being said, he apparently played 336 NHL games so he's one of the "made it" guys.

The gay bar can't refuse service to anyone either, d4rk. Gays are pretty friendly though so I have a tough time imagining that happening, unless the person in question is being an ######. In that case, it's not about straight/gay any more. Going back to the voter ID, this video is being played up as a Republican admitting/excited that Photo ID is going to hurt Democrats.

Yep. Tesla is the Apple, BMW, Big Green Egg, Victory Beer, etc. in this field; something fashionable and fancier than the competition and priced to match. And when we're talking pure electric cars, you're talking about people that have disposable income to spend on a luxury item (and probably have another car). I haven't done the research, but the Volt is in competition with the Prius and other hybrids, and being more expensive it's not fairing well. The Leaf is a much smaller car that most Americans aren't usually interested in, and the top model has a range of just over 100 miles (new), which isn't a crazy amount to drive in a day. the model 3's quoted range is 215 miles, which isn't something many people do without planning.

And LA, Chicago, Pittsburgh, even Boston are examples of where it does work.

Not SSD, spinning rust storage on that one. At some point I'll upgrade; it does feel like it's holding it back a bit compared to my very-similar-but-SSD-equiped work laptop.

So essentially, you need to decide how portable you want to be, and how much you plan on using the keyboard vs tablet mode. One thing to watch out for with the surface is the price doesn't include the snap-in keyboard. Amazon has that item at $125, the tablet at $450. For similar money, you could buy a Core i5 8GB 13.3" 2-in-1 (where the keyboard folds back to make a fairly large and heavy tablet), same full-HD screen, and a larger but spinning storage (that's probably a wash). i can't make that decision for you, if you truly see yourself being very mobile and not using the keyboard very often, the Surface probably wins. I don't find a 13.3" laptop to be very un-portable and I'd much rather use a keyboard 90% of the time, so that'd be my choice for that price range. Actually, it was my choice (if you don't mind a refurb). As far as I can tell, this is the model I have at home and it comes in almost exactly the same price as the Surface + keyboard. http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Inspiron-7000-Touchscreen-Refurbished/dp/B015MA2E3S/ref=sr_1_8?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1459878486&sr=1-8&keywords=dell+inspiron+13+7000 Choose! :)