Finished reading: Arbitrary Stupid Goal by Tamara Shopsin 📚
Congrats to the St. Louis Blues, 2019 Stanley Cup Champions! That was a hell of a series. Two really good teams left it all on the ice, all seven games. What a particularly sweet victory for rookie goalie Jordan Binnington and “interim coach” Craig Berube. Well done. 🏒
This review of John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum pretty much echoes my own feelings, especially this bit:
“But as masterfully executed as the action is, watching two-plus hours of mayhem without any palpable dramatic stakes, or nuance, or any emotion at all save bloodlust offers undeniably diminishing returns.”
Despite going into them with low expectations, I really liked the first movie, and especially the second, because as over-the-top as they were, there were pretty simple stories to follow, and Wick himself was sympathetic.
I found it much harder to understand the logic of Chapter 3, or to care much about the characters. There were a lot of good ideas, yet none of them seemed to add up to much. The action scenes were amazing, but without stakes, they started to feel gratuitous. Boring, even.
I’ll still be there if there’s a Chapter 4. If so, let’s hope the filmmakers can recapture the formula that made Chapter 2 so good: stakes + a clear goal + great action = a cracking good time.
I don’t care for most of the armchair Game of Thrones analyses, but this piece by Matt Yglesias at Vox is the smartest take I’ve seen. He analyzes the final episode from a historical and political context and convincingly concludes: Daenerys was right: King’s Landing had to burn
Wine Cork Designs
I hadn’t really looked at the designs on wine corks before. Most of them are pretty functional, but some are surprisingly intricate, or whimsical, or artistic. For something that usually just gets yanked out and tossed in the trash without so much as a second glance, I find the extra effort here delightful.
Started cleaning out the garage today and sorted through all my corks for recycling. I might have a drinking problem. Or a cork hoarding problem. Or both.
OH: Somebody meeting your kids is way worse than someone seeing your CD collection.
Tampa not even being able to take a game in the series really hurts. Full credit to Columbus. From the second period of Game 1 on, they dominated the Lightning. They deserved this win. It just stinks for Tampa that they didn’t show up better.
sigh Next year…
🏒
Well, going down three games in the series really sucks. If there’s a bright spot, it’s that the Lightning played their best period of the series so far in the third. Maybe now they see what they need to do to be competitive. But time’s a-wasting. Not giving up yet… 🏒
Huh… Guess I haven’t been paying enough attention to the Islanders. They’ve got the Pens down 3-0 in the series so far. Good on ‘em. 🏒
A nervous Tampa Bay fan reflects on the post-season so far
My beloved Tampa Bay Lightning are down 2-0 in their series with the Columbus Blue Jackets, losing both their games on home ice. For a team that tied the record for regular-season wins at 62, that never dropped back-to-back games all year, that has a seemingly endless well of talent, it’s an absolutely gobsmacking situation.
Plenty of teams have come back from two games down in the playoffs. Some teams have even come back from three games down. But Tampa was so thoroughly dominated in the first two games that something major will have to change for them to dig out of this hole.
I’m certainly no hockey expert, but I am a pretty avid fan of the sport who has been watching the Lightning intently for the past 27 seasons, and I’ve been kind of worried this would happen. Playoff hockey is not like regular season hockey. The goal of regular season hockey is to get enough wins to get into the playoffs, and to stay relatively healthy doing it. In the regular season, talented, under-sized hockey players like those that fill Tampa’s roster can use their speed and quickness to get into the soft spots and find goal-scoring opportunities.
In playoff hockey, there are no soft spots. In playoff hockey, guys step it up a dozen notches, throwing their bodies around as if they were rented. In playoff hockey, it takes grit and toughness to win games, but also size and strength and an ability to physically dominate your opponent.
Tampa has built a team around fast, nimble, and under-sized forwards and young, talented defensemen. In the last two games against Columbus, the forwards were getting pushed around and the defensemen were showing their inexperience. (Actually, even Ryan McDonagh, who’s been so solid all year long, looked like he was out of his depth a few times.) And when the Lightning tried to come out and play a more physical game, as they did in the second period of Game 2, they didn’t do it smartly. Alex Killorn’s late hit early in the period earned him an interference penalty which led to a Blue Jackets power play goal.
