It matters not to folks over in England, and those fortunate or unfortunate enough to live in Arizona, but for the rest of us, at 2:00 tonight we skip an hour. If you haven’t already, don’t forget to do that thing with your clocks. As for me, I’m gaining a whole lot more than just one hour of sleep.

So they do remember how to do the more than one win in a row shpeel. Who’d of thunk it? And in overtime, too–something they’ve rather sucked at all year. Again, who’d of thunk it? Now if only it actually mattered. Still, it’s nice to see them starting to play a little bit better with each other. Even if it’s still difficult to get excited over a few wins strung together. So difficult, in fact, that I’m bowing out of that race right now.

Last time

Back in January, we didn’t get off so lucky. Well, actually, we didn’t really get off at all–hence the 3 2 loss. We actually pretended to play a little tiny bit better then, too. Or so I kept telling myself, anyway. Funny how all these teams we keep sucking against tend to add up. A few years ago, a win like this might have sent every Leafs fan between here and Toronto into ultra party mode. Now? We just shrug. And I go back to getting things ready for the arival of the girlfriend.

I’m not by any means a religious person. My parents say I’m Christian, but I haven’t practiced since I was much too young to do so willingly. Ironically enough, it’s been about that long since they’ve entered a church for anything other than a wedding or funeral too. Sadly, this is a pretty good explanation as to why.

A highschool in Rome actually did something rare for a state-run institution–it came up with an actual brilliant idea. Vending machines that sell condoms, and for cheaper than those which you’d have to drop by the drug store to get your hands on. One would think this to be a good thing–kids that age are probably doing it anyway, might as well minimize the risks, right? Apparently, not if you’re a member of the Roman church. Or, for that matter, its still far too church-oriented government.

The newspaper of the Italian Bishops’ Conference said Thursday that sex was being reduced to “mere physical exercise.” The newspaper, L’Avvenire, lamented that young people these days have no spiritual guidance on sexuality, and that educators are more concerned with “the health and hygiene consequences of sex” than its moral implications.

Good God, they’re fussing about their health! Quick, lock them in confession–yesterday! Now, before someone jumps on me for supposedly saying “to hell with morality”, I somehow doubt that’s going to be the first thing on some kid’s list of worries if they discover, through the experimentation just about everyone was doing in one way, shape or form in highschool–yeah, you, don’t say you weren’t–that they have HIV or some other health complication. Or, as happens far too frequently–yes, even in Rome, there’s a pregnancy involved. Please. You have kids sneaking off to dark places to smoke a joint, and that’s actually against non-religious laws. You have kids hanging out in the woods with various things of an alcoholic nature, in spite of the fact underaged drinking is also against non-religious laws–except in Europe. You’re not going to prevent them from doing the bed sheat tango over some moral or spiritual obligation to keep it zipped or face eternal damnation–particularly if, as is becoming more and more common in North America at least, they’re increasingly more likely to laugh it off as the empty threat it is.

They’re going to drink. They’re probably going to smoke–if for no other reason than just to say they’ve tried it. And if you cram otherworldly reasons why they shouldn’t down their throats, they’re just going to do it and not tell you. And then you have two problems to deal with.

By all means, talk about it with your kids. Tell them why they should really think about maybe not getting naked at 16. Just please, for sanity’s sake, leave the bloody bible out of the conversation. And in the meantime, don’t shit all over a highschool looking to provide those of them who’re just gonna do it anyway with a way to at the very least lesen their risks. Or, better yet, buy them the condoms yourself if it’s that much a concern. You can’t force people to make what you believe to be the right decisions. No, not even your kids. But if you’d spend less time worrying about which direction they’ll be heading in the afterlife and more time lessening their chances of falling flat on their faces from a mistake in their present life, you might actually learn you also don’t have to. Oh, and do both yourselves and your kids a favour while you’re at it. Tell the Italian Bishops’ Conference where they can shove their moral and spiritual guidance. It hasn’t been working well enough for them to be worrying about throwing it at everyone else.

In the 1960’s, 2010 was all about the flying car, the voice-activated computers and the robots that did all the routine and boring crap–housework among other things–for you. Well, it’s 2010, and I still have to do my own dishes. Dammit. But, I can take comfort–they’re still predicting the same thing in my lifetime.

