back in the saddle again!

it was a short summer for the Sabres.. the new season is already underway, a couple of lineup changes in the offseason, a greater sense of teamwork and a whole scandal about a changing of logos and team colors back to their old look.. the result of that? the Sabres start the season 10-0 tying a NHL record, and are looking good, scary good!

here are the old and new icons, personally i don't see how it matters!

with the Bills stinking up the town so bad, it's some relief that the Sabres are causing so much excitement so early on.. stay tuned

Thank You Sabres!

a great journey came to an unfortunate end, plagued by injuries and bad luck throughout. alas there were some hurdles that great heart and courage also couldn't overcome, but we have no regrets, you played like a team and we love you for that.. the Buffalo Sabres lost in Game 7 of the Conference Finals, so we won't be holding aloft the Stanley Cup this year.

thank you Sabres, you gave us hope and joy, and we were glad to be part of this ride with all you heroes, and we'll be right there again next year too! here, as a lasting tribute to this season is the editorial from the Buffalo News..

Disappointment runs deep in Buffalo these days. But pride runs deeper.

Playing with far more heart than health, the Buffalo Sabres fell one period short in their quest for a trip to the Stanley Cup finals. There was no shame in that loss. When you enter Game Seven with a depth chart that already looks like a scratched-off lottery card, it's tough to hit the jackpot.

Make no mistake, this Sabres season was all about heart, and hard work, and team play through round after round of adversity. The 2005-2006 Sabres refused to make excuses, but they also refused to quit despite injury after injury. They played their last deciding game on the road with what one Carolina writer called their "37th-string defense" - and that was before Jay McKee got sick. Yet they still led after the first two periods.

With all due respect to the still-standing 'Canes and Edmonton Oilers, no team in this postseason played with more heart than the Sabres. They demonstrated just how far drive, guts and speed can go in the "new" NHL, and they were good not just for Buffalo - when was the last time you felt this elated about sports in this city? - but for the sport of hockey.

The Sabres are a young team, with still-emerging stars and organization-nurtured talent. They also have major forces behind the bench in master psychologist Lindy Ruff, and in the owner's box, where Buffalo owes a huge emotional debt to B. Thomas Golisano for launching a championship team from a platform of disarray and prior-owner bankruptcy. Much of this team will stay together. And that's good. Scary good.

go SABRES!!

for those of you who have no idea what time of the year it is.. i'll remind you! it's NHL playoffs time, and it's time to sit back and watch the Buffalo Sabres do their stuff, like they have been doing all season long baby!!

in the first round we take on the Philadelphia Flyers.. who should be no match for the speed we bring to the ice.. they don't stand a chance!! see what happened in Game 1 at the HSBC Arena in Buffalo, which we went on to win 3-2.



as if that wasn't enough, in Game 2 we steamrolled them 8-2.. some highlights here.

it don't stop here.. this Sabres train will keep on rollin' baby!!

office lingo for 2006

NEW WORDS FOR 2006 - Essential additions for the workplace vocabulary:

BLAMESTORMING : Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.

ASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than by working hard.

SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.

CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles.

PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.

MOUSE POTATO: The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.

STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.

IRRITAINMENT: Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying but you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The Anna Nicole show or the Bachelor is a prime example.

PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE : The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.

ADMINISPHERE: The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.

404 : Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message "404 Not Found" (meaning that the requested document, like the person's brain, could not be located.)

GENERICA: Features of the North American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, subdivisions.

OHNOSECOND: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake.

WOOFYS: Well Off Older Folks.

CROP DUSTING: Surreptitiously farting while passing through a cube farm, then enjoying the sounds of dismay and disgust (leads to PRAIRIE DOGGING).

beer it is!

“Drink! for you know not when you came, nor why;
Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.”

— Omar Khayyan, The Rubiay’at

“One drink is just right,two are too many,
three too few”

— Spanish saying

“Here’s to long life and a merry one.
A quick death and an easy one.
A pretty girl and an honest one.
A cold beer — and another one!”

