Last Wednesday, Montreal somehow managed to survive long enough to give Washington the boot. That netted them a matchup against the Penguins this week–and they’re even in the series at a game a piece. Montreal. In the second round. And not staring at elimination yet. Um. What? Okay, I get that the hockey gods despise me right now. But must they be so overly cruel? Really? I know I’m kind of looking forward to an original team cup final… but… Montreal? I’d really rather not.
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These playoffs are going in entirely the wrong direction.
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Coyotes get clipped. Big time.
Speaking of teams you don’t expect to see in the playoffs, enter Phoenix. Beginning of the year, they were pretty much losing money, and the only reason they weren’t sold to a Canadian owner and set up to move is the NHL’s apparent anti-Canada bias. End of the year, they’re still losing money, still probably going to end up being sold and/or moving, and now, they can count themselves among the playoffs’ casualties. Not that a Stanley cup final featuring Phoenix wouldn’t have been fun to watch, but… come on. It’s Phoenix. As in, Arizona. As in, desert country. What’s a hockey team even *doing* there? Besides golfing this week, I mean. Good try, Coyotes. Wanna move yet?
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Why IE 8 is crap, in list format.
Because the few major problems it has need no explanation, have an increasingly rare list format rant. The target? That thing Microsoft would like to call an improved browser.
- The browser crashes more in one day than Windows ME ever did in a week. I’d know–I’ve used both.
- Websites I can access just fine in IE 7, or in firefox, break IE 8. Badly.
- IE 8’s ability to restore tabs on a crash? Absolutely useless–it fails more than it succeeds, leading me to need to fight with it to get back to where I was and pray it doesn’t crash again anyway.
- Its “fast search” functionality? Yeah, crashes at least once per restart. Fail.
- It really makes me wish my parents’ computer, which is currently running IE 8–I’m fixing that the next time I’m over there, wouldn’t threaten to fall over every time I want to install something new. I’d be going Firefox in a real hurry over there if it didn’t.
Yes, IE 8 is on my parents’ computer. I have no idea who put it there–this one’s at least running 7, and it’s actually more stable. When next I have a couple hours, IE 8 is going to find itself taken out back, sat in the middle of the lawn, and shot. Call it a mercy killing–my mercy. There are rumours IE 9’s around the corner. I hope to God it handles itself better than 8. For its own sake.
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Blackhawks in, Predators gone.
File this under massive underestimations. I didn’t even think Nashville would manage to make it into the playoffs this year. They didn’t make it past the first round, mind you, but they beat my expectations. Now, if they can just knock San Jose around a little, we’ll be a step closer to an original conference final. SWeet would be an understatement.
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Oh, buffalo. You had such promise. Well, okay, maybe not.
In my one-person household, we have a problem. It’s baseball season, and Toronto’s actually doing… well… decently. It’s alsp playoff season, and Montreal still needs to be shown the door–something I’d like to be able to watch. Unfortunately, while my multitasking ability is awesome, my TV’s isn’t. So I missed the playoff style drop kick handed to Buffalo thanks to Boston on Monday night. But, as I’ve shown previously, just because I missed it by 4 days doesn’t mean I can’t have my own little cellebration. So long, Sabres. You were good in the regular season–just not good enough for the postseason. I’d say I’ll miss ya, but well… no.
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Poll: theaters or DVD, or both?
It’s been rather concretely proven that, contrary to what certain folks in the industry are insisting, if a movie’s halfway decent the release of it on DVD has no real negative impact on theater sales. Thus, sticking a fork in yet another movie industry scare tactic. So, I got curious. And when I get curious, bad things happen. Thus, a poll. When are you most likely to see a movie in theaters, if at all? You may need to click over to the actual site to vote, if it’s your intention–I’ve not done this before so can’t say for sure yet.
And now, the poll works. At least until the next time I break something.
[poll id=”2″]
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Behold, Canada’s new pirate party.
Canada now has its own pirate party registered to run in federal elections, at least as of Tuesday. The tradition started in Europe, where the party got its first European Union seats. As the article explains, the party actually stands for something I can get behind–the legal copying of music and other such items for personal/non-commercial use. Otherwise known as what today calls piracy. Now, let’s see if they can actually get into the House of Commons.
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Floppy disks are dead. No, really, it’s official.
Sales of floppy disks come to a screaming hault in March of next year. I haven’t had a computer with a floppy disk drive since probably March of 6 years ago. Yet, I still have a case of well-used floppies kicking around the apartment that haven’t so much as been dusted off since the days of college. Signs of the times? I’d argue those showed up around the same time as the first $20 thumb drive. The era of depressingly little memory has ended.
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Hey look, it’s Vancouver. And on the golf course? Why, Los Angeles.
The Kings won’t be doing much else hockey related ’til next year. Vancouver took care of that on Sunday, giving me something besides Montreal to cheer for. I never thought I’d say it–thank you so very much, Vancouver. You’ve made my year.
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Windows Live Writer review: epic accessibility fail.
I like to think I’m halfway patient. Kind of. In that way that kind of makes some people consider beating me over the head for being too stubborn for my own good. Still, that having been said, Windows Live Writer just beat the royal hell out of me so far as accessibility goes. Huge.
After fighting to get it to show me the screen to write a blog entry in a manner that doesn’t do hurty things to my head, I discover it wants to create its own standards for entry formatting–including throwing HTML where it really hasn’t got any business throwing it. For right now, it’s imperfect solutions time. Which means I do the majority of my work via Semagic, now that I’ve finally gotten it to play nice with something that isn’t LJ, and what I can’t do with this will get done from the web. In the meantime, the hunt is on for a third party client that is:
- accessible
- flexible
- compatible with WordPress’s newer features
- not necessarily restricted by LiveJournal’s limitations–I’d like to be able to make full use of nested categories, etc.
I don’t particularly think I’m being entirely too demanding in this search. I also don’t think such a beast exists, or exists for free in any event. Meantime, if you’re planning to use Windows Live Writer, reconsider. It, for lack of a better word, is crap. From an accessibility perspective, Microsoft fails. Hardcore. I should probably know that already. Ah well, that’ll learn me.