An unanticipated side effect of night shift working has been the speed at which time passes. Considering that from about 10:40 on Saturday night until noon on Wednesday my life is a blur of late-night news programming, unix systems administration, complicated charts monitoring various nigh-unintelligible technologies like ‘telephony’ and ‘database replication’, driving and poor sleep patterns it’s maybe not all that remarkable. That doesn’t mean I expected it though.

My weekends, such that they are, therefore involve a lot of chores and sleep catch-up plus a smattering of social activity and other recreational pursuits where they fit in. The end result is that I stand up and by the time I sit down several weeks have passed, usually without me updating the site.

I vowed awhile back not to waste a lot of time writing about not writing or making lengthy posts trying to excuse my absences. If I update, I update; if I can’t or don’t that’s the way it goes. No one cares one way or the other so it’s just alternating self flagellation and excuse-making which is boring and pointless.

If it’s cool with you I’ll pretend that isn’t par for the course around here.

Anyway, I have a smattering of thoughts and commentary now, which is at least something.

• So the Colts won the Super Bowl. Good for them, and good for Peyton Manning. I know lots of folks are down on him for various reasons but I’ve liked watching the guy play ever since he orchestrated a marvelous comeback on Monday Night Football several years ago. Usually I don’t really admire non-Bay Area teams’ players, even if they’re really good. But unlike Peter Forsberg or Tom Brady or Alex Rodriguez who are good but often also surrounded by other really good players, I can honestly tell that the Colts—despite having good players aside from Manning—would be a shadow of their championship selves without Mr. Laser-Rocket Arm back there draining the play clock and reading defenses and generally quarterbacking as opposed to just being a guy who can read his progression well and throw a tight spiral. I think what impresses me is that he’s certainly an athletic guy but he seems to play the game mostly with his head and I really only admire two things in professional athletes (whom I tend to think ought to have an extraordinary level of athleticism and talent merely as qualifications for being a professional) and that is hard work and a critical mind for the game.
• Unless said athlete plays for a Bay Area team in which case I only admire one thing and that is the ability to win. By and large, I don’t admire Bay Area professional athletes very often.
• Speaking of, I thought I should make a quick note of the Sharks, especially in light of their atrocious two game stand against Dallas. Sure, they were coming off a win streak but they looked really sad against a team that they have no reason not to beat. I mean, if they lose to Anaheim I’m certainly not happy but San Jose and the Ducks are supposed to be the teams to beat this year so games between them ought to be completely up for grabs. But Dallas is behind the Sharks in the standings which means, to me, they should be better than the Stars. They certainly didn’t look like it. A few very brief pointers for the boys in teal: 1) Shoot the puck. 2) Anyone on D who can’t hold the line (in any offensive situation but specifically on the Power Play) ought to get punched in the lips. I’m looking at you, Erhoff. 3) Stop trying to clear the zone with that little backhand bank pass. Here’s a clue: When it doesn’t work twenty-six times in a row, it might be time to try a different approach.
• I finally felt like Heroes got back on track last night. I think the “revelation” of the identity of Claire’s birth father was kind of telegraphed but it wasn’t unwelcome. The actor who plays Sylar did a really good job in the episode, too, successfully playing the charmer and then making a chilling transition back into total lunatic. I can’t say I was too thrilled that HRG made it just in time to save the day since the wife/mom character annoys the heck out of me, but I guess it wouldn’t work to have Claire completely grief-stricken at this point in the game. I’m also really liking Claude, the invisible dude. His rationale for tossing Peter off the roof was somehow hilarious to me. Nice shout out to Star Trek with the license plate on Sulu Hiro’s dad’s limo, too. In fact the relatively serious plot thread with Hiro was a pleasant change of pace for him as well. And while I’m still no fan of Niki, for once I felt like they were actually doing something with her this week so I didn’t have that familiar urge to hit the fast forward button quite as much whenever she came onscreen.
• On a different subject altogether, if you happen to have a hundred and fifty grand lying around, why not put it to good use?
• While I’m linking stuff, this dude has some ideas to improve the NHL. He thinks having more USians in the league, widening the net, adding expansion teams and going to permanent 4-on-4 would do the trick, in a nutshell. The problem is that he’s demonstrably wrong. The MLS was designed to get Americans into futbol by having local players they could identify with but that certainly hasn’t seemed to matter. He says that bigger nets would mean more scoring and more “crowd reactions” which makes games more exciting and more attractive as entertainment options. But then he goes on to spit out a bunch of numbers about goals per season and TV viewership which seem to directly contradict this theory. Also, while we’re trying to get more Americans playing the game we should add two more Canadian teams? That does not compute. And as for 4-on-4, I agree that making the shootout more rare would be good so I’m down with the ten minute 4-on-4 overtime, but playing the whole game 4-on-4? Sure, it’s exciting but it also would basically eliminate the pure defenseman since everybody would have to score well. You’d end up with guys like Patrick Marleau being listed as a D-man. No thanks.
• I was working on this sweet photo essay of the total weirdness of my workplace but my stupid camera ran out of batteries. In this whole building full of technological whizbangs I couldn’t find a single pair of AA batteries that would so much as power on my battery-devouring digital camera, much less allow me to snap off the last few shots I had in mind. Stupid electricity. I’ll have to try again tomorrow.