Alright. It's been a while since I've posted, so here's a whirlwind update on everything that's been going on in the past couple of weeks.

Eva is doing very well. From what I hear, she's very easy to take care of compared to a lot of other newborns. At night, we usually feed her every 3 or 4 hours and she sleeps without waking up between each feeding. So you could say we get up to eight hours of sleep a night and only get up once or twice to wake her up. I was prepared for many sleepless nights, but it hasn't been like that. About the only bad thing is that her prime awake time is from about 9:00 PM to 1:30 AM, and during that time she tends to cry a lot. So we just go to bed around 1:30 and get up around 9:30.

Although I haven't experienced much of parenthood yet, so far it's going without many big suprises. There are some little suprises, like the number of diaper changes every day, but that's not a very big deal. Watching Eva every day and observing small changes in her behavior is a blast. We try to interact with her as much as possible while she is awake by talking and singing to her and showing her all kinds of stuff in the house. Heck, I've talked politics and music with her too. Anything to capture her interest and get her mind going.

I'm curious to know if there are any parents out there that have decided to not breast feed and instead use baby formula. I have a strong opinion out there on the topic and might write about it more someday...

While I've been taking time off from work to be at home with Nikki and Eva, I think I'm losing weight. Instead of sitting at a desk (or table) writing code, I'm running around all day doing chores or spending time with Eva. I'm usually on my feet all day and it's kind of a nice change. Some friends of mine have warned me about not having any time to do any chores (e.g. mow the lawn, do dishes, vacuum, etc), but so far we've had plenty of time to do that stuff. Maybe once I go back to work it'll be tougher, but I don't see that happening.

Nikki and I are excited as hell for the new NHL season to start. With the "new" league ready to go it should make for an exciting and somewhat dramatic season. Hockey fans will be watching closely at how the new rule changes, salary cap, and new player aquisitions affect the game. Preseason starts in a few weeks, and the regular season in about a month. Our Wild season tickets should be arriving soon. Shortly after we'll be getting together with our friends Lee and Shannon to pick games and split up the tickets. That's always a fun activity.

VirtualPuck.com launched a while back and the innagural season starts in a couple of days. If you use an RSS reader or aggregator, check out the Virtual Puck RSS Feed. I'm looking for more people who are interested in writing content for the site. Drop me a line if you're interested. Take a look at the site to get a flavor for what's in store.

My site/SharePoint feed is listed on this SharePoint list of bloggers. That's great, but I don't really post a lot of SharePoint related content. What's really mind-boggling is that my friend and colleague IWKid posts a significant amount of SharePoint-related content (much much more than I do), yet he was turned down to be on that list of bloggers.

I'm really itching to get back into music. I've got a big-time music bug. I haven't made time for either the Sidetracked Project or my own personal stuff at all since I've been home. One reason is that my "studio" has been torn down to make room for finishing the basement and soundproof studio. I'm so close to getting drywall up in the basement that I can taste it, but it'll be tough to find time. Nikki's uncle Chris came over to give me his opinion on what I needed to get finished up before the pre-drywall inspections, and he caught a lot of things that I forgot to take care of.

New baby, finishing the basement, building a deck, music projects, VirtualPuck.com enhancements, Windows Presentation Foundation research, getting back into mountain biking, getting back into golfing... busy people are happy people right?

So, life's good. Thanks for reading. This was long. I'll be back at work after labor day. Until then, keep your ear to the grindstone, and always wear a hardhat.

I uploaded all of the the pictures we've taken of Eva over the last few days.  You can view them at http://www.kindohm.com/ngallery/albums/42.aspx.

Nikki and I are now parents!  We have a new daughter named Eva Joy Hodnick.  She was born 8/18/2005 at 11:09 AM.  She was 7 pounds 11 ounces and was 20.5 inches long. 

After a brisk walk the night before, Nikki started having much more frequent and intense contractions.  We went into the hospital at about 4:30 A.M. and she was dialated 4cm.  The labor went very, very well and it was pretty much a textbook delivery.  The birth was 100% natural (Nikki didn't use any drugs at all), and I don't know how she was able to do it!  We were open to the option of using some drugs but the labor was going well enough that we decided not to.  She went through a lot of pain, but it was worth it!

