Received my official confirmation of entry card in the mail today for the 33rd Annual Grandma’s Marathon, which will be held Saturday, June 20, 2009. My number this time will be 3669.

Online registration is still open as of today, so grab your spot if you want to run this year.

My sister has joined my brother in Florida – both now work for the mouse on the Disney Plantation. Lynn is on a cooking internship, currently working as a pastry chef at the Contemporary Resort. I think that lasts through June or July.

Yesterday I got a package in the mail that contained an awesome birthday gift: a Pirates of the Caribbean hockey jersey. Thanks Lynn!

The Wild gave up a loser point and then the extra point to a Kings team they should have slapped all over the place. The first period was so boring, I might have left if my daughter wasn’t with me. I probably should have, as I got a nice little $25 present on my car from the St. Paul Police Department that was placed there around 9pm. More on that in a minute…

The second period at least had some scoring, including the beautiful short-handed goal by Miettinen off the pass from Koivu. I’m pretty sure the Kings goal was scored by Johnsson, which ended the Wild’s long penalty kill streak. No goals in the third, although the Wild had a few chances. I am so sick of single digit shot totals in a period – what is up with that? Both teams seemed tired in the OT and just seemed to stop skating. I’m starting to hate the shoot-out even more now (and not because the Wild lost the last two I’ve witnessed). It’s a skills test, yes, but lately hasn’t really showcased a lot of skill. And please, Coach, keep Burns on the bench during shoot-outs for the rest of the year.

Now on to the real thing that made me mad tonight. I drive a MINI Cooper that used to fit just about anywhere in downtown St. Paul. Then the city put up signs that said no parking from here to corner. I’m fine with that. At the corner of Smith and Chestnut where I parked at tonight, though, there was no sign. Plenty of room for a MINI to fit. The curb was covered with snow, so there weren’t any markings I could see.

At 21:06, an Officer Lee decided that I was violating statute 169.34.1.a.6 – “Prohibitions – stopping, parking within 20 feet of crosswalk.” $25 fee – just enough to really not make it worth my time to dispute. So word of warning Wild fans – don’t park within 20 feet of a crosswalk, even if there are no signs or visible markings. Grumble, grumble.

Wild are off now on their six game road trip, which starts Friday in Calgary – 8pm start on FS North (no HD).

During my oh so fun network adventures the past few weeks, I did run across one wonderful new tool. iStat is a $1.99 iPhone application (normally $2.99) by a company called Bjango that can be used to remotely monitor Mac servers (and regular computers).

Very easy to set up, iStat actually has two parts: the iPhone program and a Mac program called iStat Server that runs on the machines you want to monitor. It transmits data on port 5109, so you may need to make adjustments to your firewall in order to get the two programs to talk to each other. I set this up on several Xserves running Mac OS X Server 10.4.11 and 10.5.6, as well as two Mac minis that I use as servers running regular 10.5.6 (see screen shot on the left).

Once your firewall rules are correct, configuration on the phone side was easy – enter an IP address and enter the 5-digit passcode that the iStat Server displays. As you can see in the sample screen shot on the right (provided by Bjango), iStat gives you a nicely designed layout for each device that provides live updates for CPU usage, RAM allocation, open hard drive space on each volume, network traffic (in both directions) and, depending on the machine, internal temperatures. Device uptime and system load are also displayed.

The program also allows you to see information about your iPhone: memory usage (with an option to free memory), open storage space, IP addresses in use, uptime, load, your phone’s unique identifier and the wi-fi MAC address. The last two items also have buttons to email those bits of data to whatever address you want.

There are also options for ping and traceroute, but I haven’t had as much luck using those as the normal monitoring features. That is probably more of an AT&T issue than the program, though. When connected to a wi-fi network, it seems to work better. Bonjour is also supported, so it can see devices that are running the server software.

Since my network has been wonky, iStat was a nice discovery to allow me a chance to get out of the building, but still watch what was going on in the server room. The look and feel are perfect and it works as advertised (aside from the ping issues). A steal at $2 – this is an application I would have paid much more for – especially when you look at the price of tools like Intermapper.

Now if Apple would come out with iPhone editions of Server Admin and Workgroup Manager, I’d be all set…

From our mailbox:

One of the best races of the year – sign up by March 29 for a discounted entry fee.

OK, so now you know just how far behind on things I am. Here is a scan of the holiday card I received from the Wild for being on the warming house season ticket waiting list:

Happy (belated) holidays!

Thanks to my “real job” nightmare, I haven’t had much time to focus on this site or on hockey in general. It’s hard to miss the general state of despair of the Wild online community, though. Russo thinks the Wild are toast, Hockey Wilderness is totally pissed and threats of season ticket holder revolts are flying left and right.

Yes, the Ottawa game was a massive choke. Yes, the Wild are uber-inconsistent this season. Yes, the Wild can’t string three wins in a row to save their lives. Yes, the upcoming stretch of games against top-ranked teams will be challenging. And, yes, 14 out of 17 games on the road is a bitch.

But you know what? I’m not ready to stop watching or call for Risebrough’s head on a platter just yet. Our beloved GM’s statement that “there are only four or five good teams in the league and the rest of us are all the same” is pretty much dead on. The Wild could very well stink it up for the rest of the season, but they also have a very good chance at any of the lower half of the playoff seeds (assuming San Jose, Detroit, Calgary and Chicago are locks for #1-4).

There is plenty of time at the end of the season to call for blood, but right now I’m excited to see what this crop of players can do. Hell, I’ll even give Dougie the benefit of the doubt at the trade deadline. History has shown this time of year isn’t exactly a showcase of his negotiating skills, but Mr. Leipold won’t let mistakes go on forever, right? Maybe he can redeem himself with the Gabby and Backstrom situations after all…

It cracks me up when I read posts from places like Detroit that can always find something to complain about. As if 82 points isn’t good enough, eh?

This clever ruse about consecutive sell-outs needs to end, though. I’m 99.9% sure all of those seats aren’t sold every game. Any insider informants out there that care to spill the beans? Leave us a comment or drop me a line at dk@hockey.mn.