Not long after I took my current job, my desk was moved to Canton, MA. I was living in Tewksbury and the commute was torture. After a couple of years my desk was moved to Framingham. The drive was still torture, but it was a little better. Eventually I figured out ways to get to work that avoided most highways. The drive was still long and sometimes it was still seriously painful, but generally it was much more pleasant. Every now and then I still have to go to Canton. Today is one of those days.

Oh my god it is awful.

The traffic jams just go on and on. They never seem to end.

I found a major downside of using iTunes match on the iPhone on the way home tonight.

I was listening to a Yes playlist on random. At one point I was stopped at a light and it seemed to be taking a while in between songs. I looked down and saw it had brought up “Awaken” which is about 15 minutes long. Then without playing it jumped to the next song.

Oh no you do NOT skip “Awaken”!

I hit back to try again and it immediately moved to the next song again. I did it three more times, same result. I then went to the album and selected the song directly (yes this is a very long stop light). That’s when the error message came up.

It told me I needed to connect to wifi to play the file. Huh? I went to another looooong song, “Close to the Edge”. Same thing.

Apparently iTunes Match won’t transfer larger files over 3G.

That really pissed me off.

I saw last night’s Bruins loss to Winnipeg a mile away.  A huge win on Monday followed by a long flight and a much weaker opponent on Tuesday adds up to a big let down game.

Still… what a streak it’s been, huh?  Speaking of streaks, Tim Thomas still has a 10 game winning streak that we can get behind.

Since the start of November the Bruins have lost twice.  Rask was in net for both of them.  Coincidence?

Somehow I don’t think so.

Okay, one more clip from the heyday of Yes.  I needed to throw in something with Bill Bruford on drums.  This one has Tony Kaye as well, but that’s not a big deal when the last one had Rick Wakeman.  This is a Beat Club video of the band playing “Yours is No Disgrace” from the Yes Album.  When I first saw this, 90125 was all the rage and Yes were having top 40 success for the first time ever.  I thought they were okay then, but nothing out of this world.

Then I saw this.

Specifically, I discovered Steve Howe for the first time.  The man is an absolute animal on guitar and he is out of his mind in this clip.  I’ve been a die hard Steve Howe fanatic ever since.

The Bruins game against the new Winnipeg Jets just started a few minutes ago.  I fear this game a little bit for a number of reasons.  Sure they haven’t lost a game in regulation since October, but last night they played a great game against the top team in the East, Pittsburgh, and now for the second half of the back to back they get the somewhat lowlier Jets.  It’s a pretty obvious let down game.  Also, Rask is in net and while I have faith in him, I have a lot more faith in Tim “The Man” Thomas.  Now I find out that Tyler Seguin skipped a team breakfast today and has earned himself a benching for breaking a team rule.  Not good, Tyler.  For you or for the team tonight.

Still though… it’s sure nice to see the NHL in Winnipeg again, isn’t it?

How about that realignment they announced yesterday?  I like it.  I honestly don’t care what they do so long as we remain in the same division (or conference, as they will call it next year) as Montreal and Toronto and even Buffalo.  The idea of the Northeastern teams being in the same “conference” as the two Florida teams is… well… weird, but not a bad thing.  I think it’s great that each conference will hang on to the major rivalries, and most of the teams will be within the same time zone so fans in the East won’t have to stay up late for quite as many West coast games.  I really don’t care that much about playing home and home against every team in the league.  I’m one of those people who favors divisional games over non-divisional games, but then again I’m not a season ticket holder.

They haven’t announced the plan for seeding the last two rounds of the playoffs.  I am 100% in favor of seeding the third round by points with the winner of each of the four conferences having a chance to play against any of the other conferences.  I hope they don’t separate the conferences into East/West pairs.  I want the change to meet New York, or Detroit, or Vancouver in the finals.  I want the conference champ with the most points in the regular season to play the conference champ with the fewest points in the regular season in the third round. 

A lot of people are bitching about the two conferences made up of current Eastern teams being made up of seven teams each while the Western conferences are made up of eight teams each.  I personally don’t care.  It gives the league a degree of flexibility, and I see a couple of quiet conspiracies in it.  First, I think this pretty much guarantees that Phoenix as a franchise is toast.  I bet they will be in Quebec City next year.  When that happens the league just has to add them to the Northeast + Florida conference and no one bats an eye.  After that, the league is free to expand by two teams.  One in the East and one in the West.  Nice, huh?  What they should do is contract the league down to 28 teams, but they are never going to do that.  So my guess is Hamilton, Ontario will get a team.  If not Hamilton, then somewhere in the greater Toronto area.  Out West is harder to guess.  Kansas City wants a team.  So does Las Vegas.  I don’t see Vegas ever getting a team, but who knows.  There’s also places like Seattle and Portland to consider, and has anyone ever thought about San Francisco?

The only other thing that I want to see happen with the realignment is…

Can we be the Adams division again?

Please?

Here are a few of the pictures I took in New York on Saturday.  We had a blast.

This was my first ever visit to Grand Central Station.

There were Christmas decorations everywhere.

We walked from Grand Central to 5th Avenue to the edge of Central Park.  Our destination?  The Apple store, of course.  It was the kids’ idea.

Obligatory flags on buildings photo.

My step son pointed out the Union Jack.

The Salvation Army folks successfully improved on their tried and true fundraising format.

My step daughter knew exactly what this statue depicts.

I’m sure this is much more impressive at night.

I like clocks.  What are you gonna do about it?

We briefly detoured into the Trump Tower before heading on to the Apple store.

We also stopped in Tiffany’s. 

After the Apple store we headed to Rockefeller Center, taking a cab most of the way, to see the tree and the skating.

The tree is huge, but somehow looks taller on TV.  It probably thinks the same about me.

Rockefeller Center was mobbed, but it was nothing compared to how busy it was later in the evening.  Keep reading for more on that.

We were gypped a little.  The Zamboni was out cleaning the ice surface so we didn’t get to see any skating.

From there we headed to Broadway to catch a showing of Wicked.  We all liked it, although it was admittedly a tad on the girly side for the two males in the group.  The kids weren’t as up on The Wizard of Oz as we would have liked, so they missed a lot of the jokes, but it was an enjoyable show.

I still didn’t see anyone selling $10 Rolex’s, but  there were plenty of caricature artists on the street that day.

Arty photo #1.

After the show let out we tried to find someplace to go for dinner and got sucked into the largest street crowd I’ve ever been a part of.  There were a gagillion people in Rockefeller Center.  Jen and I were both very nervous about losing the kids.  Later they both realized we were nervous and got scared, but I think at the time they were okay.  I managed to get some night time tree pictures before things got out of hand.

The camera stayed away while we were pressing through the massive crowd, but I had to take this picture because it reminded me of Cloverfield.  I can almost see the monster herding people through the streets.

We were clear of the crowd by this point and looking back at the tree.

We walked around a random corner on the way back to Grand Central and saw this.  Arty photo #2.

Arty photo #3.

Finally, arty photo #4.  Thus concludes the Saturday in New York picture post.

After listening to more of the new Yes live album I sort of need to do this…

Ahh, that’s more like it.