caffeine and the road

tapped.

2005-12-16T14:22:00.000-08:00

I realize now just how uninspiring it is to keep blogging when you really hate the way your blog looks and still are too lazy to do anything about it.

So, I promise, after Christmas to clean up my act, whip up something more eye pleasing and start writing about the dangers of working at home, the 45$ cup of coffee that I never got to drink, boxing with a former olympic medalist until I puked and more reasons why everyone should love the Ottawa Senators.

I head home tomorrow for some much needed vacation. I look forward to reading, not worrying about work or school, wearing jogging pants and drinking coffee. With an economics exam in the morning in Hamilton, a quick flight to Ottawa and a chance to see the Sens take on the Leafs live first hand, I'm expecting a long day.

You know when you're sensitive when...

2005-12-13T13:43:00.000-08:00

You are offended by something written on the Internet.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,69810,00.html?tw=rss.TEK

Especially about you! :)

Ask Yahoo! Blows

2005-12-12T11:50:00.000-08:00

Case in point: http://ask.yahoo.com/20051212.html

No mention of Charlie Ward at all. Absolutely ridiculous.

the lighthouse

2005-11-26T08:43:00.000-08:00

I've been spending the morning finishing my last economics assignment, packing and cleaning the apartment for the move this week. And I think a lot of my recent ennui might be attributed to something surprising.

Just what happens after you've found the one thing you've been waiting for for twenty years? What happens to the seeker when the search is over? When you've been so accustomed to waiting and looking forward, what does one do with himself when the need is no longer there?

I wonder.

last weekend

2005-11-25T20:05:00.000-08:00

This will be my last Friday night in my first Toronto apartment. With all of the bullshit that happened in May with the air conditioning unit, the barking dogs down the hall, and the monthly false fire alwarms that require a 19-flight descent carrying a furry monster, I think I'll be glad to be out of here and there'll be few tears shed.

Barbara and I will merging our belongings in a new townhouse near Exhibition, 2 br, 1.5 bath, washer, dryer, dishwasher, and a 300 sf patio on the top of the roof to boot, it should be pretty swell. Mr. Gary will have lots of places to explore and hide, and I'll finally have my first office. Also, taking the Go train down to Hamilton will be easier, since I'll be able to walk to the Exhibition stop. It looks quite promising.

My parents are finshing up the house on the lake, the cottage has been moved about 800m down the point and it looks like they'll be moved in and settled for Christmas.

The new powerbook is still quite swell although the keyboard shortcuts need getting used to.

I have few witty bloggable observations these days, seeing as how I'm either doing school work or working between 730am and 6pm straight every day. Today I took a "me" day, to expedidite the process of balanching things out. I took myself out to lunch at Volo, had a nap on the couch with the Sens game on. In a few short weeks I'll have completed 10% of an MBA. I've been reading very little, I'm just finishing the last of "Until I Find You" despite starting it at Thanksgiving and I did pick up a collection of short fiction by Borges.

And the Sens continue to dominate, we scored some sweet tickets to see them a few times in Buffalo in the 2nd half of the season.

This Weeks Picks

2005-11-22T08:03:00.000-08:00

Since it's Tuesday, here are this week's picks for my Fantasy Hockey team on the Fantasy Sports Network.

LW Vaclav Prospal TB
LW Simon Gagne Phi
C Jason Spezza Ott
C Craig Conroy LA
RW Jaromir Jagr NYR
RW Daniel Alfredsson Ott
D Wade Redden Ott
D Kimmo Timonen Nsh
D Joni Pitkanen Phi
G Manny Legace Det

There's an obvious flaw in the FSN salary cap and value, you'll notice that the top leagues scorers are all on my team. Legace has the most wins as a Goalie in November and the only real weak spot is Craig Conroy, who actually is going on bit of a hot streak. Nashville plays four times this week, and Timonen has 10 pts in November while Pitkanen has 13. I may have to keep Alfredsson and Gagne on the team all year long, but I suspect Jagr will belly out about half way through the season.

First Snowfall

2005-11-18T11:03:00.000-08:00

It's snowing. Winter is here.

Run.

updates

2005-11-15T11:33:00.000-08:00

Out of all the blog postings I've ever had the pleasure of posting, I can honestly say that this is the first posting I've written from a Mac. I'm writing from my new 12" PowerBook G4, which is so incredibly small and light that I don't know how I ever did without it. The keyboard and great graphics makes it entirely worth it. It's not a wimpy machine either with half a gig of RAM and a 60GB hard drive. Not bad at all.

I just came from signing the lease to a new apartment, keeping the streak alive of never had to live in one apartment for more than 11 months straight.

