Bye DreamHost. One too many “you’re using too many server resources, how about investigating before we shut off your account?” emails. Now I’m with A Small Orange, which supposedly is much better. We’ll see, but so far I’m impressed with their support. I asked for SSH access and got a response within about 5 minutes.

I’m sure there will be more later. At least now I have a place to put it!

Marty Brodeur celebrated his 34th birthday today while visiting my home town here in Raleigh. As a gift the Carolina Hurricanes ran him out of the net with 6 goals, shutting out the New Jersey Devils during the first game of the second round of the playoffs. Me and the girls were there in full regalia — me sporting the “new look” playoff scruff I decided to adopt in useless and unknown support of my ‘Canes — cheering on and staring in frank disbelief as we essentially dismantled a team that hadn’t lost since the end of March.

Montreal

I admit, I had lost my faith in the Hurricanes after sitting in the RBC Center and watching them lose the first two games against the Canadiens during the first round. I distinctly recall uttering the words “that might have been the last live game we’ll see this year, because they might not make it back from Montreal playing like this”.

They definitely proved me wrong. Oh, the games were tight. Every game except for the first blow-out by Montreal was decided by a single goal. The overtime winner by Stillman in game 6 to win the series was almost a letdown after how well Huet had been playing for them, but those are the breaks.

It’s possible that losing Saku Koivu with his eye injury — an injury I cringe at every time I see it… only recently has his prognosis begun to improve and now he’s expected to make a full recovery — was the breaker for Montreal. It’s understandable. I really thought following those first two games that Cole’s neck injury was going to be our post-season killer. But other players have started picking up, notably Rod Brind’Amour and Ray Whitney.

New Jersey

Yes, we won four in a row against Montreal. New Jersey just blew past the Rangers in their series. Brodeur had a 1.00 GAA coming out of that series and everyone kind of expected them to blow us out of the water. Hell, I expected it. We’ve been sliding since the Olympic break and since Cole’s injury, Brodeur and the Devils hadn’t lost since March. The beginning to middle of our season was our high point, New Jersey peaked at just the right time.

But, they came into our house and didn’t play their game. New Jersey is deliberate, they’re defensive, they’re tough. We scored 5 powerplay goals and controlled the tempo and style of the game the entire 60 minutes. We got some lucky bounces, but that’s hockey. There were two other goals that could have been tacked on to that score given a millimeter’s difference in trajectory. We got the luck, but we worked for the goals and the luck.

I have some hope that we can reach the semis now. The team isn’t getting cocky, they’re acknowledging the win and that there’s a world-class caliber goalie that had the luck against him tonight. Doug Weight said it best:

“Marty is not going to worry about being pulled and their team isn’t either,” said Weight. “Hey, we wanted to send a message early and play a great game in our building and we did. Having said that, it’s only 1-0 in the series and we have nothing to be big-chested about right now.”

Bring on Monday!

Bungie and Microsoft officially announced the final game in the Halo trilogy cunningly named Halo 3. You may remember that I’m a bit of a Halo fanboy. Maybe more than a bit. Given that, I’m almost frothing at the thought of playing the new game. Appears I’ll have to wait until sometime in 2007 to do it, but I can froth for that long. I have nothing if not extensive, long-lived frothing abilities.

Don’t just take my word for it. Go see it for yourself. If you have an Xbox 360, you may want to grab the high-def version on the Xbox Live Marketplace instead, but for those of you who were biding your time for the PS3 announcement and suddenly discovered that you were going to be spending upwards of $600 for your precious PS3 and are now driving around looking for a 360 to buy, you can watch the goodness on your PC.

I’m not musically experimental. I’m not experimental at all, really. I read the same authors over and over, I listen to the same music, I eat the same food. It takes significant effort and will for me to admit another source into the mix. Call me a creature of habit, call me staid, call me boring… that’s just the way I roll.

So why do I find Pandora so compelling? A spin-off of the Music Genome Project, Pandora aims to introduce the listener to new music he might enjoy. Yeah. Everyone says that. Rhapsody, which I have lavished attention and money at for years, does something similar with their “Radio Station” concept. However, Pandora leverages the Music Genome Project’s music characterization and classification system to truly attempt to deliver something you really might enjoy rather than simply jam artists into the queue based on genre.

For instance, I have a station based on a number of bands, from Metallica to Joe Satriani. Given the types of music it will play other things similar. And by “similar” it gets pretty interesting. For instance, it chose to play “The Disintegrators” by Megadeth. Why? I asked it.

We’re playing this track because it features a subtle use of vocal harmony, extensive vamping, a vocal-centric aesthetic, minor key tonality, and a dirty electric guitar solo.

You can add particular songs you like to the station’s database of preferences. Based on that individual song’s characteristics, you’ll hear more like it. You can fine tune the selections by giving thumbs up and thumbs down for songs played. If you hate something, thumbs down on it and it’ll be skipped and the station will be adjusted to avoid similar things in the future.

I haven’t found any real keepers so far, but the chaff to wheat ratio is running pretty high. All this and it’s free. CF likes free.

Few things are quite as humorous as being upbraided by your toddler. Your mom was good at it, your wife is likely supremely talented at this act, but when your 3 year old daughter witnesses some foul-up, cocks her little head just so and, shaking her head gently, pipes “oh Papa, you made a big mess,” you know you’ve been put where you belong. This particular exchange has become an almost daily occurrence as I seem incapable of pouring my milk over my cereal in the morning without getting some brave milk sprinkles forging new trails onto my place mat. Julia, ever watchful as I perform these preparations, never misses an opportunity to critique my technique.

The first time she did that to me I almost dropped the jug from laughing. At this point, to be honest, it’s tempting to succumb to the temptation and just poor an entire bowl on the ground just to get her reaction.