Timed Out

I wish I could get away with my connection with school work 'timing out' as often as my router and ISP have been lately. I wouldn't have anything to complain about if I was actually learning anything even halfway significant to the field I plan on going into, but instead 4 of my 5 courses are loaded with material I'll never see again, its very frustrating. On the bright side, at least I'm not a reporter held captive for a month, released, and shot within hours by 'friendly fire'.

Lord Stanley's TV Cup

I sure do wish there was more coverage of the bickering between the millionaire NHL players and the billionaire owners. And strike those players down who might consider going around their organization to try to actually be reasonable with the league. Sportscenter, Sportsnet News, Hockey Central, The Business of Sports, CBC National News, its just not enough coverage of the squabbling over money for me. I want more! I want to see these guys, paid millions to go out and play a game that I only wish I had time enough to play regularly, fight over dollar figures and "cost certainty" and "salary caps" and yadda yadda yadda. I mean, god forbid in the downtime, any attention be given to the amateur sports in Canada that we only hear about suffering at Olympic time when we underperform (at least in terms of total quantity, there were some interesting per capita figures for the last Olympics that I made but never managed to publish) as a country. Disregarding the fact that a salary cap has significantly changed the dynamics of the NBA and NFL, and made them interesting leagues to follow year to year because the teams actually change, one would think these guys (read, the NHLPA, and the NHL) could realize that at this point they are shooting each other in the foot...actually, at this point, they are starting to move their sights upward towards critical arteries in the thigh.

Every night I see the same old shit, with Nick Kypreos and company on Sportsnet and Bob Mackenzie and friends on TSN making predictions and passing on their infinite wisdom, all of which never seem to be accurate, nor productive in anything but eating up air time. Granted, noticeably more attention has been given to minor hockey (which is good in and of itself), and European football (read soccer) which I can't complain about...one still has to sit through 15 minutes of NHL speculation over a bunch of bullshit first. From another frustrated hockey fan: guys, get your shit together, or people are going to really start appreciate what other venues of entertainment are available to them, and that certainly isn't going to help maintain your millionaire lifestyles.

Cold War Solution to New Age Problem

Paul Martin and friends down in Ottawa took a step in the right direction today by finally making the decision not to join, at least in full capacity, the United States Missile Defense scheme. Besides the fact that Canada manages to avoid serious troubles with the more high powered governments on the planet, and is generally free of any direct threat (while I am not naïve enough to believe that Canada could never be targeted by some attack down the road), and besides the fact that there are much better things that our government could could spend its money on, and disregarding the failing missile interception tests run in the past couple months by the U.S., there is the general understanding that the Cold War symbolically ended in 1990 with the fall of the Berlin Wall. I could be completely wrong in my assumption, but I would tend to think that the greatest threat to the U.S., even in the nuclear weapon sense, no longer lies in ICBM's launched over the Arctic or Northern Pacific, but in things like suitcase nukes. This whole missile defense thing to me seems like a relic military plan from the days of duck and cover (which is one of the few things I'm glad I missed of the middle of the 20th century). Needless to say, I'm glad that it looks like Canada is taking a stand against the action.

On another note, here's a map with a reminder, just so I remember where Iran is ahead of the reports that will probably pop up with increasing frequency in the next while:

Free Arash and Mojtaba

Worthy of a look:

Lake Effect and Weird Fronts

What a weird winter, and another fun night ahead, 10cm of snow followed by freezing rain, Happy Monday!

Follow the Bouncing Dot

Karaoke should not be allowed in bars with a capacity of less than 100 people. While I don't claim to be able to sing, I also realize that I shouldn't be up infront of a bunch of my buddies pretending to be able to. In a small bar however this dynamic is compounded by a more 'homey' feel, and a higher proportion of those buddies around, and the quality of 'singing' is noticeably decreased from what you'll get at a bigger establishment. Particularly when the person running the set-up is significantly less than sober, and you have to start plugging your ears as the night progresses to block out feedback, and a pack of girls squealing their rendition of Janis Joplin, whom they may have listened to once before that point in time. Perhaps I'm bitter because I wasn't drunk enough not to care.

Today is gonna be assignment day hopefully so I can devote the rest of the week to reading, and delaying that reading as much as possible. I can guarantee my house will be at its cleanest this week as I do everything I can to avoid my school work while still being productive. Funny how that works.

Reading Week Blues

As of 12:30 yesterday, I am officially on reading week (with the exception of my engineering requirement, as apparently work, and especially tutorials are oxygen to them). Typically the 'reading' portion is a misnomer of what actually goes on, drinking, and sitting around thinking about anything BUT courses. Unfortunately, in fashion true to the way the rest of the term has gone, this isn't the case for me. To top it off, I have been finding myself increasingly unmotivated (or decreasingly motivated, pick your poison) lately. Loads upon loads of mundane, mostly repetitive work in my courses, and moreso my labs, combined with a few amazingly uninteresting profs have made it very difficult to actually focus. And once again, the co-op department at the university sucks, and I gotta get on finding my own job. Oh how I love dropping 500 bucks a term on co-op fees for them to accomplish nothing.

Everything will work out though...on some level anyways. I'm determined not to let it get me down, just gotta get it done.

On the positive side of life...I have a week without any NEW assignments or labs, and its starting to smell like spring outside. To top it all off MBlog is back up and running, and I'm lovin the new style set-up. Hopefully it isn't once again ruined by the ignorant who run rampant on this here interweb...Al Gore really should have designed things better.

I read this today on MBlog in regards to Internet Explorer:

"My reason for bringing it up is that I have this sneaking suspicion that my sidebar is being pushed down to the bottom of the page in IE. Apple hasn’t supported IE for a few years now, so I don’t use it or have it. In fact, if someone you know does, arrange an intervention immediately! The truth? I can be bothered to fix it. It looks perfect in Firefox and Safari and all the numbers add up. So help a brother out, get Firefox. Girls will flock to you, boys will swoon over you, you’ll inherit 10 million dollars, be invited to all the best parties, and live out the rest if your days worshiped by everyone who has the good fortune to know you. And it’s 100% free. For the love of all that is holy – act now!"

Now, while I don't use an Apple, I DID do all my templates and formatting using HTML and XML coding (to my limited level of knowledge) within Firefox. I just checked it out in IE after the suggestion that my comments weren't working properly (and needed to use a browser without an existing cookie/saved settings to do so). All I can say is wow....spacing looks like hell, font colours off...in short, I too urge anyone reading this to get Firefox for free right....NOW. If you want to get away from Outlook as well, I use Thunderbird now for mail (I've never been one to use newsgroups, but apparently it works well for those as well). Firefox and Thunderbird are both free, and both work excellently, and there is no good excuse for at least not trying out Firefox.

Operation Iraqi Freedom

Three days remain until Iraq's 'free and democratic' election under the new American 'protection'. Nothing like holding an election for the people in a nation in which most people are afraid to leave their homes for fear of a suicide bomber, gunfire, or a misplaced American bomb keeping them from ever returning home. It baffles me to ponder how the current United States government could possibly believe in their current positive stance. 1 + 1 = 2. What goes up must come down. Holding an election in an active war zone is ridiculous. They seem to all be equally obvious statements, even to an otherwise unaware elementary school student. I certainly don't see anything believeable as a 'fairly elected government' coming out of all this, just more of the same American control over a region they, by all normal standards, have no rights to. Maybe I'm just talking crazy talk, I should go take my Prozac and Vicodin.