I Have Never Seen…

…a sporting championship won by a team that was behind the ENTIRE game and THEN, won on a horrible penalty AFTER the game was over due to a missed last second point score attempt

I mean, after Montreal's missed field goal, everyone at our house stood up and exchanged hugs, thinking the game was over, not having seen the flags that were thrown. 

And yes, the irony for a team that claims the benefit of the “13th Man” losing on a “Too Many Men” penalty…it oozes.

Saturday Snap – Where Did the Watermelon Helmet Tradition Come From? (Go Riders Go!)

A colleague brought this to work on Friday then got snaps of a bunch of the staff trying it on. I'm a Rider fan but gotta say this was a first for me!  (Here's a history of the watermelon helmet from TSN.)

Friday Fun Link – Mashup of NHL Player Birthplaces (November 27, 2009)

This is very cool.  A Google Maps mash-up showing the birthplace of every player that's ever played in the NHL.  Although there is the expected broad swath through Canada, the northern US, Europe and Russia, I was surprised at how many countries and continents are actually represented.  (If you zoom in on the map, you'll only see how many people came from each community.  You ahve to drill down using the names of countries on the right side of the page to see the actual names for each location.) 

Where Does Daddy Work? Where Does Mommy Work?

It's been a long time since I posted a video clip of Pace.  This is his understanding of where his mother and I work:


(If you can't make it out, he says daddy works at “library books!” and mommy works at “needles!” )

Rider Fans = Neanderthals?

The person who submitted this Letter to the Editor to the Calgary Herald didn't give their title.  But I suspect it might be “Agent for Henry Burris”. 

Music Monday – "Twelve drummers drumming like Olympus on the Serengeti"

One month until Christmas so to help get you in the mood…

Go Riders Go!!!

Saturday Snap – My Christmas Themed Walking Cast

As promised last week, here's a pic of the cast I got last Friday to replace the one I've had since I broke my leg a month ago.  

When the cast technician asked what colour I wanted, I said “Red or green would be festive” and he goes, “You know, I could probably do both…”  (How can you tell that cast techs probably don't get to stretch their creative muscles very often? )  

Plus the white part is glow-in-the-dark so if this liberry thing doesn't work out, I can hire myself out as a nighttime Christmas decoration! 

Friday Fun Link – How Hard Is It To Vanish In The Digital Age? (November 20, 2009)

A writer for Wired magazine offers $5000 to anyone who can find him after he purposely attempts to drop out of society for a month.

“The idea for the contest started with a series of questions, foremost
among them: How hard is it to vanish in the digital age? Long
fascinated by stories of faked deaths, sudden disappearances, and
cat-and-mouse games between investigators and fugitives, I signed on to
write a story for
Wired about people who’ve tried to end
one life and start another. People fret about privacy, but what are the
consequences of giving it all up, I wondered. What can investigators
glean from all the digital fingerprints we leave behind? You can be
anybody you want online, sure, but can you reinvent yourself in real
life?”

As part of the contest, he allows his editor to dole out the same type of hints that a
private investigator would likely be able to uncover – recent credit
card purchases, online handles, etc. 

The contest generates a great deal of interest from people across the web:

When I flipped open my laptop and saw my private information spilling
onto the Web, however, I got my first taste of a soon-to-be-permanent
state of fitful anxiety. I’d signed up for it, of course. But actually
living the new, paranoid reality felt different. Absurd ideas suddenly
seemed plausible. They’d contacted my cat sitter; would they kidnap my
cat?”


In the end, he makes it almost to the end of the month but not quite:

“And what of our original questions? Had I shown that a person, given
enough resources and discipline, could vanish from one life and
reinvent himself in another? I thought I had, though only up to a
point. Obviously the smarts and dedication of the hunters had
overwhelmed my planning and endurance. Along the way they’d also proven
my privacy to be a modern fiction. It turns out that people — ordinary
people — really can gather an incredible dossier of facts about you.
But a month later, life was back to normal and no one was taking any
interest.”


The story's a long read but worth it if you're interested in the idea of digital footprints, privacy and the ubiquity of technology in today's world.  

(via Reddit)

Conservative? I Do Not Think That Word Means What You Think It Means

So it was just announced that the Sask Party, which initially projected potash revenues to be $1.9 billion will actually only bring $109 million to provincial coffers (a whopping 95% LESS than they projected!

Now, whether your political colour is orange or green, blue or red, purple
or pink, if you put aside the partisanship from either side of the political spectrum for a sec and just look
at those numbers in isolation, it has to be pretty obvious that
something is massively wrong for a projection to be out by that much.   (To put it in real-life terms, it'd be like a buddy promising he'll pay you ten bucks as soon as he gets paid then saying he didn't get as much as he thought but hey, here's fifty cents.)  


So anyhow, after some jiggery-pokery to raid the province's rainy day fund, use proceeds from the sale of government assets and cancel some spending (including money for new long-term care facilities – ouch!), the Sask Party government has created a billion dollar deficit only a couple years after taking power and having been left with one of the largest surpluses in the province's history by the outgoing NDP government.  

For me, this is pretty sad but not unexpected.  Does anybody else see the irony in the fact that “conservative” governments tend to be anything but? 

“The lesson we've learned from this experience is we have to be more
cautious and more prudent than we've been in the past,” [Finance Minister Rod] Gantefoer said.