It was unanimously decided back in the beginning of February that there would be 6 more weeks of winter. Here we are in mid-february, just 2 or 3 weeks later, and we’re just barely managing to stay below freezing. In fact, I hear tell tomorrow will likely go above freezing. I can’t speak for everyone, but well, I think we’ve been lied to.
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I think our ground hog lied.
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And on day 3, Canada is golden!
Alexandre Bilodeau walks away from the mens’ moguls course with a gold metal, making him the first in Canadian history to ever win gold on home soil. Now can we please get that out of the headlines? That’d be awesome.
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And one bronze makes two.
Kristina Groves blew her way to a bronze in the 3000 meter speed skating run. Not even her specialty, and she managed the top 3. I believe they said her specialty was the 5000? I’m halfway tempted to watch that just to see if that’s finally our ticket to gold.
Update: I stand corrected–her specialty is the 1500. That just makes it that much more awesome. She will, though, I believe, be competing in the 5000 anyway.
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In which James discovers, not for the first time, that Rogers is broken.
For a little over a week, I’ve been at my parents’ place keeping an eye on things while they go do the skipping the country thing. A couple days ago, I temporarily expanded my house sitting operation to include my aunt’s place, while they took care of something about 1.5 hours away–someone still had to be there when repair people showed up. I knew I’d be bored to tears sitting there, since they don’t have a computer I can use, or a wireless network I can attach a computer I can use to, assuming I brought one. Fortunately or otherwise, the place still had cell coverage. So, packing as little as possible, plus the phone I finally got my hands on back in November after its logistical issues, I went and spent the morning doing not a whole lot.
I did manage to get a bit of job searching done, not that I found anything worthy of applying for. And thanks to the fact they charge me way too much for a data plan I absolutely have to have with this phone, I was still able to go through a lot of the things I had to go through. When getting around to posting a couple of the things that got posted on here yesterday, though, I discovered the brokenness.
I don’t use any third party applications for maintaining the blog. Mostly because, especially the past month or so, I never know from where I’m going to be writing. It could be from my place, from this machine, over at Jessica’s place in the event I end up there, or wherever. And I very rarely, meaning all of twice, actually wrote and posted something from my phone so installing an application on there didn’t cross my mind. It probably should have.
Trying to log into the site via the Rogers Wireless cellular network proved to be next to impossible. Of course, it being me and my phone being something of a questionable internet usage tool, I suspected it might have been a thing to be tweaked a little in order to get it to work. So I spent the better part of 45 minutes doing that. And googling for things to try that I hadn’t already thought of. After banging my head against that for a bit, I eventually just said screw it and went back to my email. I’d beat the hell out of it when I got back home and didn’t need it in top working condition.
When I did get back to my parents’ place and their sort of half stuck together, but working, wireless network–hey, I can only do so much with a wireless modem from Bell–I figured I’d try to log in via the wifi connection. And, wouldn’t you know, first try it let me in. I tried from the cell network again, and of course it laughed at me.
What’s interesting about it, though, is it doesn’t throw any kind of error at me. Or rather, it doesn’t throw anything at me–it just returns me to the login screen as though I hadn’t given it any information. The logs don’t show my attempts either, which makes me wonder exactly what funky and messed up thing Rogers is doing to me between phone and blog. Of course, googling further for other people having that issue with websites that aren’t this one didn’t answer my question either. Although, I did find several more examples of severe Rogers and Rogers Wireless related brokenness–their website, which I think has only gotten worse, for one. Not a good thing to be reading about when trying to fix an existing problem, Rogers. You might want to look in to that.
I did manage to learn two very valuable pieces of information, though, when doing this. Pieces of information that may have been helpful 2 days ago.
- The phone isn’t quite as questionable an internet usage tool as I originally thought. The network, however, makes up for that improvement in questionability status.
- And, the most important lesson to take away from this bit of unexpected geekery. From now on, posts while mobile will be emailed. Starting whenever I get around to configuring such things.