Look at all that hair!

The new league begins...
http://www.virtualpuck.com

RSS:
http://www.virtualpuck.com/rss.aspx

There are a lot of nay-sayers out there who are very, very disappointed that the Minnesota Wild haven't taken advantage of the new free agent market in the NHL. They've signed a few "role" players here and there but haven't made any big moves like many other teams have. Stars and solid veterans like Petr Forsberg, Mike Modano, Paul Kariya, Teemu Selanne, and Chris Pronger (to name only a few) have been picked up by teams trying to improve their odds for winning the Cup (e.g. Columbus, Atlanta, Edmonton, Pittsburgh). Also, existing elite teams like Philadelphia and Toronto are opening their pocketbooks and signing big names. In addition, the NHL rules have changed and now aim to favor offense - thus justifying the need to pick up a star player.

Should the Wild be worried? Definately not.

Whoa, wait a minute. How should they not be worried? It's a bit painful to look at the 2005 offseason transaction log, see all of the talent that's been signed, and not see the Wild take advantage of it. How does that spell anything BUT worry for the Wild? One word: defense.

One of the hallmarks of the Wild is their defensive mentality. It's the exact style of play that the league hates. The new NHL rules will try to discourage teams from employing it. The problem is that the rules themselves open opportunities for offense, but don't penalize teams for using good defense. Why would the Wild quit using a defensive style that's worked well for them? Teams that used a successful defensive strategy in the past will likely keep using it. The new rules created to encourage offense will only be used by defensive-minded teams when an appropriate opportunity presents itself. They won't take advantage of the new rules until their opponent makes a mistake as a result of their good defense. Personally, I'd get a lot of satisfaction in seeing the Wild shut down Lemieux and his freshly stacked Penguin lineup (Crosby, Palffy, Gonchar) because they can't find open ice or complete a pass.

A lot of NHL fans think that the Wild are a clutch-and-grab team. Clutching and grabing are obstruction tactics that are illegal (resulting in a penalty) and slow down the offensive game. The stereotype is that a clutch-and-grab team isn't very skilled and they need to rely on dirty tactics to win. Well, that's very true - but the Wild are not a clutch-and-grab team. They are excellent skaters who use superb defensive positioning and checking. You'll find the Wild's opponents clutching and grabbing more often than the Wild do. The new rules also aim to be tougher on penalizing obstructions, and it will only help the Wild for when their opponents are clutching and grabbing.

Perhaps two role-model teams for the Wild are the Ottawa Senators and New Jersey Devils. Both the Senators and Devils are defensive-minded, develop their team through drafting (rather than free agents), and haven't signed any big free agents this offseason (except to keep their own players who became free agents). Both the Senators and Devils are consistently in the playoffs.

The fans who are upset about the Wild not signing many free agents are forgetting something. Because of the new salary cap in the NHL, unless all of the stars in the NHL are willing to take pay cuts there is a maximum amount of talent that a team can have. In order to gain something, you have to give up something. Take the Philadelphia Flyers for example. They've gained a lot of talent in new players they've signed such as Petr Forsberg and Derian Hatcher, but have had to give up all-star Jeremy Roenick to land Forsberg and Hatcher. The Flyers went over the salary cap and will need to give something up.

All of these free agent signings in the league just means that the talent is being spread around. It has to come from somewhere, and that means a team has to give it up. The Wild haven't given much up and they will be successful with gameplay strategies they have used in the past.

A while back I mentioned that I had put away plans for VirtualPuck.com.  Well,. I'm back at it.  This weekend some friends of mine were significantly bummed when I told them that I hadn't worked on it since March and that I actually forgot about it.  They actually inspired me to pick it up again. 

So I cracked open the code and was pleasantly suprised to see that it was actually in pretty good shape.  I really had no recollection of where I left off and how good or bad the code was. 

