I’ve made my feelings known on the GMHL forums about what I think the name of the new/old team should be named in Deseronto.  I think the name ‘Warriors’ suits a First Nations theme and is inherently fierce.  I even cobbled up a logo for the team.

I even went so far as to park the domain name deserontowarriors.com.  I didn’t park it to make money though.  I parked it because I was really insulted when I found that deserontothunder.com was parked when Luke and I were putting together the website for the original team.  It had leaked that there would be a team and by the time I tried to register the name, someone had scooped it.  Not this time.

If you’re reading this and you’d like the name, for the official team in Deseronto, Ontario, Canada, just drop me a line and I’ll be glad to transfer the name to the team.  If you’d also like me to do the website for the team, THAT’S GREAT! 

I finally upgraded my home computer, after 8 years. According to Moore’s Law my home PC was something like 64 dog-PC years old. I don’t want to go into the whole, “I remember when 8MB of RAM was enough” story but this thing was a screamer when I first got it. It was a Dell Dimension V350 making it a Pentium II, 350MHz, and I loaded it up with 256MB of RAM and a humungous 8MB AGP video card. Add a 17″ CRT monitor and I was the coolest computing kid on the block, in the year 1999. I think the hard drive was 8GB, which I couldn’t even imagine filling (even though I was downloading mp3s as fast as my dial-up connection would allow with the original Napster).

Well my new laptop, which I ordered from Sears of all places, is a Toshiba Satellite P100 MA305C. It’s got some kind of Centrino Duo processor and 2GB of RAM and an adequate video card and hard drive. There’s a good reason why I don’t know exactly what my computer is running: just about anything new these days is more than fast enough. I lost track of the advances in processor, video card and RAM speeds when they were no longer being scooped up by businesses in order to do business faster. With the exception of the newest FPS games and 3d design/CAD software, today’s computers have no trouble keeping up – with one proviso. DO NOT KEEP WINDOWS VISTA ON YOUR NEW COMPUTER!

I read a couple of reviews saying that Vista was a little power hungry but that it was beautiful. My new laptop came pre-loaded with Vista Home Premium so I was confident that my new, super-fast laptop was going to be able to handle it. Then, the day before my laptop arrived, I read another review saying that you needed at least 4GB of RAM to run Vista near the equivalent of XP Pro with 2GB of RAM. I really couldn’t believe it but I did a little more research. To add another 2GB of RAM to a notebook would cost me about the price of another whole laptop! Well, I still thought they were over-reacting. Unfortunately I was wrong.

2GB really isn’t enough to run Windows Vista Home Premium. I know, I tried. What was truly amazing was to wipe the hard drive, put XP Pro on and watch the machine fly. It was like two different computers.

While I was trying out Vista I purchased Norton 360. My goal was to be sure that this home PC would never see a virus or spyware and be backed up on a weekly basis. 360 promises to do all of those things in one neat package. The first install went great and everything was pumping along just famously, until the first LiveUpdate. After that, everything went to hell. Nothing would update, uninstalling and reinstalling didn’t fix it, Norton chat support couldn’t help me, I was stuck. Thankfully the motherboard went on my brand new laptop (there’s a funny sentence). When I got it back I put XP Pro straight on and gave Norton another chance. Same problems. Nothing would update properly. This time, though, the steps given to me by the chat support DID fix the problem and I’ve been running problem-free since then – and I actually like it. Unfortunately, I think most people would have given up long before I did. I wasn’t about to let nearly $100 go down the drain.

Bottom line? Vista is definitely NOT worth the upgrade. Norton 360 is actually pretty useful, if you can get past all of the initial bugs.

Well, The Sopranos is over and I’ve seen exactly 0 minutes of “America’s Favourite Drama Series.” Obviously, since I’ve never seen it, I didn’t not watch it because I didn’t like it. It’s just another one of those shows that was either on during another show I was already into, or it was a show I didn’t get, or it was a show that I respected enough to want to start from the beginning. In this case it was more than likely the latter.

