Archive - Feb 2005

Boris has been crying for it, and now the Government is pushing the CRTC to speed up the look at cellular LNP. This could be awesome for us poor Canadian wireless subscribers. It will only mean better plans for us!

Okay, no hockey this year, CBC doesn't have the Olympics for the 2010 & 2012 games, and today the they let go of Chris Cuthbert.

Hmmm... I mean, either Nancy Lee should go (she's screwed with almost every loved personality there), or really, the CBC should just give up on sports. Continue with movie night in Canada, and let TSN takeover HNIC. Hell, sell the property to them and keep Antiques Roadshow out of hock.

Grrrr...

Wow, talk about an awesome day. Thanks Kev and Andy, you guys rock!
Today I went flying with Kevin and Andy, for Kev it was his first little trip with a couple of passengers (outside of taking Grant and John for his load test with an instructor or taking Amy (his fiancee had to be his first passenger for sure) last weekend for a short little flight). Andy flew the first leg of our journey, taking off from Ottawa (YOW) and heading to Arnprior (NP3). We were flying a Cessna C-172, a very nice plane (C-GCVO). We flew by the building where I work , part of Nortel's Carling campus. We did a quick touch and go in Arnprior, very nice work by Andy for sure. From Arnprior we charted a course (and even used the GPS in the plane after figuring it out) to Maniwaki, PQ (YMW).

With nothing but bitterness, I bid adieu to the NHL season. Unless something drastic happens within the next hour the 2004-05 season will be officially cancelled by Gary Bettman today. I don't personally put a whole lot of blame on the owners, in a lot of cases they were screwed by situations caused by their own lot, but not by them alone. Sure, there was the odd Lapointe, Corson, Yashin or Holik - but really - the actions of a few GMs certainly impacted the actions of others. The players (as evidenced by numerous players' comments - see Sandison's Rant on Sean Avery's) absolutely think they are worth more than they truly are.
For them to think that the hockey players should be making 2 to 9 million is ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is a $49Mil per team cap. That works out to approximately $1.5Billion in possible total team payroll - or 75% of league revenues from 2003-04 (and they won't be near that when things start up again). Most businesses strive for 40-70% margins, only commodity products can survive at lower margins in most cases. And while the NHL might appear like a commodity in the eyes of some (NASCAR and Arena Football outdraw them on TV broadcasts in their largest markets), it certainly isn't one. The owners have already gone further than I think they should have by taking linkage off the table, they have positioned themselves to lose money again.
Grrr... my blood boils when I think of the comments the players pull out... Once again, I'll say that I'm a Leaf fan, and not a Mats Sundin or Ed Belfour fan, and I'm most certainly not a Bryan McCabe fan.

Vince Carter wanted out, sulked and sucked all season long until he was finally traded. Alonzo Mourning was acquired by the team in the Carter trade but will never play, instead just sitting in Miami at Heat games collecting a salary. Jalen Rose was relegated to starting on the bench until a long streak of amazing performances as a 4th quarter sub. Raefer Alston and Sam Mitchell keep having run-ins and arguments and now Raefer wants an apology. And now Eric Williams, the best player acqurired in the Carter trade wants out of town.

This is crazy, the Raptors are just becoming the largest train-wreck in the NBA. How could anyone want to play here? All it seems to be is arguments and losing. I mean, in the time where Toronto should be doing everything it can to build a following for the Raptors around Chris Bosh, they essentially seem to be asleep at the switch. This is certainly not making me want to watch them, and believe me... I wanted to. But poor performances, and tonnes of melodrama are beginning to make it less appealing.

Well, just like in the NHL right now, there is labour unrest elsewhere. Today Walmart indicated that it would close a store in Quebec where the employees had voted to unionize and were negotiating their first contract. It appears as though the union walked away from the negotiating table and applied for arbitration. Walmart took that as a signal that a deal couldn't be reached and instead of going to arbitration have decided to close the store.
Hmm... so a union in this case has little power, much like the NHLPA. Though the differences between the workers are vast! This is a case where a union should have worked, or better yet, provincial labour standards should have been higher preventing the need for a union...

Hmm... I think I liked "Rogers Field" better, but whatever - Rogers Centre is an improvement over "Skydome" I guess. Sounds like the new video board will be cool, with the addition of some other screens "in the gaps". But the thing that is truly awesome is the replacement of the turf in the dome with "FieldTurf".

The thing that is somewhat disconcerting is the fact that they couldn't apparently sign Carlos Delgado to a new deal, but Ted today committed to raising their payroll by 40% over last year. Hmmm....

Well... maybe they went to Sydney or Cairns before, but I don't quite recall that. But I have been to Shanghai and so it was neat tonight to see them go there. My sister and I went to the market area around the Yu Yuan Garden, but didn't go in to the Garden proper. We also went over to Pudong but we went up in a diferent building then the Racers did... we went up in the Jin Mao Tower, one of the ten tallest buildings in the world.
We went to the Bund and saw the Monument to the People's Heroes too... Craziness!

Okay... so I'm actually pretty wrong, the race has been to Hong Kong, Ellis Beach (between Cairns and Port Douglas in Queensland, Australia) and Sydney... places I've been to or have driven through. Still, this was pretty cool to see.