I've felt like the writing has been on the wall for McMichael for a while, even in his career year in 24-25 his name consistently appeared as a piece in trade rumors surrounding us.

My impressions about our prospects are essentially entirely based on hype and not observation, so I can't say anything notable on Gastrin other than he got some generic praise when he was inserted for a couple games in the Bears playoffs a few months back. There was a draft-room video posted after last year's draft that showed he was one of two guys our front office was targeting with that pick. (The other was a russian that Montreal took a few picks ahead of us.) Everything I've heard about him since then has been tempered praise, obviously prospects are unpredictable at this point but I'm sure there's a reason they felt comfortable using him as an add-in.

I'll admit I haven't watched a lot of Kyrou. He had a severe down year last year, but he waived his NTC to come here and at this point it's hard to question our pro scouting department. If our pro scouts and Carbery think he'll be brought back to form then I'm pumped.

The NHL official website has had a "goal visualizer" feature the past couple years that show goals diagrammatically from tracking puck and player positions. Sometimes stripping the video context makes for good comedy, or adds to the comedy for already silly goals.

I follow the caps, so here's a few of the examples I have offhand:

Typical goals scored by the Washington Capitals: A, B

Typical goals scored against Charlie Lindgren: A, B

Feel free to volunteer your own examples here.

The Washington Capitals have acquired a second-round pick in the 2029 NHL Draft, a third-round pick in the 2027 NHL Draft (originally from San Jose) and goaltender Jesper Vikman from the Vegas Golden Knights for forward Nic Dowd, senior vice president and general manager Chris Patrick announced today.

I'm really sad to see him go, and especially sad to see him go to a team I'm inclined to root against, but I can recognize this is a good move for the team. His age has been catching up to him a bit and the return is not bad. It also lets us have both Sourdif and McMichael playing center when the lineup is healthy, and both seem to do better there than on wing.

There is something kind of sad about losing a prospect who clearly killed it in preseason. At his age though he needed playing time, and to get that he'd have needed to bump out Carlson, Roy, or TvR.

How are we feeling? Miroshnichenko is the only player still up that doesn't need to clear waivers, so he's almost certainly sent down in spite of a strong showing. I almost expect Iorio to be traded because he's unlikely to pass waivers, our top six is basically set for defense, and we wouldn't want to keep a young kid up just to sit on the bench and not get experience.

First game is on Wednesday against Boston.

Ovi really did grow into the leadership role, but there's something to be said for the knowledge that someone else would have been the NHL's best leader if opposing goalies had stopped four more of his shots than they actually did over the course of his career.

(Also Messier is enough of a blowhard that receiving his endorsement feels like a character attack.)

I think this is really special. There's more meaning in it than anything you'd get in an interview because, well, he didn't have to write this.

Well that sucks. Hope Alexeyev can do well.

Big commitment, but he's been great this season.

Glad he'll be staying with us.

He's been lights out and if he maintains that over the contract's duration then this is a steal. Goalies are generally so volitile though that it seems like a big risk to me.

He has very much outperformed Lindgren this year, but I was still hoping we would stick with Charlie given that Charlie showed last year what he is capable of, he is still playing well overall, and signing on a down year would give us a friendlier contract.

I'm an aspiring screenwriter and need some constructive criticism. Please go easy on me, I've poured my heart into these.

Only five unique ideas so far, could stay that way for a long while or maybe not. Inspiration comes when it comes.

I mean on the one hand, I could take the two minutes right now. On the other hand, I could lie awake for another half an hour thinking about this thing I could easily take care of immediately, and then later on take time out of my day to actually do it. It's an easy choice which is a better management of time, I'll be back in bed in a minute.

Alright, now that I've had a full minute back and comfy and tucked in again I've thought up another task that's even less time-consuming than the last one.

I was wondering if this was coming, given he's had a rough season while almost all of his NHL teammates are thriving. He was very good last year and won AHL playoff MVP, so I was expecting a better year out of him. He'll get there.

This might sound like a joke, and I'd actually rather just have everyone assume it's a joke than give actual details, but I've been in the hospital a few weeks and have missed a bit of hockey. Doing a bit better now, still recovering. The last game I saw was us getting shut out by Tampa near the end of October.

I watched highlights today and the caps look spectacular. I see the old man was going berserk again but got hurt recently. Also looks like McMichael is having a breakout season, the highlights make him look amazing. We got Eller back? I remember Lapierre didn't look too good early in the season, was the Eller trade sparked by a lack of faith in him playing 3C?

Anything else I've missed?

Had to check online to be 100% sure the superPAC that mailed it was Trump-linked. I've never heard of Elissa Slotkin before, but apparently she's a US rep for another district in Michigan. Our rep is Rashida Tlaib, who is Palestinian descent, so I'm guessing the PAC's thought process in designing this was they don't want to link Harris to our actual representative so just pick some other random rep nearby.

As someone who does not want Trump to be re-elected, it's at least relieving to know how easy it will be for the democrats to counter these dirty tricks. All they need to do is have their candidate make clear public statements to clarify that she doesn't want this linked to her campaign. Of course, she'll have to clearly point out which specific parts are offensive, so people don't just think she fine with antisemitism. Explaining that being anti-apartheid is not the same as being antisemitic is pretty straightforward though, so this should be no big deal.

We've had my cat Roto-Borola (pictured here) for over two years, we got him when he was maybe five months. A couple months back I discovered he really enjoys having his head massaged. He likes me to put a good bit more pressure on his head than I would expect him to be comfortable with.

He's still a very playful cat at times, and I try to engage with that as best I can but I don't always love being play-bitten. At some point a while back, if I'm petting his head and move my hand somewhere else near him, including petting his back or somewhere else on him, it sets off a timer of 15-20 seconds typically (usually around 10-15 seconds with no reaction, when he opens his mouth just a hint it means he is about five seconds away) for him to play bite me. If he's laying on top of me the timer it sets off is just for exiting the ride. I've been playing with him pretty rough by squeezing his head or giving him a little noogie, but it just hit me that this has really been him training me in how he wants to be pet.

So I'll give him a pretty rough noogie and he acts like "oh no, I'm really trying to bite you but I can't when your hand is right there", but he's definitely able to outspeed me. And I'm realizing now in retrospect, I started going for the back of his head because he left me one spot to find where he would pretend that he can't get to me. And he gradually trained me I needed to be more and more violent if I wanted to not get bitten.

So yeah, I put my entire hand around his skull and squeeze a bit tight and somehow he loves this. Realized a few months ago that this is his thing, realized today that this is something he taught me.

He had a good preseason, I'm sure he knows this could be his last chance. Rooting for him.

I'm a little disappointed Cristall will have to return to juniors, it sucks that he can't go to the AHL, but oh well.

:: Starting full system upgrade...
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (1) deepin-icon-theme-2024.06.21-1

Total Installed Size:  138.93 MiB
Net Upgrade Size:        5.96 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] Y
(1/1) checking keys in keyring                     [########################] 100%
(1/1) checking package integrity                   [########################] 100%
(1/1) loading package files                        [########################] 100%
(1/1) checking for file conflicts                  [########################] 100%
error: failed to commit transaction (conflicting files)
deepin-icon-theme: /usr/share/icons/bloom/icon-theme.cache exists in filesystem
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.

Running a search for the error I didn't find one for deepin-icon-theme, but the same error for other packages in arch updates show up and the other ones I saw laid the blame on improper packaging. Given that this is the one from the arch repositories and not some AUR package, I'm nowhere near confident enough in myself to jump to the conclusion that this is someone else's fault, so I'm asking here.