Well it took a bit longer than expected but it’s finally done. A few weekends of bad weather plus 2 kids and a wife who is never home meant I had a few 30 minute pockets of time spread out over a few weeks and 1 actual full day. Continue reading
Doesn’t look like the weather is going to co-operate today so I won’t be getting much work done so we packed up the kiddies and headed off to Home Depot to get some ideas. I orginally planned to replace the decking, but after talking to the guy in the deck department he suggested re-finishing is probably going to be a better route unless the decking is rotted out (which is isn’t)
So the new plan is to add some wrap-around steps, put up railings around the areas that won’t have the steps attached and to re-finishing and re-stain the surface. That’s probably going to save a few hundred bucks easily. The current deck is just a simple 12 X 16 deck surround by weeds, weeds and more weeds so I drew up a simple plan of what the finished product will look like. Continue reading
Pretty good progress on day 1, managed to remove the decking to inspect more of the foundation and also removed all the railings.
I was being kind when I called the deck an ‘eye-sore’ in my previous post, when I was removing the railings, the tops of the railings literally fell apart as I pulled the railings down after removing the bolts that attached the railing posts to the deck. After those bolts were removed I literally pulled the rest of it apart with my bare hands. Continue reading
This project has been a long time coming since we bought our place a few years ago. The deck out back was in terrible shape when we bought the place (handyman special) and 2 winters haven’t exactly been kind to the decking. I can’t exactly call this a ‘how to’ article, but it’ll serve as a pretty good starting point for the novice handyman who needs a relatively easy project to start out with. Continue reading
Round 1 started with a roar, lots of great hits but I would assume the league cracked down on the ’shenanigans’ which is why most of the series that went past 4 games were pretty tame. Calgary/Chicago was a beauty all the way through, but the rest that started out with a bang seemed to fizzle near the end. So I’m 50/50 through the first round. I knew it would be risky picking Calgary and Columbus but I really expected the Flames experience to pay off and didn’t expect Chris Osgood to actually be any good.
Oh well, on to round 2. Continue reading
This is freakin HAL-AIRY-ASS…. Blonde Jovi featuring Bitchy Sambora….oh to be a rockstar…
Metal Sludge - Bon Jovi threatens to sue tribute bands - The Power & Glory since 1998
Another year, another round of picks…let’s get started:
San Jose vs Anaheim Ducks (San Jose in 7)
This will be a tough series, San Jose needs to play a tough team like the Ducks in the first round instead of playing a team they could walk all over. Blake and Boyle on the blueline for the Sharks will be the key for the series as both have Cup rings. Even though there is almost 30 points separating these teams in the standings, it’ll be a close series, but San Jose has better goaltending and more fire-power and much more scoring depth than the Ducks.
Detroit vs Columbus (Columbus in 6)
The playoffs are about goaltending, the Blue Jackets have it and the Wings don’t. Osgood hasn’t been good all year and despite his 3 Stanely Cups, he’s past his time and Conklin isn’t much better (I still haven’t forgiven him for the screw up that cost the Oilers game 1 against the Canes when Roloson was injured a few years back). Detroit is an un-beleivably talented team but Steve Mason is the difference maker regardless of the fact he’s a rookie (remember Patrick Roy anyone?) and Ken Hitchcock’s style will ultimately frustrate the Wings and the Blue Jackets will prevail. This will be one helluva boring series to watch.
Vancouver vs St Louis (Vancouver in 5)
Vancouver has far too much depth for this to be much of a series. Kariya likely won’t be back for this series and he has the most playoff experience on the team. The Blues are missing their top 2 defencemen as well. It’s a great story that the Blues came back from last place a few months ago to 6th place, but they had nothing to lose, now the games count for something and they don’t have the experience or depth to handle a club like Vancouver. Luongo will be sensational and even though Sundin hasn’t set the world afire when he signed on, he’ll have a great playoff. Vancouver is simply too good and will roll over the Blues, but it’ll be a good series to watch.
