marka

Howdy, Not that big a surprise. Mine is a tight squeeze for CXN holder steel (new, Step). It fits, but there's no extra room. Mark

Howdy, Yeah, typically all the out-of-towners end up at the same hotel and usually Friday's get together is there. Not a 'requirement' to stay there or anything, but it makes it easier. JR negotiates a block of rooms rate. IIRC I think NJ is $200/night? I'm guessing you could probably find a buddy to share a room with but ?? I usually have my family with me and I'm one of those folks that likes to escape off to be by themselves at times so I've never tried to get a roomie. 🙂 Mark

Howdy, Yep, exactly this. Anyone know the details for these? Mark

Howdy, Usually a dinner/get together the night before and the night of the game, generally later in the evenings for both (at least for an old man like me). I would say at these events the ice time / manufacturer demo / whatever is roughly half of the experience for me, with the other half being those get togethers or other activities (like if you've got family with you and do the tourist thing or something). "Worth it" is kinda a personal thing. Its worth it to me. Mark

Howdy, Whoa! So routine tests led to them finding that vs. any type of episode/symptoms? That sounds actually fairly lucky if so? Any restrictions on activities or anything? Mark

Howdy, Still jealous of all that empty ice. 🙂 Mark

Howdy, Yep, should be good. 🙂 Assuming we're not all sick. 😕 Mark

Howdy, Sorry to read about your son's head injury! Hopefully no long term effects. I really wish that manufacturers would prioritize protection over looks/weight/gimmicks and then back that up with published testing results. The poor VT testing results and this anecdotal report have certainly put an end to any interest I had in the new True lid, despite my interest in the MIPS system. Mark

Howdy, I'm still just amazed that someone has the same stick they want to use four years later. 🙂 Mark

Howdy, Yeah, those answers feel right to me (not that I have the hockey history that most here do). But I'm not finding that stuff in the rulebook. This rule is about the puck going out of play: https://www.usahockeyrulebook.com/page/show/1084689-rule-631-puck-out-of-bounds-or-unplayable And this is about hand passes: https://www.usahockeyrulebook.com/page/show/1084666-rule-618-handling-puck-with-hands The handpass rule specifically says "directly to a teammate"... Nothing about the other team getting possession or whatever. It seems like if a deflection out of play counts as a 'last play' (and I can certainly see that), it ought to count if its a deflection off a goaltender's pads too, right? And therefore that wouldn't be a handpass? I'm asking because I frequently struggle to find the "of course" answers to weird situations like this in the actual black and white rule book. Which I'm pretty sure is more an indication that I don't know how to read the book, more than anything else. And which I'd like to get better at, because I hate not knowing the underlying rules in those weird situations. Mark

Howdy, So, sorta morphing this into my "ask weird rules questions" thread... Does a deflection count as a "play"? I ask for two situations... 1) a shot is taken from the neutral zone, with all offensive players on-sides. It deflects off a defenseman in the offensive zone, going out of play. Face off location is supposed to be determined by the last play, but I'm not sure if the shot is the last play or the deflection is. 2) offensive player in the offensive zone bats the puck with his hand. Puck deflects off the goalie's pads, to another offensive player. Hand pass or not? If you REALLY want to help me out, you could specify which USA hockey rule applies with your answer. 🙂 Mark

Howdy, I think everyone is going to have different patterns for usage. And what works for you is going to depend on what steel, what hollow, how sensitive you are, etc. etc. For me (regular Step steel, 3/4 Fire hollow), I don't notice a difference in the way my skates feel for say the first 6 to 8 hours or so on the ice. Lately what I've been doing is making 3 passes every 6 to 10 hours or so. I'm not religious about it. If I haven't sharpened for a while and I have a game, I'll probably throw them on there. If I'm just reffing, I probably won't. Mark

Howdy, I bet Sean would give you lessons after the morning skate on Thursday... Mark

