Happy New Year

Happy New Year! This year I'm a bit lonely since I'm spending it away from family. My sister is in NYC and my family is in Toronto, while I'm in Waterloo. I decided not to drive home partly because of the weather and because it's a weekday. I'm always tempted to take the day off of work, but I have never done so. Has anyone ever missed school or work because of Chinese New Year?

But the craziest news today is the Shaq-Marion trade. The Suns were my favourite team to watch, but now they won't nearly be as exciting. Marion was great on the fast break and now that Shaq is on the team, I don't see as many fast breaks happening. I guess he could be the one that initiates the fast break with the rebound, but marion was one that could either start (by rebounding or steal) and finish fast breaks. Shaq can only start them. Will Phoenix's half court offense be better? I don't think Shaq will draw many doubles anymore to help Phoenix. He will just get in the way of Nash/Amare's pick and roll. No team is going to cover Shaq when he's away from the basket. This means there might be an extra help defender when Nash does his pick and roll, limiting his choices.

On the defensive end, Marion was by far Phoenix's best man to man defender. Now they have to use Raja Bell in that role and increase his minutes. Shaq is suppose to help with the interior defense, but I have my doubts as to whether he can stay out of foul trouble. He also won't be able to play big minutes, so Amare will end up at C most of the time anyway.

And the biggest issue is Shaq's health. He is way overweight and has multiple injuries. By the time playoffs roll around, Shaq could be injured and then this trade will be for naught. Next year it'll be even worse. The year after Shaq will probably be retired.

Then the salary cap problem of bringing Shaq onboard. The Sun's owner doesn't want to pay the luxury tax, but by bringing Shaq on, he's on the hook for $20 million for two more years. Two more years after this one.

In conclusion, I'm sad they broke up this entertaining Suns team. :_(

Happy Chinese New Year

Year of the Golden Boar this year, and from what I've hear, the "golden" part of it only comes around once in 600 odd years.

I work indirectly with some people in China, and over there they get the whole week off. Actually they are suppose to work on Saturday and then they get Sunday to Saturday off. That's a long time of consecutive days off!

At work, I also happen to get Monday off for "Heritage Day". Not sure why we get it off, perhaps a relic from the past, but I'm not complaining. It also happens to be President's day in the US, so maybe that's part of the reason. It just so happens to fall on the same weekend as Chinese New Year, so maybe Heritage day is appropriate for me this year.

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On a different topic, my post about sharing passwords generated a lot of comments.

Here are some highlights:

"I think being "family" has more to do with it than how many years you have been together"

"there's the whole "persona" thing, if I give you my password, then my persona is not necessary consistent."

"I don't see what the big deal is, meddling and trust are related no? You have to trust them not to meddle and change your settings too."

"I want to limit my liability by not having access to their private account."

"real trust means that you trust your partner to act responsibly as her own person; one must learn to accept that."

"the strongest and best relationships and marriages are ones that respect the rights and autonomy of both members equally."

"All in all, it's not a trust thing, but a guy (geek) thing."

When I first wrote the entry, I had no idea that it would divide so strongly along gender lines. Maybe it's a matter of commenting bias, that is males who identify with my position feel strong enough to comment and males who don't agree rather not comment and similarly with females. In the end, I think it was a matter of trust imbalance that caused conflict. I don't have access to her Xanga account anymore and hopefully that will be the end of the story. Although, please feel welcome to continue commenting.

Even though I got twice as many hits blogging about relationships, I can now go back to blogging about the Wii (do I hear groans?). I try to diversify my blogging topics, but usually I just blog what most easily comes to mind and, unfortunately, recently it's been the Wii. Anyway, Happy New Year!