Used to be, I was a football guy. BAseball I didn't care about either way; I'd watch it, I liked a good game live, but it didn't matter. Basketball bored me to tears, and soccer more so.

Hockey was one of those games I wanted to like, very much. Back in Gretzky's day, when my brother was glued to the games, I'd try, and try, and never get it.

in 1991 when Hockey came back to the bay area (thanks to George Gund) ,I started thinking I should go to a game. And I said that off and on for years afterwards. I tried, again, to get into in on TV, but it's not an accessible game on a small screen.

It wasn't until my first game, somewhere in the early '00s, that I finally got it. From the first play of that first game live in person, I was a dedicated San Jose Sharks fan.

The Sharks have had some good, great, and not great seasons, but I didn't care; I was hooked.

The first year, I went to several games before I was able to easily track the action on tv. But once I got what was going on, I found i was getting almost as much as I did live.

Football is a game made for TV. Deliberate pacing, setup, play, stop, setup. It's geometric, strategic, reasonably predictable. Live, the game is thrilling, but often difficult to track at stadium distances. On TV, you can see everything you need to see to understand the game completely. Truly, you get far more out of a football game on TV than you do in the stands (aside from the sheer energy of being there).

Hockey is the opposite. A TV screen - no matter how big and how clear - cannot catch all the action on every part of the ice. Hockey's too fast, too frantic, too unpredictable. Also, obviously, a three inch puck becomes about a pixel wide on a TV screen, so it's rarely visible for more than seconds at a time.

Live, though, the incredibly complex interplay, the constant change of strategy, the timing with who's where on the ice at any time. More, you get the changing on and off the ice - an absolutely crucial detail of coaching - that on tv is never visible.

Hockey is an absurdly fast game. The skaters are fast, the puck is fast, the changes in pace and direction are fast. Scoring can happen any time by any member of either team. In football, you know a touchdown is coming - or may come - for a long time as teams march down the field. You know when you go get a beer, when things won't be happening for a while. In hockey, you don't, ever, know when the game changing moment is going to happen. Live, there are moments when one can't even catch breath, when the tension tightens and tightens and tightens until you're ready to explode. You can't get this when you're not there, hearing skate hit skate, stick crack off puck, players crashing into each other or the boards. The SOUND of hockey is an integral part of the experience.

More than any sport I've seen, Hockey is made to see live.

Yet, I've seen enough now that I can assemble what's happening from TV; I can make up the difference now. We're lucky to have one of the best broadcasting teams in any pro sport I can think of in San Jose; Drew Remenda and Randy Hahn, on Comcast SportsNet California. I can't over-state the difference it makes to have top broadcasters calling the game; particularly with Hockey. It makes watching games immensely entertaining. When the games are on other networks (usually Versus), my enjoyment is radically less (though I'll still, always watch).

I'm a committed fan; I've reached that point where I plan around Hockey. I plan my weekday evenings, I plan when I'll leave work early and when I'll leave late, I plan my drinking. I try to catch every game. A hockey season is long. 82 games, plus playoffs. That means 41 home games. This is one of the reasons I don't have season tickets; I simply can't make the commitment of time and money. And of course, I can't realistically even watch that many on TV. But I try. Knowing a hockey game will be on when I get home on weeknights makes me happier.

From the beginning of October 'til the season ends (In April if you're not lucky, or into May or even June, depending on how long one's team survives the playoffs), it's a constant in a hockey fan's life; something that has a significant impact on mood.

The letdown when the season ends is significant. Even when we're having a bad year, when we're not in the playoffs, or when we exit them early and ugly, I look at the calendar and think, how many months until I can buy tickets for another game.

A year like this one - wow.

The last three years, the sharks have played incredibly well all season. They've set records - points, games won. Franchise records, player records, league records. They've been on a major roll; playing absolutely amazing hockey all year. But the previous two, they went out hard and early in the playoffs (in 08, in the most brutal overtime marathon I've ever seen, and in '09, they were smacked down with ridiculous ease in the first round by the hated Anaheim Ducks).

Brutal endings, both, for a team that had 'stanley cup' written all over them. Truly, both years, they looked unbeatable early on.

This year was different. This year we played hard, played well, but we didn't have the look of a team peaking too hard and too early. We had firepower from all over the team, we had discipline, we had a powerful physically game. We had top players like Marleau and Heatly playing at the top of their games and scoring at will. It looked like a cup run.

And when we came into the playoffs, it still looked like a cup run. We stumbled a bit in the first round, making it look harder than it should have been. But it wasn't that hard. The second round, against Detroit, we made look pretty easy.

So coming into the final, against a strong but extremely beatable Chicago Black Hawks, we all sort of felt like this was just the walk up to a Stanley Cups we'd already won.

