I’ve had my little pink iPod Mini for 2 years. It’s always been faithful, always been full of musical treats and has never failed me. But today, I feared the worst when my trusty little Mini would not turn on.

I’ve had a few scares, then with a quick online search I found out how to reboot the sucker without losing and information [reboot]. Sweet. That little trick has saved me many times. But today, it wouldn’t start at all. The reboot wouldn’t work and when I plugged it in via a USB cable, I got the lightning bolt battery symbol that wasn’t animated. It was just stuck, not charging, not playing, not rebooting.

Everyone in the office jumped to the conclusion that iPod Mini batteries suck and that mine is probably totally gone. Yes, they’ve had battery issues and some people have had some really crummy luck. But before I jump to conclusions, spazz, run over to Future Shop and start yelling for them to send it away, fix it or give me a new one… before I do any of that, I Google.

I’ve been told I could be a professional Google master. You need to find something? I can get it for you faster than anyone else. I have special Googling powers. Well, those ‘powers’ came in handy this morning but the search lead me to a pretty common site, one I could have even started with – Apple support said the following:

When you plug your iPod into a power source, the charging icon appears—it’s a lightning bolt over a battery. If the battery is fully discharged, you won’t see an animated icon. Instead, you’ll see the icon pictured below (even on a color screen). The icon indicates the battery is charging successfully, but it doesn’t have enough charge to power up. When connecting an iPod with a fully discharged battery, it may take up to 30 minutes for iPod to have enough charge to turn on and be recognized by the computer and iTunes [apple]

The still image of the lightning bolt over a battery was creeping me out so I had to try something. The advice was really, ‘plug it in and do nothing’ so that’s what I did. Every couple of minutes someone would come up and talk about how I need to buy a new player now that this was one dead. I covered my ears and refused to give up. I left it plugged in and after 45 minutes, iTunes popped up and the screen of the Mini screen turned on the animated do not disconnect logo. “Success! It’s not dead!” I shouted, which is good, cause I can’t afford a new, cute, pink, little Nano.

Towel Power [wiki] is as much a fixture of Canuck playoff dreams as the “Believe” sign and TSN/CBC personalities’ anti-Vancouver commentary.

As the Canucks coach during a 1982 playoff game against the Chicago Blackhawks, he [Roger Neilson] felt his team was unfairly penalized on several occasions during the third period. He took a white trainer’s towel and held it on a hockey stick, as if to wave a white flag. Three other Canucks players did the same thing, and all were ejected from the game. By doing this, Neilson inadvertently started an NHL tradition. Canucks fans waved white towels by the thousands at the next game, a play off tradition that continues to this day and that is widely copied by other hockey teams and by other sports as well [wiki]

The 2003-2004 season was the last time the Canucks made it to the playoffs. Unfortunately the run didn’t last long, thanks to the stinkin’ Calgary Flames. Towels were handed out at games and those who still had them, waved their 1994 Cup-run souvenirs with pride.

A few weeks ago former Canuck, Peter Schaefer pulled a little Towel Power of his own, unfortunately, it cost him a nice chunk of change.

Schaefer took a page from legendary coach Roger Neilson, who during a 1982 playoff game against the Blackhawks felt his team was unfairly penalized. He took a white trainer’s towel and held it on a hockey stick, as if to wave a white flag. Three other Canucks players did the same thing, and all were ejected from the game [TSN]

The Canucks are sitting at 27-19-2 with the league’s best goalie as displayed in last night’s All Star Super Skills competition [canada.com], and they are riding high along with all those on the bandwagon. Sure we get silly and plan parade routes in jest, hoping and wanting that Cup to make its home in Vancouver. I find myself often wondering about the white towels that will be handed out at our first playoff games. Will they have the Orca logo, or the fan-favourite stink in rink [604]?  Hmm.

Towel power has its place in Canuck hockey pride, it signifies making it to the playoffs and standing together as one crowd cheering on our team. In a city of champions (CFL, USL, WHL) it’s about time we added NHL to the list.

(Towel Power photo is a snapshot from the Roger Neilson tribute)

I wrote last week about a podcast we’d be listening to, where one of the show themes was about TV reruns [ms604]. The woman producing the segment said that Boy Meets World was her guilty pleasure, which made me shudder then wonder, what are mine?

First off, I know you’re thinking ‘why not just turn off the TV, get up from the couch and do something else if there’s nothing new on?’ Well there’s a time and place for everything. By reading my blog you can probably tell that John and I are not afraid to hop out of the house and go for a walk which then turns into a several-hour-log trek through muddy pathways. We do have a social life, we do get exercise but there are just some times when you need to sit down and let your mind go to mush.

