Hockey Quebec Goalie Gear Rules are dumb April 16, 2009
Posted by jphebert in family, hockey.add a comment
I’m sorry to rant, but I think this is completely stupid. Next fall goalie gear will need to be of the new “NHL-based” specs, which means the goalie gear owned by local hockey associations and parents will be “illegal” on the ice for games. To be fair to Hockey Quebec, they might be following Hockey Canada.
I understand and appreciate the idea behind normalizing gear to standards but they’re doing this for all levels of play. So novice (7 to 9 year old players) and atom (9 to 11 year old players) will need new gear. Since parents and associations (unlike some believe) are not made of money and therefore this rule should apply to players starting at a certain level of play (pee-wee or bantam) since they have a more serious outlook on the game.
What this will likely cause is a shortage of goalies, where gear will be less abundant and cash will be an issue. Most importantly, this will discourage parents from dressing up their kids as goalies, hurt the sport which is in decline and will not help anybody play any better at all.
Music worth buying: The Decemberists April 7, 2009
Posted by jphebert in Music.Tags: cd, folk, mp3, Music, prog, the crane wife, the decemberists, the hazards of love
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The Decemberists just released last week a new CD named The Hazards of Love
The new album builds on the same sound but somewhat louder (guitars) and is a concept album where the tracks are technically separated but listens like one long track.
This band with this album crosses British folk with prog influences, which makes it a very nice and different piece of music to listen to these days. Highly recommended if you’re tired of the usual crap which is thrown our way by record execs.
Google Docs to manage kids’ presents April 6, 2009
Posted by jphebert in family.Tags: b-day, birthday, parent, parenting, parties, party, x-mas
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As a parent every time there is an occation (X-Mas, B-Day, etc.) I get asked what the kids would like to get as a present. I do the same to people, it just makes sense to not go in blind and get something which will be off-mark.
Since last X-Mas, I’ve been using Google Docs‘ spreadsheet to manage the “present process”. We just had my son’s birthday this weekend and we listed a set of suggestions we thought our monkey would like and all the parents used this to get suggestions and most importantly let the others of what they got. And herein lies the trick, this document can be edited by all invitees. Otherwise a simple email would do – so we had no gift duplication, the monkey was really happy with what his buddies got him, we controlled the present list so we avoid as much as we can the stuff he’ll never touch and simplified the process for other parents.