I think there's some irony to be had while taking my MBA degree. One of the chief motivations I have for taking the degree is that I never want to go through the unfortunate situation of being unemployed. The recession in Canada during the early 1990s really affected my family and still has an impact on my parents future. Right off the bat though in my Economics class, I'm given the run through about why recessions happen and total insight to how the economy grows and shrinks in cycles. I see my family buried in the statistic of that extra 2% of unemployment we faced in order to bring down inflation and come back to the potential stable long run GDP line. It's just numbers, but somehow it's really shaped my outlook on who I am and how hard I'm willing to work to provide for myself. I think I never would have had such a hard work ethic had my parents had it easy when I was growing up.

Speaking of a hard work ethic, it does appear that I will have to pull my socks up a little higher and grind a little bit more, seeing as how I got 64% on my first mid-term. Somewhat reminiscent of Waterloo though, that first term I was pretty convinced that I would flunk out and that would be the end of it. I'll have to tough it out though, I guess it somewhat puts it in perspective that when exams are over in December, I'll only be 10% done.

And I Won't Tell Anyone.

2005-11-10T09:11:00.000-08:00

Speaking of old or not so new hardcore....

How could Texas is the Reason manage to write one of the best songs ever when they wrote "If It's Here When We Get Back It's Ours" and then manage never to write another song worth listening to again? While not really being a one-hit wonder, I sometimes wonder this when that crunchy guitar starts up and the drums kick in and I can't help but floor the gas pedal if I'm in a car or get goose bumps on my arms if I'm just sitting here every time, and then punching shit during the breakdown with 53 seconds left on the clock.

Here's to Texas is the Reason. A band who managed to come up with a great name and wrote something that was absolutely perfect and never again wrote anything else I could manage to listen to.

Hurricane Karl would have been a better name

2005-11-10T07:30:00.000-08:00

A waterstorm to purify!

You know.. just keeping up with the current theme.

This weeks picks

2005-11-09T10:41:00.000-08:00

Most people would be bored stiff about this mentioning, but here are my fantasy hockey team picks for the upcoming week. I decided to add a few LA Kings to the roster seeing as how they play 4 games this week (including games again Chicago and Columbus-sans-Nash), stick with the Flyers, add the amazing-but-sometimes-tripping-before-fights Dion Phaenuf ("Enough is Phaneuf!") . I'll stick with Spezza instead of going with with Alfreddson this week, because I think the former's recent burst of points will be short lived while JS is still warming up. Prospal had a pretty slow week, but plays also 4 times between tonight and next week.

Without further adieu:

LW Vaclav Prospal TB
LW Simon Gagne Phi
C Jason Spezza Ott
C Eric Staal Car
RW Jaromir Jagr NYR
RW Mike Knuble Phi
D Wade Redden Ott
D Lubomir Visnovsky LA
D Dion Phaneuf Cgy
G Jason Labarbera LA

Continuing the Broadcast Into Empty Space...

2005-11-01T16:11:00.000-08:00

An overdue post that pretty much will bring us up to speed.

School started the second half of the term this week, my 2nd midterm was due Monday and we started the 2nd half with new professors in each course. the MBA program is going much better than expected, I'm enjoying it, it's not extremely difficult as long as I put in the hours necessary to get the job done. The commute to Hamilton is a bitch, but the Go Train isn't so bad, except when there's a hockey game and the train is full of Leafs fans. I don't feel any smarter half way through the term, I just have a new perspective of how certain things operate and with that I feel that much farther ahead.

Hockey is back with a vengance. I brought my brothers and Barbara to see the Flyers play in Ottawa the other night and just happened to show up on a night where the beloved Sens lost a game. This disappoint is slightly offset by the beating they gave rightly administered to the Leafs the night prior, I'm not sure what I appreciated more, an embarassing 8-0 nothing victory, or a broken Tie Domi nose. It's a close call. I'm having a hard time restraining myself from driving to Buffalo to see the Sens play there tonight. It's funny though when I think about it, it seems like my devotion to our nation's capital hockey team sort of mirrors the devotion and enjoyment that I used to have for music. Instead of showing up and singing along, I'm showing up and screaming "Clear the puck maggots!". I just guess I never got to see Good Clean Fun cover Earth Crisis' head with their jerseys and punch their covered heads in.

Going back to music, Propagandhi released their new album after a 4 year wait last week and I've been listening to it a few times a day. It almost makes it worth the wait. Considering the profound influence their first two albums had on me in my teenage years, it's almost nostalgic with this newness. The Nation-State-Flag-Waving-Bashing Propagandhi though has managed to muster some sort of patriotic sentiment in their first track "A Speculative Fiction".

