shrader

I saw one of those seahawk highlighter jerseys at the gym yesterday. I immediately lost sight and walked into a locker. They're even worse in person.

One bottle neck vs. 18 different bottle necks. Give me the former, please.

I'm in a fairly quiet suburb, so there's only a few cars street parked at any point. So for them, it's not really an issue of stealing space. The thing that drives me crazy though is that with the entire street open, they'll always wind up parking directly across from my driveway. Maybe I'm the only one who things this way, but when I park on a street, I'm avoiding being near anyone's driveway unless absolutely necessary. You limit their space if they decide to pull out and it's just asking for the car to get dinged. It's even worse at my house because my wife is completely unaware of her surroundings while she backs out. Move the car about 10 feet in either direction and you're completely clear of the driveway. It's not rocket science. The worst part is that it has mostly been contractors parking there with their massive trailers. They wind up parking over a foot away from the curb, making it impossible to get out of the driveway without either hitting my curb or switching between drive and reverse a couple times.

Why do smoke detector batteries only die in the middle of the night? Thanks a lot, smoke detector. I don't have a spare 9 volt in the house and all stores are closed. I know your battery is dead and I can't fix that. There's really no need to chirp at me all night. And since you're hard-wired into an electrical source anyway, how the hell are you draining that batter so fast anyway?

You missed an obvious Tim Horton's joke here. You're officially slipping.

It's always July 1st for the start of free agency. They have a day or two window before that now where the player is allowed to talk with other teams, but I'm too lazy to look up the specifics on that.

And their website is complete garbage. You'd think that the contract length would be fairly easy to find, but I can't find mine listed anywhere on there or in a bill.

It's interesting too because there really isn't any other comparable among the other sports (granted, I don't know how soccer handles things). MLB is the only other one with a big international mix to their player base, but they non-US guys aren't included in the draft. It's a shame that they probably will never truly get a meaningful world championship format established because it's one sport where there could really be an international market for it.

I wonder how much scrambling Hockey Canada is doing with these recent drafts where they don't completely dominate the early portion of the NHL draft. Last year they had 2 of the top 10. The Auston Matthews draft was the same. This year they'll get 3 or 4. So it's not like it's happening every year, but they have to cringe a bit when they see it. Other parts of the world are catching up to them quickly when it comes to talent development.

Those aren't loopholes, they are specifically spelled out rules. And they won't be changing them, there's no reason to do that. We're talking about such a small number of players. These college players already have their rights restricted more than they are for the non-CHL player. The PA would never agree to restricted those guys' rights even further. Every single player can be eligible for unrestricted free agency 4 years after becoming eligible for the draft. You can't suddenly change that so that the college players have to wait even longer. Also, the CHL guys can re-enter the draft after two years if unsigned, something not available to the college guys. Yes there is a window each year where a bunch of college guys become UFAs at the same time, but that happens with the CHL guys as well. The only difference there is that those players can sign earlier in the year without fear of becoming inelligble to play with their current team. So you won't get that "all at once" feel, but there is definitely CHL undrafted free agency as well.

We really only have one player to look at right now for this question. Anyone beyond the first round picks was more than like a >2 year project anyway. So it's just Mittelstadt who may have been taken instead of a worthy CHL pick. With those later picks, they may indeed have a preference of one league vs. the other, but I don't think it has anything to do with those CHL transfer agreement rules. This year's draft results may very well fuel that theory though. It seems so USNTDP heavy this time around and the numbers alone make it pretty likely that they go that route with the first pick.

I can't think of the last early drafted CHL player to hold out and return into the draft 2 years later. It's too easy to just sign them right away and then let them stay there for their next two years if needed. I don't really see how they would have less control over player development with this option. I'd also have to imagine that they had some say in Pekar and UPL (yeah, until he makes it, I'm not learning that spelling) switching into that league. That's certainly a developmental move for those guys.

I just don't want to give that blind squirrel any credit if this by some chance does happen. Those constant references remind me too much of the hit and run "my neighbor's cousin works on the grounds crew" guys we get over on the football side of the board.

I've been here in the Raleigh area for 5 years now and this year was by far the worst one we had for pollen. I remember one day in particular where a specific section of my morning drive, it looked like I was driving through cartoon nuclear fallout. I'm fortunate that I don't have any allergy issues, but it's so bad here that it has introduced a new problem: getting pollen under my contact lenses. That right there is brutal. We're past that season now though, thank god.

I wouldn't call it being a cynic though. The constant use of the phrase "super secret source" doesn't exactly instill much in the way of confidence, at least for me.

Mine actually turned out ok. I'm already in that period without any promotions, so there was no price increase coming. They offered me a credit of $64 per month for 12 months, without a new contract. So that means I can just go through this whole process again in a year when the price jumps back up to their normal rate.

Ha, they have apparently switched to the car dealership method of negotiation now. The woman I talked to said she has to talk to her manager and will call me back with what they can offer. Apparently I've got a bit more time left on the contract than I thought, so I can sit back and watch this play out a bit. It should be fun to see just how close they stick to that car dealer method where the first offer is pure garbage. I've heard from a few people going that route recently. I'm not sure how it has worked out for them so far.

The same super secret source that said the coaching job was Tippet's if he wanted it, after the job had already been offered to Krueger?

I'm at the end of my latest two year deal with Directv. I hear that they don't bend quite as much as they used to with that routine negotiation game. Has anyone had that experience recently? I did just recently switch my internet provider, so I can definitely use the threat of switching to them for cable as well.

I'd imagine it's far more about money than it is about whether or not Krueger can makes a sales pitch.

How many trucks broke down over the course of that countdown?

And the casual listener is by far the majority of the audience. Of course any of these lists are going to cater to those people. There was one music list years ago that at least always nailed the #1 ranking. Back in the stone age when MTV actually aired videos, they would randomly pull out "the greatest videos of all time". No one could ever compete with Thriller.

I fully expect to see the royal blue this season. They have nothing to gain from releasing that info right now, so they might as well string along the fans for a while. It will get that much better of a reaction right around September.

And apparently they originally planned on killing Conor at the end and then have the human/terminator hybrid guy take on his face. That would have been... different. I need to go back and watch that one sometime. I haven't seen it since theaters but I remember having a positive reaction to it. But then again, I'm a fan of Bale.

And where's John Connor? He should be well over 40 at this point. I wonder if they've got something planned with him in the movie and they want to keep him out of trailers for now.