Congratulations Bingo and CP

[Dion]

The Wayback Machine gives us a glimpse of the forum back in 2002....

October 9th, 2002
Calgarypuck.com

October Preview Feature

by Calgarypuck.com Staff

Another season begins tomorrow for the Calgary Flames, which means today we welcome back the monthly prediction feature at Calgarypuck.com.

For those of you new to the site, each and every month Calgarypuck.com writers look to the schedule ahead, predict the outcomes of each game, and provide some creative if not farfetched predictions for the team in the calendar month ahead.

Will the squad jump out to the brilliant start of a year ago, or come out of the gates stone cold which was the annual ritual prior to last October?

Time will tell.

D'Arcy McGrath

Monthly Record: : 5-3-1-1, 12 points
Some teams make changes over the off season. The Calgary Flames shook their core to the bone.
But now ... with the dust settling on an opening night roster the challenge falls to the on-looker to determine the results.

Are they a better team? A team that has taken a step back? Have positive moves in some areas weakened the club in other areas to the point where the moves are negated?

We'll see.

For my money I like the new edition. They won't have the Detroit Red Wings shaking in their boots - though they should given the clubs history from last season - but they do appear to be a more professional, deep, consistent bunch.

The play of the greatly altered squad in their final two preseason games against Edmonton has the city talking hockey once again, but those Edmonton lineups were missing their share of regulars.

Like any recent addition; this year's Flames have their quota of "ifs" needed to be answered positively in order to get to the promised land. This year, however, the "if" total seems to have shrunk.

Look for a solid start from the homeside, tying a well played game to open the season with Vancouver then upsetting the Hitchcock driven Flyers.

When the month comes to a close to the Flames will be in the thick of things, where they should remain all season.

Predictions

Chris Drury will continue his torrid preseason pace, by notching 13 points in the opening month, including five goals. ... Jordan Leoopold's concussion will prove worse than imagined, forcing him to miss the club's first three games. ... Marc Savard will survive the month as a Calgary Flame, squashing the rumour mill of late that has him on the way out of town. ... Jamie McLennan will make his first start against Chicago, picking up the win. ... Micki Dupont will be returned to Saint John midway through the month when the Flames add a veteran blueliner. ... Toni Lydman will out score Derek Morris in October.

http://web.archive.org/web/200211191...on_Oct2002.htm

[WesternCanadaKing]

I've been here for 10 years, albeit mostly quietly lurking. Absolutely love this site, when I became a Flames fan / hockey fan, it really helped me get my head around the ins and outs of the game. It definitely helped me develop a really good appreciation for the sport - thanks for everything you do Bingo!

[Drury18]

Originally Posted by Dion

The Wayback Machine gives us a glimpse of the forum back in 2002....

Dear Past Me,

Don't name yourself after a player who was doing well but only with the team for a few months when you decided this was the way to go. And then will change his number shortly after. It will be 3 months of awesomeness, followed by 12 years of regret.

Signed,
Present Me

...this works like Back to the Future right??

[MrMastodonFarm]

Originally Posted by Drury18

Dear Past Me,

Don't name yourself after a player who was doing well but only with the team for a few months when you decided this was the way to go. And then will change his number shortly after. It will be 3 months of awesomeness, followed by 12 years of regret.

Signed,
Present Me

...this works like Back to the Future right??

Did you sign up during one of the few games towards the end of the season he wore #18 for the Flames? Bit of a double whammy there.

[Drury18]

Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm

Did you sign up during one of the few games towards the end of the season he wore #18 for the Flames? Bit of a double whammy there.

Yes. April 5, 2003 so that would have had to been one of the last games.

[Pierre "Monster" McGuire]

Congrats D'Arcy and everyone involved. I sincerely love this site and couldn't imagine what my daily intertube routine would be without it. Thank you very much.

Just as a reference, when CP was first started...

...this was a thing:



...Seinfeld ended.

...The first Harry Potter book was released.

