As a ginger I've had to endure the typical stereotypes, abuse, ignorance, and out right bigotry.   However, I had no idea this type of stuff was still being taught in schools around the world!  Time to step into the new century Korea, gingers are people too!

 

What am I ranting about??  Well take a look at the two pictures below.  This comes from a Korean textbook used to teach English, the lesson is opposites.  On the left is 'pretty' next to a picture of a blond girl, and on the right... 'ugly' next to a picture of a ginger girl!

 

 

 

I went down to the Ice House Microsoft built for their Vista launch event in Toronto today to check things out.  First of all the ice house was pretty impressive with lots of details, but damn cold.  They had some simple yet impressive demos going on all over the 'house' with even more MVPs and other 'experts' wandering around answering questions for the masses.  The one thing that almost all the machines had was DreamScene, this is a new (in beta) Ultra Extra that lets you set a movie as your desktop wallpaper.  Now you could set anything if you wanted, but it ships with a couple of small subtle looping videos.  The one I was looking at was a shot of a rainforest (I think) and a waterfall.  Looked amazing.  Going to look into getting a copy of the beta.  I've been running Vista Ultimate since mid-December and finally got a legit license for it now.  The initial 'wow factor' has worn off, and I still love it.  It's fast, it's sleek, and they fixed a lot of little things that really pissed me off in XP.  I think it is a big step forward for my tech support customer (ie, my family). It will be a learning curve in certain spots, but it should keep their machines nice and clean (hopefully).

 

The event seemed like a success to me just wandering around, I heard lots of people talking about all the cool things, like DreamScene and Media Centre slideshows.  Not sure how many of those 'oh I want that' will translate into a bought copy of Vista but hopefully a few of them at least. <Rant> I did of course hear 'dude, just download it off bittorrent you do know the url for bittorrent right?', so many things wrong with this statement, BitTorrent is a protocol, a site that hosts BitTorrent files is just that, a site that hosts BitTorrent files, not BitTorrent itself.  </Rant>

 

Anyways, I snapped a couple of pics with my new phone.  Turns out I should have looked into the Camera capabilities before I left.  I had the thing set on the low quality setting, so I apologize for the lower quality pics, next ones will be better I promise.

 

Vista Ice House (PicasaWeb)

Well it has been almost a month of fighting with IBM I finally got my laptop back.  I had a problem with the machine locking up and then when I rebooted it, the LCD refused to turn on.  Before I get started, I love my Lenovo laptop.   But I hate Lenovo.   Such unbelievably terrible service.  The story is long, and boring, and not appropriate for children.  If anyone wants to hear it let me know I don't mind telling it.

 

Now that it is back, I'll start blogging again more.

 

Update: I think IBM broke my SD card reader.

I was over at Casa Runham last night to hang out and make fun of the kids trick-or-treating.  I must say I was shocked!  Shocked I say!  What I saw was the saddest group of kids ever in the most uninspiring costumes ever.  When I dressed up as the guy from Scream (not sure I actually did, but play along) it was topical.  The movie had just come out, however it has been 6 years since the last Scream movie came out.  Darth Maul??  Seriously?  The guy was in about 10 scenes in a movie 7 years ago.  Clearly he is no Darth Vader, a cultural icon.  One kid came dressed as an Ipod, a lame Ipod mind you, but at least it was a creative idea. 

 

I was pretty disappointed in the state of costumes, these kids need a little passion.  Check out this guy below, in possibly the greatest costume I've ever seen. Well next to the Home Wrecker costumes from Drew's Halloween party...

 

 As a general rule I have little patience for separatism, and in this case I make no exception.  This 'lawyer' wants to get Team Quebec at the IIHF World Championship. 

Quebec is a nation that has the right to be represented at international tournaments.

I must have missed when Quebec became a nation...

 

Wonder who would play for them?  I'm just reading Marin Brodeur's new biography and it's nice to see a professional athlete address topics like this.  Brodeur says he would play for a Team Quebec only if he had to.  If playing for the team was the only way he could play hockey than he would, otherwise he would play for his country (Canada). 

Lawyer wants a Team Quebec at the Worlds

Went to see The Departed this evening, great freaking movie!  The movie was a classic action movie, with some really funny parts and stock full of big name actors.  Sometimes that isn't always a good thing, but they all did a great job in this movie.  Don't want to add any spoilers, but it was a great ending to a great movie.  Also it revealed to me that there is a third Wahlberg!  Yes that's right Donnie, Mark and apparently Robert who also 'starred' in this movie.

Went to the Penguins vs Sabers pre-season game in Hamilton last night.  At some point you would think that Hamilton was hosting an important game, at other points it was clearly amateur hour at Copps.  They had guys taking money to park in my normally free hidden parking spot, but then there were only 2 girls working the beer window, with no change.  The line-up for beer was way too long, then when you got to the front you learned the big 'Molson Canadian on tap here' sign was just a lie.  They only had Steelback.  I thought that was ok, I'd never had Steelback before and I was willing to give it a try.  Steelback is the gross.