— Irish Toast

“He that drinketh strong beer and goes to bed right mellow,
lives as he ought to live and dies a hearty fellow.”

— Anonymous

Google vs. Yahoo

read a great piece today, this should make for some interesting times ahead.

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Don't stare so hard at Google you miss Yahoo!

The Internet powerhouse may be growing slower than Google now, but it's well positioned for long-term success as a central site on the burgeoning Web.

By David Kirkpatrick, FORTUNE senior editor

March 10, 2006: 9:09 PM EST

NEW YORK (FORTUNE) – With all the attention going to everything Google (Research) these days, it's worth pointing out that it's not the only Internet powerhouse. Yes, Google is growing a lot faster than Yahoo! -- 92 percent last year compared to 28 percent. But Yahoo! (Research) is very well-positioned for where the Internet is going.

Yahoo! is no slouch on search. A recent French academic study found that the quality of Yahoo!'s search results was just about exactly as good as Google's. One big advantage Google has over Yahoo! at the moment is its AdSense network for placing ads on sites all over the Web, not just in search. But Yahoo! is close to rolling out its own ad network, now in beta.

Yahoo! is superbly on top of one of the Internet's most important trends -- the move toward social networking. Yahoo! recently purchased both Flickr and De.licio.us -- businesses that use social networking to improve our ability to find things -- photos with Flickr and useful Web sites with De.licio.us. Yahoo! has concluded that it can get an edge on Google, MSN, AOL and other rivals by leveraging the fantastic power of friends helping friends.

I think Yahoo! is onto something. People are always going to have better judgment than computers about what is relevant and interesting. The holy grail will be to effectively use social networking in search itself, something Yahoo! strategists are thinking hard about.

And let's not forget MyYahoo!. The customizable site is my own personal Web home page, and has been for eight or nine years. Most of the demographically-desirable tech industry execs and investors I know also use it as their home page.

Yahoo! has backed off somewhat from its efforts to develop lots of original content. But it may not need to. What Yahoo! has proven consistently adept at is identifying and gathering under its umbrella high-quality content from others.

The company's biggest problem is that while it has a number of good Web businesses, it is not number one in many of them. It is number two in Web e-mail, behind Microsoft, and number two in search, behind Google.

Its total Web traffic remains tops online, but it needs to clearly differentiate itself with an industry-leading business -- and soon. Building a community with social networking that enables it to improve search may be the secret.

Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel is almost universally regarded as one of the Internet's best leaders. He confounded many skeptics like me after he arrived from Hollywood. His moves to make Yahoo! a more advertiser-friendly environment have paid off in spades.

"I think Yahoo! is one of the best-managed companies in America," says Mike Volpi, who runs Cisco's routing and service provider technology group and who frequently deals with Yahoo!, a big customer.

Co-founder Jerry Yang is less visible than a few years ago, but he's now playing a big role behind the scenes helping sharpen Yahoo!'s underlying software. Yahoo! has a formidable tech arsenal, which I predict will be more apparent in the coming year.

Aside from simply becoming an even more appealing place for Web users to hang out and get their information and entertainment, Yahoo! wants to become more of a platform for other businesses to build on. That's what has made eBay (Research) so successful -- becoming a home and platform for retailers. If Yahoo! can build its ecosystem, it will develop more places to stick advertising, more revenues and a higher stock price.

I expect the day isn't far off when Yahoo! is seen as Google's true peer.

Correction: An earlier version of this column made an argument based on misleading figures for the price-to-earnings ratio for Yahoo! A more useful price-to-earnings ratio for Yahoo! is 53. The more commonly reported trailing P/E of 24 for Yahoo was distorted this past year by several special items, including the sale of a large chunk of Google stock. The 53 figure is adjusted for these items.

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how's your mind today?

You Are Animal

A complete lunatic, you're operating on 100% animal instincts. You thrive on uncontrolled energy, and you're downright scary. But you sure can beat a good drum. "Kill! Kill!"

