There has been something that hasn’t been sitting with me well for awhile and up until now I hadn’t been able to figure this out.  The Olympics is being hosted in Canada and our Men’s hockey team is the pride and joy of many in this country.  Yet I found I just wasn’t excited about it.  I didn’t even bother to watch Canada play in their first game against Norway.  So tonight I was invited to go watch the Canada vs Switzerland game with friends.  I was kinda begrudging about going, but couldn’t really figure a rational reason why I wouldn’t want to hang out with friends and watch a hockey game.  The game went to a shootout, with Sidney Crosby scoring the winner, then Martin Brodeur stopping final Swiss shot to seal the win.  You’d figure I would be happy, but again I wasn’t jumping out of my skin about it.

On the drive back home I finally put my finger on what was bothering me about Team Canada.  It’s that I fucking hate a lot of the players on the team!  I’m a hockey fan, I follow it quite closely, I play Fantasy Hockey as well and know a fair amount about the game. I just find that the team Steve Yzerman has assembled here is like an all-star team of players I hate.

Sidney Crosby
I’ve disliked Cindy since he was drafted to the Penguins. I disliked the way he flopped all over the ice during his first few years in the league. I’ve long disliked the Penguins, back to the Lemieux/Jagr days and really disliked when they won the Cup last year.

Marc-Andre Fleury
Fleury is guilty by association with Crosby. Also the fact he blew that World Junior gold medal in 2004 to Canada doesn’t help his cause either.

Chris Pronger
I’ve disliked Pronger since his time in Anaheim. He left Edmonton on bad terms, then went to Anaheim and won a Stanley Cup. The fact he won at the expense of my beloved Senators just makes it that much worse. He gooned Dean McAmmond in that series, a play that I’ve long felt turned the momentum of the finals.

Dany Heatley
Here is a guy that I used to really like, up until he weaseled his way out of Ottawa. He signed a big fat contract in Ottawa, only to leverage his no-trade clause into a move to a Cup contender in San Jose. The fact that Ottawa helped him resuscitate his career after the whole vehicular manslaughter thing just seemed like a slap in the face to Senators fans.

Scott Niedermayer, Ryan Getzlav and Corey Perry
Not that I terribly dislike any of these three, but they play for the loathed Anaheim Ducks. Niedermayer also played for the New Jersey Devils, another team I really dislike.

Patrice Bergeron
Plays for divisional rival Bruins. Got the Olympic spot that should have probably gone to Mike Fisher, given Fisher was having a better season in a similar role for the Senators this year.

Martin Brodeur
I will begrudgingly admit that Brodeur is a great goalie, even though I believe much of his success is a bi-product of New Jersey’s defense first system he’s played behind his whole career. Also him beating the Sens in the 2003 Conference Finals didn’t endear himself to me either.

Sure many of the reasons I listed might be petty. Sure I hold grudges and have a long memory. But that’s just the way I feel. I think even if Stevie Y had put Mike Fisher or Jason Spezza on the team I would probably feel different, but I feel I don’t really have anyone to root for on this team. Being a Canadian player doesn’t buy my undying loyalty. Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing Canada win and want them to win gold in hockey on home soil. Just don’t ask me to be excited to cheer on Cindy Crosby and Dany Heatley while they do it.

This week everyone has been talking about Google Buzz, the latest thing to roll out of the search giants labs. After waiting 2 days I finally got to see it and was pretty underwhelmed by what they are offering.

The first impression is that it is a half-assed Facebook/Friendfeed ripoff. If this service came out 2 years ago maybe I would have given it the time of day, but to me this seems a day late and a buck short on the part of Google. Google has failed at getting any slice of the social networking pie over the years, losing out badly to Facebook and Twitter. They tried launching a social network, called Orkut back in 2004, but did little to nothing with it. In 2007 they bought Twitter clone Jaiku, then did little to nothing with it.

The biggest issue with this product is that it requires building out yet another network of friends. I know myself I’m tired of it. I’ve used eMode/Tickle, Hi5, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed and LinkedIn over the last 7 years and I’m all networked out. That doesn’t even mention the niche networks like Digg, MyBlogLog, thesixtyone and Last.fm that I have used, or the services I signed up to and never built out a full network on. Google is absolutely crazy to expect people like myself to use their service, and the reality is, if they don’t have a geek community evangelizing their product to others it will go nowhere.