 

On to the game... it was a pretty decent game.  Crosby lost his temper and took a penalty for it, had 2 nice assists though.  There was a good fight, some kid named Stone got his right arm free and gave the Sabers kid 3 good shots to the face and knocked him clean off his feet.  And finally the game ended in a shootout, and a long shootout at that.  11 rounds before Clarke MacArthur ended it.  Crosby also had a goal in the shootout.  It was a pretty good game, but to the people in Hamilton I have one suggestion.... clearly people will not pay 60-80 dollars for lower bowl tickets to a preseason game.  Copps was at about 50% capacity last night.

 

Check out John's pictures from the game.

The movie theatres are upset about how quickly DVD are coming out.  Some theatre chains even refuse to show some of Mark Cuban's films because he releases them to the theatres and dvd at the same time.  Now Disney suggests it would like to release DVDs sooner after their theatrical releases as welll
So the question is, if DVDs came out a month after the movie came out in theatre would you still go see the movie? Would you just wait for the DVD? Would you be more likely to buy the DVD after you saw the movie in the theatre? I think I would be just as likely to see the movie in theatre (I don't see a lot of movies in the theatre as it is. When I do, it is as an evening out more so than a desire to see a specific movie), and if I really liked the movie I think there is a greater chance I would buy the dvd afterwards. Don't under estimate the honeymoon period when it is in full force. 8 months after I saw an amazing movie, it no longer interests me, so I'm a lot less likely to buy the DVD.

http://www.360electrical.com/index-1.html

No idea how it works, but I for one welcome our new rotating overlords.

I read this wonderful article on the Globe & Mail's website

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050818.wxwilkins18/BNStory/National/

"Lumber dispute needs soft words, envoy says"
 The American ambassador to Canada thinks we should all play nice and say nothing mean about each other. I however have a better idea, play by the rules you created and pay us the 4 billion dollars you owe us.

As for us crying about guns coming over the borders... grow up. We have a problem and we should fix it, don't blame the Americans for letting guns into OUR country when there are so many other great things we can blame them for. We guard our own borders, if guns get across them, it's our fault.

Dear Labatt,
  Calling me cheap for not wasting my extra couple bucks on your beer is not a good way to get me back as a customer.

Who exactly convinced you that calling me cheap would cause me to come running back to your beer???

Hope you didn't pay much.

Dan

Pictures are here


Story Here:
Well it might have been one of the most disappointing races I have ever attended, despite a Ferrari 1,2, but it probably was the most interesting and memorable.  If you don't follow F1 or sports in general, the F1 race last weekend was not run as far as any of the fans are concerned.  
The weekend started just like any of the previous 5 years, until Ralf Schumacher hit the wall coming into the high banking.  Everyone laughed, Ralf had done the same thing the previous year during the race, knocking him out for a few races.  Little did we know that a later problem with his sister Toyota driven by Ricardo Zonta would lead Michelin (their tire manufacturer) to believe that their tires were unsafe.  Apparently Michelin had under-estimated the lateral G-forces put
on the tires in the banking.  The tires were blowing themselves apart, which is what put Ralf into the wall. 

Now during the race weekend I meet my friend Donovan, who is a Speedway local, so he was able to bring me up to speed on Saturday night after an exciting qualifying (yes I actually tricked myself into believing there was competition on the track during qualifying).  Their were rumours that Michelin was flying in a whole new set of tires for the race, this is strictly against the rules and no one was saying what would be done to appease the Bridgestone runners if this took place.  To be honest we didn't think much of it.  On the morning of the race the guy sitting next to us received a phone call from his father watching the race back at home.  He said that the Michelin cars (which is all but Ferrari, Jordan and Minardi) were not going to take part in the race unless they were allowed to use these new tires or a chicane was placed in the lead up to the high bank.  Again, didn't think much of it, the cars had all made their way to the grid, even if it took the Michelin drivers a little longer than normal to come out of hiding in their garages.  
What could they possibly do, they were on the grid ready to start?  I highly doubted they would just sit there and not move when the lights went out.  Well as they rolled off the starting grid for their parade lap my fears were forgotten, all cars were underway and the race was going to start in a few minutes.  However the McLaren crew were out in the pits, which is very strange.  Then with horror the entire grandstand was shocked to see ALL the Michelin runners peeling into the pits instead of taking to the grid.  Only Ferrari, Jordan and Minardi lined up to take the start.  From their the race was a lock, the only excitement came in the closing laps.  Schumacher was behind Barrichello before their last pitstops and when Schumi came out of the pits they were side by side into the first corner.  Both drivers locked up their brakes trying to be the first into the corner, too bad Barichello locked up his a bit too much and sent himself across the grass and Schumi took the win.   Good to see the Minardi's and Jordan's getting points that will equal a fair amount of money
come the end of the year.

So, in the end, Michelin sucks.  How did they bring a tire that couldn't withstand the lateral forces of the banking.  This isn't their first trip to Indy, they must have known exactly what the G-forces were and exactly how much their tire could handle.  The FIA sucks, but on the other hand they are running a competition with rules, too bad those rules deprived me of a race.

I'm typing this on I-69 heading into the Detroit area, when I get home hopefully there will be some word on refunds for those of us that were at the race... and hopefully I will get the chance to go to Indy next year...

There has been a lot of talk lately about 'freeing' the Stanley Cup from the NHL, obviously this is a stupid idea...

You know, Kevin Kerr, the all time minor league goal scoring leader...

Today's NHL rant brought to you by the letter C.