blog.erwintang.com

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEgrFCIJPvo]

Today Vancouver hockey fans were still buzzing about Roberto Luongo’s record 72 save performance in Wednesday night’s game. It reminded me of a game nearly thirteen years ago. It was game one of the 1994 Stanley Cup finals. The Canucks were in New York to face the Rangers. Kirk McLean had magnificiently backstopped his team through three rounds of playoff hockey including a save in the seventh game in overtime versus the Flames that people still talk about today.

I was fortunate enough to watch that game on TV, then again, most of BC was doing the same. McLean was simply brilliant all night, stopping wave after wave of Ranger forwards. It probably should have been a blowout but McLean kept the Canucks in it until Adams scored in overtime.

In my opinion, that first game in Manhattan still remains the greatest display of Canuck goaltending in the history of the team. The short video above shows some highlights of that night. Stay until the end where you see Adams one-time the puck past Richter. My heart had never felt so much joy.

The Canucks defeated the Stars tonight in the fourth OT period, with the game ending around 12:30am local time. Six hours after it started, it was all over. For people who attended the pre-game ceremony it was probably a seven hour affair.

Vancouver game up three one-goal leads and a single two-goal lead. They were thoroughly outplayed in the third period. They gave up 40-something shots by the end of regulation. If you examine the stats, they really had no business winning this game. The reality is they got lucky tonight. If they don’t make some adjustments for tomorrow, I guarantee you the next game won’t go into OT.

There are going to be some tired people out there tomorrow and I don’t mean the players.

As much as I was hesistant, I have a Facebook account. This thing looked like a MySpace clone
from a mile away, so I was ready to lump it into the same trash pile as Xanga and all these other social networking sites.

I’ve been on Friendster for years but very few others that I knew were on it. It just didn’t reach critical mass. On the other hand, I’ve been amazed by Facebook. People who I never thought would join a social networking site are on it… lots of people. Why is Facebook taking off while sites like Friendster didn’t? The answer is unclear to me.

Actually, there are some things about Facebook that I’ll cautiously say are nice features. First, Facebook prevents you from taking your profile page and turning it into a UI disaster. There’s no embedded audio of some stupid song. There’s no changing the colour of the background so that your text is illegible. Compared to MySpace, it’s night and day comparing the two interfaces.

I haven’t bought into the whole Facebook thing yet but look me up if you’ve got an account. Feel free to poke me or add me as a friend.

Throughout this hockey season I’ve been nearly silent about the local professional hockey team, the Canucks of Vancouver. To be honest, at the beginning of October, I believed the Canucks would fall short of making the playoffs. I wasn’t alone it seems since a local poll run by one of the newspapers showed a majority of respondents thought they wouldn’t make it either.

Fast forward to several months later and it turns out I was wrong. The team won their division based on the heroics of their new goaltender, Bobby Lou himself, Roberto Luongo. Yes, there many other players with a great showing but if you averaged it out, Luongo was the difference this season.

On Wednesday, the playoffs begin with the Canucks hosting Dallas. On paper, Vancouver is the third seed while Dallas is the sixth. In reality, the Stars finished the season with two more points (and one more win) than Vancouver and their year was just as good, if not better. Dallas played in the super competitive Pacific Division, while the Canucks were able to capitalize on a bad year for Edmonton and Colorado.

To say the Canucks have an advantage would be folly. Indeed, I am going on record here to state that Dallas will win the series in six games. The Stars are a powerful team and the Canucks will undoubtedly try to go to the well one too many times. Bobby Lou is only human and he can’t rescue an entire team all the time.

It will be a good series but Dallas in six.

I’m fascinated by new stories such as this one. A California care centre for seniors is being sued for negligence. The suit claims that the centre allowed a rat to enter the mouth of a 90 year-old senior, whereupon the rat died.

Apparently, this centre has been in trouble in the recent past as well. Just last year, a senior with dementia wandered away from the facility and was never found.

I am extremely gassy tonight.

In speedy fashion, my manager approved my request for virtual private network (VPN) access. This means I can partially work from home now. Using Windows Remote Desktop, I can now access my work computer from my home computer.

As you might expect, the level of security around all of this is pretty high. EA uses the RSA SecurID system which I believe is fairly common for companies. A username and a password isn’t enough for me to connect to the EA network. I now carry around a small keyfob with an LCD display on it. It shows a six digit code that I have to enter in whenever I log in. This code changes every sixty seconds according to a specific algorithm. The servers at EA know this algorithm as well, so the numbers have to match up at both ends.

As a test, I connected tonight after coming home. I added a couple lines of code. It’s not exactly like being there because the connection lags a bit but it’s not bad. While I can write, edit, compile, and read code, there’s no way to really test the game. I can run it but since I can’t see my TV or move the controller, it does have its limit. Still having e-mail access and the ability to write code is still pretty nice. Yay! EA now gets productivity from me even when I’m home!

I am now homefrom work. I took a taxi that EA paid for. They have a corporate account with Vancouver Taxi. It was 11:30pm and my part of the game was done. My manager saw I was still around so she told me to get a taxi voucher.

People who are working late take cabs home all the time though this was my first time. I had a friendly driver. I could have just sat in silence but you know cab drivers are in an interesting line of work. My driver had been driving for 15 years. He told me how he gets paid and how many fares he needs to get before he even breaks even. He even commented on other cab companies.

It wasn’t until we were almost home when the conversation got really interesting. Taxi drivers hear a lot of weird stuff. My driver has picked up a lot of fares who are hookers. They tell him how much they made that day, how many times they’ve had sex, and sometimes, how they’ve had the sex. If you think that’s wild, then there are the offers. He had one guy get on downtown near St. Paul’s Hospital. While on the way to Broadway, he offered to give my driver some oral pleasure. He refused on account of him being straight and married but his fare persisted, even going to the point of offering $100. It was an offer that he turned down. Another time, he picked up a dude on Davie. This guy wanted to know if he wanted to have some fun. My driver declined the offer of sex, so his fare just asked to be dropped off on the next corner. Last but not least, he had a woman offer him money to go on a picnic in the park, complete with a picnic basket, and dancing. Apparently, she wanted to make him jealous or something.

By the time he finished telling that story, we were at my place. The fare came to $39. I feel bad now because I only gave him $6 for a tip. It should have been closer to $8. What do I care? It’s EA’s money. I know I’ll be working late again, I’ll see if he’s around so I listen to the rest of his stories.

Well, it’s 11pm and I’m still at work. I’m usually parked in front of my Wii at this time of night but I’m here waiting for the build to finish. We’re doing some stuff for the CEO when he visits the studio tomorrow.

There are lots of people here putting in lots of effort for this. I hope this dude appreciates it.

I know that scientists have been saying the Earth is getting warmer year by year but you sure couldn’t tell in Vancouver today. We’re into April now which is supposed to be the gateway to spring and warmer weather. This was not the case on Monday.

It was surprisingly cold today. In some suburbs there was a healthy dose of snow on the ground. The air wasn’t just nipping at you with the cold, it was biting you. I regretted putting on just my fleece jacket today.

The high is supposed to be 14 on Friday. We will see Al Roker, we will see.