Scooter, the Hockey Cat
Scooter was fourth in a litter of six kittens long ago in a century now gone. According to her "mother" / my friend, Scooter clawed her way out carrying an unlit cigarette and a small baggie of catnip, crying for a light. Owtch! Apparently, the neighborhood tom cat didn't believe in safe sex OR in the process of putting on a cat condom, his excited claws punctured it. In any case, my friend asked if I wanted one.Actually, she begged me to take one.
It had been a while since I had lived with a cat, so I went to look. As soon as I got there, Scooter came over to me and started rubbing up against my leg so in a sense she adopted me. The other kittens seemed preoccupied with a plastic bag.
I took her home and stopped along the way to get a toilet ... er ... cat box, toys and food. Lots and lots of food. Cats definition of food: "Anything we say it is until we say it isn't."
Surprisingly, she actually slept most of the way home. I'd brought a box with me, lined with an old shirt and she apparently found it comfortable and a now famililar scent. She always seemed to be a calm and happy kitten. Unless you tried to take away her cigarettes.
I had a plastic hockey puck which sat on the living room coffee table and a few months after she settled in, she reached up and dragged it off the table and started swatting it around. Eventually, it would become a daily ritual where I'd get on the floor / rug and flick the puck with my fingers. She would start a couple feet away and run forward to the puck, bouncing it between her paws until it was back to me.
She slept in my bed, under the covers, until she got hungry, needed the cat box or one of us farted.
We shared a lot of adventures over the years with other animals, including a fisher cat, most of whom were non-aggressive. Even in her teens she enjoyed run and chase (but never with a bear) or string, especially after she snorted some catnip.
She joined the spirits in 2001, the worst year of my life, as it was for too many others. It's a very unhappy anniversary every year on 09/11.
Hockey Man
I was third in a litter of four. According to mother, I fought my way out and arrived with a hockey stick in one hand and a bag of marijuana in the other. I don't remember it so I'll have to take her word for it. Owtch!
But I do remember the day in the photo. I was off to give a lecture about the differences between a bubble sort and a binary sort, the only two ways to deal with unsorted files in the old days, before indices were invented. Even at five, I didn't suffer from stage fright.
As you might notice in the image, I lived in a rough neighborhood. Our zip code only had four digits because gangs kept stealing the fifth one. Thankfully, that was way back before public housing was brought into the area so I didn't see too many murders or robberies. Certainly a lot fewer than any our overpopulated and poorly administered cities.
Growing up in my neighborhood is probably why I was a Broad Street Bullies wannabe. The Philadelphia Flyers, in their early years, were said Bullies. That was also way, way back. Back when hockey was a manly sport with bench emptying brawls, boisterous fans and big, mean gorillas for referees.
I purchased the domain Hockey-Cat.net back in 1997 and it's been active for over twenty-seven years. Over the years, I tracked and posted the results and standings of a dozen leagues with maybe eight active each year. From Memory: AHL, CHL (both Colonial and Central), ECHL, IHL, NHL, SHL, SPHL, UHL, WHA, WHL and the WPHL (until absorbed by the ECHL). And that's NOT counting the three Canadian Junior leagues I also carried.
After I FINALLY divorced my ex-monster, I chose to migrate north as the house was now just a sad, daily reminder of the failure of my marriage. I thought twenty years was a long enough sentence. The loss of Scooter was also primarily why I needed to escape that environment although I have had several other "Scooters" since the change in century.
After some time off the grid, I settled in the state capitol. I've been here over twenty years and it's starting to feel like home except the closest pro hockey team is now over sixty miles away. The ECHL Maine Mariners now play in the same arena as our original franchise. More than four decades ago, the Maine Mariners entered hockey as the AHL affiliate of the Philadelphia Flyers and not only won the Calder Cup their first year in the league but also did the same the following year.
