The fun of Ottawa and San Jose
Tonight was the Ottawa vs San Jose game, Dany Heatley playing his old chums (and half of Canada’s sports journalists in town to cover it), with Michalek and Cheechoo coming back for their first visit since the trade.
Cheechoo had a really solid chance early on a wrap around that I still don’t understand how he didn’t score, and then was more or less invisible the rest of the game. That kinda sums up why Cheechoo is now a Senator (and on the 3rd/4th line there) and not a Shark. Great hustle, great guy, fading talent on the depth chart.
Michalek had a hell of a game. Heatley had a hell of a game. It was a lot of fun. The Sharks won pretty handily, but both teams made it interesting.Tonight’s three stars: Heatley, Michalek and Marleau.
But here’s what really made it fun tonight…
An old friend and Apple cohort is from Ottawa, and boring the hell out of everyone around us talking hockey was a time-honored tradition back at meetings we were at together. He was at the game tonight, so before it started, I texted him and set a bet — loser buys lunch.
Then I spotted him a goal.
THEN I found out Thomas Greiss was starting in goal instead of Nabokov.
So I spotted him TWO goals, just to poke at him a bit.
And I won the bet.
A good time was had by all, I get to have lunch with an old friend — and he’s paying….
How much fun is that?
You don’t take pictures for a living…
Many years ago, when I was doing book reviews for Amazing Science Fiction (at that time owned by TSR. I did say “many years ago!”) a common question I got was ‘How can I get paid to read books?’
It may sound like I’m picking nits, but this is an important semantical detail: I didn’t get paid to read books. I got paid to help readers decide whether to read (and buy) books.
Typing is a skill. Writing is a craft. You don’t get paid for writing. You get paid for selling what you wrote. What you wrote is an asset, and your income depends on how others value that asset and what they’re willing to pay for it.
Ditto photography. The act of taking a photograph is a skill. The act of making a photograph is a craft. You don’t get paid to make a photo; that photo is an asset; it has to be valued and bought to generate income. (or more wonderful thoughts on making vs. taking, see Scott Bourne and Chase Jarvis)
Nowhere in here have I mentioned the word “art” or “artist”. To a good degree, it’s an irrelevant concept in the discussion (except it’s not). In my way of seeing things, to be a craftsman, you have to master the skills. To be an artist, you have to master the craft AND have a specific inner spark or vision that drives your work beyond the typical. Few are true artists, but in some fields, defining yourself as an “artist” is a marketing tactic used to increase your value and and improve sales. That’s not a crticism — it worked wonderfully for Andy Warhol (but is what he did art?)
Stephen King
This is a somewhat round-about way of pointing out that business of selling your work has very little to do with the act of creating it. If you don’t understand this, I can’t believe you can succeed as a business — but you may still be a great writer or photographer.
Which is a round-about way of bringing forward the idea that there’s going to be very little discussion about making great photos. It’s a given that you can do that; you can probably market yourself to some level of success if you’re craft is technically mediocre, but you’ll be constantly shooting yourself in the foot.
So this conversation is really about what to sell. It’s about how to market it so people know you’re selling it. It’s about making sure that someone who wants to buy it can. It’s about maximizing the value of your assets, and making sure that what you sell it for makes you more than it cost you to make it.
It’s also about when to give it away, because many times, the best sales tool you have is the free sample.
But the trick there is how to give it away, without, well, giving it away. Because if it’s free, why should someone pay for it?
And that issue is core to success in the internet-enabled universe, and is both a massive challenge — and a bigger opportunity.
Thoughts on the Second Career
Filed under: About Chuq, Thoughts on "The Second Career", Two for Elbowing: Hockey & Sports
As I noted the other day, I expect posting frequency on the blog to go up soon. About this time last year I started serious planning on my “what’s next?” project — that being my long-term look at how I want to make the shift into the second career. I see a time where I’m not going to want to work in Silicon Valley and hack high tech 24×7 (gasp), but I certainly have no plans on retiring.
The elevator speech: I want to earn a respectable income from my home office in Astoria, Oregon without telecommuting.