A new iron curtain drawn across the 49th parallel. Cut all diplomatic ties as we expel all American dignitaries and issue a nation-wide travel advisory for any others left inside..... Still visible below their charred remains: Pax Americana plates. Your stupid fucking laser-pucks™ were just the start.... And while you may stand six full cubits and a span, we got a shepherd’s sling and five stones in our hand and the battle of 1812 lives in our hearts.

Of course, we can never be sure with those Propagandhi guys, they may just be too smart for us and we may be missing the entire point. I'm sure somewhere in there they are singing about the unprivileged something or other, but at any rate, I think Canada may have just found their new fight song to take to the streets with our hockey sticks and chainsaws to battle the Canadian Beef Ban and Softwood Lumber tariffs. Watch out Yankees, I'm sure there's no coincidence that 90% of us live within a 100 miles of the border, we may be salivating dogs just waiting for you to make the wrong move! Exclaim has a featured article on our beloved anti-heroes from Winnipeg this month, and this quote particularily resonates with me:

“Anything that gets a laugh will keep going. And if it doesn’t, it’ll keep going twice as hard.”

Anyway. Work is status quo, but I've been endulging in some atypical frivulous spending, recently acquiring but not yet receiving a Blackberry 4280, an HP 23" LCD flat panel monitor and an Apple 12" Powerbook. I guess I might as well have my toys if I'm going to play alone.

And my recent partner in crime, Gary the Cat says hello to all. Or is that meow to all?

Goodbye Student Loans

2005-10-27T11:58:00.000-07:00

And as of October 27, 2005 @ 2:58 PM I am now officially student-loan free. For some reason it took me 1651 days since I wrote my last exam to finally pay out 2 large sum payments to CIBC and I'm done.

The Historian

2005-10-25T13:25:00.000-07:00

Here are my thoughts on the novel The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova.

Pictures from Summer Vacation

2005-10-19T12:42:00.000-07:00

Here are a some photos from our summer vacation.

Barbara and Travis Go to Nova Scotia

I said... this a stick up. Put your flithy hands up ...

2005-10-19T07:29:00.000-07:00

With the recent change in blog addresses, I've been reconsidering my interest in blogging, its purpose and wondering if I should bother continuing to post in blogs. As with anything, if I'm going to do something, I really want to do it well. Nothing drives me more crazy than doing something half-assed. So... why blog? Here are some reasons I've come up with and that I've been taking into consideration when deciding on how to go forth. After about four years of blogging (not that I'm some sort of veteran), I've been able to make some observations finally.

Blogging is an outlet, sometimes is more of an outlet than others. Moreso when times are challenging and shit is going bad and no single person would want to hear all of your shit and complaints.
Blogging can serve as a way of looking back in the past and noting what you did or were thinking back at that point in time. Like how 3 years ago today I was just settling back after returning from my grandmother's funeral and how I still think that these are some of the best photos I've ever shot.
Blogging can serve as a means of income. Granted the Internet is saturated with blogs and blogs that I've created have received minimal traffic, even with all of my SEO know-how. I guess it comes down to, in order to write a great blog that people want to read, you have to really have the time and skill to write something interesting. I have neither.
Blogging is a way of keeping in touch with people who are far away. It's a lazy approach to keeping up on what people are doing, I don't have to e-mail or call someone as much if they are blogging, I can simply drop in from time to time and see what's up and post a comment here and there to let them know I was wondering what they were up to. More of my friends should have blogs, it'd make my life easier!

I'm hearing now that the new "What's your e-mail address?", is "What's your blog's address?".

And that said, I'm still not entirely sure that I'm 100% stoked on blogging and am no farther ahead thanks to this conversation.

Fantasy Hockey Tip

2005-10-18T09:47:00.000-07:00

Here's a tip for you if you are playing fantasy hockey where you have to pick a week's roster. It's a good idea to find out how many times your player is paying that week, if the system doesn't limit the number of total games you can play at each position in a season, it's a wise choice to pick a player that is playing 4 times over a player playing only twice. For the week of October 19-25, here's how many times each team is playing:

Anaheim 4
Calgary 4
Colorado 4
Los Angeles 4
Minnesota 4
NY Islanders 4
St. Louis 4
Atlanta 3
Boston 3
Carolina 3
Columbus 3
Detroit 3
Edmonton 3
Florida 3
NY Rangers 3
Nashville 3
Ottawa 3
Phoenix 3
Pittsburgh 3
San Jose 3
Toronto 3
Vancouver 3
Buffalo 2
Chicago 2
Dallas 2
Montreal 2
New Jersey 2
Philadelphia 2
Tampa Bay 2
Washington 2

Test

2005-10-12T18:33:00.000-07:00

Test