Derailment
A Train Of Thought That Jumped The Track

It's over. A disappointing end to a record-breaking season for the Caps, at the hands of the lowest-seeded team in the East. Montreal got spectacular goaltending from Jaroslav Halak down the stretch that kept them in the games where the Caps heavily out-shot them. Game 7 had stout defense on both sides, but the lack of power play production was the Caps' downfall. You simply cannot win in the playoffs scoring so little on the man advantage.

Coverage summary

Dennis Clarke noticed something interesting in a trailer for Disney's upcoming TRON Legacy movie. A glimpse of an "old" computer interface shows what looks like a window running "top" and another window containing a semblance of "uname -a" from a Solaris machine.

Reminds me of spotting nmap in Matrix Reloaded.

Good news for Habs fans, not so good news for Caps faithful. Last night was a pretty disappointing result despite a high volume of shots on Halak. There's a good summary and links to coverage at Caps Nut.

Sony has announced that it is ending production of the venerable 3.5" floppy disk. Additional coverage at Ars Technica.

Things like this cause me to wax nostalgic (a sure sign of advancing age, at least in Internet terms,) but I'll simply recall that my first OS (MS-DOS) came on something like 3-4 floppies. We also thought the boot-sector viruses that often rode around on floppies were a terrible scourge. If only we'd known what was to come.

A lackluster offense (until the third period) and amazing goaltending by Halak. It's a cliche that elimination games are difficult for the series leader to win, but we've got to snap out of this habit of getting behind or we'll have no energy left.

Another solid game for the Caps, taking the series lead to 3-1 with a chance to put it away at home on Friday. A nail-biter through two (Varly's glove should be bronzed when this is all over) but explosive offense in the third was the difference.

Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win a hockey game. Defense and goaltending. And short-handed goals. And face-off wins. And secondary scoring. Oh yeah, and getting Ovie on the board didn't hurt. Montreal has to ponder their goaltending choice while Washington's seems settled. Something about the playoffs must elevate Varlamov's game, because he looked stout tonight. LET'S GO CAPS!!

The Caps managed to eke out a win in another overtime. Disappointing start to go down 2-0 early, and it was pretty grim being down 4-1, but the comeback was there, and congrats to John Carlson on his first playoff goal. That was a veteran wrist shot from the slot. Nice to see Backstrom get a hat trick to boot.

We'll be looking to steal some thunder from Montreal on Monday.

Every so often I stumble on a book that opens up an entirely new area of knowledge for me. Last Thanksgiving I was on vacation in Florida and picked up Bernard Cornwell's historical novel, Sword Song in a used book store. Only later did I learn that this was the fourth in a series of books set in ninth-century England that tell the story of King Alfred the Great and the defense of Wessex, the last remaining Anglo-Saxon kingdom during the period of Danish invasions.

This is a time period of which I knew little, and though these are novels, they have been thoroughly researched and I've felt transported to that time. When I read the actual historical accounts, I can relate to them much better. That's what I love about historical fiction-- it breathes life into the dry facts of history and fires the imagination. I'm half tempted to try to learn Old English!

My main site was never that appealing, and I'd like to blog more, so now my site is just the blog. Things will be in disarray for a while as I bring over some of my old articles.