Yes, you could potentially contract and consult from there (although if I were going to do that game, I’d do it from Ashland or Medford — like, it sometimes seems, half the population of those towns) but that’s not the point. At some point, I know I want to get out of the Silicon Valley rat race and do something else. The question is — what?
I want to emphasize something: this is a long term (3-5 years) thing; in fact for about the last 15 years I’ve been keeping (with more or less intensity) a 3-5 year plan. That’s the first lesson in something like this: planning is good, because it helps you map a path, but it should also be flexible because as you do the planning, you’ll change your mind, new situations come up, the unexpected happens. For me, the planning on the second career wasn’t so much about implementation, but on understanding where I wanted to end up and to influence decisions now that will make it happen someday. And occasionally, after a really bad day at the office, as a way to keep my sense of humor and sanity. Well, okay. My sense of humor.
Now, the day for that second career is closer. I’ve known for a few years roughly what I wanted to aim at here. Various decisions I’ve made over the last couple of years have been driven by this long-term planning. My move of the blog from Typepad back here to chuqui.com was because I knew I wanted total control over my online environment, and I wanted it under my own domain name for branding purposes. I chose Wordpress because I really like that tool as a platform for it’s flexibility and the community ecosystem that exists around it (my second choice, even thought I’ve occasionally described it as sportfishing off of an aircraft carrier, is Drupal, and the drupal community has done a really nice job of cleaning up issues that bothered me back when they couldn’t even run the Drupal site on the Drupal 6 release).
Another decision I made was shutting down the “Two for Elbowing” blog on hockey and de-emphasizing my hockey writing. I did that for a few reasons; originally, that blog was supposed to be for both myself and Laurie to write about hockey (“two for… get it? heh. heh.). Laurie’s life took her in other directions and it turned into a solo gig (although the hockey world is missing out on a damn good hockey geek, and I’m not talking about me); as a solo, I much preferred putting all of my writing into one place (the branding thing) again. Also, think about my long-term goal: moving to Astoria. Building an income around writing about hockey and the Sharks and moving to Astoria conflict. Just a bit. Besides, there are plenty of good hockey writers out there now, and if I was 25 (instead of 50+), I might take a run at doing something like what Rich Hammond is doing with the Kings. Instead, I made a decision to enjoy hockey, not sweat about what to write about it — and I only write when I want to. This is a feature, not a bug.
I’m firmly convinced that what Hammond and the Kings are doing is the future model for journalism in pro sports as the newspaper business continues to evolve and implode. NHL teams that haven’t figured this out yet should take a close look and find a good beat guy to bring on board and nurture. The Sharks could do a lot worse than hiring Dave Pollak and bringing him in-house, for instance. Having been writing about hockey online since before the Sharks existed, I do sometimes wish that the online environment that exists today had existed 15 years ago, but it didn’t. Sometimes timing is everything, and understanding that is a key aspect of designing success into your plans.
To succeed in ANY career path, not just a second career, it’s important to know what NOT to do, what not to sidetrack yourself on, what not to invest time and money in. That may be even more important than knowing what to do, in fact, because that’s how you stay focused and moving in the direction you want to end up.
In any event, this is the first in a series of articles on the idea of a second career and my thoughts and plans. I’m hoping this becomes a conversation, not a lecture; I’m doing this in public both because I hope you find it interesting and learn from it to help refine your own plans and ideas — and because I hope you will help me improve my own ideas and fix the flaws in my thinking and make my own second career success happen as well. I hope you find this interesting and useful; I know I’ll learn from your feedback and comments and end up the better for it. Together, everyone wins — and how can that be bad?
So, onward. The future starts today.
Chuq
Footnote on Astoria: For those not familiar with Astoria, it’s about 2 hours from Portland on the coast, and it’s a very nice, small, homey town, but has some really nice places like the restaurant Baked Alaska and Cellar on 10th that make it more than a small rural town — and it’s well located to a lot of great photographic opportunities). It might not be Astoria (I’m really falling more and more in like with Morro Bay, for instance, and I love the northern Oregon Coast so it could be anywhere from Astoria to Newport…), but that’s a nice placeholder for what I’d like to do.