Howdy, Is it possible to ban users from specific threads? Mark

Howdy, Well, I guess when Sparx stops selling overseas, we'll know why. Mark

Howdy, From the little I've seen, used rings sell pretty quick, at least on ebay. I casually keep an eye out for a deal on weird ones like a 3/8", just in case I have crazy friend that wants to try it or something, but I very rarely see used rings get listed on ebay and they always seem to sell fairly quickly for not enough off of "new from Sparx" for me to want to deal with a rando. Which is all a long way to say... I bet if you list it here it'd sell pretty quick. 🙂 Mark

Howdy, Oh and yes, super car or not doesn't really matter a lot here. Any 'super car' made for normal road use in the USA will run just fine on 93 octane fuel / is designed & engineered to use that fuel. Racing fuel is (99%) for _actual_ racing. Mark

Howdy, Generally speaking, additional octane for an engine that doesn't need it actually hurts performance, vs. helping it. Short version, its extremely unlikely to help your car's performance and might have negative effects. Octane is a measurement of the resistance to detonation, which is another way of saying that its slower/requires more energy to ignite as octane goes up. The reason some racing engines require higher octane fuel is that they have a significantly higher compression ratio than 'normal' engine. That higher amount of compression can inadvertenly ignite the fuel mixture of a lower octane fuel, so racing fuel is used that resists that early ignition / detonation better. If your engine isn't a very high compression racing engine, there's no need for the higher octane fuel and if there is any effect, its that it will slightly hurt performance. Having said that... The amount of timing advance can also play into performance. More advance == more performance, at least up to a point. The issue with more advance is that again, it can cause detonation and higher octane can help limit that. So _if_ your engine has enough compression _and_ it has tuning/sensors that can take advantage of higher than normal octane fuel, you _might_ see a performance benefit from increasing octane over the normal 93 'super' level. But its more likely that none of that will apply and you'll just be burning up $10/gallon fuel that will have a negative effect if it has any effect at all. YMMV. Literally. 🙂 Mark

Howdy, Grrr. Nothing like driving to the rink to find out that pickup has been cancelled. Small blessings. It was only 15 minutes away, I guess. Mark

Howdy, I can't see how it would matter, in terms of # of passes, unless you have an actual cross grinding ring that has more aggressive material removal. The same amount of steel ends up being gone. Which is a long way to say that I agree with your take on using a ring (that you already have) that otherwise gets little use as your 'cross grind' ring. 🙂 I actually did a pair a couple days ago where a cross grind ring would have been helpful. 1st pair so far. About an inch of inside edge damage under the ball of the foot. Ended up doing something like 15 passes with a regular ring to get it (mostly) taken care of. Mark

Howdy, A couple things: 1st, generally speaking when I do other folk's skates I do 4 passes unless there are problems. Usually those 4 passes are enough. You cannot make a categorical statement like you are above. When I'm doing my own, I usually do 2 or 3 passes. 2nd, if you're doing other folks skates, presumably you're not doing them for free. Charge enough to cover your consumable cost or don't sharpen them. Mark

Howdy, What technology does Sparx use to code the rings? Looks like NFC read/write is built into phones these days, right? Mark

Howdy, I'm not entirely convinced that this is a great method to determine if you've cut the whole edge. I wonder if the material coming off steel "scrubs" the marker away. But I've never tried to make a large radius change with only a single pass or something to test it. Mark

Howdy, I never know where to post these "Thanks for Winterfest!" posts... Move this as necessary. 🙂 Just wanted to post and say thanks for another great Winterfest! Really nice to see folks again, particularly after being hurt this summer and missing SummerJam. I particularly appreciate everyone being nice/welcoming to Laura. She had a good time, even though she thinks we're all weird. 🙂 My first time going up to Guernsey's as well, which was probably the part of the thing I enjoyed the most outside of chirping Dave. Already looking forward to the next one. JR and everyone else... Thanks! Mark

Howdy, 1ms at 80mph is ~1.5". I think I'll worry about other things first. 🙂 Mark