My poor Hurricanes. They truly can’t decide whether to win or lose. After shellacking the best team (admittedly without their top goalie) in the NHL they lose to the worst team in the league. They follow that up by getting shut out by the Penguins. Tough space.

We were there on New Year’s Eve watching our ineffectiveness against Philly, all of us including our good Canadian friends who are currently visiting. It was enjoyable and exciting but ultimately disappointing. We almost force Joel — one of said Canuckian friends — to go to the can late in the third as he was absent for both of the Hurricanes other goals and we needed something, but even that wouldn’t have helped. It’s so odd to see flashes of brilliance and dominance amidst stretches of mediocrity and seeming laziness.

The coolest thing to see was Flyers goalie Robert Esche come out for his first-star honors after warding off 40 shots. It’s rare to see a visiting team member come out for three stars honors, and I personally saluted him for it along with the visiting Flyers boosters in attendance. On his way back off the ice he gave his stick to a kid in a Flyers sweater along the exit row. Entirely, completely, utterly cool and I tip my hat to him. He’s won a casual fan in me and almost certainly a lifelong fan in that kid. This is in stark contrast to other players I see who won’t even lift a hand when heading off the ice after their home three stars honors. I’m looking at you, Cory Stillman. You’re younger than me, heed your elders.

By almost all accounts Xbox Live is a success, acquiring millions of subscribers and introducing new content and revenue streams almost constantly. As a subscriber, the amount and quality of offerings has been, with some exceptions, impressive. From game demos to Xbox Live Arcade titles to the newly introduced Video Marketplace, there’s plenty of content to find and enjoy.

All is not perfect, though. Well I should clarify that by saying all is not perfect for those who have to replace their consoles. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Xbox 360s are not the most reliable pieces of hardware — spurring Microsoft to increase the warranty period to a year recently — so quite a few people are finding themselves with replacements. Microsoft kindly provides a gamertag recovery feature that works as advertised, transferring some important gamertag information back to your new console. You lose game saves, but your Xbox Live experience is almost the same.

Almost.

The only place where things aren’t as rosy is Xbox Live marketplace purchases. Arcade games, video content, additional game content and the like. You see, when you first plop down your points for that content it gets downloaded and authorized for play on the console to which you downloaded it. Anyone on that console can use the content. Also, your Xbox Live profile is authorized to use the content anywhere as long as it’s logged in to Xbox Live. You see where I’m going.

The catch

If you have to replace your 360 — as I did back in July when my launch 360 died — you are suddenly stuck with less functionality. I didn’t discover it until I decided to bring the console to work the day before the holidays for the folks here to have fun with on the projector. After some scintillating rounds of Gears of War I decided to show off some Geometry Wars. “Play Trial Version” showed up on the launch menu. Huh? I bought that on day one! Having never really had the 360 offline I decided to log in. Suddenly I could play. Hmm. So, as long as I’m logged in to Xbox Live with my profile I’m okay. But if my wife wants to play (hahahahahahaha), no go.

Microsoft is handling this piecemeal. There are accounts of people calling 1-800-4MYXBOX and getting points replaced. This is a hack fix as you essentially create a throw-away Xbox Live silver account and redownload the content you bought. More interesting, Microsoft is playing it a bit coy with the support forums. There’s a thread — a 31 page thread to be exact — that was started in the general support forum discussing this problem. It has now been moved to the (significantly lower trafficked) Wish List forum. Lower visibility and all.

I love everything about Xbox Live. This is a minor annoyance, but it yet again points to the inherent weakness in any DRM scheme. At some point, through perhaps unforeseen circumstances, the consumer gets screwed. I bought those games. If you want to get technical, I bought licenses to play those games. Were I not able to connect to the Internet I would have been unable to use my purchased content due to a protection choice. This needs to be corrected in the same way that the original 90-day warranty needed to be corrected.

Here’s more discussion of the licensing from the actual Xbox team.

UPDATE: I just got off the phone with Allison at Xbox Live support. Very friendly and helpful. It is as I feared. Here are the steps you’ll need to go through if you had your 360 replaced by anyone other than Microsoft. If it was done by Microsoft you should just have to call support and tell them you can’t play your premium content on your new console unless you’re logged in.

• Call support and get a reference.
• Go and track down the documentation saying you exchanged your 360 from the reseller where you exchanged the 360. This could be fun.
• Fax the documentation and your contact information and your reference number to Xbox support.
• Call them and get your points.

Far from ideal, but given that people will attempt to game the system any way they can I don’t know that they have too many options. With a July replacement date, I seriously doubt EB is going to have my “replacement documentation.” Lovely.

I believe at one particular point in this video, the Dallas Stars’ Patrick Stefan becomes an atheist — or a firm believer in a particularly malevolent god. I invite you to see where you think that turning point is. It’s not as bad as it could be — they didn’t end up losing the game — but you can’t help but think Dave Tippett wanted Stefan’s head on a pike for the next 20 minutes.

Were I to purchase a named sweater of the Hurricanes, a serious contender would have to be Kevyn Adams. A perennial fourth liner, Kevyn exhibits work ethic and tenaciousness on defense. He centered one of the two penalty kill lines last season that stymied the best powerplay lines in the league. An alternate captain, he was also a great ambassador for the game. (Picture is from a couple of years ago at the Skate with the Canes event. Kevyn was on skates, I’m not that damned short.)

Kevyn ends his 5-year stint as a Hurricane today in trade for a young defenseman from Phoenix. A trade had to happen given the Hurricanes played a 5-man defensive unit in the previous game with injuries to Wesley and newcomer Tim Gleason. And, frankly, Kevyn hasn’t seen the ice time he used to. Laviolette has his choice of penalty killers this season, with stalwarts Brind’Amour and Williams anchoring one and several ad hoc lines featuring Craig Adams, Chad Larose, Trevor Letowski and Eric Belanger, Kevyn hasn’t played the role he had in the past. Add to that the limited opportunities for grinding it out by the fourth line this year, and you see a diminished role. Hopefully he’ll see more play time in Phoenix.

Thanks for everything Kevyn, including the picture.

You knew I had to comment on this thing. Had to. Steve Jobs waltzed out and quite calmly smacked the cell phone — and MP3 player, for that matter — market on its collective ass with the announcement of Apple Computer, Inc.’s iPhone. Packing a widescreen touchscreen, a 4 or 8GB iPod Video, “free” push email through Yahoo and “visual voicemail”, this thing takes aim at every other phone out there and waggles its svelte form their way. In one fell swoop every phone on the market looks dumb and antiquated. All those devices with QWERTY keyboards dangling ponderously off the side suddenly are ungainly and ridiculous. Okay, they looked that way before yesterday, but there was no other option before. Now there is, and everyone will want one.

Almost. They’re not perfect. For one thing, you’ll have to switch to Cingular if you don’t already use them. That might kill the deal for many, and it would for me. At a $499 starting price for the 4GB version they’ll sell plenty to the Mac-faithful and the gadget heads. That’s a premium pricepoint and I think the uptake from the business people and executives could take a hit as companies try to swallow that pill on an expense report. Using Cingular’s EDGE service seems… limiting. With the rich experience Apple demoed yesterday there will be significant bandwidth required which might be throttled a bit under the EDGE limitation.

All that said, it’s sexy. As I mentioned to a friend, I don’t want to want it but I want it. Damn you, Apple.