The Muppet Personality Test

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You Are 88% Open Minded

You are so open minded that your brain may have fallen out! Well, not really. But you may be confused on where you stand. You don't have a judgemental bone in your body, and you're very accepting. You enjoy the best of every life philosophy, even if you sometimes contradict yourself.

How Open Minded Are You?

the Gestalt Theory of Visual Perception

i remembered having studied this in Psychology class.. i actually enjoyed that class, whenever i attended it that is!

Gestalt is a German word meaning "organised whole", when parts identified individually have different characteristics to the whole.Parts are of secondary importance even though they can be clearly seen.
e.g. describing a tree - its parts are trunk, branches, leaves, perhaps blossoms or fruit. But when you look at an entire tree, you are not conscious of the parts, you are aware of the overall object - the tree.

The Six Principles of Gestalt Perception -

1. Proximity

   The principle of proximity or contiguity states that things which are closer together will be seen as belonging together. Looking at the picture below, since the horizontal rows of circles are closer together than the vertical columns, we perceive two vertical lines. Since the first two columns and the last two columns have less space between them than the center two columns, we perceive two groups of two columns.
   
   
   



2. Similarity

   The principle of similarity states that things which share visual characteristics such as shape, size, color, texture, value or orientation will be seen as belonging together. In the example, the two filled lines gives our eyes the impression of two horizontal lines, even though all the circles are equidistant from each other.
   
   
   



3. Good Continuation

   The principle of continuity predicts the preference for continuous figures. We perceive the figure as two crossed lines instead of 4 lines meeting at the center.
   
   
   



4. Closure

   The principle of closure applies when we tend to see complete figures even when part of the information is missing. Our minds react to patterns that are familiar, even though we often receive incomplete information. Even though the circle is not joined together, we still perceive a circle due to the principle of closure.
   
   
   



5. Figure & Ground

   The terms figure and ground explain how we use elements of the scene which are similar in appearance and shape and group them together as a whole. Similar elements (figure) are contrasted with dissimilar elements (ground) to give the impression of a whole. In the picture, the lighthouse stands out as the figure, while the horizontal blue lines are perceived as ground.
   
   
   



6. Area & Symmetry

   The principle of area states that the smaller of two overlapping figures is perceived as figure while the larger is regarded as ground. We perceive the smaller square to be a shape on top of the other figure, as opposed to a hole in the larger shape.
   
   
   
   
   
   The principle of symmetry describes the instance where the whole of a figure is perceived rather than the individual parts which make up the figure. What do you see in the figure below? Two overlapping diamonds, or three objects, a small diamond and two irregular objects above and below it? If you are perceiving according to the principle of symmetry, you will probably see two diamonds overlapping.
   
   
   

T-A-C test

Curvy and Naughty Raw score: 55% Big Breasts, 45% Big Ass, and 60% Cute!

Thanks for taking the T and A and C test! Based on your selections, the results are clear: you show an attraction to larger breasts, larger asses, and sexier composures than others who've taken the test. Note that you like women overall curvier than average. My third variable, "cuteness" is a mostly objective measure of how innocent a given model looked. It's determined by a combination of a lot of factors: lack of dark eye makeup, facial expression, posture, etc. If you scored high on that variable, you are either really nice OR you're into deflowering teens. If you scored low, you are attracted to raunchier, sexier, women. In your case, your lower than average score suggests you appreciate a sexier, naughtier look. Kudos! Recommended Celebrities: Supermodel Laetitia Casta and Actress Angelina Jolie.

My test tracked 3 variables. How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 66% on tit-size You scored higher than 44% on ass-size You scored higher than 51% on cuteness

The Tits, Ass, and Cuteness Test written by chicken_pot_pie on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

i say tomato, you say tomäto

got this in a fwd.. enjoy!

THINGY (thing-ee) n.
female: Any part under a car's hood.
male: The strap fastener on a woman's bra.

VULNERABLE (vul-ne-ra-bel) adj.
female: Fully opening up one's self emotionally to another.
male: Playing football without a helmet or a jockstrap.

