I wanna rock...

Ronan and I occasionally play "Guitar Hero III" together on our Wii. This has become much easier since we bought a second guitar controller. We don't last too long in cooperative mode, as his arms don't really reach the strum bar and the note buttons at the same time. But he loves "rockin' out" with his dad.

Last night, Ronan stayed over at his Grandad and Grandma's house, but had a bad night, and had been up since 3:30 am. Which meant that by 7:30 tonight, he was pretty brittle. He was in good spirits and behaved well through dinner, so when he asked to play Guitar Hero with me, I gladly agreed. We told him "one song" only though before bedtime. He and I played "Slow Ride" twice, failing miserably to get farther than twenty bars into it before we were booed off the stage.

After that, Julie took over Ronan's guitar for one song with me (she's getting pretty good) and then we said it was time for him to go to bed. And thus provoked the funniest tantrum in his long history of tantrums.

"I don't WANNA go ta bed. I wanna ROCK! I WAH-HA-NAH ROCK!"
"I wanna ROCK! I don't WANNA go ta bed! I WAH-NA RO-HO-HO-CK!"

It's hard to carry a kicking, screaming rock star down the hallway to his bedroom when your sides are shaking with laughter, and he sobs and wails at the top of his voice:

"I wanna ROCK! I WAH-NA RO-HO-HO-CK!"

Oilers get bounced

Crap. The Edmonton Oilers got booted out of the playoff picture with their loss last night to Calgary. Big downer, as it means the Oil have been out of the Stanley Cup picture both seasons that we've lived here. After 12+ years in southern Ontario, you think I'd be used to the local team not having a shot in the playoffs, but I'm still a big enough Oilers fan that this one will sting for a while.

I did wonder though how much of an impact the extra overtime loss point system played in the Oilers downfall this year -- even though they were great in the shootout, they let a lot of teams get away with that one point for making it to the overtime session. I fired up Excel and did some quick calculations for the standings, based on the old (2 pts for a W, 0 for a L) system, and a English Premier league style system (3 pts for a W, 1 for an overtime loss, and 0 for a loss). Here's the results for the Western Conference:

Classic system (2 points for a Win)
(Games, Wins, Losses, Points)

1 Detroit      79 52 27 104
2 San Jose     80 49 31 98
3* Minnesota   80 43 37 86
4 Anaheim      80 45 35 90
5 Dallas       79 43 36 86
6 Colorado     81 43 38 86
7 Calgary      80 41 39 82
8 Nashville    80 40 40 80
 Edmonton      81 40 41 80
 Vancouver     80 39 41 78
 Chicago       79 38 41 76
 Phoenix       79 37 42 74
 Columbus      79 34 45 68
 St. Louis     79 31 48 62
 Los Angeles   80 31 49 62

* Minnesota gets 3rd place due to conference winners getting top 3 seeds.

So no help for the Oilers there, but they'd still be alive mathematically.

EPL type system (3 points for a Win, 1 point for an overtime loss)
(Games, Wins, Losses, Overtime Losses, Points)

1 Detroit       79 52 20 7  163
2 San Jose      80 49 21 10 157
3* Minnesota    80 43 28 9  138
4 Anaheim       80 45 27 8  143
5 Dallas        79 43 29 7  136
6 Colorado      81 43 31 7  136
7 Calgary       80 41 29 10 133
8 Nashville     80 40 31 9  129
  Vancouver     80 39 31 10 127
  Edmonton      81 40 35 6  126
  Chicago       79 38 33 8  122
  Phoenix       79 37 36 6  117
  Columbus      79 34 33 12 114
  St. Louis     79 31 35 13 106
  Los Angeles   80 31 42 7  100

* Minnesota gets 3rd place due to conference winners getting top 3 seeds.

No changes in the placings here. So no help for the Oilers with this system either, but again, they'd still be alive mathematically.

Guess we just have to wait until next year...

Wagons HO!

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