Winners and losers

Wow, the spirit of competition is alive and well in my world right now. And by "my world" I mean the stuff I watch on TV!

NHL Playoffs:
The playoffs are nearing an end, as the final round begins today. I'm hoping Detroit (I can't believe I'm actually saying this) wins the Stanley Cup this year. I'm no Detroit Red Wings fan, by any stretch of the imagination, but I also don't want to see Pittsburgh win the Cup. There's far too much hype around Sidney Crosby, and if nothing else, I don't want them to win because he should not be wearing the 'C' on his jersey! The only player on that team who should have even been considered for the role of Captain is Gary Roberts! He's payed his dues more than anyone else there. Besides this, if Pittsburgh wins, there will suddenly be this (temporary, I'm sure) resurgence of support for the Penguins, and they won't be able to relocate to Canada, where they should be! But anyway, that's my rant for the day. Onto other competition...

American Idol:
The "Battle of the Davids" concluded this week. Let's face it, we all knew these would be the final two before the top 12. This season of Idol was the only American one I've ever watched from beginning to end. I've seen a few odd episodes of previous seasons, and I watched one full season of Canadian Idol (BTW, Theresa Sokyrka was way better than Kalan Porter!), but I've never seen quite as much talent as I saw during this entire season. Michael Johns was the one that got me hooked when he sang Bohemian Rhapsody during the top 100. There were even people who didn't make the top 24 that I would've loved to hear more of. That said, there was certainly no shortage of questionable singers that made it quite far. Oh well. On to the roundup.

The top 5, I would easily buy albums from any of these 5. They all have very unique styles. They all have amazing vocal ability. They all are entertaining in their own way. But... The choice came down to two things: vocal ability vs. performance ability. I've heard a few people complaining that the American public got it wrong, that Archuleta was the superior singer, and that Cook's vocal abilities were weak in comparison. I agree, sort of. Archuleta was indeed the better vocalist; I don't think anyone can really argue against this. However, Cook brought so much more to the stage. Cook was a performance artist, and an excellent one at that. He came out on the stage with confidence, did his thing, was grateful for any praise and/or criticism, and was still confident and ready to roll again at a moment's notice. Archuleta, on the other hand, was bashful to a fault as soon as the song was done. He didn't know how to handle the adoration or the criticism. And worst of all, he came out and sang the same song every week! Okay, not literally the same song, but if you saw the performances, you know what I mean. He just didn't display the versatility that Cook did. The fact is that over 50 million people voted for Cook, who won by over 12 million votes. I don't believe the final night of voting was his best night, but the voters obviously chose who they thought was better over all. If you have any doubt about Cook's validity as a star, just look back at some of his performances (you can find them on YouTube), such as Hello, or Billie Jean.

UFC:
Speaking of one-on-one battles, there have been some amazing UFC fights lately! From the success of local Jason Day (from Ft. Macleod, fighting out of Lethbridge), who won his UFC debut in UFC 83, to the return of GSP (Georges St. Pierre) to undisputed champion status after defeating Matt Serra at the same event in Montreal last month. Tonight UFC 84 takes place with a great, though not quite as great, card lined up. I'm excited to see Sherk beat Penn, but even more excited to watch Ortiz lose what could be his last ever fight in the UFC. I'm also hoping Silva can beat Jardine.

Over the last couple years I've been growing more and more into a fan of MMA in general, especially UFC. As I learn more about the sport, I find myself being able to analyze the moves of the fighters, the strategy involved, and the shear talent that some of them possess. MMA is certainly the best of all the combat sports, and makes boxing look like a game for kids. I might even be willing to say that I'm probably now a bigger MMA fan than I am a hockey fan. And that's saying a lot! I totally understand how it's not something that everyone would be interested in, since on the surface it appears either barbaric (there can sometimes be a lot of blood) or boring (the ground game isn't too exciting unless you know what to look for). That said, for anyone willing to get through the surface and see what's really happening, it really is an amazing sport with some of the best athletes I've ever seen.

So that's it. Throw in some NBA finals (which I've not really been following), the WHL playoffs (Lethbridge Hurricanes only lost to the team that will likely be the Memorial Cups winners before the weekend is through), and the baseball season starting up (snore-fest for the first half of the season, as always), and there's certainly no shortage of competition to talk about. Oh, and let's not forget So You Think You Can Dance! (Actually, can we please forget it?) I'm looking forward to seeing if this coming season of Canadian Idol is going to be any good.

Wow, 2 blog posts this week! I wonder if I can keep this up.

At last (or alas), I return!!!

I probably shouldn't be sitting here blogging while at work, especially since I've got tons to do today, but what's done is done (or will be by the time I click the "Publish Post" button).

Last night I discovered Google Reader. I've added 8 feeds so far. I've been catching up on some blogs, and now I finally feel re-motivated to post again. Mind you, this post is pretty much just self-referential, so we'll have to see how things develop in the future. Wish me luck!!!