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Canadian metal number 1 goes to Jen Heil, and it’s silver.
Jennifer Heil, surprising everyone from commentators to fans, comes up with a silver metal in womens’ moguls. She was expected to be the first ever to win gold on Canadian soil, but we’ll take this just as well. She finds herself sandwitched in between two Americans, with a second Canadian rounding out the top 5.
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Canada 18, Slovakia 0.
Canada’s womens’ team might not have been playing a metal game, but it was almost as exciting. For a few reasons. This was the first time in olympic history Slovakia had a womens’ hockey team in the tournament–a surprising fact I wasn’t aware of, particularly given how well their mens’ team usually plays. On top of that, an olympic record 18 goals were scored by Canada, including two hat tricks, breaking the previous record that’d been standing since the 1998 olympics. On top of that, they played this game as though it were a metal game–much to the misfortune of the Slovakians. An interesting way to start off the run for gold. Now here’s hoping the mens’ team’s half as lucky.
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On why olympic protesters are morons.
I get that not everyone’s going to agree with the olympics. I get that there’s probably not going to be anything short of a small miracle that’ll change their mind. And I get that even if their mind changed, they’d more than likely still insist the olympics be paid for by someone else who isn’t them–while they enjoy the benefits thereof, of course. That’s fine. That’s cool. Wonderful, even. That’s their right. This isn’t. Way to go, morons. You’ve just successfully punished people who probably had little to do with the games, short of maybe going to watch. Yeah, you’ve definitely made your point. Now kindly go to hell.
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Blues 4, Maple Leafs 0.
Fortunately, or not if you’d prefer, I wasn’t able to watch last night’s game. The parents lack Leafs TV and this computer would explode were I to try and get it via the intertubes. So, I watched the opening cerimonies for the olympics instead. Turns out, best decision I could have made. WE got 30 shots on net. And didn’t have a decent scoring chance since the first period–a shot that went off the post. And, for the first time since the trade that rid us of Toskala, we were shut out. Us. The team that was supposed to be improved. I think we need a little more improvement.
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A little bit of everything, and the cerimonies had it.
If it could remotely be called Canadian, it was shown off in tonight’s opening festivities. Right down to the problematic hydraulic system, which I sort of halfway joked about having been designed by Toyota. They got all manner of historical on us, hitting on not only Canada’s aboriginal history but our apparent fondness for fiddle music. I’ll admit, I have an occasional interest in that particular genre. Rarely, and usually around the same time of year, also usually while sitting around drinking beer and enjoying Pembroke’s labour day fiddle fest. Naturally, the city of Pembroke website doesn’t actually have anything really link-worthy to explain just how far back that goes, but it goes back far enough and is popular enough that Riverside Park is pretty much jammed full for a week solid. And when they’re not competing–yes, they actually have a contest in among all this, there’s music and dancing and shananigans of all kinds. And, because I have no idea how else to describe it other than a shit ton of people crammed into a can of awesomeness, I won’t bother to describe it in any other way. Instead, have a video. This does a better job of it than I can. Sorry for any issues with being able to actually see it–it seems to have been recorded on someone’s personal video camera. But, it was the best and most involved video I could find. Blame Youtube and Google. I do.
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Go Canada go!
In less than half an hour, indeed in les than 20 minutes, the opening cerimonies for the Vancouver 2010 winter olympics will be underway. Granted, I’m not an overly huge fan of, say, speed skating. Or down hill skiing–even though I used to do it, just not pro. But I am a *huge*, and I do mean *huge* fan of hockey, olympic or otherwise. So, while I plan to at least make an attempt at blogging what I can of the olympics over the next 2 and a half weeks, I’ll most definitely be parked in front of my TV for the important games–the ones that define us. Still, even though I don’t plan to watch every event as it happens, I will try and keep track of each and every metal Canada gets its hands on. Why? Because I like doing better than them damned Americans as much as if not more than the next Canadian. Go Canada go, and make Vancouver this country’s Stanley cup. We need one.