Small, inviting, not urban, on the coast, lower cost of living but with some nice amenties and close to civilization when I want it. The kind of place most Silicon Valley Geeks seem to wish they lived, unless they’re the hard core urban type. I’m not, but Vancouver tempts me to convert…
Should the Sharks break up the top line of Thornton and Heatley?
That’s the question I’ve asked myself after watching the past few SJ Sharks games.
via Should the Sharks break up the top line of Thornton and Heatley? | The Hockey Writers.
That’s the question Chelsea is asking.
The question I’m asking is why you’re asking this question with a team that’s 8-0-2 in their last ten, gaining 18 out of a possible 20 points? Given their success (they have not lost in regulation two games in a row yet this season), whatever McLellan is putting out on the ice is working. So why are we trying to fix it?
Now, sometimes — to try to answer my own question seriously — a team can be winning but clearly not playing good hockey. The Sharks, however, are a team that is starting to get on a roll to my eyes. They just got Pavelski back, and he really makes the 2nd line dangerously good, and it looks like the chemstry is coming together and the team is starting to play its game.
So my short answer is — it ain’t broken. In fact, it looks good. I’d leave it alone. And with a team playing this well and winning this consistently, I’d ask myself why I’m looking for things to kvetch about.
But that’s just me.
Looking at the Dany Heatley trade
Now that we’re in November, I wanted to take a look at the Dany Heatley trade and the Sharks in general. Given I wasn’t a huge fan of the trade before it was made (look here), what do I think now?
I like it. Heatley is doing pretty much everything I could ask to convince me that Doug Wilson knew better than I did about this trade. Gee, that’s a surprise — the GM knows more than I do (but it’s surprising how few fans are willing to admit that. Hi, Tom!).
Michalek is — well, he’s Michalek. What you see is what you get. Cheechoo is just floundering, and I feel bad for the kid, but… well, am I surprised? Not really. So what we gave up I don’t miss. And what I see I like.
Heatley has kept his mouth shut, he’s worked his butt off on the ice, he’s produced, and he’s fit in well with the team. Exactly what he needed to do. Even better, he’s shown himself to me to be a grittier player than I expected — he’s no brett hull, he actually gets his nose dirty around the crease. And the Sharks have had him playing penalty kill, which I didn’t expect, and he’s okay at it (his defensive coverage is sometimes a bit — lax — but he’s decent and he tries. He also has a nice edge to him, which I also didn’t expect.
So what can I say? He’s the player I hoped we’d get, and more. I have no real complaints here. And what we gave up? expendable..
And the Sharks? took a bit to get the chemistry going. right now? they’re looking somewhat unstoppable. I was all for some adversity early in the season, given that last year it was easy early and they put it into coast mode and couldn’t get out.
This year? I’m not seeing that. The big difference is on the third and fourth line. No offense to Mike Grier or Marcel Goc or the third liners last year, but they were good defensive players, but weren’t able to impact or change momentum. Bringing in Nichol and Ortmeyer has made a huge difference, and changed the mix witwh the younger role players, too, and now we’re seeing that the third and fourth lines are really changing the flow of the game.
Most notable change from last year? These two lines still do a lot of cycling on the shifts, but this year, they’re doing it in the offensive zone and creating problems for the other team, rather than last year, where we saw these lines mostly in the defensive zones preventing goals. Over a season, this is huge.
I give this team an A- so far. And they’re fun to watch, too.
Where are they now? Ed Courtenay
For all you really old Sharks fans out there, a quick where are they now — Ed Courtenay.
Ed’s still playing hockey, and playing in Britain.
Courtenay is teh subject of one of my favorite all time radio “moments” in Sharks history:
Dan Rusanowsky: It’s a breakaway!
Dennis Hull: No, it’s Courtenay.
Dennis Hull was right. Never the fleetist of feet in the NHL, Courtenay still was one of those guys who brought the effort every night in the early (really sucky!) days of San Jose Sharks history….
A quick comment on the Sharks/Capitals game (and Sharks hall of fame ramblings)
I can only think of one thing to say about tonight’s game against the Capitals:
LOOK! A PUPPY!