It's me, Simpsonized

New internet service...

Ok, so it's been a LONG time since I updated this, I know. Sorry. Anyway, rather than catch everyone up on the past few months, I'll just start from now. So last week we had a couple of power outages within a few hours. After the second one, my ADSL modem stopped connecting with Telus' internet service. It would take them about 5 days to send someone to check it out. So, I set up an appointment, and go to work. Then I get to thinking, I've been wanting to switch to shaw for a while anyway. So the following evening, I call Shaw to set up installation. They were very helpful, and though I called them about 36 hours after I called Telus, they were able to make the appointment for only 24 hours after Telus could. So then I call Telus to cancel the appointment and try to cancel my service. Well, the guy (who hardly speaks English, and made me repeat myself about 5 times for everything I said so he knew what I was saying) tells me that he's cancelled the appointment, but that he can't cancel my service. I have to talk to "sales and retention" so he transfers me, but they're not open so I go back to him, though it takes him a while to realise this, and I'm sitting there listening to background mumbling for a good 2 minutes before he clues in that I'm on the line with him. He says that they're close 'till Monday morning (this was Friday evening) so I ask him to talk to a supervisor, he says they're all in meetings for the next three hours. After countless times on hold and him thanking me for "patiently waiting" every time he returned, he finally patched me through to customer service (instead of tech, which he was, since I wanted to cancel my tech appointment). Customer service tells me that sales and retention are open the following morning. This is somewhat acceptable (though I'm not sure what 24 hr service means if they can't access the entire system 24 hrs a day). Finally I call back the next morning, and I'm able to get them to cancel my service. (Like there was ANY chance I was going to change my mind after what I'd gone through the previous night.)

So yesterday, the guy from Shaw comes over. At no charge he finds a way to get a cable connection up to the computer room, checks the connection, but sees that it's quite weak. So he goes and gets a signal booster from his van, hooks it up, and now it's nice and strong. We go to the computer to check the bandwidth now. From Telus I was getting around 500Kbps down, and probably around 100Kbps up. Immediately I'm now getting 5000Kbps down (yes 10X what I had) and about 500Kbps up. Then he calls in to the office to activate the "eXtreme" connection (which I pay $10 more a month for), and within about 2 minutes my connection speed doubles. The link included (click on the title of this post) will take you to an image of the results of a test I did today, to make sure I'm still getting the same type of connection. The slight drop is caused by the fact that I now have it going through a router. Still, quite impressive for those who are tech savvy enough to know what any of this means.

Ok, so it's been a while...

Ok, so I'm being attacked quite briskly for not keeping up to date with my blog. (Sorry, I guess.) I knew before I started this that I'd go through dry spells. Oh well. So if I have to write something, I figure I'll write a movie review for the most recent movie I went to, Perfect Stranger.

Be forewarned if you're thinking of seeing this that there are some disturbing images, though they're not really focused on much. The biggest thing for many people will be the pornographic images posted on a wall that they pan by with the camera at one point, and also a couple on the computer screen at another point. If you think you can handle this, and a lot of bad language, then I think this movie is sure worth a look. I tend to like a movie with twists in it, and this one takes plot twists to a whole new level. Remember the twist in the Sixth Sense, that's child's play in comparison to Perfect Stranger. I'll try to explain somewhat about the movie, without giving away the main twists.

So Halle Berry and Giovanni Ribisi are friends. Berry is a big time investigative journalist for a major newspaper who writes under a pen name to keep the heat off her while she's investigating. After being pulled off her latest expose for political ties between her target and the newspaper she works for, she runs into an old friend who appears to give her a tip about another story she could work on. A few days later the old friend turns up dead, and Halle puts on her investigative hat to find out about this tip she had given her, trying to see if she can find evidence that the target of this tip (Bruce Willis) was involved in this murder. Willis is a top executive for an advertising firm, and Halle gets a temp job near his office to get close to him. Things get pretty tense as the less-than-happily married Willis takes a bit of a liking to Halle, while she's trying to implicate him in her friend's murder.

SPOILER ALERT!
I'll try no to give away too much here, but as the investigation leads to charges and eventually a conviction, something just doesn't seem right. Far too many other more believable suspects have emerged, and soon it seems like literally anyone could've actually committed the murder.
Well, anyone except the one who actually did. I don't care how good you are at seeing twists coming before they're revealed, you'd never see this one. I can't bring myself to reveal it here though. Just watch it, you'll see.
END OF SPOILER!

Anyway, I thought the movie was very well done. Great acting!! (Duh! Berry, Willis and Ribisi!) And very entertaining! Again, just be forewarned of the crudeness in a couple of scenes, and the language throughout. But this one will keep you on the edge of your seats. (And try not to chew your fingernails down to their nubs!)

Ok, so I've finally updated my blog. Hopefully this will buy me another couple weeks before I'm goaded into updating this again. I'm really not trying to be a slacker, I just don't have a whole lot to say right now. At least not to the audience that reads this blog. ;)