Turned out, not.

I was at game one of that series, and walked out with a couple of clear impressions. One was that this is some incredibly good hockey; possibly the best hockey I've ever seen live. One was that this Chicago team was fast, strong, and incredibly good. And the third was that we are just about dead even it abilities, so the series would be decided by small details and tiny increments of advantage.

We lost that game, but only just; we were in it til the ending. It was about as good a game as a loss can be.

The second game, they caught us out. They exposed a couple of weaknesses, and lined up their own strengths against them; playing spectacular defense and using speed to disrupt the sharks normal puck movement strategies.

three and four played out more like one; incredibly close games, were two teams stood head to head and measured up; one was a tiny bit better, and dominated.

The Sharks could have one that series; but they couldn't win it right now. They don't have the right game, and maybe they're one or two key players off the right lines. Personally I think it was one of those 'who's hot this week' cases; I think a month ago or a month from now, the series would have been different if the peaks and valleys lined up different. Because Hockey's like that; teams go on amazing streaks where they can't lose, and then they do lose, and have amazing streaks where everything goes wrong for them for a week, or a month, before they put it together.

The Sharks came in off pace; we knew that when they struggled against an infinitely weaker Colorado team. They came in vulnerable, with an awareness of fallibility and a history a failing hard, early. Chicago were on the opposite end of the curve, surging when they needed to surge, and playing up to peak rather than down to valley.

Yes, it was a sweep; but every game was close, and every game was within reach.

The heartbreak last year was that our team let us down. The heartbreak this year was that they didn't; they just were not quite great enough, not as great as they needed to be this week.

The end of the season happens in that one second when a puck goes over the line, and then in that 60 seconds when the time trickles away on the clock, and you know, finally, that hope's over and the season ends. right. here.

Stanley cup? Who cares. The real battle was here, in San Jose, and in Chicago, and it ended wrong. Who gets that big silver mug in a couple weeks time doesn't matter at all, it's an afterthought, for bragging rights between two teams who mean nothing but payback targets next year.

The season's ever when my team get on a plane and fly home.

I look at the calendar - summer beginning, weather warming. I think about bbq and swim parties, about warm vacations and lazy (or busy) weekends, about hot, sweaty nights. But I also look past that to fall, because the only thing that makes it feel better is football season. And this year, for the first time in a decade, I'm seeing the 49ers look like they may be worthy of hope. It's been a long, ugly road for them, and they've made a great show of wildly, obviously bad choices everywhere in the organization, from owner to coach to general manager to drafts to free-agents, all the way to where to build new stadiums. But it's hit a point where the pieces seem to be falling into some sort of line, and where the players we have signed all look like the right players to fit what's been wrong. We have a coach who seems to understand how to lead. MAybe, just maybe, we're finally starting to do it right.

That doesn't mean they're looking to a super bowl; but it means they just might be looking at a winner of a season, and if we're very lucky, more. And that, for a long, long time fan, is a little glow out on the horizon that makes it seem better.

That doesn't stop me from being bummed. When I put my new, personalized "playoffs" hockey jerseys away today, I though "i need more of these, I don't have a Nabokov one yet". And then I remembered how long i'd be before I can wear it to a game.

But this sharks team will be back here, and past here. Of that I'm completely sure. And meanwhile, there's that summer, and that fall of red and gold. And hopefully, there are drunken, sweaty pursuits that will get me out of the house and get sports the hell out of my head; god knows that'll be good for me.

But you know, this shit's just too good.

If you're not following, Bacchus at ErosBlog gives a great summary.

Even better is the post that stirred all this, over at MayMay's blog, Maybe Maimed.

To quote Bacchus, "It's epic. It's detailed. It's devastating. And it's hilarious".

The shortest summary I can come up with is that Eden Fantasies have been building a vast link farm with a 'link exchange' program ("if you link to my blog I'll link to yours"), but has been using technical slight-of-hand to obscure outgoing links. The upshot is that they appear to be networked from everywhere in the sex-bloging universe, while showing absolutely no links of any kind out. The details are brilliant if you can wrap your head around it (see MayMay's post, above).

The bottom line - covered here, there and everywhere by the above two gentlemen-and-scholars, as well by AAG and others - is that Eden have proven themselves to be pretty thorough scumbags numerous times, in numerous ways. If you want to take a stand, I suggest you read and forward some of those links. At very least, it's a good object lesson in how sneaky business practices can't be hidden for long.

I have to suggest, though, that if you have anything to do with Eden, you get the hell out of there. They're a slow-motion train wreck, and everyone I know who's been involved with something there has been burned in one way or another.