COMMUNICATION (ko-myoo-ni-kay-shon) n.
female: The open sharing of thoughts and feelings with one's partner.
male:Scratching out a note before suddenly taking off for a weekend with the boys, or yelling out "beer!".

BUTT (but) n.
female: The body part that every item of clothing manufactured makes look bigger'.
male:What you slap when someone's scored a touchdown, homerun, or goal. Also good for checking out when on the female form, aka 'junk in the trunk'.

COMMITMENT (ko-mit-ment) n.
female: A desire to get married and raise a family.
male:Not trying to pick up other women while out with one's girlfriend.

ENTERTAINMENT (en-ter-tayn-ment) n.
female: A good movie, concert, play or book.
male:Anything that can be done while drinking.

FLATULENCE (flach-u-lens) n.
female:An embarrassing by-product of digestion.
male:An endless source of entertainment, self-expression and male bonding.

MAKING LOVE (may-king luv) v.
female:The greatest expression of intimacy a couple can achieve.
male:Call it whatever you want just as long as we end up in bed.

REMOTE CONTROL (ri-moht kon-trohl) n.
female: A device for changing from one TV channel to another.
male: A device for scanning through all 75 channels every three minutes.

3-4.. gah!!

seven games into the season.. the AFC East is the laughing stock of the NFL.. the Buffalo Bills are playing abysmally, three narrow wins and four sad losses.. the new QB JP failed to deliver, TKo is out for the season, the offense is a bunch of bumbling idiots, the defense is an overhyped sieve and special teams are the only saving grace.. once again being a football fan in Buffalo is the heights of frustration..

Where are You on Your Journey?
by Tony Bogyo

Grief is a complex emotion. It is a unique experience for each one of us. We all go through it in our own way. If you’re a Bills fan, you’ve certainly had your share of grief. By now everyone has seen the football debacle in Oakland and the pain of Sunday undoubtedly lingers on. You’ve heard all the gory stats, thought about the implications of the loss on the team and the remainder of the season and drowned your sorrows in more than a few beers. Indeed, you are experiencing grief.

There are 5 main stages of grief, and today finds Bills fans at various stages in the process. Where you fall in the process depends upon you outlook for the season prior to week 1. Those who didn’t expect much from the team are likely further along down the grieving path than those who honestly felt this was a team ready for its first post season appearance in the new millennium. As a service to grieving Bills fans, I have decided to outline the 5 stages of grief so you can understand where you are in the process and survey the road ahead. I know it’s painful, but eventually it is a process we will all get through.

Stage 1 – Denial
In this stage of grief you refuse to accept things as they really are. You try to tell yourself that things are as they used to be. You live in the past, flashing back to past experiences as if they were happening now. In Bills fans this stage is marked by a refusal to see that this is not a playoff team. You have a continual belief that we have a top NFL defense that has simply had a few weak games. You talk about how we have a young stud quarterback who can still lead us to the division title. You frequently talk about Jim, Thurman, Bruce and Andre. In serious cases, you have a mullet and break out the lucky zuba pants to watch the game on Sunday and may have lead poisoning from the paint on the Whammy Weenie you always carry. In critical cases you talk to people about how Sunday’s victory over New England, at Foxboro, in front of a national TV audience, will be the turning point of the season. If this is you, seek professional help in moving on to step 2.

Stage 2 – Anger
In stage 2, you have anger that eats at you. You may be subject to emotional outbursts. The anger may manifest itself as anger towards others and blaming them for the loss, or even anger at yourself. It’s only natural that you rant about what a terrible job Tom Donahoe has done in his tenure as Bills General Manager. You may choose to focus on a single player and his lack of performance this season (Jeff Posey, Sam Adams, anyone on the offensive line). You may also hate someone like Willis “I’m the best back in the NFL” McGahee for his pre-game comments to the Bay Area press. You may hate yourself for being a Bills fan and seemingly bringing emotional distress upon you and your family. In serious cases you’ve removed the Bills bumper sticker from your car or put away all of your Bills items in a box in the attic. In severe cases you’ve set fire to your house or yourself when burning your $235 authentic Bills jersey or cut your wrists with the Bills straight razor you found on Ebay (it matches your Bills bathroom and toiletries set).

