Frozen Grand Central

WARNING: I may be the last person on Earth to see this video.

But, wow, is it ever good.

The Onion brings the funny!

Starbucks To Begin Sinister 'Phase Two' Of Operation

SEATTLE-Starbucks officials announced Monday that they are through with the coffee-distribution portion of their long-range plan.

NEW! Shared items

The keen-eyed among you will have noticed that I now have a "shared items" applet along the right-hand side of the page. I have several dozen blog feeds in my Google Reader (an amazing application), and from time to time, I'll be marking items there that I think my readership (all 4 of you) might be interested in reading as well. Or not.

The items can be clicked one at a time, or you can click the "read more" link to read all the items in my list.

Currently, there's some MMA news, a good article on the death of Christian rock pioneer Larry Norman, and and older link to the day I got cut from the Edmonton Sun.

This could be HUGE for MMA

There's talk today that EliteXC, probably the closest thing the UFC has to a rival in North America as far as MMA promotions go, is going to get a TV deal with CBS.

If this happens, this is huge for the sport of mixed martial arts. It's obviously great for EliteXC, which would go from being the distant second-place promotion in the U.S., to being a legitimate threat to the UFC overight.

It will be good for fighters, too, as a rising EliteXC is going to be trying to lure talent from UFC, and bidding wars are going to erupt for top talent.

It could even be good news for Dana White, the combative UFC president who has been acting more and more like Vince McMahon recently than ever before (and that's not a compliment). Dana has tried to get on HBO ... and failed. He tried to get on CBS ... and apparently failed.

Sure, Spike TV probably saved UFC from bankruptcy, but UFC needs to take the next step in growth, and Dana's reported insistence on maintaining total control over his product (including how it is broadcasted) has hindered that growth and kept him from signing those deals with HBO and CBS.


Maybe this will be the kick in the pants that Dana White needs to realize he's not the only game in town and that it's time to loosen up on the controls in order to take his company to the next level.

EDIT: More info on the pending deal here.

Thanks to Jason Genegabus, a columnist with the Honolulu Star-Bulletin for the use of the great photo of the Elite XC title belt!

Liveblogging Monday Night Raw

For something completely different ...

I'm going to try to live-blog Monday Night Raw tonight. All the fun begins in 15 minutes, when the Score starts the show...

7:05 - The Score is showing highlights of the WWE press conference today with Floyd Mayweather, and one of the first things they show is a dude wearing a UFC hat. Well done. Big Show looks very dapper in a suit.

7:18 - William Regal wants a photo-op with Cena, Orton and Triple-Haich (sic) for "prosperity."

7:23 - Cena stands nose-to-nose with Hunter ... which means, of course, that Cena is in the ring and Hunter is half-way up the ramp.

7:25 - Opening segment ends with Orton laying out Cena and Hunter. I suspect next week will see Cena lay out Orton and HHH, and then the week after, HHH will triumph over Orton and Cena. Oh, wait, he did that last week.

7:28 - The Score's sports cutaway just compared the Leafs vs. Senators game to Hulk Hogan vs. Iron Mike Sharpe.

7:32 - Santino and Carlito vs. WWE tag champions Bob Holly and Cody Rhodes. Please, let Santino and Carlito win the tag belts here.

7:35 - Phooey. Rhodes and Holly won. The match wasn't that great.

7:45 - Highlights of the Floyd Mayweather and Big Show build for Wrestlemania, and today's WM 24 press conference in LA. I would absolutely LOVE this feud if I could figure out why Big Show is the heel and Floyd Mayweather - the outsider, interloping, midget boxer - is supposed to be the babyface. That would be FLOYD "MONEY" MAYWEATHER, the BIGGEST HEEL IN BOXING RIGHT NOW! He's the BABYFACE in this feud.

7:46 - Tonight's main event - Cena and HHH vs. Kennedy and Orton. Reminds me of Sesame Street - one of these things is not like the other. One of these things just doesn't belong ...

Hey, Chris Jericho wants in the Money in the Bank match at Mania. He gets to face Jeff Hardy. Well, that should be a good match at least.

7:58 - Chris Jericho vs. Jeff Hardy ... Commercial break. Good match so far.

8:07 - Jericho wins! Great finishing sequence.

OK, while that was a fine match, I wish the WWE would stop having Intercontinental champion Hardy and U.S. champion MVP continually losing all these non-title matches while never having them defend their titles. The secondary belts in the company mean virtually nothing as it without adding to this problem. I mean, Jericho just beat the IC champion clean, and I'll bet $100 that next week on Raw, he does NOT get an IC title shot.