I've been in tech since tech was new, so of course, I've done a hell of a lot of this. I've even done the moves myself, when I worked for a startup in this dim and distant past; being the lowest paid guy in the company (one of maybe three without a PHd behind my name), i got all those extra jobs, like building stuff, tearing stuff down, moving heavy things, and driving the company truck (because I had a truck, and no one else did, it became The Company TRuck).

The thing that seems ironic now, though, is that physical proximity to co workers matters almost not at all for most companies now. Most of us in tech - at least the engineers - get more done when we're away from our cubicles than when we're in them. So the push to gather a team together in one room, area or bldg is a loosing battle for a company that's growing.

I'm lucky enough to work for such a company, so we're doing lots of poorly-planned body shuffles.

It's frustrating; putting us together won't help us work, but moving us disrupts work. Our last move was dreadful, costing me vastly in terms of productivity. And it failed the goal of putting a team together, because we tried to shoehorn three teams into room for two, and thus wound up splitting all three teams worse than when we started.

Tomorrow, we go again, and it's the same thing; three teams into one bldg, and by the time we move, space is already too short to fit everyone, even with cubes cut down to 2/3 normal size.

For what? So managers who don't really get it can know where everyone sits.

There's an upside though. My current bldg is absolutely horrible. Oh, it looks great, but as a working environment it's dreadful. Every mistake you can make in terms of lighting and sound has been made. So the new bldg - literally two parking lots down the road - has to be better, if only because it can't be worse. So if we stay there loger than a year, the productivity should be a sum gain only because the environment may be less noisy and unpleasant. BUt that's only a win if we don't move again in six months, because a move like that always costs weeks of disruption.

And again, why? When we could work literally anywhere, in any bldg. Moving one employee is easy; moving a bldg-full is a huge undertaking.

Corporation, I guess we could say, are stupid.

On the other hand, we get friday off. So it's not a complete loss.

While my shoulder heals well ahead of schedule, my sleep still falls victim to it's ache. My normal sleep habits - a mess at the best of times - are now completely fractured.

It's no secret that I've been had hell's own time writing recently, to the point where I had lost all care or interest in it. But over the last couple of weeks, I've begun to feel the return of some faint muse.

Characters are starting to regain their voices. Only, they are doing so in the middle of the night.

Every night this week, when I'm just down far enough into the well of sleep that I can't drag back out without struggle (or caffeine), I start thinking of things I need to write. Characters, stories, themes, settings.

I actually got up one night over the weekend, with this piece of dialog in my head:

"Where'd this come from," she asked me, running a finger over the faintly puckered skin above my right ear.

The scar itself was numb, but the skin around it was oddly sensitive. It tingled when she traced it's jagged outline.

"Walked into a door," I said.

She stroked my scalp, the day and a half of stubble making a faint scraping sound.

"I like it," she said.

It wasn't much, but it was enough. I could visualize the woman - her short, stylishly cut hair in some perfect honey shade, her mellow voice, her skin tan and just beginning to show her fourty years. I knew the narrator; a sort of stock character out of my head - big, road-worn, a bit taciturn, and with dark secrets in his past. I knew how they wound up together, and where they were (her bed, with late afternoon sun through expensive curtains, fading light on sex-tossed covers the color of caramel. I had her entire house in my head, her colors, her expensive, understated taste. I even knew what car was parked (somewhat crookedly, like she'd been in a hurry) in the carport beside her house.

I knew the conversation, up until he opens his mouth, pauses, and then begins to tell her his story. And then it ran out. I didn't know what the story was. Or to be more specific, while I knew what story he'd tell her, I didn't know what THIS story was, that I was telling.

I wrote it down, and saved it. A small victory; the first bit of fiction that's gotten all the way out of my head and onto (virtual) paper in more months than I can remember.

But it's been that way every night. Last night, a pair of characters wandered into my head and tried to talk to me. A female young traveler, and the mate of some craft, making a lonely traverse. I don't know if this was a ship crossing bodies of water, or some spaceship crossing unimaginable gulfs, or an airship in some steampunk past-future. But I could hear her voice, and hear him tell her how everyone else on the ship slept, his low rank leaving him on the bridge.

They never got to the point where it became a story; just a setting, faces, emotions (pride, loneliness) and an physical environment of cold and isolation.

Today, I tried to write a bit of that down, but I had nothing. I couldn't summon the scene, merely it's description. Like all the veins of creativity I've encountered between sleep and wake, it was small, and not found again once lost.

Inspiration, for me, is profoundly elusive. I have never found a way to turn it on, and so often find it slipping. The muse of distraction speaks more loudly, always, than that of creation. But at least I begin to hear those whispers. I've missed the voice of creative inspiration.