Hal Stern's thoughts on the economy, software, services, technology, and snowmen. Hal Stern: The Morning Snowman

There is much joy in Mudville, New Jersey today.

Patrik Elias, scorer, prankster, passer, Euro-cool and Jersey-slick, re-signed with the Devils. Elias re-upped for 7 more years, for a total of $42 million. Impressive on the surface as it's the largest contract signed so far this year, but more impressive is what it says about Elias as a leader.

Benefitting from the new NHL collective bargaining agreement and an April birthday, Elias is 30 years old and eligible for unrestricted free agency this year. He could have cashed in for up to $8.8 million a season, more than 30% over his negotiated $6 million paycheck. Rumors had three quarters of the league interested in him, and all of us who have closets and shelves full of Elias swag have been on edge since the Devils ended their playoff run. All of the ingredients were there for a fan disaster.

I believe that our sports heroes should impress us with their behavior and not just their skill; they should be people we want to emulate in terms of what they do during off-days. We should want to exhibit all of their attitudes. My love of the Pittsburgh Pirates' Willie Stargell went beyond him being slow and left-handed; he worked in his own restaurant during the off-season; he endured a tough childhood; he was a team leader and created unity when he could have had rampant dissention. He played because he loved baseball, and is one of only a few baseball athletes to stay with a single club -- the club that first signed him -- more than 20 years.

And so it is with Elias. Drafted by the Devils in 1994, he's always been in a Jersey way. Now signed for seven more years, it's likely he'll finish his career (or come close) wearing the tail and horns. Loyalty, hard work, team play -- the attributes I want my own son to learn from his favorite athlete.

I love it when live becomes somewhat self-referential, or when life imitates art that is imitating life. Yesterday morning I spoke at EUNIS 2006, an annual conference of European universities that looks at technology issues in education and research. The event was held at the University of Tartu, Estonia.

The University of Tartu was established by King Gustavus of Sweden, however, its campus buildings date back to the 13th century. We held our partner talk in the University Art Museum, formerly the cathedral building, which was completed in the 16th century. The cathedral was damaged during various wars, and fell into disrepair after fires in the late 16th century. One of the university staff lamented that during the decades in which Estonia was part of the Russian confederacy, most funds for reconstruction were devoted to military spending, and only recently has repair of these wonderful buildings begun again.

The cathedral is a great work of engineering. Despite the destruction of buttresses and outside arches in the last few centuries, the walls didn't collapse under their own weight, or collapse inward into the building itself. The building was built for the long haul, to give a place for a community that would long outlive the original builders. During my talk, I made my usual references to the street "architecture" of Boston, drawn from my reading of Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn. Boston's street layout is accidental architecture overlaid with asphalt and then made permanent by buildings and other infrastructure. My key point is that if you allow messy architecture to become permanent, whatever you build on top attains a rigidity that makes incremental change difficult. You need to be able to change the components in the architecture, down to the level of those arches and supporting walls.