When I started following hockey as a young kid around the age seven or eight, the Islanders were the best team in the league. (Interestingly, I clearly remember friends who cheered for Boston, Toronto, Montreal, Chicago, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Philadephia but no one else seemed to have latched on to the Islanders which is another reason I liked them as they were “my” team.)
Their amazing dynasty won four Stanley Cups in a row from 1980-1983 and featured one of the most competitive, money goalies of all-time in Billy Smith, one of the best pure goal scorers of all-time in Mike Bossy, not one but two outstanding Saskatchewan players in Bryan Trottier (one of the most well-rounded players in the game at the time) and Clark Gillies (who was one of the toughest players in the league but still had top line level skills), one of the greatest defensemen of all-time in Denis Potvin and a strong supporting cast of role players from Bob Nystrom to John Tonelli to Butch Goring to Ken Morrow and more, all under the guidance of one of the game’s great coaches, Al Arbour.
Between that terrible stretch plus the fact that we moved to Calgary in 2001, I became a Flames fan. But the Isles always had a spot in my heart and are still who I consider my second favourite team though I don’t follow them nearly as closely as I used to.
The single best presentation I did in library school was on the evolution of streaming video online and how it’s biggest benefit was how online video eliminates constraints of both time and distance that all previous dominant mass communications mediums – radio, television – suffered from.
Like most 70s kids, I was pretty obsessed with TV. Then, in the 90s, I even ended up with a job selling cable TV subscriptions door-to-door. This was around the time I discovered the Internet too and I still remember obsessively downloading short, grainy clips of hockey highlights and music videos and Simpsons scenes, even before YouTube existed.
I don’t regret much about how my life is gone but admit I often wonder how my life might’ve been different if I’d pursued this area of interest more actively – instead of being a librarian, I might be working for a traditional or new media company.
At any rate, I’m still interested in developments in streaming media but every time I come across a clip like this one, I still think of that original library school presentation I did *fifteen* years ago.
*Literally* the first words of this timeline discuss the central role of various churches in the creation of schools that took Indigenous children from their parents, communities and culture.
For more than two hundred years [from 1600-1800], religious orders run mission schools for Indigenous children, the precursors to the Government of Canada’s residential school system.
I could’ve used this when we lived in Calgary but honestly, this is all I needed to know:
1. Hop N Brew (right next door to where my office was – dangerous!)
2. Drum & Monkey (also down the street from my office – sat there for like ten hours from noon on to hold a table for Game 7 in the 2004 Stanley Cup Final!)
3. Classic Jack’s
4. James Joyce (downtown and I think there was one on 4th? Amazing curry fries!)
5. Ship & Anchor (Many places on this list are gone but the Ship is a Calgary institution.)
6. Kensington Pub (home to a great Saturday afternoon sharing a pint with an 80-year old aunt!)
7. Rose & Crown
8. King Eddy
9. Kaos Jazz & Blues Club on 17th (Special mention as we held multiple Freedom to Read Week fundraisers here when I worked at the Writers Guild of Alberta)
10. Wild Rose Brewery
My old 'where to drink in Calgary' decision tree got onto reddit again today. Seeing that many people were commenting about how out-of-date it is, I updated it for 2021. Here is your new 'Where to drink in Calgary' decision tree! pic.twitter.com/lThzbyPLtN
Browsing my photos, I occasionally come across a photo of someone in the family wearing a mask and it’s weird to think how unusual it felt at the time – when Pace had to go into isolation for a weekend after presenting with some weird breathing (later diagnosed as childhood asthma), when I’ve gone in for surgery or when I accompanied Shea for a c-section, when we sprayed chemicals on our lawn, when we did painting.
Not sure on the context of this one but three year old Sasha had no idea what she was preparing for only a few short years later!
I’m trying as hard as I can to avoid buying from Amazon as I’ve grown to *really* dislike their business practices – from how they treat workers to resellers engaging in fraud to simply the fact that Jeff Bezos does not need one more penny of my money.
I mean, Wal-Mart is a shitty employer too but at least they have employees in my city and pay taxes here and so on. I haven’t done it at Wal-Mart but most bricks & mortar stores also making returning stuff you bought from their online stores a lot easier (recently returned some clothes to Old Navy, no problem!).
Here’s a sample of a couple of the comments on the MetaFilter thread…
My biggest problem with Amazon these days is that so many of their third party sellers are practicing fraud. I only buy the most basic items there anymore because too many times, even slightly above bottom-of-the-barrel brand products have turned out to be not the item claimed, but rather cheap, low-quality alternatives in fake packaging.
Also:
The issue has been that Amazon’s warehouses consider all “same” items interchangeable. In the “Fulfilled by Amazon” system, the seller ships their product to Amazon, who keep it in their warehouses until it’s bought. If another seller is selling the same item, their stock is mingled with the first seller’s stock at the warehouse. If one of these sellers is sending fakes to Amazon, you as the customer have no way to avoid them when buying that item. Buying from seller A or seller B has no relationship to whether the item you receive is originally from one or the other.
“There are legitimate medical exemptions but if someone requires a mask exemption, that usually means they are at high risk of Covid and I counsel them to not to go out in public without a mask and instead, have someone assist you – a family member or caregiver if possible…Some doctors will feel pressured to give medical exemption letters but by and large, most of the time, people don’t need a medical exemption from wearing a mask.”
