Good Things

The Bruins are beating the Devils

The Red Sox are smoking the Tigers

There’s a new Star Wars show on Disney+

There are new episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale

I get to see my father tomorrow

I closed all three activity app rings

All good things. Looking for bright sides everywhere.

Thoughts on a Tuesday

I spent my whole afternoon so far looking through a customer’s database for an example of a piece of data that I am now pretty convinced does not exist. Le Sigh, as the French (don’t) say.

The Bruins moved into third place in the division with a win over New Jersey last night. The win also clinched a playoff spot. There will be a post season for the Bruins in this Covid Season #2. There are still a few more games to play but if it ended today they’d be matched with Pittsburgh in the first round. Le Yikes, as the French (don’t) say.

I tore the cellar storage apart twice and that little purple knock off uni-vibe pedal is still MIA. Before the great cellar disaster clean up (I’ll give the details someday, but the wound is too fresh for now) it was in a cardboard box on top of the table next to the bulkhead door under one of the last remaining functional fluorescent lights. All of that stuff was packed up and moved into the storage area just to the left of the washer/dryer. Everything else is there, but the little purple knock off uni-vibe pedal with Jimi Hendrix painted on it is not there. (It’s a Moen Shaky Jimi, if you’re curious). I did have a thought as to one place it could be… it could be over Mike the Bass players house. I have an amp (my beloved Fender Deluxe Reverb) and a small board there that have been off limits to me since Covid. I know my Wampler Tumnus is on that board as well as an MXR Phase 95 and a Seymour Duncan Vapor Trail. I have no memory of putting the Shaky Jimi on that board, but there is a chance that it’s there. Waiting for me. Taunting me. Le Lame, as the French (don’t) say.

I’m going to see my father in the rehab hospital tomorrow. I haven’t been there yet, you need an appointment to visit patients, but my brother has. I talked to him a little today. He said I am going to have to take a Covid test before I can see my dad. He suggested I bring my vaccination card with me. Well, I bring that little cardboard bastard with me everywhere I go. I am willing to pull it out and flash it for all the world to see at the slightest moment’s notice. Hell, most times I leave the house I have to stop myself from stapling it to my forehead on the way out the door. I want everyone to see that little guy. I am vaccinated. Two shots plus two weeks, babie. I am up-to-date. Le Groovy, as the French (don’t) say.

Sunday Morning Thoughts

I’m up and showered and ready to face the day and all that. I went to sleep at about quarter to one am. I woke up a couple of times before waking up for good at about quarter to five am. My AppleWatch tells me I failed to reach four hours of sleep. I tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t do it. Early to bed tonight, I guess.

Two WordPress.com items of note:

  1. I have recently gained a handful of new followers here. That’s nice, right? They all have the same profile image. Well… that’s not good. It doesn’t appear to be porn spam, which is nice, but it does appear to be spam of some kind, which isn’t good.
  2. What’s up with stats? WordPress.com has a stats page that keeps all sorts of information, including page view counts and unique visitors, sorted by days, weeks, months, and years. There is also a page called insights which is supposed to be like a summary page. I noticed last month that the view counts on the insight page were off. Not just for that month, but for a whole bunch of random months over the life of this account. I found this off putting because the analyst side of my programmer/analyst brain likes digging through the stats. I was hoping it was just a bug in the calculation and WordPress.com would fix it. Nope. It seems to have gotten worse. Yesterday I checked the stats just before midnight. I had a healthy number of views for the day (thank, folks!) and given that it was the first of the month the day and month counts matched. I went to insight, which defaults to monthly counts, and it gave me a big goose egg of a zero. Huh? Sometimes it takes a few seconds to update, but it never did. I checked the stats again just before starting to write this post and I had one view for the day. I checked insight and it showed one view for the month. It basically skipped yesterday. What the hell, bro?

What else is going on? The Bruins won yesterday, They are a point away from clinching a playoff spot (I think) with five or six games left to go (I think). Color me cautiously optimistic. The Red Sox lost last night. They play in Texas again this afternoon. I thought the Rangers avoided day games at home, but I guess it’s still early enough in the spring that they won’t bake the players and the fans in the afternoon heat. Speaking of fans, the stadium was full for last night’s game. I guess Covid’s over, right? Texas says so. I hope they have contact tracing available for the thousands of folks who went to the game as an outbreak is pretty much inevitable.

Dad called a few minutes ago. He’s hooked up to an IV. Antibiotics, I’m sure. He said he thought he was going to have physical therapy this morning, but how can he do that when they have him plugged in? The hospital has limited visiting hours and you have to make an appointment ahead of time and you can only make one appointment per week. I’m going Wednesday. I haven’t seen him since January. I’m looking forward to a visit. Once again let me put my vaccination to work.