The part that baffles me about this product is who they’re targeting with this product?  It doesn’t do micro blogging as well as Twitter.  It doesn’t do content sharing as well as FriendFeed or Facebook.  Are they targeting Gmail users too stupid to know any better?  Buzz features pretty much zero innovation and looks like one of Google’s many also ran products in the marketplace.  Google seems obsessed with having their thumb in every pie.  Aside from search where they are undisputed kings, Google seems to be getting a reputation of making me too products that don’t manage to innovate or if they do innovate, are so far behind the market leader that closing the gap is nearly impossible.

Google, I think I’ll pass.

I loaded up Canoe.ca today and saw the headline above. Something I never knew about Jack Layton. He may be an NDP, but I never took Jack for the decapitating kind.

Update 3:57pm Glad I got the screencap, the story headline got updated pretty quickly.

I’ve waited a couple days now to comment on Apple’s latest product, the iPad. I typically don’t like being “that guy”, evangelizing Apple to other people. I know the company isn’t infallible, but really how many companies out there are? The iPad is definitely flawed, but I don’t think it is flawed for many of the reasons people are currently crucifying it for.

The Name
This was the first thing that people seemed to have gone off on. In the last 3 days everyone seems to have made the obvious feminine hygiene product jokes. We laughed. Stupid Apple. But didn’t we say the same thing about the Nintendo Wii? It was stupid. Everyone made all the obvious urination jokes. Boy was the Wii a failure. Oh, wait, no it wasn’t. It’s gone on to sell almost double the amount of units of it’s nearest competitor. So in the end, people will get over an unfortunate name and they won’t even bat an eye when you mention iPad.

It’s just an oversized iPhone
I’ve heard quite a few people complain about how the iPad is running “just” the iPhone OS. The problem with this argument is that it’s more then likely being used by people who have never used a tablet PC. To put it simply, a full operating system like Windows or OS X isn’t meant to be used on a touchscreen. Stuff like scroll bars and tiny interface buttons don’t work or make sense on a touchscreen. This is the reason why most tablet PCs use a stylus, as your fingers are too inaccurate for controlling a touch screen. And more then likely this is a good reason why tablet PCs have never really taken off, as they tried to put a square peg in a round hole by offering a desktop OS on a touchscreen device.

Apple was among the first, if not the first to offer a proper touchscreen experience on a mobile phone. It’s been an obvious success as they essentially revolutionized the phone industry and caused every other manufacturer to take note and create similar touchscreen devices. They’ve already proven the iPhone OS is a winning touchscreen solution, why not have it running on the iPad?

But how will you get any real work done on this thing?
The reality here is that this isn’t even being positioned as a work machine. I think the definition of “real work” for most people would have the requirement of being able to type. If you were expecting to be able to code websites or type the next great novel you were probably barking up the wrong tree in the first place. This device is meant as an entertainment device. The type of thing you can surf the internet on while watching TV. Given the explosion of smartphones we have become a generation of multi-taskers as these devices have enabled us to passively answer emails, send a quick tweet or browse the web from anywhere in the world, including the living room sofa. Nobody complains that they can’t get any real work done on an iPod Touch. It’s simply not the reason why 99% of people bought the device in the first place.

The fact that this device starts at $499 should also tell you this isn’t meant as a workstation. This item is meant to compete with something like the Amazon Kindle DX, which retails for $489 US. People are willing to spend that kind of money on a Kindle, so you can be sure the public would be willing to spend the money on something like an iPad.

It’s too expensive
I’ve heard people complain about the price as well. This is possibly the most ridiculous complaint out of them all. Here’s a chart for the device pricing.

People complaining about the pricing are the types who don’t actually know the true cost of devices like the iPhone and similar smartphone devices. But the iPhone 3G is only $199, this is so much more expensive they might say. The fact is that is the subsidized price offered by cell phone carriers. Without a contract an iPhone costs much more. On eBay a new, unlocked 16GB iPhone 3GS sells for roughly $500 US, and $650 to $700 for the 32GB model. So you can see Apple’s pricing is quite close to being inline with the real market values of similar current generation iPhones.

I already have an iPhone, what’s the point of it?
The iPhone is a great device, but it’s not ideal for all types of browsing. Something I did this morning was fill out an online form to get tickets to an upcoming event that had been promoted through Twitter. I wasn’t quite ready to get out of bed yet, so I filled the form out using my iPhone. As I’m sure anyone whose used an iPhone or iPod Touch for filling out forms you know there just isn’t enough room on the screen to fit the keyboard and see which form box you’re filling in sometimes. This would be a piece of cake using a 10″ screen to browse the page. Another thing I instantly thought of was using an iPad in the kitchen. I like to look up recipes online, but find it a pain to actually use that info in my kitchen. I don’t have a printer(nor really want one), so I either write down the recipe on paper by hand, haul our 15.5″ Toshiba laptop into the kitchen(where it takes up valuable real estate) or I look it up on the iPhone. None of these solutions is ideal. This is exactly where the iPad comes in.