...Frank Sinatra died.

[Buff]

Originally Posted by Sr. Mints

Ah, Usenet - The original Web 2.0.

Admittedly, the only names I recognize on Calgary puck that I knew from alt.sports.flames.whatever is Buff and Jay Random.

Jay and I were two of the last dozen or so holdouts among the regulars. In fact it took Jay quite a bit longer to join CP. I found his email and emailed him a couple of times to come join CP. He finally gave in, probably so I would leave him alone.

I don't remember your name. What was your handle on usenet?

[Finger Cookin]

Originally Posted by surferguy

I like Calgarypuck

Calgarypuck is...good.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Vox

What's nice is I can tell my wife that reading CP is part of my job. If the site is up, the data center is up. Since we do a lot of mission critical work for the city and province I feel it is my professional duty to validate the datacenter multiple times per day, and especially at night when most of the staff is at home. And if the site is slow, I'll here it from you folks faster than from anyone else! It also works at the office when I have CP running in the background - I can tell my staff that I'm just keeping tabs on them. It's been working for years.

Seriously, since a lot of you guys have been around a long time, and have better memories than me, I'd love to hear any shout outs to people I may have missed.

What kind of horsepower do we need to run CP? And how has that need increased the past year or so? Would be interesting to see how CP has grown that way.

[Buff]

Originally Posted by Vox

What's nice is I can tell my wife that reading CP is part of my job. If the site is up, the data center is up. Since we do a lot of mission critical work for the city and province I feel it is my professional duty to validate the datacenter multiple times per day, and especially at night when most of the staff is at home. And if the site is slow, I'll here it from you folks faster than from anyone else! It also works at the office when I have CP running in the background - I can tell my staff that I'm just keeping tabs on them. It's been working for years.

Seriously, since a lot of you guys have been around a long time, and have better memories than me, I'd love to hear any shout outs to people I may have missed.

Yeah, I remember David. And Ciampa and Caldwell. And Lemieux and his broken English and temper. MikeF, browna... There are a few other usernames here that I see and remember them from usenet. Probably a lot more users here that changed their names.

I remember and miss messing with the trolls HungryLion and they poster with the initials of RM (he changed his name a few times), one of which was Realto Margarino.

[Buff]

Originally Posted by surferguy

I like Calgarypuck

I can't stop talking about CalgaryPuck.

[Dion]

CP logo's of the past.

[Vox]

Originally Posted by Buff

Yeah, I remember David. And Ciampa and Caldwell. And Lemieux and his broken English and temper. MikeF, browna... There are a few other usernames here that I see and remember them from usenet. Probably a lot more users here that changed their names.

I remember and miss messing with the trolls HungryLion and they poster with the initials of RM (he changed his name a few times), one of which was Realto Margarino.

My only claim to fame was the old usenet hockey pool run by Andrew Scott (or Scott Andrews?). Worked like a stock market where you bought and sold players after each game based on the number of extrapolated points they were projected to score by the end of the season. You started with 1,000 points, and bought and sold through out the year. I set a record of 1,800 points by seasons end that stood for about 20 years. Don't know if the pool even exists anymore.

Would be interesting to hear if anyone else here participated in that pool. I know we had a huge number of people from dozens of countries around the world back in 1991/92, so maybe someone else remembers it.

[Vox]

Originally Posted by Azure

What kind of horsepower do we need to run CP? And how has that need increased the past year or so? Would be interesting to see how CP has grown that way.

I can share some information that Photon and Bingo gave me the ok to share a couple years back. If I recall, based on the public forum stats, when we started hosting about 5 years ago the site would see around 290 concurrent users. When the site reached 300-400 users back in the day it would start to slow down, and I think it maxed at 600 before cratering.

Based on the same public stats, today I'd say the site has 600 or more concurrent users every day, and routinely hits 700 or more. This is unofficial, just my observations. CP almost hit 3000 concurrent users last year, and the site kept on going, though it slowed a bit.