8:12 - Wrestlemania is in Orlando this year. That would be, Orlando, Florida. One of the theme songs for Mania this year is by the Red Hot Chili Peppers ... a song called SNOW.

Alrighty then.

8:16 - Yay. It's the weekly Hornswaggle soap opera segment. Wake me when it's over.

8:28 - UMANGA! vs. D.H. Smith. I suspect the match will be over by the time I finish typing and uploading this.

8:30 - Young Mr. Smith lasted about 2 minutes longer than I thought he would. I believe the D.H. stands for "designated hittee."

8:32 - It's Crumpet and Tea Hour with William Regal, and Paul and Katie Burchill. Can someone please put the closed-captioning on so I can understand them?

8:39 - Currently on CNN-Sports Illustrated: Mayweather goes from WBC to WEE.

WEE?

Oh yeah, Shawn Michaels is wrestling Lance Cade. This is interesting only because Cade was a student at Michaels' wrestling school a few years ago.

8:46 - Ric Flair challenges Shawn Michaels at Wrestlemania. I like Lance Storm's idea for this match: everyone thinks Michaels is going to win and retire Flair, so have Flair win instead, and then announce he's retiring.

8:55 - Yay! The WWE is putting the Maivia-Johnson family in the Hall of Fame! And the Rock will be inducting them! Awesome.

8:59 - With just the main event to go, I'm shutting down for the night. Time to get the kids to bed ...

WEE?

wbcwee
Originally uploaded by mjenkinson

Sports Illustrated gets its acronyms mixed up. But, seriously, you'd never see SI.com get "NFL" wrong in a headline.

Firefox weirdness

As I mentioned below, I downloaded and installed the Firefox 3 Beta 3 last week, and found it to be quite spiffy, even if had broken most of my extensions.

I had been using it for a few days and not thinking to much about it when I realized that all my extensions were back. And some of the Beta 3 changes were gone.

Apparently, Firefox had downloaded the latest patch for Firefox 2.0 and in the process, it "updated" itself from version 3B3 to version 2.0012. So, now, when I start FF, I get the updated 2.0012 ... except for the odd time it actually starts up version 3B3.

In short, I seem to be using some kind of mutant version 2.0012-Beta3 combo browser. I would download the beta version again, but I much prefer having my extensions back to using the faster Version 3, so at this point, I'm going to wait for the release version of 3 and stick with my mutant hybrid browser.

Return of the Hungarian Partridges

For the past couple of springs, our backyard has played host to a pair of Hungarian Partridges. Last year, the two of them nested in our firepit for a few weeks as the snow melted, before disappearing for the summer. This morning, there were three of them exploring our backyard.

EDIT: Video added ...

WWE: Insert headline here

 

A funny little blooper on the back cover of the WWE's 2007 Survivor Series DVD. While it is factually correct to say that the extras on the disc will come from Monday's TV, that really should have been removed in favour of, you know, what extras from Monday's TV were put on the disc.

You are my sunshine!

Our penultimate Hawaii video. Nicole shot this on her camera, as she didn't want to learn to play the ukulele. It was taken at the Polynesian Cultural Center.

Funny side note: this is our most-viewed Hawaii video on YouTube, and someone awarded it the dreaded one-star (Poor) rating.

Batting 1,000 on YouTube

Sure, it's a small accomplishment in the online world, but this is my first YouTube video to get 1,000 viewings.

Firefox 3 Beta 3

On an absolute whim tonight, I decided to download the new Firefox beta browser. I'm about 10 minutes into testing it out, but the 3.0 beta 3 sure feels a lot faster than the 2.0 version.

So far, the only downside is that some of my Firefox extensions have been disabled, but that's to be expected when experimenting with unreleased software. Otherwise, though, it's quite the little upgrade.

It must be the medication

I'm sure it's the cold medication I'm currently taking. Because there's no way the Oilers just scored three goals in three minutes to take a 4-3 lead over Nashville. Nope. It's the NyQuil.

EDIT ONE MINUTE LATER: Nevermind. It's now 4-4.

EDIT AGAIN: And, of course, the Oilers lost. Hey, remember when the big excuse was that the Oilers would be competitive if only the dollar wasn't so low and the league could put in a salary cap? Well, the dollar is at par, the NHL has a salary cap, and the Oilers still suck.

Raiders!