The iPad is far from perfect, but I think it’s a good start. I feel Apple made some boneheaded decisions (no USB, SD, 4×3 screen resolution among others) but the concept definitely has promise. Looking at devices like the first Eee PC netbook or the first generation Kindle have shown companies don’t always hit a home run with their first attempt, but people will buy into the concept none the less.

I think many people have gotten caught up with years of rumour mongering about this mystical Apple tablet that it could do little else but disappoint. They could have announced the iPad came with a free unicorn and the public still would have been letdown by the announcement. People had the perception that this device was going to meet all of their personal computing needs, so when it failed to meet those lofty expectations they have essentially thrown it under the bus instead of looking at what Apple is actually offering.

Sure this device isn’t going to be for everyone, but my guess is that it’ll be another Apple success once people actually have a chance to use it and figure out the value of the device. So lets take a chill pill and wait until April when you’re actually able to go to a store and try one out.

I’ve been following this whole Leno/Conan/NBC debacle online, as I don’t really have NBC to actually watch it all unfold.  After hearing all the details I can’t help but feel kinda similar to another recent retirement situation, the one between Bret Favre and the Green Bay Packers 2 summers ago.

Brett Favre
On March 4, 2008 Brett Favre gave a teary eyed announcement that he was in fact retiring from the NFL after 17 years in the league. He’d had a long and successful career, but now he was stepping aside to let his successor in waiting Aaron Rodgers take the reins of his longtime team, the Green Bay Packers. Announcing this in March gave the team plenty of time to prepare for the transition to their young quarterback.

Jay Leno
On September 27, 2004 Jay Leno announced that he was leaving the Tonight Show in 2009 after having hosted the show for 17 years. It had been a long and successful run as host, but now he was stepping aside to let his successor in waiting Conan O’Brien take over NBC’s flagship late night talk show. Announcing it 5 years in advance gave NBC plenty of time to prepare for the transition to their new host.

Aaron Rogers
Drafted in 2005 by the Green Bay Packers after sliding from being a potential first overall pick to number 24. He became the heir apparent to Brett Favre in Green Bay, their longtime, future Hall of Famer quarterback. For 3 seasons he bided his time as backup, learning the Packers system and honing his craft. Finally after 3 seasons of waiting he was to get his chance to be “The Man” in Green Bay.

Conan O’Brien
Starting in 1993 he started as the host of Late Night with Conan O’Brien, after David Letterman had defected to CBS. For years he was the heir apparent to Jay Leno at NBC, their longtime Tonight Show host. For years he bided his time in the 12:30am timeslot, building his following and honing his act. Finally, after years of waiting he was to get his chance to be “The Man” at NBC.

Favre
From the time Favre retired there were rumours of his desire to play for the hated Minnesota Vikings. As summer rolled on these rumours began to grab more traction and Favre announced that he wanted his old job back or to be traded to the Vikings. After showing up in training camp and generally creating an awkward situation for Aaron Rodgers and the entire Packers organization, Favre was traded to the New York Jets. This avoided the problem of trading Favre to their hated rivals the Vikings and facing him twice a season and at the same time gave Brett a fresh start with a new team.

Leno
After Jay had announced that he was stepping away from the Tonight Show rumours started popping up that about his desire to jump to broadcast rivals Fox. In the months preceding his departure from the Tonight Show NBC announced an unprecedented move, they were going to give Leno a primetime 10pm talk show 5 days a week. This avoided the problem of Leno competing head to head with NBC 5 nights a week and at the same time gave Jay a fresh start in a new timeslot.

Favre
After 7 unsuccessful months with the New York Jets, Brett retires again and asks for his unconditional release from the team following the season. At this point Brett is now a free agent and the rumour mill cranks up again about his going to the Minnesota Vikings. After a few months of waffling Brett finally signs on with Vikings and will now face how old team the Packers twice in the same season. In the end Brett got exactly what he wanted, to play for the Vikings.

