MattPie

The marketing video *is* the best part of this season. I haven't watched them, but I'm really hopeful that when I do watch them, they'll be much better than the other Sabres-related TV (the games) I've been watching lately.

All I know is Vanek should be talking all our tough faceoffs, he's winning 75% of them! :)

shrader: really sorry to hear it. I hope things work out for the best. I'll second the small wedding, mostly because it's what I'm doing. There were 18 people at my wedding (parents, grandparents, siblings, and a few close friends (3 each)). It was a really cool, easy way to do things. My wife's Dad was beaming the entire time. It was a bit easier for us though, being my wife's second marriage and neither of us being religious. Not sure of those things apply to you.

I think the point was that some of the goalies have only played a handful of games, so there's a wide variation. Enroth, for instance, looked spectacular for the first bunch of games he played, and now looks awful. At this point in the season, anyone who hasn't played at least 8-9 games doesn't really count.

Another Briton said, "We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analysing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will." I, for one, welcome our new Chz-led overlords.

You know, after reading some of the above, I have to wonder: is there a "Drew Stafford: get him at all costs!" thread on some other team's board? They kinda seem like similar numbers, with O'Reilly having some delusions of grandeur about how much he should be paid. How about "Marcus Foligno:"? I hope this isn't a devil-you-know situation.

I hate to pull a Sylvester, but which goalies are those? I don't think Miller is the second coming of Hasek, don't get me wrong. But a lot of goalies let in bad shots from time to time. It happens. I'd put him between 5-10 in the NHL assuming equal teams in front of those goalies. As for talking to the media, I don't know. Some guys will probably take it as "well, he did say the same thing in the room, and he's right". Those folks will either be sad about it or try to prove him wrong. Has Miller actually been wrong in any of the comments (I'm really asking, I haven't followed him that closely)?

Right, I just wasn't sure if he was an RFA now or will be in July although the fact that we're talking about COL negotiating should have tipped me off. Duh. An offer sheet mid-season would be unprecedented, yes?

Smiley faces aside, I'm with you. Although apparently the lottery this year to see who actually picks first is way more variable than before so even if we (continue to) stink up the joint, we might only end up in the top-10 somewhere. And, what is the status right now? I assume O'Reilly is an RFA now, so can you offer sheet during the season or are we talking about the summer? If summer, that would be after the draft, so we'd be talking 2014 picks (which ideally would be down around 26-30 overall :)).

I was out when the game was on last night. When I got home around 10, I needed to cook for pot-luck and forgot to put the game on (as I usually do when I'm cooking). Forgot to check the score at any point until I got into work this morning when I watched the youtube highlights. That is all.

There was an article in Modern Drunkard railing about this at the time. Good read. https://drunkard.com/archive/editors_archive/jack_news_front.html

Tim Thomas update:

That first is looking pretty good right now.

You know, Sulzer is leading all D in goals, and is second only to Ehrhoff in +/-. Maybe he should stay in. :)

FWIW, there's a few dozen people here that figure Myers is being ruined by Ruff. There has to be at least 1 (probably several) GMs or HCs that think the same thing, and that they can fix Myers. His trade stock probably isn't as low as some here would think.

Yeah, that series was really cool. Victory (I'm really not trying to sound like a fanboi here) did something similar as well but on draft, so you could get a flight of the components and then a pint of the finished product. I really think that if I were going to put serious thought into a kegerator/bar set up for my house, I'd be looking for a hand pump solution. Every beer I'd had both on hand pump and standard draft has been far better on pump. Very cool. I like them a lot as well. Victory did a smoked Hefe awhile back (Scarlet Sunrise). That was an absolutely incredible beer. Tons of complexity and changes. It must have had some issue though, I haven't seen it back since then. Now there's a beer I do miss.