Took some video this weekend while at the soccer tournament.

Game 3

The tournament ended with a 4-2 loss against the Grassland Amazons ... er, Strikers. Whatever. That team was gigantic.

Game 2

Game 2 this morning saw my daughter's team lose 3-0, leaving us out of the medal round. We play the 5-6 consolation game in about an hour, and then homeward we go.

Game 1

Our team lost 3-2. Back tomorrow at 10:15 a.m. for Game 2

Waiting for the first game to start

I'm sitting at a free Internet kiosk at the soccer centre in Red Deer waiting for our first game to start. Things are running behind here today due to an injury earlier in the day that apparently required an ambulance to be brought in. Our first game won't start until about 8:45 p.m.

And we're off!

We're heading out of town this afternoon for a soccer tournament. Check back in a couple of days for results and, perhaps, pictures.

In the meantime, I'm suffering from a bad head cold. I'm so heavily medicated right now, I'd never pass an Olympic drug test.

A little bit of vindication

P1010228
Originally uploaded by mjenkinson

My older daughter tried out for her indoor soccer team as a keeper. She made the team as the backup keeper but was basically never allowed to play because she was the backup, the coach was very competitive and wanted to win, and it left my daughter in a bad situation. She practiced as a keeper, but always played forward during the games.

So, last night, with the team out of the playoffs, my daughter was finally allowed to play keeper.

Her team won, 4-0.

Go figure. She can play keeper!

The greatest or most disturbing photograph ever

Stolen from a friend's Facebook site. Picture was taken during this person's recent Mexico trip. Click picture for larger version.

It's hard to believe there are still people in the world this dumb

I had the 6 o'clock news on, and a "troubleshooter" story came on about someone who had been stopped in a parking lot and offered a great deal on a home theatre system that was surplus or some fool thing, and it was worth $3,000 but could be had for $400 right now. Cash only.

It turns out the home theatre system was junk and not at all what was advertised (I know, I'm shocked, too, but stay with me here), and the people who bought it felt so ripped off by this act of treachery that they went to the local TV new station to get publicity for their poor plight.

The TV news person explained that this is a variation of the white van scam.

Warnings were given about buying "bargains" out of the back of vans in parking lots.

Eyes were rolled.

Well, at least by me.

I'm not sure what's worse:

a) Falling for such an obvious scam or
b) Complaining about it on TV.

Testing e-mail publishing

This is just a test of Blogger's e-mail publishing system. If you see
this, it means the system works as advertised.

Halifax Daily News kaput

Read all of the bad news here.

I suspect in the not-too-distant future people will look back on the death of the Daily News as the first of many major daily newspapers to be euthanized in favour of the slimmed-down free paper instead.

Surfing in Hawaii!

It's Sunday morning, it's cold. Time for another visit to Hawaii!

This was the first Hawaii video I put together a few months ago when I started playing around with our video editing software. It's a 30-second clip edited down from about 3 minutes of footage. I thought it turned out pretty good. Make sure you stay until the end of the credits.

I love this video for several reasons:

• One of the things Nicole absolutely wanted to do in Hawaii was surfing. For her, this was a dream come true. It was a great thrill as a parent to watch her have so much fun.
• Michelle did not want to go surfing, but we cajoled her into doing it, and she was so happy afterwards. This was an enormous step for her because she was utterly intimidated by the prospect of surfing, but sucked it up, took the lessons, and had a blast.

Basically, this was a chance to watch my kids do something amazing, and stand back and take it all in. What a joy!

Free advice for newspaper executives

I suppose this comment is a tad hypocritical as my wife sits at the breakfast table beside me reading the newspaper at 7:29 a.m. on a Saturday, but ...

As newspapers struggle with falling circulation, which results in staff cuts (ahem!), and, in Alberta, are having a tough time finding adult carriers due to the labour crunch ... have they considered that perhaps the morning publishing and delivery model isn't working for them anymore?

As a teenager, I delivered the Winnipeg Free Press after school because the Freep, like pretty much every other paper, delivered in the afternoons so that people had their newspaper when they arrived home at suppertime.

The Sun chain, which published in the mornings and emphasized single-copy sales rather than delivery, changed the entire model for the industry. Now everyone delivers in the mornings. In Alberta, this has resulted in massive turnover of carriers - teens can't deliver the paper at 5 a.m., and not many adults want to, either.