There are several series that I have on my back ordered list of shows to watch. Most of the time the shows are hour long episodes that I didn’t want to waste my time on if they sucked; shows like 24 (which I was nervous about due to Keifer as the leading man), The Sopranos (which I didn’t think James Gandolfini could carry), Heroes (nerdies rejoice), and Lost (actually, I’m still on the fence over whether I’m interested in this one). But there are now a whole list of comedies that are on my list and I don’t know when I’ll find the time. I’ve had Arrested Development on my list ever since I saw Dodgeball.  I’ve always liked Jason Lee so My Name is Earl made the list.  I saw 20 minutes of one episode of the British The Office so it made my list, and people here at work won’t stop talking about the American The Office so now it’s on my list too.

The truth is, as long as the UFC stays popular, CSI continues to pump out episodes (and series[es?]) and America’s Funniest Videos is still running, I just don’t have any hours left in the TV-watching day. CSI is on 4 times a night so most of the time I can find an episode I haven’t seen. I am finding myself enjoying :New York even though I didn’t want to. :Miami has taken a strange turn and is completely unrealistic but is exactly like a train wreck – I can’t look away.

My watching CSI at all is a bit of a fluke. It was, at one time, in my back ordered shows list but while my wife and I were in Finland with my parents, it was the only show we got at my grandmother’s farm that was in English. I hate jumping into the middle of a series but CSI had me hooked the first time we met Greg in the lab. He sold me.

I guess what will eventually happen is that I’ll get to the point in my life where I am complaining that everything on TV is crap (and the music is too loud) and I’ll be able to go back and watch all of these series like they were brand new. The key will be maintaining a complete list of all of these shows I deem worthy. I’ll start it right now.

1. The Sopranos…

I completely forgot to write about my REAL Father’s Day treat.  My wonderful wife, Lesley, set up a surprise visit to the Picton Children’s Centre for Ella and me where the Reptile Zoo was putting on a show.  Ella and I got to check out a bunch of reptiles like a blue-tongued skink, a milk snake, a boa, and even an alligator!

I have to say that the girl putting on the show really knew her stuff – and I don’t mean the reptiles.  She was excellent with the kids and knew all the right ways to keep them involved and interested.  It was probably a younger crowd than she’s used to but really handled it well.

From a people-watching perspective it was hilarious.  I only see about 5-7 kids on a regular basis so seeing other little ones in action really makes me appreciate my own even more.  One kid just HAD to ask a question and had his hand up, crying, “I have a question” in a little whimpering voice.  Heart-breaking and hilarious at the same time.  Of course, had he not been so concerned about being ignored he would have realized that his question was answered while he was crying (“do you have any pythons” after she’d just said that the one she was holding was a python).

My Ella is such an interesting bird.  She didn’t really seem like she was too into the show at the time but when we quizzed her about a few things later, she had the whole thing memorized!  She remembered that we leave snakes alone, that if we were snakes we’d be able to eat a whole pizza in one gulp, and she remembered the skink surprise face.  Very cool.

Anyway, it was the real treat of the weekend, I just forgot to mention it.  One of those forest for the trees sort of deals.  Extra special thanks to Les for putting it together – that’s why she’s the best.

“A good walk spoiled.”

I have no idea who said it but it couldn’t be more true.  My dad always said, though, that during a round you always had one shot that lifted you to the point where it would bring you back.  I had a couple today but really it was the company that I enjoyed the most.  I golfed today with team white: Dan Kempers and Matty Mikel, and team orange: myself and Scott (Mole) Finlayson.  The weather couldn’t have been better and the course was quite adequate.

We played Wellington on the Lake today.  It’s only 9 holes but it’s one of the few 9-holers I know that has two par fives.  To me that means more lost balls and a longer round…  My one complaint about WotL is that there aren’t enough garbage cans.  Weird complaint, I know, but if you put at least a garbage can at each tee deck then we’d have a place for our empties.  As it was we ended up carrying our cans for several holes hoping to stumble across a bin.  Annoying.

I have no idea what I shot today but you can bet I didn’t set any [good] records.  There was a time when I played 3 times a week and I have even been witness to a hole-in-one.  My game is severely lacking but that doesn’t stop me from dispensing advice like a pro.  Anyone else out there an armchair coach?

Oh well, I had a great time and I look forward to my next walk spoiled.  Cheers!