Today I added some RSS feeds, some caching, and support for CAPTCHA.  I'm very pleased with the web app.  The database side is a different story though.  While the design is solid, it will rely on me to perform some semi-regular tasks to demoralize the data [1].  I want to avoid that if possible.  And those processes are CPU intensive too - not something my ISP would like.  Those are two things I really want to address before the first release. 

One of the big benefits over the last league I ran two years ago is that the new league will have contributors that can publish content.  In addition, there'll be a public smack-talk line right on the front page that anyone can add to.  Not sure how good or bad that feature will be :)  If you have a creative spirit, a weird sense of humor, and think you might like to be a contributor if this thing takes off, contact me.

We'll see where the project goes. 

[1] For those of you not familar with data demoralization, it's like denormalization except you make the data feel bad.

Eklund's Hockey Rumors is a fantastic blog.  I don't know much about the guy yet, but he definately seems to have some very close ties and inside relationships with players and agents.  He updates very frequently, and it's insane reading stuff like this:

More rumors from the edge....

Chris Pronger got traded to Edmonton for Eric Brewer, Jeff Woywitka, and Doug Lynch.

Naslund signed with the Canucks.

Dallas thought they signed Modano, then Boston made another offer, and now nothing is certain..in fact Chicago may be involved...

Naslund re-signed with Vancouver.

Kariya strongly rumored to San Jose.

Kovalev to Montreal is a good possibility.

Martin Skoula signed with Dallas.

Lindros to Nashville or Toronto by Friday.

Pittsburgh made a huge push for Niedermayer...Calgary or Vancouver are involved as well

Rafalski could be a Blue Jacket or could end up back in NJ. (other teams involved.)

Tonight we went to the MN Wild select-a-seat in an attempt to find some nicer seats to upgrade to (not that ours are bad at all), but we didn't find anything better.  There were two open seats one row down from us, but we liked the angle of our seats better.  Ours are just behind one of the goal lines on the side of the arena and it's a great vantage point to see plays develop and goals scored.

I brought along our camera just for fun, and got a few good pictures.  All of the pictures can be viewed in the 2005 select-a-seat gallery, but some highlights are below.

Perhaps two of the most interesting sights there were of the modifications they've made to the arena for the new rules this season.  The goals have been moved back toward the boards, and some red lines have been added to define a zone behind the goals where goalies are limited to play the puck:

Fresh concrete footings for the new goal mooring positions.

New zone lines behind the goal.

Other than that, the rest are just kinda fun:

View from our seats.

Wild locker room.

Mike by the goal.

Today is going to be interesting in the NHL.  The greatest number of free agents in NHL history will become available today at 11:00 central time.  Watch the TSN transaction log for details. 

The large number of free agents has occurred because of the new collective bargaining agreement between the NHL and the NHLPA and the events leading up to it.  Teams have not extended offers to a lot of high-paid players in order to get rid of salaries and keep team payrolls under the new salary cap.

It will be fun today seeing where high-profile players like Forsberg and Modano end up.  A lot of NHL'ers have stayed with a single team their whole career and today that will change for many of them.  I can't imagine Modano in a Montreal sweater, or Pronger playing in Atlanta.  However, it's entirely possible that nobody will be pulling the trigger today and teams will stay where they're at.  I'm predicting that the day will be moderately exciting with some big names ending up in a new place but for the most part we'll just see a few rank-and-file players being picked up.

How will this affect the Wild?  I don't think they'll be signing many free agents, and this has typically been their strategy.  They'll be saving room for their young talent like O'Sullivan, Koivu, Bouchard, Wallin, and Veilleux, as they typically develop their prospects and let them play.  They'll sign a free agent here and there to compliment their lineup, but I don't expect them to sign a big name like Forsberg.  I think that rumor is completely bogus.  He's old and a star player - definately not a player that “compliments” the Wild.  The Wild will pick players that compliment their rookies with hard work and some leadership, if anybody at all.  The Wild picked up Brian Rolston before the lockout and we haven't even seen him play yet.  He was probably the highest profile player the Wild ever picked up out of free agency.  He's already going to be the complimentary type of player the Wild would look for.  I just don't see the Wild signing any well-known players before training camp.