Calgary vs Chicago (Calgary in 6)
This will be a beauty to watch. Chicago has a lot going for them, except experience (not counting the Bulin Wall). Chicago is a fast team but Calgary has much more character and has the gritty players you need come playoff time. Although Calgary faded the last few weeks of the season and had tremendous injury problems, they’ve iced the best team the city has seen since they won the cup 20 years ago IMO. The only chance Chicago has is if Khabibulin out-duels Kiprusoff, which is possible, but I don’t see a young team like Chicago pulling this off even though most are saying the Flames are the underdogs.
Montreal vs Boston (Bruins in 4)
Sorry Habs fans…the Canadiens don’t stand a chance against this Bruins team. They have too much talent, goaltending, size and grit for Montreal to have a shot at an upset. Tim Thomas has had a fantastic year and after toiling away in the minors for most of his career, he has elevated his game over the last few seasons. The Habs are missing their best defenceman in Markov and don’t have the gumption to handle the physical game the Bruins will throw at them. If Price gets hot they might steal a couple, but they won’t win the series. Even though I’m predicting a sweep this will be a fantastic series to watch, lots of emotion and a great rivalry.
Washington vs Rangers (Washington in 5)
Lundqvist (spelling?) is the only hope the Rangers have to not get embarrassed in this series. Well, that and if Theodore doesn’t fall flat on his face for the Caps. Nobody can stop Ovechkin and Washington learned a lot from last year’s playoff loss and will be a tough team for the Rangers to handle. Washington has too much speed but the only problem they might run into is depth on defence. Outside of Mike Green and maybe Tom Poti, there isn’t much there and it shows as the Caps has the 2nd worst GAA out of all playoff teams. The Caps have been great on the powerplay, but the Rangers have been equally good on the PK. Washington will still roll over this one and despite the Avery hype, this won’t be much of an entertaining series.
Penguins vs Flyers (Penguins in 7)
Now this is going to be a beauty. Sydney Crosby is going to erase his mediocre season (even though he finished 3rd in scoring) with an un-believable playoff. I really like the he’s been playing all year, much more of an edge to his game and he’ll be bringing it to the Flyers all series long. I will take Fleury over Biron any day of the week and the pickups the Pens made be getting Guerin and Kunitz will be key in this series. They both bring a huge physical presence that the Pens need. Philly doesn’t have a match-up for Malkin and Crosby on defence, but it’ll be great watching Crosby battle against Mike Richards.
Hurricanes vs Devils (Devils in 6)
I said this last year but was dead wrong, so I’ll say it again. One Word. Brodeur. He faltered down the stretch and did have that serious bicep injury, but he came to training camp in the best shape of his life and he wants to prove he’s better than Roy, especially after beating his win record. Had it not been for that injury he’d have eclipsed the shutout record too. Brendan Shanahan is a proven playoff performer and even though Carolina has been great during the last couple of months, the Devils will still prevail in this one. There will be some amazing saves between Ward and Brodeur, but this will largly be a snooze fest to watch.
Who will win the cup? Boston. Great goaltending and too much talent. I picked the Flames at the start of the year by the way…
Best Series? Calgary/Chicago. Lots of speed and hits, great entertainment.
Worst Series? Detroit/Columbus. Trap, trap and more trap…boooooo
Conn Smyth Winner: Tim Thomas
Scoring Leader: Sydney Crosby. I think he’s really going to turn it up a notch even though they won’t make it to the finals.
This works perfectly, I needed solution 3 to fix it:
Check out the link below for a couple of other solutions, but the first 2 didn’t work for me, I needed to use the 3rd solution after going through a whack of pain…
Windows XP SP3 install fails with error code 0×80070005 | Windows Reference
Now that you can upload hi-def videos to youtube…well, you have been able to for a while, I’ve just never used it, there’s some querystring parameters to let you have the hi-quality version play by default. Seems youtube always plays the lo-quality one by default unless your user account has the option to pick it. Mine doesn’t. Long story short, try this code generator, it works like a charm.
I dug through a bunch of archived DVD’s and found some of my original design work going back to 2001. I left out the ugly stuff, but have a peek!
My Agile Blog