Happy Sunday, everyone. Can’t wait to go home and see Jen and Harry. Until then, I’m trying to make the best of it by writing really long, boring, uninformative blog posts. Cheerio, all.

Zombie Double Feature

Why did I watch two zombie movies today? I don’t know. I’m staying at my parent’s house for a couple of days and I’ve had some time to spend with ye olde streaming services.

First choice was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and I don’t know why. No idea. It was really stupid and I am never getting that hour and a half of my life back again.

Second choice was The Girl With All the Gifts. I read the book a while ago. The movie was very faithful and very good. The kids were creepy AF, but any zombie movie with kid zombies is going to be creepy AF.

Now I have to decide what to watch next. It probably won’t be until tomorrow, but there will be time. Tarantino movies? Marvel movies? Star Wars movies?

On an unrelated note, Taylor Hall had two goals with Buffalo this season. In three games with the Bruins he has… two goals. Now we’re talking, Taylor.

Fans in the Stands

The Boston Bruins are coming out of their week or so long Covid-19 shut down tonight. They are playing the Islanders at the Garden and for the first time since last March there will be fans in the stands. Not a lot of them, in terms of the building’s capacity, but some.

This was actually supposed to be the second game with fans in the stands but the first one was postponed when the team was shut down due to their little Covid-19 outbreak. I’m just going to leave this sentence right there and give you a second to allow the irony to sink in.

All set? Okay, ignoring the irony for a moment, I was thinking about this earlier today and I started to wonder how the team would handle possible outbreaks in the stands. I envisioned a message displaying on the jumbotron at regular intervals saying something like:

If within the next week or so you should develop Covid-19 symptoms and receive a positive result on a Covid-19 test, please call the Bruins at 617-555-IRONY and let us know so that we can commence with contact tracing for your fellow ticketholders.

You know, something simple like that.


On a completely unrelated note, we had a meeting today with all of the groups under our Senior Manager. We did a little team building exercise that required everyone to log into the same website. Sort of like a Jackbox thing without the possibility of NSFW content cropping up. The site gave each participant a randomly generated user name. What was my randomly generated user name, you ask?

EpicGiraffe

I’m pretty sure that when I someday punch my ticket and see my whole life flash before my eyes, being referred to anonymously as EpicGiraffe is probably going to end up being the high water mark for all things.

He Said the Quiet Part Out Loud

The NHL fired a referee. After calling a penalty on a play that probably didn’t deserve it, he was caught on a mic saying that he wanted to give that team a penalty.

He wanted to give a make up call for whatever reason. Everyone who has ever watched hockey knows that refs occasionally give make up calls when one team is getting whistled more than the other. It’s a thing that everyone knows happens, but referees never talk about. This guy was fired for saying the quiet part out loud.

Do I agree with the firing? Hell yes. The league is correct when it says that it needs to protect the integrity of the game and all that.

Do I think the league is being completely hypocritical? Hell yes. If the integrity of the game is this important, why haven’t they investigated the seemingly infinite number of calls that were clearly make up calls over the course of the last 100 years or so? He wasn’t fired for his actions, he was fired for talking about the obvious thing while standing too close to an open microphone.

The refs have a union, don’t they? I’m curious to hear what they have to say about this.

A Pretty Good Sunday

Things that were good today, not in order of importance:

  • I finished this year’s RPM Challenge
  • The Bruins beat the Rangers
  • We got a new waffle iron and it made some really good waffles.
  • Also in food news, Jen made a roast tonight and it was scary how good it was.
  • The Red Sox played their first Sprint training game. Sure, they lost to the Twinkies, but the important thing is that they played.
  • The Walking Dead came back.
  • My father, who went into the hospital on January 29th, came home. I mean, he’s going back in on Wednesday but the point is he finally came home. My father went home today!

Two Bruins Loses? Inconceivable!

I’ve been so wrapped up in music this week that I didn’t notice until just now that the Bruins were blown out in each of their last two games. Worse, they were both against New York teams. Inconceivable*!

They lost to the Rangers 6-2 on Friday, and the day before they lost to the Islanders 7-2. How could this happen? Two bad loses against two New York teams?

They play the Rangers again tomorrow at noon. Let’s hope they put a stop to these shenanigans toot sweet!

*You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means

12%

Massachusetts is going to allow people into arenas for sporting events starting March 22nd. Yet they can’t offer vaccines to people under 65 years old unless they have two of a short list of comorbidities.

I believe they are going to allow entry to 12% of the building capacities. That’s 2107 Bruins fans, 2234 Celtics fans, and once the season starts, 4553 Red Sox fans.

A gathering of 2,000 people… yes there will be social distance and masks and all of that… still… If the Bruins play three games in a week, that means we could have three super spreader events in town in a single week.

We’re never going to get out of this covid mess, are we.