Of course I had season tickets. I was very vocal at the games about my support of the white, orange and black. Mother made me a very long, Dr. Who (Tom Baker) type scarf with orange and white. She never explained why she didn't include the black but I know it had nothing to do with race, okay. She was a saint as are ALL mothers. One of the only off-ice saves I made (I played defense) was a puck over the glass that would have hit her in the head. Another team scout saw it and tried to sign me up but I declined. You have to be a bit crazy to play defense but totally insane to be a goalie. According to a former center for the team, I should have received at least one assist for thoroughly unsettling one opposing goalie. :-) But then the Flyers migrated their farm team to Philadelphia. Sadness obviously ensued and I had to tolerate the likes of Washington, Anaheim, Chicago and even Boston.
The NHL is now merely a shadow of the game with it now being viewed as "entertainment" instead of a sport. I'm never sure which brain fart caused me to stop watching; the addition of a second referee, four on four in overtime or doing away with the All-Star game.
As far as the work I've done before retirement, I won't bore you with my numerous accomplishments, because I don't think the statutes of limitation have run out on all of them. But I will occasionally throw out a random image or video to back up some of my outrageous claims.
Helen Waite
Not long after settling down in the capitol city, I had a knock on my door and a woman I thought might be homeless happened to be my landlady. Apparently, she was very lonely, probably due to her near terminal case of halitosis and frequently breaking into very vulgar talk because of her Coprolalia / Tourette's and has a serious problem with flatulence.But she agreed to do all the typing and dealing with the uploads/downloads, etc.
She's gotten even more unpleasant since we met but she seems to be interested in me. I'm afraid because of her age, she's a couple years older, she's much too old for me. I haven't told her that but when one of my younger companions stops by, I'm sure she's suspicious when they don't leave until morning and generally with a smile on their face.
Helen also handles the complaints. She can be VERY unpleasant to deal with either over the phone or via email but if you're offended by something posted here and want to demand it be removed or rewritten, you can go to Helen Waite.
The History
Sometime in the mid 1980's and early 1990's some system operators of home computers used programs to create electronic bulletin boards. These were the precursors of web sites, before the internet was opened to the public. If you had a modem, your computer could dial into my computer and interact with a number of message bases. There was no instant gratification, only downloading new messages and uploading your responses to previously received messages.Most people communicated at 2400 baud meaning it was connected to a serial port or in rare cases a parallel port. It basically crawled compared to todays wi-fi.
One of the nation's leading manufacturer of modems noticed how active my board was and offered me a 9600 baud modem for nothing but a thank you note on my board. Graphics were very rudimentary and videos were unheard of. Regardless, I did some tinkering with my modem and boosted it to 19,200 baud. I also let some of my fellow BBS sysops (system operators) know and a group of us had the fastest upload / download speeds along the eastern seaboard.
My modem was tied to a secondary phone line and was busy twenty-four / seven. Initially, it was called The Great White North primarily because I lived in one of the coldest states in the U. S. and always one within the top five for the most SNOW. It was also based on a Canadian comedy show called, Second City TV. It starred a number of future successful comics including, John Candy, Eugene Levy, Katherine O'Hara, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis and others. It was a bit like Saturday Night Live back when it was actually funny. One of the regular segments was with Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis discussing the Great White North (Canada in this case) surrounded by dozens of cases of beer. They eventually made a movie called Strange Brew but I think you needed to love the show to really enjoy that movie.
I had my first ugly encounter with a racist when I was chastised about "Great White" with the complainer having no clue about Canada and most of the Northern U. S. Not wanting to be labeled as a white supremicist, I basically explained why she was an idiot and banned her. Then I said I was glad I didn't mention black ice to her. That's a term used because when water freezes, it's usually clear so the roads can be dangerously slippery without appearing so.
Triggered racist idiot #2 also banned for whining about the black ice.
Suddenly, the internet was opened to the public and I bought the domain hockey-cat.net, a.k.a. Hockey-Cat's Excess Energy. It's now in the twenty-seventh year on the net. It's a small and personal web site. Hopefully, you'll find something of interest here.