(seriously, Sharks didn’t look terrible; a step slow, and they couldn’t handle Ovechkin tonight. Well done game by the Caps, the two quick goals took the fight out of team teal tonight)
So instead, some quick ramblings about the Sharks Hall of Fame. They were talking about team hall of fames on XM this morning, which got me thinking: if I were running the Sharks Hall of Fame, who would be in it? My list. Feel free to add your own, or complain about mine:
Players:
- Kelly Kisio: Kisio is one player that gets forgotten in the early years of the Sharks — perhaps he wants to forget the pain, I dunno. But the reality is, while Doug Wilson was the first captain and the goal was for him to lead the sharks out of expansion hell, injuries prevented his being much of an impact on the ice, and it was Kisio that really held the early years of the team together. Some nights, he was the only player that seemed to be fighting the good fight, and if there was a real “first captain” that set the tone of what the Sharks wanted to be, it was Kelly Kisio. He’d be the first player I induct into the the Sharks hall of fame.
- Arturs Irbe: was the player that kept the Sharks competitive night after night. He was nevera “pretty” goalie, more of the squeal-and-lunge school of goaltending, but it worked. He made the Sharks a lot better than they were, and deserves to be one of the initial inductees into the Hall of Fame.
- Jeff Odgers: Odgers more than any other players defined the lunchpail ethic of the Sharks and was the guy who brought his heart and work ethic to the game every night. Not the most talented guy in the game — but his stint as captain really helped create the shark’s team identity.
- Igor Larionov, Sergei Makarov, Johan Garpenlov: I don’t know that these three players are Sharks hall of famers individually (even though Larionov and Makarov are hall of famers for their contributions to hockey overall) — but this was the first true “identity line” that played together for a significant time and really showed magic on the ice to the fans. So they go in as a line, as they played on the team.
- Owen Nolan: Another player who defined “what it takes to be a Shark” and the Sharks first true All Star.
- Brian Marchment: Okay, okay. Just kidding.
Honorable mentions:
- Mike Rathje: who doesn’t get the credit he deserves for what he did, because the fans could only see what they thought he ought to be.
- Tony Granato: for taking what Jeff Odgers started and helping it mature.
- Jeff Friesen: who had a better career as a Shark as many (including myself) gave him credit for, because he never quite lived up to his draft position.
- Mike Vernon: just isn’t quite enough of a Shark in my eyes.
- Mike Ricci: ditto, but it came down to Odgers or Ricci (but not both) in my eyes, and Odgers won.
- Jamie Baker: most dramatic goal in franchise history, great player for the Sharks — but not quite the team hall of fame to me.
Future inductees: Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau, Evgeny Nabokov. (maybe Dan Boyle, depending on how long he stays…)
Builders:
- George Gund: let’s not forget how much time and energy (and money) he put into making this team successful
- Dan Rusanowsky: The voice of the Sharks. Always will be.
- Frank Albin: who really has defined how the Sharks look on TV and made them very entertaining and accessible.
- Dean Lombardi: for how far he took this team, even if it wasn’t the final prize. Don’t underestimate how much of the team’s recent success is built on his shoulders.
- Tricia Sullivan: because I know who really keeps this franchise functioning.
- Joe Will and Tim Burke: the two people who make the draft work and understand which players in the system are expendable (and which aren’t). They’re the core of the foundation of the young players that the Sharks keep bringing into the team, and you simply can’t succeed unless you develop your own stars.
- Doug Wilson? — probably as a builder, but he still has some unfinished business before he gets nominated.
Honorable mentions: Roy Sommer, Mike Aldritch, Ken Arnold, Tom “Woody” Woodcock, Bob Friedlander, Dieter Ruehle, Warren Strelow.
Remember a few weeks ago when I said….
the NHLPA firing Jim Kelly: If you needed evidence that the PA was in trouble, you have it. My take on this is simple: the firing was done by a very small group of people without consulting the larger membership. Effectively, it was the thirty team reps — and it looks to me like a small group manipulated them with carefully crafted and biased information that wasn’t distributed ahead of the meeting and where the team reps weren’t given time to think it through or consult with the rest of the players they represented.Was it really so urgent that the NHLPA COULD NOT wait two weeks for camps to open, when all of the players would be in town and the team reps could discuss the information with them and make them all part of the process?
via The summer of hockey’s discontent.
well, the membership seems to be figuring out they got gamed:
It’s possible, according to player sources, that one or more NHLPA members will insist on an immediate, thorough, and independent investigation of not only the process that led to Kelly’s dismissal but also of those who perpetrated it. Clearly, some players are finally waking up to smell the reality that, as one veteran told me last week, “Paul got sewered.’’