With no backup on this idea, you might want to search (Google) to see if Comcast plays games with traffic shaping (I have no idea). Routers have the ability to classify traffic by type and bandwidth and limit it "for the good of everyone". You see it most with Bittorrent and whatnot, but I wouldn't put it past them to limit other high-traffic stuff too. Protecting people's Skype sessions is way more important from a business standpoint than hardcore gamers. Oh, and +1 on the no-wifi comment. The hop between your device and router will *always* be greater using wifi. Wifi ping times (the latency just between the router and the device) will be anywhere between 20-70ms, whereas an ethernet cable is almost always around 1ms. EDIT: On another note, there's two numbers in play here, bandwidth and latency. Bandwidth is the total amount of data you're sending over an amount of time (those seem to be the numbers you're talking about above). Latency is how long it takes for a packet (basic unit of data for this discussion) to get to where it's going. For gaming, your latency is generally more important to the discussion. Game update packets aren't that big so they don't count for much bandwidth. However, if in an extreme case your latency was 1 full second (1000ms), it would be a full second between when the game server registered a shot from your opponent and when you saw it at your end. You want to eliminate latency whenever you can which is where network cables come into the discussion. You can't do much once the packets get to the router, but you might as well control what you can.

FWIW, in the big picture above and the beers we've been discussing, the vast majority of the beers are American Microbrews. Cracked open a bottle of Dogfish Lady-dog's Brew to celebrate the wife moving in. Such a great beer if you like stout/porter styles. Last Friday stopped off for dinner at Victory. Sad to say, the food is somewhat declining. What they serve is generally very good, but the menu keeps getting smaller and smaller. Very sad. A few years ago they'd have a split standard and seasonal menu with lots of interesting and somewhat innovative stuff on it (mustard-sage ice cream on a savory waffle with escargot (for $10)), but it's more like a normal pub menu these days. Hopefully it's a winter thing. As for beer, I tried Hop Devil on nitro pour. Hop Devil on draft (or bottle): Good. Hop Devil on hand-pump: great. Hop Devil on nitro: disappointing. On hand pump, if becomes really creamy, the hops mellow out a bit, and the floral/pine comes out. On nitro, it seems to lose the complexity of the hops and was just kinda bitter. Oh well, it was fun. Wife had Scarlet Fire, their Rauschbier (smoked malts). I had a 100 Horse Ale for my second, which is OK. It's a winter ale brewed with chestnuts. I'll put it this way, it's a nice beer but if it disappeared I wouldn't miss it.

My parents have a bunch of pictures skating on the ice at the Aud, back in the early 70s. My Dad apparently knew someone, so he skated around and took a few shots on net, a few with my Mom playing goal. Also a few pictures of my very-young cousins at centre ice. As for HSBC, about 10 years ago a friend was working for Adelphia and his office was under the seats in the arena. If you came in from main entrance, you'd walk past the escalators and thru a card-swipe door. We went to a game back then (19th row, on centre ice, nice seats) and wandered around the arena afterwards (didn't see anyone interesting though).

Really worth it. Only problem is a bus may swamp the place. They have maybe 30 seats.

Really? I thought that was pretty popular at one point. So anyways, about beer: going to Victory tonight for dinner. Woot! I'll have to see what's new.

So if Thomas never comes back, no deal, and if he does the Islanders get him for a 2nd? That doesn't seem that horrible, as long as Thomas is in any sort of shape next year.

Confound your use of logic man! How are we going to blame Lindy now?

I grabbed a bag of bacon jerky last week on my way up to Buffalo. Before opening it, I told myself I needed to temper my expectations, it's not going to be as good as bacon + jerky. I was wrong. It's bacon, but shelf-stable and doesn't require the fridge after opening. I just found my new favourite camping food. As for food, I probably have 2-3 weeks of food if I had to stretch it. I'd be eating a lot of rice and other grains, but I could make significant amount of pizza dough, lentils, rice, and pasta after that.[0] Then I'd get into the MREs I have in the closet that didn't get used on an aborted camping trip. I only have a case+ of beer though, but lots of liquor. [0] Hot water from my camp stove, charcoal grill, or gasoline (if I really had to).

Probably When you have a foot of snow on the hood (after being out for dinner), you'd have to be careful to not break the buried wiper arms with the shovel. :) If you're only going to get an inch or two, it's a good idea.