I’ve been reading the In Death series, which is based–again–about 50 years in our future. And, once again, in 2060, it’s all about the flying car, the voice-activated computer, and the robot that does all the routine tasks so you don’t have to. Oh yeah, it’s also about everything from murder to the bad side of New York City. And again, if you follow the traditional fiction trends, you know where this is going. Exactly like they said in the 1960’s about 2010, in 2060 we’re off on our own spaceward adventures–everything from vacations to whatever crosses the mind. For a change, though, at least we’re not at war with some oddly designated alien race or another. Sometimes, I love science fiction. Keep it up, folks. We’ll get a car I might actually be able to drive someday.

You can’t go a week in some circles without hearing some crack or another about the guy always wanting sex, and the girl not being interested. I mean hell, it’s a comedian’s default line, if he’s got nothing else. One wonders sometimes where it is they come up with it–I always thought that was just something randomly tossed out there. Not according to a survey done in the US. Apparently, we guys want it more, have more of an interest in it, and will probably want it longer. Yep, give us sex and give us sports, and our lives will be complete. Remember that the next time your girlfriend says you’re never satisfied. Oh, you were expecting a post on my or Jessica’s sexual preference/interest level? Sorry.

I spent almost 4 years in Ottawa, on the third floor of a three-story building you couldn’t get into without buzzing in, or having a key for the front door–this on top of the key you had for your apartment. Jessica’s building in Rochester takes it a step further, needing a key to get into the building, a key to get onto your floor, and a key to get into your apartment. This building in Petawawa? You have a key to get into your apartment. Well, actually you have two, but who’s counting? And this building gets something the other two I mentioned don’t seem to get–or at least, they get very rarely if at all. Folks coming around marketting their own electricity initiatives.

I get an average of one of these people knocking on my door on a weekly basis. And, of course, not being able to know who’s there until I open the door, I take a chance it might not be someone trying to sell me something. And every time I’ve done so, it’s been any number of situations from people who’d just like to see my hydro bill, to people who just want to tell me about the green initiatives their particular company/organization/what have you is offering. To one offer I’ve received asking if I’d be interested in locking in my hydro and/or gas prices for 5 years. And every time, my response is the same–I point at the door leading out of the building, with a polite suggestion that they go that way.

I received a grand total of one such offer while living in Ottawa. And they were stupid enough to try pitching that offer to me over the intercom system the building has. They, of course, got hung up on. I don’t have that option here, so to get rid of them, they first have to be effectively standing on my doorstep. I swear, just as soon as I can twist a governmental arm far enough back that it decides it’d be in its best interest to increase disability payments–or just as soon as I can get myself hired again, whichever comes first, my next move will be back to a secure building. Ideally I’d much rather see that type of marketting made illegal, but since that’s not very likely to happen, I’ll take my secure building. Besides, there’s something to be said for having a little warning when you’re getting company–welcome or not. Gives me time to hide my porn magazines. Er, wait, I didn’t say that.

Well now, would you look at that. A win, and a rare one at that. Even more so seeing as it’s in overtime. I’d pretty much accepted they’d forgotten how to do that, and then last night, they proved me wrong. Now if I could just work up the energy to smile about it. Unfortunately, it’s still a meaningless win–and probably the only one we’ll see this week.

Last time

We might have threatened at one point to win our last game versus the Bruins. Only problem? We didn’t. Rather, we kind of tried to make it look like we were going to, and then promptly fell apart. Kind of like we did last night, giving up the lead for all but the last goal. Well, I guess what goes down must come up. Still, is it next season yet?

One of these days, I’ll remind myself I meant last month to remind myself to pick a theme and stay with it. It won’t be today, though. I decided I like the 3-column approach much better, particularly so far as my plans for the site go. Mostly, I’m not cramming everything over on the right hand side, which makes my life just slightly easier. Of course, there’s yet to be a theme created that I haven’t had to slightly modify to meet my tastes. That goes just as well for this one. And, in the process, the blog very nearly went completely sideways–thus further solidifying the fact I should not be messing with PHP, particularly on no sleep. Much as I shouldn’t be blogging on no sleep–I’ve managed to require use of the backspace key roughly a dozen times so far, but that hasn’t stopped me either. Fortunately, Wordpress is very good about warning me when I’m about this close to completely and totally screwing things up. And its documentation is plenty good enough that, if I do manage to screw things up entirely too wrongly, unscrewing them isn’t too difficult either. Now, if they just had a similar solution to my ability to screw up posting. Oh well, can’t have it all. Now, perhaps I should consider correcting this no sleep thing. I’ve broken the blog enough for one night.