Leno
After 7 unsuccessful months in the 10pm timeslot, NBC cancels The Jay Leno show. NBC decides to reorganize their late night lineup, attempting to shoehorn Jay Leno between the evening news and Conan’s Tonight show. In the end it looks like Leno will get that he wanted all along, his old show the Tonight Show back.

Conan O’Brien has refused to be part of moving the show to a later timeslot and at this point it looks like he’s the one who’s going to be moving to another network.  Sad really as NBC never really gave Conan a chance to grow a following for the Tonight Show, as Leno’s show offered a poor lead-in to the nightly news, which in turn weakened the Tonight Shows ratings.

I have recently started playing foursquare on my iPhone and was bestowed the honour of being Mayor of Walmart in Cambridge, after I had checked in there twice on consecutive days. Upon this happening it was tweeted to all my Twitter followers this dubious achievement. At this point you would expect much of the anti-Walmart sentiment was aimed squarely at me after broadcasting my achievement.

As I’ve stated before on this blog, I don’t have a beef with Walmart. I know it’s the cool thing to do to bash Walmart. It’s just human nature. People hate the New York Yankees just because of what they stand for, and Walmart is no exception. After shopping at Walmart my wife Corina and I grabbed dinner at McDonalds and the topic of why Walmart is #1 came up. To me this is a question people don’t actually give nearly enough thought to.

My feeling is that Walmart is just simply way ahead of the curve when it comes to changes in retail sales. I see lots of innovation on Walmart’s part when I enter their stores, stuff that you simply don’t see from the competition. We have a brand new Walmart Supercentre in Cambridge, which seems to have lots of things that set it apart from the competition.

• They have 2 giant entrances for improving the flow of traffic in and out of the store.
• Where they have the carts is loaded from the outside of the building in, so you don’t end up with some flunky pushing 45 carts in and blocking the front entrance for customers for 2 minutes.
• They have an express checkout queue with 8 registers, usually with at 3 registers open simultaneously.
• The debit/credit machines use a paper-less digital signature pad for credit cards
• They have greeters at either door that can answer questions, or put a sticker on a product you’re returning(which I did the other day)
• They have carts, mini-carts and baskets available for you to shop with so not everyone needs to be bumping into each other with big carts

Those are just the things I’ve noticed. From what my friend Dan has told me(he works for a company that supplies Walmart), these types of innovations don’t stop at the store, but go all the way down the distribution chain when compared with their competition.

In Canada Zellers is the next biggest retail chain and they are just laughable by comparison.  The one in Cambridge is one that is attached to a mall and is the same old dingy store its been for the last 20 years.  Sure they’ve rearranged things in recent years, but you know what they say about polishing a turd.  I rarely find the same deals I would find at Walmart, aside from when items are on clearance.  If you do find a deal, then you have to wait 20 minutes in line while they check out the 5 old ladies with carts full of items and expired coupons to use on said items.

As I mentioned previously, we were at McDonalds, which is another market leader that draws the ire of many people.  Why are they #1?  The same reason, innovation.  I think almost all the McDonalds in Cambridge have been renovated or rebuilt in the last few years.  Much of what they’ve done has been rather interesting.

• They have multiple drive-in ordering lanes, which cuts down on the lineup waiting to order
• The drive-in register automatically spits out the correct amount of change to give back to the customer, reducing room for employee error and speeding up the payment process
• Big, visual, uncomplicated menu boards
• They’ve updated the decor making it more inviting.  They’ve taken a page from coffee shops and added comfortable leather furniture and fireplaces to make it more of a place you want to spend time and chat with friends

I find going to a place like Harvey’s in Canada some of the decor looks like plastic versions of your parents 80′s pastel couch set, with the artwork to match.  You go to Burger King and Wendy’s and stand in their hamster maze of a queue to order from the one cash that is open during Whopper Wednesday.

Walmart and McDonalds are proactive to many of the issues that plague retail service.  Much of their competition is not.  I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, there is a reason why people keep coming back to these companies.  Customer loyalty is something companies have to work hard at and as far as I’m concerned it’s more the competition failing to keep up with Walmart then Walmart crushing the competition.

This is an older video, but still really amazing. Definitely shows you how not to drive in icy conditions. It’s like they had never seen snow before or something.

I usually don’t like getting into retrospection too much, but given the end of a decade I’m feeling a little nostalgic. I find myself being born on the turn of a decade, way back in 1980, probably gives my life a certain symmetry that others might not feel when a change of decade comes along. I’ll be turning 30 in February and it definitely feels like life is in the midst of turning to another page.