There are those shows you’ve seen 100 times but always prompt you to end your channel surfing the minute you come across them. On the podcast [thisamericanlife] they mention it could be a questions or comfort, feeling comfortable watching reruns, if even just to reminisce about that time in your life when that show came out. I don’t know if I have many reasons for watching them, I just know there are only a select few that do make me stop in my tracks when I’m looking for TV to be my companion for the night. The repeat offenders in my books, (and I’m probably not alone on this) would be The Simpsons, who dominate syndication.

But what about the lesser knowns? Not just Simpsons, Friends or Seinfeld, but the shows that were and are total crap. The ones you might not want to admit you watched religiously 10 years ago. The ones available for viewing several times a day now, so you just give in and you watch. If there’s new nothing on TV, why not venture down the rerun road?

A couple of my guilty pleasures would be Futurama & Family Guy but they’re too recent and too great to fit into this category. So I guess I have to say News Radio (with Phil Hartman, pre-Lovitz era), and Saved by the Bell (not the original old one, or the newer College years).

John bugs me when I won’t re-watch an episode of, say… Heroes the day after it first aired but I’ll watch things I’ve seen dozens of times before. Well, aside from the buffer zone of about 8 years since I last watched certain episodes of those shows, it is also kind of amusing. Things you thought were funny, or things that were serious and now looking back, they’re just hilarious (like most of the fashions from the early 90s and 80s). It’s a trip down memory lane, opening a time capsule, discovering a new reason why some things are funny, reciting hilarious lines that you thought you’d forgotten… “that is SO not the opposite of stealing someone’s underwear!” or “that’s okay DJ, you can be grounded next weekend“.

Yes, I didn’t make a post for Episode 17, but I was working on it, I swear. It wasn’t a true round table episode as is the norm with TCC, it was audio from our experience on Hockey Day in Canada. With the blessing of our co-hosts we posted the audio on The Crazy Canucks feed. Run time: 18:18

As promised, Rebecca and John were able to check out the Canucks game against the Leafs on the new scoreboard at GM Place this past weekend. The UBC Thunderbirds played a game against the Regina Cougars following the broadcast. Overall, a great way to spend a Hockey Day in Canada.

The audio quality is not the best, but hopefully the die hard fans out there will enjoy the sounds of what it’s like to attend an event like this in Vancouver.

Now for Episode 18, which was recorded last night.

The plan was to have us all be online for this episode, but Dave got held up at work and couldn’t make it in time. The rest of the crew gathered to go over the rest of the road trip out east. Two wins over Montreal and Ottawa, and a shootout loss to Buffalo that didn’t seem as bad as what losing should be.

Record as of this episode: 27-19-2
Northwest Division: 2nd
Western Conference: 7th

It’s the All-Star break, so we take a little time to talk about the festivities and the new uniforms that have been unveiled by the league. They ain’t so bad, but the change might result in more than just new threads. Also, we can’t help ourselves from talking about the Bullis rumors of him wanting a trade out of Vancouver.

* NHL.com: “Players will have the EDGE in 2006-07?
* Website for new NHL uniforms by RBK

This does end up being a long episode, but there is something a little extra on the end of this one. J.J., Rebecca, and John met up to watch the game against Buffalo at a pub in downtown Vancouver and caught some audio of the crowd gathered there during the shootout. Hopefully you enjoy the atmosphere of watching the Canucks in the heart of Vancouver.

It runs about 64 minutes, which is pretty long for an Episode of TCC but there’s some special audio tagged on the end, as we often do in ‘secret track’ fashion.

I feel like I’m writing a theme composition in grade 3 about what I did over the weekend, but this is about blogging, why I’m here and why you’re here and the free stuff I want to win.

Darren Barefoot put the call out yesterday:

In February, I’m giving a talk called “Why We Blog” at Northern Voice here in Vancouver. In preparation, I’m launching this ad hoc survey to gather more opinions and voices from the blogosphere. [db]

I have filled out the survey as best I can, answering questions about anything from site stats to how emotional my writing might be. There are many reasons why I do this and there’s various reasons why people come back everyday to read what I’ve posted. If you feel like sharing your thoughts on the matter, take the survey (if you’re a blogger yourself) or feel free to comment here, regardless if you’re a blogger, lurker, active commenter, admirer or disliker of all things blog. Why do you read?