Well, I can’t, anyway. I get emails from Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment, to do with everything from the results of the last game to major trading/other such news relating to my team. Yes, even though the said team couldn’t play their way out of a game with a 25 nothing lead lately. Occasionally, those emails contain free stuff. This free thinggy came from Sirius Canada. Ordinarily, I can’t aford to go throwing money away on something I may or may not like, so this was halfway decent timing on their part. So now, I have 2 weeks to play around with it and see if it’s something I might want to contemplate paying for, should I come up with the money to do so. And now, because I’m good like that, so do you. If you’ve wanted to give their online version a try and didn’t want to pay for it, just fill out this form and enter promo code “leafs” if it isn’t already entered for you. Then, they’ll email you a password and you’ll have two weeks to play. So far, I’m undecided. After two weeks, we shall see.

Sigh. Again. We did almost tolerably well. Until the third period. Again. A minute and 16 apart, they managed to throw two behind us–that sunk us. Not that we weren’t sunk before that, but that pretty much guaranteed we weren’t going to be surprised. I used to look forward to the next time we won. Now, I’m just looking forward to the end of the season.

Last time

We shut them out in January. Then went back to sucking. Then came the multidirectional trade. And then, more sucking. Now? We’re in the league’s basement and closing in on the last game of the season. On the bright side, baseball starts up in a month. The bluejays can’t do much worse… can they?

For about 48 hours after the government of Canada’s throne speech, a whole crap ton of people–yes, including me–were up in arms over consideration being given, after this long with it being exactly the way it is with no uproar from anyone whatsoever, to change a part of Canada’s national anthem to make it more gender neutral. Instead of just rewriting that part of the anthem, and then later on rewriting the parts to do with everything from religion to the fact it’s not some peoples’ native land, I have a perhaps not unoriginal solution. Replace the whole thing with this video. Why? Well, it’s simple. Anne Murry is Canadian. Hockey is Canadian. The song itself is Canadian. It salutes Canada’s national symbol–the maple leaf–and doesn’t offend anyone. Or, if it does, no one’s cried about it yet. And the song is just plain awesome. It doesn’t hurt that it was sung in Maple Leaf Gardens, either, but you know.

A little background on the video: in 1999, Maple Leaf Gardens was officially closed down, and the Toronto Maple Leafs moved to what is now their new home, the air Canada center. Before the last game at the Gardens–a game in which they lost rather badly, there was quite the tribute going on in honour of it. This song, performed before what I believe–my memory fails me at the moment–was a packed house, pretty much sent the message that regardless to where the team plays, or what else ends up changing around them, the team’s still the same. And, they’re still toronto’s team. And, surprise surprise, they’re still not going to be any closer to winning the cup–because they’re still Toronto’s team, damn them.

In other words, minus the hockey references, just like this country. It’s changed a hell of a lot in 20 years, nevermind since 1867–when the original song, not this particular version, was written. But it’s still Canada, and we’ll still call it home. Even if we wouldn’t recognise parts of it from the way things were growing up. This song is Canada, plain and simple. crack open a beer, and let’s kick ass Canadian style. The maple leaf forever, damn right. Now, have a video.

Things have a nasty little habbit of happening here on 30 seconds’ notice. That kind of happened on Friday. Mom was in a fair bit of pain, and ended up going to Ottawa to get herself checked out Friday morning. There’s speculation that it may or may not be something similar to what she was dealing with in January. If it is, it’s nowhere near as severe so it can be left to either heal on its own or be delt with in a month or two if it’s not getting any better or worse. That left us free yesterday, and her particularly pain free, to spend some quality time with my nephew.

His parents were in Ottawa for their own reasons–I suspect it had a lot to do with a shopping trip and a stop off at the casino, so he belonged to us for the day. He’s almost 6 months old now, and you might argue he looks more like a 9-month-old or older. Already he’s fitting into clothes etc for up to 12 months in some cases. So yeah, spending time with him pretty much took care of the majority of the day. And, yes, was exhausting as hell–but I’ll take it.

It of course meant today was an easy day, with the only thing worth going out for being a trip to the Santa Fe Restaurant for supper–if you’re in the Pembroke area and do not stop in to this restaurant, you’re ripping yourself off. Just sayin’. They do everything from prime rib to Italian to yes, Mexican. Costs a little more than most places, but you’ll probably not be ordering dessert. Or breakfast the next morning. I’ve been home for 2 hours and I’m still stuffed.

There will be nephew pictures posted up here at some point. Most likely, later tonight. As for right now, there’s a hockey game on, caffinated things in the fridge, optionally alcoholic things to be put in said caffinated things, and a laptop that still needs to be tweeked just a little tiny bit. And I need to explode. Excuse me while I go do that.