In the regular season, the Lightning dominated their opponents by finding the time and space to create plays. In the playoffs, that time and space doesn’t exist unless you create it with your body.
In the regular season, the Lightning’s bread and butter were quick passing and pretty goals. In the playoffs, pretty goals are much, much harder to come by. More often than not, it’s gritty goals, greasy goals, and lucky bounces that come your way because you’re just relentlessly pounding away around the crease that are the difference-makers.
John Tortorella is a great coach (he led the Lightning to a Stanley Cup win in 2004, after all), and the Blue Jackets are a talented team that have been out-playing the Bolts for 5 out of 6 periods so far.
John Cooper is a great coach, too, and I believe the Lightning have it in them to go all the way this year. But in the back of my mind, I worry that they’re a team built for the regular season and not for the playoffs.
Prove me wrong, boys.
🏒
There’s nothing like Stanley Cup hockey. The intensity, the speed, the emotion, the physicality, the quality of play… it all goes up about 10 notches come playoff time. See today’s Dallas/Nashville game for an example of what I’m talking about. Off the hook. 🏒
IBM Chairman, President and CEO Ginni Rometty says “You will never have AI without IA.” Check it out at ~00:04:25 here: www.ibm.com/events/th…
Plaaaaay with meeeeeee!!!
Possible fix for Plex remote access trouble: log in to Plex.tv
Bottom Line: If you are having trouble getting your Plex server’s remote access to work, try logging into Plex.tv.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure this out.
I recently upgraded my eero network to the newest hardware. It was super easy to swap out the hardware, set the new devices up with the same SSID and password, and just keep on truckin'.
Shortly after that, I upgraded my Mac mini to MacOS Mojave, which included up/down-grading Mac Server. I had been experimenting with the mini as a VPN server and made a few tweaks to my eero configuration to allow the VPN to work. (Sadly, the new Mac Server software has removed VPN and quite a few other features, but I digress…)
Some time after I made those upgrades, I noticed that I couldn’t connect to my Plex library, either internally or externally. Every time I went to Remote Access on the Plex server settings page, it would show “Not available outside your network.”
Hmm… Surely this was a problem with the eero, right? It must have screwed up my port settings somehow. I knew it was too good to be true! I tried everything I could think of, including completely re-configuring my port forwarding settings on the eero, but I just couldn’t get the Plex server to respond. This went on for weeks, with me trying different tactics in odd moments when I’d have a few minutes to spend with it.
Rather than continue to search DuckDuckGo for answers, I finally went directly to plex.tv to see if I could figure out. I logged in to the site, and … boom! Everything started working again.
Sure would’ve been nice to have some indication that I needed to log in to my account, but I’m just glad everything is finally up and running. If you find yourself in the same situation, try going to your Plex account on Plex.tv and logging in. It may just save your sanity.
Here’s something I learned from my ophthalmologist: The lens in your eye is made, essentially, out of hair cells. You still have hair cells in your lenses from when you were born, and, just like your hair and nails, those cells will continue to grow throughout your life.
Rediscovered this mug in my cupboard today. I’m toasting with my morning tea to the memories of Spirit and Opportunity. Long live Curiosity!
It still astonishes and thrills me that I’m related by blood and marriage to people who work (or have worked) on these amazing missions.
Congratulations to the organizers of World IA Day Seattle 2019. What a fantastic gathering. The speakers were especially thoughtful and inspiring; I’d encourage you to follow these links and learn more about their work: Ashley Farley, Lassana Magassa, and Domonique Meeks.
Also, “pinky finger” is from the Dutch word “pink” for “little finger”.
Thumb is from “tum”, a Proto-Indo-European word “for ‘swelling’ (cf ‘tumour’ and ‘thigh’) since the thumb is the stoutest of the fingers.”
Thus endeth the etymology-of-finger-names lesson for today.