Stage 3 – Bargaining
Stage 3 sees people starting to bargain with God or the world in the hope that what has been lost can be regained in a trade. If you’re religious you may try and tell God you’ll live a better life if only the Bills would make the playoffs (much like the bargaining you do with him when lying on the bathroom floor after a night of heavy drinking). In serious cases you offer to work nights at a soup kitchen if the Bills win a wild card birth, and in extreme cases you may actually offer to sacrifice your own pets or small children in some sort of bizarre ritual if the Bills could win the Super Bowl just once.

Stage 4 – Depression
Depression is the most difficult stage of grief. It manifests itself in many ways. You may feel sad, listless, confused or numb. You may burst out into tears over a little trigger such as seeing Drew Bledsoe’s performance numbers in Dallas. You may feel that you are being punished for something you did or did not do (you never really did work those nights at the soup kitchen after that bender on Labor Day). You may feel that it’s your fault – perhaps you slipped up and put your Bills socks on before painting your chest blue before the game, a clear violation of the pre-game ritual. You may have trouble experiencing pleasure – you pass up that date to the Anchor Bar for unlimited wings with Heidi Klum you won when Maxim magazine was in town doing a story on why supermodels are attracted to blue-collar football fans. In severe cases you lose interest in everything, including rooting for the demise of all current and former Dolphin and Patriot players and campaigning for a law that would allow you to shoot Jimmy Johnson on sight with a large handgun after messing up his helmet of hair.

Stage 5 – Acceptance
In stage 5 you come to accept the loss for which you are grieving. You have worked through all of your issues and can now look at the loss in a clear and rational manner. You realize that life must go on and you can no longer carry the baggage that weighs you down. You start to think about the positive things the Bills can do for next season. You begin to understand that come September all teams will be undefeated and perhaps the Bills will finally have that year we’ve all been waiting for. The year the Bills win the Super Bowl, Tom Brady is drummed out of the league after being exposed as a Satanist, the entire Miami Dolphin team is suspended for substance abuse violations and/or jailed for criminal activity and the Bills send all 22 starters to the Pro Bowl. Hope springs eternal. And there’s always step 1 again next year if it doesn’t happen.

where do they go now?

here's a question almost everyone in the know is asking, what will Google do next?! check out the things they already have working.. and where do they go from here?! this is what CNN reports Google has done lately..

• Launched an effort to create digital versions of entire brick-and-mortar libraries, triggering copyright infringement allegations from the publishing industry, which fears Google won't be able to protect the contents.
• Unveiled a system for talking over the Internet, spurring speculation about a potential Google-branded telephone.
• Dabbled in wireless Internet access at a handful of connection points near its Silicon Valley home and now wants to extend the service throughout San Francisco, inspiring predictions about a nationwide network that will enable people to get on the Web for free.
• Confirmed the development of an online payment system that hints at company designs on electronic commerce.
• Started to stockpile video and transcripts of previously broadcast material, fueling theories that Google wants to play a bigger role in television.
• Raised $5.3 billion in two separate stock offerings, providing ample financial ammunition for a major acquisition or investment in other projects that might open even more doors.

its Bills time baby!

yes, the regular season is finally here.. the Buffalo Bills play Houston Texans in a home game on Sunday, Sept. 11th.. at the Ralph Wilson Stadium. the hype and the suspense is scrubbing the atmosphere over buffalo like the whipping winds clean the blue skies here. below is an article from the Buffalo News, about what the team really means to this city, and its people!

Bills add seasoning to calendar
By JERRY SULLIVAN

Only five days to go now. Five. You can feel it coming, like a fast-approaching train. The Labor Day holiday is behind us, the kids are getting ready to go back to school, and in five days, the Bills will kick off another NFL season.

It's hard to believe, but this will be my 17th football season in Buffalo. That's almost half the team's NFL history. And yet at times, I still feel like an outsider. Certain realizations have come to me very slowly, after years of silent, detached contemplation.