It was a hell of a close game. Sens draw first blood, Leafs somehow manage to come back, lots of people having face first meetings with the boards. Or, in some cases, the opposing team’s fists. And still, even though it was Ottawa, and even though we won–in a shootout on a Kessel goal no less, I don’t feel the excitement I want to feel. Or, even, should feel. There’s maybe 16 games left in the season, at the outside. We’re dead last in the conference, and flirting with dead last in the league. And the game was that tight against a team who’s got half its roster on the sidelines with the flue. And we still played hell not losing. The game had everything an Ontario rivalry could and should have. And I can only shrug.

Last time

I was more excited at the beginning of February, when we shut them out 5 nothing. We’d just landed the trade for Phaneuf, and it looked like we might be staring at a slightly different–more charged up–team. Or maybe they were just fooling us. I can go either way. Right now, though? I’m leaning more towards they were just fooling us. Don’t get too excited, Leafs nation. They’re not done making you sweat yet.

In 2008, the majority of employees at Dell’s Ottawa call center got their walking papers. In June of 2009, the rest of them followed suit. And here in March of 2010, Convergys gets ready to feel the pinch. I wrote about it before, when I first read about it. Now, though, it looks like we’ll be seeing a pretty significant change from business as usual when a door closes in the faces of several hundred employees.

Ottawa City council passed a motion just days after the cuts were announced, urging city staff to enter talks to see what might be done to keep the jobs here.

A few days later, a conference call between city people, the Contact Centre Association of Ottawa and provincial and federal bureaucrats was held. It was decided that they needed to find out more information from the company about the skill level of their staff.

Well now. The city never offered to get involved when Dell closed, nevermind the provincial or federal governments. Although to be fair, it doesn’t sound like Ottawa center management has altogether much faith in its front-line agents in the first place, so perhaps that’s the difference.

Paul Carr, operations manager for Convergys in Ottawa, tells CTV “close to 200 people have already left Convergys. Six hundred are still here and about 200 will still be working here after the cuts.”

Carr actually expected more would have left already, but people in the contact centre say these are not the most highly-trained people and so job options are rather limited..

Now now, that wasn’t very nice, Convergys staffers. Even if it might be true–hey, I’ve seen the results of some of Convergys’s training; I get to say that. Besides, it’s my blog.

Good to know the city’s finally thinking about doing something though to at least compensate folks for, or help them to deal with, the layoffs. How why didn’t that start happening two years ago? Anyone know?

Slightly more activity than is usual snuck up on the blog in February. Not that there was a whole lot of activity here to begin with, so there’s your comparison. Here’s what folks have found interesting when they came my way.

• February was olympic month this year, and the resulting metal haull was kicked off in style by miss Jennifer Heil. There’s confirmation now we won’t be seeing her in future olympics. Hell of a way to go.
• This blog, and nearly everything else public-facing I’ve got my hands in, is hosted by DreamHost. Every so often, they’ll pull a very minor oopsy that leaves me kind of scratching my head. Or, in some cases, scoring a discount. Hey, not my fault I already bought what they were advertising.
• Everywhere you turn nowadays, seems something either made by or hosted by Google’s cropping up. First search, then email, then their own IM service, their own answer to MS Office online, their answer to Map Quest, you name it. I made a crack or two about Google being pretty much all over the place. And, almost as though they were just proving me right, they went out and bought Aardvark–a realtime search engine I’ve been known to use that actually forwards your questions onto other users who might have an answer. Hey, Google, I’m still sorry about that. Seriously.
• Skipping back to the olympics, because we do that, our record breaking amount of gold metals was contributed to by Maelle Ricker. I wrote about it a few minutes after it happened. And she’s still a popular–well, as popular as can be expected for a blog this size–search term.
• I live in either a very tiny city or a very large small town, depending on how you look at it. I still had no idea exactly how tiny, or how slow, we were–until I learned there are actually still places here–big places here–that don’t have DSL yet. Or cable. That they’re still stuck with dialup or nothing. That… scares me. Still.

Fortunately, the month of technical issues has also come to a very conclusive end with the month of February. Although, there’s still the pesky little issue of a laptop that doesn’t quite work the way it should. But, can’t have everything. There’s your look at what we did have in the month of February. I’d say hopefully March ends up a litle better, but I know better. STill, I’l keep blogging. Interested? Keep reading.

I’ve run out of ways to say it. And we’re running out of games to do otherwise. The 2010 Toronto Maple Leafs, even after a huge as hell trade, are playing basement hockey. I want to blame the olympic break. But, I know better. So, who’s looking forward to 2010-2011?