The site originally ran on a single server, now it runs on two virtual servers with a total of six CPU cores, on a 1Gb/s internal network on top of a 48 spindle RAID10 SAN. Over the years the site and the hardware have been upgraded every six months or so. When we took over it ran about 15% capacity on normal days an peaked around 50%. Now I'd say it runs around 30% capacity and peaks at around 80%-90% on trade deadline and draft day. I do cheat and often add a 4th CPU on days I know will be bad to make sure there is additional headroom. Originally we'd see about 40Mb/s traffic between the servers which doubles during busy times. And we averaged about 2Mb/s sustained external to the users, but that increased easily to 10Mb/s of sustained data during deadline days. This is going by memory though - I don't have access to that data right now to confirm. I would think those have doubled as well today. If I have time I'll sit down and take a formal look. I've posted the usage stats a few times over the years for the techno geeks like me, but I haven't done it in a while. One thing that is interesting is that the users have increased far faster than resource consumption. This could be partially due to a couple of rounds of newer hardware, but I think it is a real testament to how well Photon has done optimizing the site over the years. I think his efforts need to be appreciated more by all of us - he does a LOT behind the scenes to keep us getting our information in seconds instead of 10s of seconds.

The actual number of page views, sessions, etc, are Bingos property. Not my place to talk to any of that, and I don't store any of that data.

[Locke]

I always find it hilarious how I found out about and joined CP.

I was in University and I'd hit up The Den with some friends and we'd talk hockey, and finally one of them asked why I'm not on CP.

I'd never heard of it and had no idea what he was talking about, he was a lurker but I figured I'd give it a try.

Worst mistake I've ever made.

[Sr. Mints]

Originally Posted by Buff

Jay and I were two of the last dozen or so holdouts among the regulars. In fact it took Jay quite a bit longer to join CP. I found his email and emailed him a couple of times to come join CP. He finally gave in, probably so I would leave him alone.

I don't remember your name. What was your handle on usenet?

To reveal my usenet username would be opening a door to an embarrassing digital past.

I think I recall you asking me if I'd be interested in playing ball hockey when I moved to Lethbridge to go to university in the early 2000s.

[Itse]

5,556 messages in almost ten years...

The things I could have done with that time.

Says he, writing his 5,557th message.

[justing]

Congratulations and a huge thank-you to everyone involved in keeping CP up and running!
I love that being on CP can now be considered 'work' related.

[CaptainYooh]

Originally Posted by Vox

...
The site originally ran on a single server, now it runs on two virtual servers with a total of six CPU cores, on a 1Gb/s internal network on top of a 48 spindle RAID10 SAN. Over the years the site and the hardware have been upgraded every six months or so. When we took over it ran about 15% capacity on normal days an peaked around 50%. Now I'd say it runs around 30% capacity and peaks at around 80%-90% on trade deadline and draft day. I do cheat and often add a 4th CPU on days I know will be bad to make sure there is additional headroom. Originally we'd see about 40Mb/s traffic between the servers which doubles during busy times. And we averaged about 2Mb/s sustained external to the users, but that increased easily to 10Mb/s of sustained data during deadline days. This is going by memory though - I don't have access to that data right now to confirm. I would think those have doubled as well today. If I have time I'll sit down and take a formal look. I've posted the usage stats a few times over the years for the techno geeks like me, but I haven't done it in a while. One thing that is interesting is that the users have increased far faster than resource consumption. This could be partially due to a couple of rounds of newer hardware, but I think it is a real testament to how well Photon has done optimizing the site over the years. I think his efforts need to be appreciated more by all of us - he does a LOT behind the scenes to keep us getting our information in seconds instead of 10s of seconds. ...

I don't understand any of this. But it's freakin' impressive!

[flamesfever]

Originally Posted by Dion

I am old

Me too...CP has added a great deal to my experience as a STH. Many thanks to all who make this a tremendous site.