The stench has reached the membership, and it is leading them to do something about it.
via Firing generates heat – The Boston Globe.
And something tells me this is both going to get really ugly before it gets better, and it’s going to totally screw over the effectiveness of the player’s association for a good period of time — at a time when they desperately need to have their act together before the start of the next CBA negotiation. And hopefully, the membership will realize that it’s because a few people were willing to destroy the union rather than let it be run in a way they didn’t like — and deal with those people appropriately. I can name one obvious name right from the top… But do I really need to?
Some thoughts on the Heatley trade.
I’m a bit late to the party, perhaps, but some thoughts on the Heatley trade.
My initial reaction was — and it somewhat surprised me — that since Marleau wasn’t part of the trade, that maybe it was okay. Heatley still has to prove to me he’s bringing the right attitude, but honestly, Doug Wilson’s a much better judge of that than I am, and I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. And honestly? It fits in line with something I said back in 2008, which Puck Daddy was nice enough to dredge up for me and point to.
My bottom line is that I’m happier because the trade didn’t involve Marleau, but I still need to see Heatley bring the right attitude and the right game, and if he does, then this is a great trade. if he doesn’t — Wilson will have to deal with it.
I’m not unhappy at seeing Michalek and Cheechoo go. Well, I’ll miss them because I enjoyed watching them play, especially Cheechoo, but I always felt Michalek had a “next step” he never figured out how to use consistently, and I think we saw the best of Cheechoo and he had no real upside. With any luck, new teams and fresh starts will help them, but they weren’t going to get better in San jose.
One question brought up to me, since I’d mentioned Larionov and his demanding his way off the team — why do I give Larionov a pass on that and not Heatley?
I had to think about that one a bit, and here’s why: Larionov had a strong track record as a player for his ethics and his committment. he was also a winner with multiple organizations. Because of that when he speaks up about something taht’s wrong — and time really proved him right in San Jose — you listen.
Heatley doesn’t have that. Heatley’s proven that in the NHL, he can score lots of goals, but he’s never proven himself as a winner. he’s also indicated through his actions in Ottawa that when he doesn’t get his way, he pouts and quits. He now has to prove himself NOT to be a quitter — and only time will tell about that. Right now, though, he doesn’t have that track record to stand on, and his actiosn the last few months put him in a negative light to many of us. He has to prove that wrong. And I’m willing to let him, but he doesn’t get a free ride, because he hasn’t earned one yet.
Nabokov, Marleau snubbed in promo letter; Sharks respond
We asked Scott Emmert, director of media relations for the Sharks, about the snubs and he encourages fans “not read into them.” He said that just because a particular player isn’t listed doesn’t mean they aren’t going to be featured in another promotional venture for the season. One look at the online season-ticket info page reinforces that: Marleau and Nabokov are still among the players pictured.
via Nabokov, Marleau snubbed in promo letter; Sharks respond – Puck Daddy – NHL – Yahoo! Sports.
Many years ago, the Sharks put Igor Larionov on the cover of the in-game magazine, just as Igor and Kevin Constantine got into a fight that led to Larionov demanding a trade and ending up a Red Wing (and winning a stanley cup….). The Sharks were left handing out magazines for a number of games that featured a player that was no longer on the team, and had left rather loudly and unhappy. It rankled the fans, and it rankled the Sharks.
And since then they’ve been careful to not put players on long-term promotional items (like tickets) unless they were sure that they were going to be sharks (barring unexpected things). So while I normally recommend not reading too much into things like ticket pictures, in this case, the Sharks have a track record of being careful — if Marleau and Nabokov aren’t on the tickets, then someone must think these players have a chance of not being here by the trade deadline. Current “three way marleau to the kings” rumor notwithstanding, one shouldn’t read into this as a short-term probability as much as a long-term possibility. Doug Wilson is clearly looking to make sure the team is fixed for the playoffs (if it already isn’t), not opening day…