I knew all along how much the Bills meant to the community. I had friends from Buffalo, so I was well aware of the obsession. But it wasn't until I had lived here for a long time that I realized it wasn't just the football that got people excited. It was the anticipation, the changing of seasons in a place where people's lives were slaves to the weather.

The changing of the seasons means more to people here. Over the years, I've noticed that Western New Yorkers experience the seasons a little more deeply than people in other cities. People seem to take more pride in their gardens here. Cookouts and swimming pools are a bigger deal. Now that I'm afflicted by the sport, I realize how precious a good golf day can be in these parts.

This past weekend, it seemed everyone was having some sort of outdoor party. The Labor Day ritual seems more important around here. People are sad to know that another fleeting summer is almost finished, so they give it a hearty Labor Day sendoff. At the same time, they're ready to welcome the fall, which means cooler weather and, of course, football.

The Bills are more than a conversation piece in Buffalo. They're a bridge between the seasons. The NFL's regular season begins in the final two weeks of summer; it occupies us for the entire autumn; and it ends just after the official start of winter.

Around the country, they think of us as a harsh, wintry NFL outpost, where lunatic Bills fans paint their faces and go bare-chested in freezing temperatures. That's fine. We might as well be known for something. Who could forget the sub-zero cold at the AFC championship game in 1991, or the snowfall during the win over Miami here in 2002?

That's the great thing about being a football fan in our town. The sport was intended to be played in all the elements, and in a single Bills' season you can sit through every imaginable form of weather. Where else could you see an NFL punter endure the horror of having one of his kicks sail backward over his head?

Still, Buffalo fans know there's nothing more glorious than a Bills game on a sun-splashed September day. The weather is an unfolding story in Buffalo. Early, you'll have a 75-degree day. Then maybe a game where it's 55. Later on, a game where it's right around freezing. Then, at some point, a day that has the opposing players cursing the day they were born.

A lot might have changed in our lives over the previous nine months, but it's always reassuring to come back for another season at Ralph Wilson Stadium and witness our time-honored rituals. It's good to know that some things haven't changed, and that you've at least made it to another Bills season, alive and intact.

People have told me a Buffalo blizzard seems pretty tame after what happened this past week in New Orleans. But I've come to believe that harsh winters do make for tougher people. It amazes me how resilient Buffalo people are in the face of relentless civic upheaval and disappointment.

Maybe that's why season-ticket sales for the Bills are at their highest level since 1993. Deep down, I suppose, people here are simply grateful to have a team, and a reason to sustain their optimism into another Buffalo winter.

This could be the year, after all, if the kid (new QB, JP Losman) can play.

the equilibrium mix

water is a strange substance, quite unlike the other homogeneous compounds in nature. for one, it is an almost universal solvent. it also supports life by allowing air bubbles with necessary gases to be carried in it.

the property of water i am interested in here is a unique one. when water freezes, it expands. no other liquid to solid transformation leads to an increase in volume. of course, this causes a lot of problems, as water freezes in winter and cracks pipes. regular substances on the other hand, they contract when they solidify.

now here's the idea. a certain proportion of water + substance X mix, that when forzen actually retains its volume, since the water expands to ice, and the substance X contracts to accomodate for exactly that volume.

what are the parameters that need to be looked at here?

• volume expansivity of X, and of H2O.
• ratio of volumes of X and of H2O.
  
• temperature range of operation.

volume and thermal expansivity are basic physical properties, and finding the relationship between the two has been the topic of various empirical formulae. besides phase interfaces make a lot of difference depending on the pressures the substances are at.

i have no idea about where such a mixture can be used, and of what benefit it might be, but i will get back to you if i find out more.

my brave Blues

Everton had their first ever Champion's League fixture today.. and even though we lost, we did not disgrace ourselves.. we cannot be faulted on work rate and effort. we shall get back up and take the game to them in the away leg, but for now we know we have a brave team that fights tooth and nail for everything, and it bodes well for the season ahead.