There is currently a Twitter meme going around called #10yearsago, reflecting on what people were doing a decade ago as the year 2000 approached. To tell you the truth I can barely remember. I had just finished my first semester at Durham College in their design program. I remember my friends and I had a house party at Les’ like we usually did, and as I recall nothing terribly remarkable happened. We used to have big parties with lots of craziness going on all the time, so it seemed almost ironic that kicking off a new millennium we had such a vanilla party.

As a recap to the decade I’m going to do some quick summations of what I actually remember of each year of this decade without doing any deeper research then off the top of my head.

2000
I remember that in 2000 I finally got my driver license. In my teenage years I never really could be bothered and had lots of friends who drove, so it was never a priority of mine. I spent most of my time partying and hanging with friends in the early part of the decade.

2001
I think like most people 9/11 definitely sticks out a one of the defining points of the year, and of the decade but I don’t need to get into that. I also finished my last in school semester of college.

2002
I got hired on at Thompson Printing in Paris to do my co-op semester and was subsequently hired on full time. I graduated from college with my diploma in Graphic Design. I stopped updating my long running website OasisCentral.com, which I had been running since 1997.

2003
I bought my first car, a standard 1999 Hyundai Accent in dark green. So I had to learn to drive stick. This was the year I met my future wife Corina. We met through an online dating site that was called eMode in August and have been together ever since.

2004
I started off this year off with a bang, getting in a car accident and writing off my aforementioned Accent. I t-boned an old lady who jumped a stop sign. I hit her going roughly 70km/h and luckily nobody was hurt. I walked away without a scratch, which led me to buying a silver 2001 Hyundai Accent with the insurance money. I also started this very blog way back in 2K4.

2005
The previous year my parents had given me a move out deadline, my 25th birthday. So as I turned a quarter century old I moved into my first apartment, a 1 bedroom place in Paris. I had lived on my own when I went to college, but living in residence really wasn’t the same as having my own place. This decision to strike out on my own wasn’t necessarily popular with Corina, but I felt the need to assert some independence. It lasted until July when Corina and I decided to move up one floor in my apartment building to a 2 bedroom place. I also tore the anterior cruciate ligament in my left knee while playing soccer. This resulted in surgery and an 18 month recovery before I was back playing soccer.

2006
I can’t recall too much about 2006 aside from the tail end. In December I got hired on as a web designer with Geosign. Also that same month I proposed to Corina in Simcoe, Ontario, 4 days before Christmas. So these 2 events pretty much setup the whirlwind what was my life the next year.

2007
In January I started commuting to my new job in Guelph, which resulted in Corina and I moving to Galt, as I wasn’t too fond of the 50 minutes drive from Paris. This was a big step for me, actually leaving Paris, which I had called home since 1994. We decided to get married on September 29th, so that gave us roughly 10 months to plan and execute our wedding. I worked a whirlwind 5 1/2 months at Geosign before the company went down in flames and I was let go along with half the company. I was unemployed most of the summer, then got hired on to work for Claris Law in Guelph in September. We had an outdoor wedding at Corina’s parents place in Clyde, with the reception held in a tent in the backyard. Weather was sunny and 25 degrees at the end of September. We drove to Massachusetts, then to the Baseball Hall of Fame for our honeymoon. As all this was going on our rental in Galt was being sold which necessitated us moving again, this time back to Clyde and Corina’s old basement apartment.

2008
2008 was another slow year. Basically we hosted the Beer Olympics in Clyde and saved money for a down payment on a house. In December we had our offer accepted on a house in Preston, capping a couple month search for our first home.

2009
In March we moved into our new house. Finally having a house of our own Corina and I decided to adopt our dog Chance, who is also affectionately known as “The Dude”. In June I was let go from my job with Claris. As crappy as that was it gave me the motivation to actually start my own business, SlideawayMedia. It was something I had always wanted to do, but as with most things I usually require a kick in the pants to get started.

While the last year has been tough, I’d say overall I was pretty happy with the 2000′s. I look back at the time and think back to where I figured I’d be at 30. I think the thing that excites me the most is being my own boss and being able to almost pick my own destiny. Who knows, maybe I’m a success, maybe I’ll fall on my face. Either way it is pretty invigorating. I think having a job that you can sleepwalk through everyday really does dull the senses. Working for yourself keeps you on your toes.

My friend Carmen got this video of the Olympic Torch Run going through my hometown of Paris, Ontario. Apparently the lead truck clipped an OPP vehicle. You could say there will be a lot of photographic evidence of what happened for a police report.