Last time

Different result in December. Granted, that was 3 months ago–the team’s been halfway decent and three quarters the way to craptastic since then. But, at least they won that one. Consolation for this round? At least it ended in a shootout.

Admittedly, my ability to be politically correct is practically nonexistent. No, I don’t go around dropping n-bombs every 20 seconds, but I haven’t rewritten a large part of my vocabulary to take into account some tiny fraction of the town I live in–who’s population isn’t all that large anyway–might be offended either. And I have no plans to. I also have no plans to do any kind of supporting the latest gem to come out of Ottawa’s parliament.

In yesterday’s throne speech, it was suggested that Canada’s national anthem needs a tiny bit of reworking. Um, what? Specificly, the part that says “all our sons command”. Again, um, what? Now our very own anthem isn’t gender-neutral enough? There’s accomodation and then there’s just overkill. That, well, is just overkill.

It’s been a complete non-issue for as long as I can remember, in spite of the fact we’ve had multiple governments with their own ideas on gender neutrality come in and screw up the country in their own ways. It’s been pretty much exactly the same in that respect, too. Except in the last decade or two it’s been forced bilingual all across Canada, except maybe in Quebec–do they even still sing that one? And now, after it’d been played about 50 billion times during the olympics, there’s talk of rewriting it for gender-neutral purposes. Someone wanna tell them drugs are bad for you?

Hey, if we’re going to rewrite the thing anyway, here’s a thought. Let’s remove or modify that whole “God keep our land” section while we’re at it. Don’t want to offend the non-Christian folks either. Or, you know, we could leave well enough alone and be happy with not having to sing “God save the queen”. I would vote for that option, too. It’s the national anthem–as much a part of Canada as hockey and beer. Don’t mess with it.

Only in England does something like this come up. And, only in Canada does it actually make headlines. And, only on this blog will it be mocked. A 23-year-old from London, while walking his dog, decided just because the dog wanted a walk doesn’t mean he had to. London’s legal system felt otherwise.

Prosecutors said Paul Railton was spotted driving at low speed along a country lane in December, holding his dog’s leash through the car window as the animal trotted alongside.

Railton pleaded guilty Monday to not being in proper control of a vehicle. His lawyer, Paul Donoghue, said 23-year-old Railton acknowledged “it was a silly thing to do and there was an element of laziness” while exercising his lurcher, a type of crossbred sighthound.

Yes, I’m lazy. Sometimes, too lazy. Way, way too lazy. But even I’m not quite *that* lazy. Even if they actually wanted to give me a lisence. Say, can he also be charged with being a contender for 2010’s moron of the year?

Well, Now that all that excitement’s well over with, back to business as usual. Which, roughly translated, means we up here in the great white north set our sights on another playoff missed. I’m willing to chalk this last game up to just returned from the olympic break. But somehow, I don’t think that’s it.

Last time

We didn’t do any better in January either, getting beaten up on 4 2 instead of Tuesday’s 5 1. Still, at least this time we only sucked very slightly less. And Burkey pulled the trigger on a trade as a result of it. Will it help? Well… it can’t hurt.

Don Cherry said victory was in the bag. Mike called it. I had a sneaking feeling. And on Sunday afternoon, we owned it. It took overtime, but Canada pulled off what we couldn’t even come close to 4 years ago. Ladies and gentlefolks, Canada has done exactly what we were supposed to do–own the podium. I said it before, and I’ll say it again. Suck it, USA. We win.

Another gold metal on Saturday. Another little known–at least by me–sport. But, I’ll take it. Canada’s men’s curling team took gold finally Saturday evening. Yeah, we definitely don’t suck.

Canada’s 4-man bobsled team worked its way to another metal on Saturday. This one bronze, and Canada’s second metal in the event–the women took one earlier in the games.

Saturday was apparently golden hat trick day. Jasey-Jay Anderson snowboarded his way to another one in the parallel giant slalom. Yeah, pretty sure we have a brand new record for gold metals swiped. Smile, Canadians. We don’t suck.

Canada did it again, on Saturday. Speedskating team pursuit, courtesy of Mathieu Giroux, Lucas Makowsky and Denny Morrison this time. And, this time, I think we walked out of these olympics with a record amount of gold. Someone feel up to correcting me on that?

Canada’s relay team nailed our 21st metal of the games. And it’s a record tying gold. It also happened on Friday in the 5000-meter speedskating relay. Gees, deal with technical issues for a week and the team kicks ass. Sometimes, I love this country.