Plus, when you get your paper at 6 a.m., it's news from 10 o'clock the night before, and more often than that, news from mid-afternoon the day before. It's not news ... it's history. You've already seen the same stuff covered on the supper-time news or on the late-night news.

And for all the talk in the newspaper industry that newspapers bring context to yesterday's news that the TV news folks don't ... well, it's largely bunk. Particularly when everyone is or has been cutting staff. There's no one left in newsrooms to bring that context.

Maybe the Sun chain or the CanWest chain should experiment with turning themselves into an afternoon paper. That would bring news to people's doorsteps in a much more timely fashion - read: before the 6 p.m. TV news - and would bring teenagers back into the newspaper delivery system, which might help the industry's current labour woes on the delivery side.

I'm not guaranteeing that circulation would go up (particularly when newspapers seem hell-bent on putting all of their content on the Internet for free anyway - why would anyone actually pay for a hard-copy newspaper these days?).

But going back to delivering in the afternoon is not going to harm circulation any worse than the business decisions of the last few years have killed circulation (as newspapers also seem hell-bent on competing with all of the free content on the Internet by reducing staff, thereby insuring they have less content for their few remaining paying customers.)

Oooohhh .... I love turtles

Another Hawaii video. This one I'm posting directly, as the YouTube version is way too pixelated and I'm not happy with it in that form.

This is a video of Green Sea Turtles, which was taken on the North Shore of Oahu. There was a spot where about 50 Green Sea Turtles would come every day to sun themselves and eat. This site is well known in Hawaii, but it isn't advertised very much. If you know about it, great, and if you don't, it's just an unmarked spot on a beach near the highway that you'll drive by before you even know you've missed it. I can't remember how my wife discovered its existence, but good thing she did, as we stopped here twice during our trip, and it was a fantastic experience. The kids loved it.

Interested observers were allowed to go in the water to swim and snorkel with them, as long as we didn't touch or crowd them. (The turtles were allowed to touch or crowd us, however.)

Blistered feet, blazing sun part of the race

There is a good story in the Fort Saskatchewan newspaper today on Blain Davis, one of the pastors in my church. Blain is a great guy who had a very difficult year in 2007. Read through to the bottom of the story for why. Or just click here.

Buy Hulk Hogan's destroyed title belt

An actual ring-used WWF title belt that was worn by Hulk Hogan is up for sale on eBay. It's being sold by PawNtheSandman, who I can vouch for as a real person who is a serious collector of championship belts.

Background on the belt, courtesy of the auction:

On October 31, 1989, at WWF Saturday Night's Main Event XXIV, The Genius defeated WWF Champion Hulk Hogan by count out. Hogan was counted out after Mr. Perfect Curt Hennig hit Hogan in the back with the WWF title belt. After the match, Mr. Perfect stole Hulk's WWF championship belt.

Later that night, Mr. Perfect came out with the belt, and proceeded to destroy the belt with a hammer to send a message to Hulk Hogan.

For years after that night, many people wondered what happened to that belt. Many people believed it was simply thrown away. Numerous others believed the WWF Hardcore Title was made from the same belt destroyed that night in 1989.

Now we know the truth.

After being destroyed, Hulk Hogan's WWF belt, and as many of the pieces that could be found, were collected and eventually ended up in the private collection of then WWF referee/booker Mel Phillips. Mel maintained possession of the belt until I acquired it through his estate sale.

Polynesian Cultural Centre - Oahu, Hawaii

As readers of my old blog are aware, I took the family to Hawaii last year for what I called my "Sun-sponsored" vacation. (Translation: I spent some of my buyout money from the Edmonton Sun on the holiday. I actually wanted to take a picture of myself on the beach holding a sign saying, "YOU PAID FOR THIS" and sending it to then-publisher Gord Norrie, but I'm pretty sure he would not have found it amusing.)

Since then, I've put all of our Hawaii videos on YouTube. Over the next few weeks, I'll be reposting them here, because in this weather, we need all the reminder of warmth and sunshine we can possibly get.

Today's video is the canoe pageant at the Polynesian Cultural Center.

Housekeeping

Two things:

• Welcome Jim Whitelaw to my blogroll. Jim's an old friend of mine, and one of the smartest tech-oriented people I know. For years, Jim graciously hosted my website for free, and for that I'll always be grateful. Jim's (finally!) entered the blog world. Now if I could only convince him to join Facebook ...
• I've changed the comments to show in a pop-up window, and removed the moderator approval. So feel free to post comments. Just don't abuse the non-moderated aspect of it, or I'll go back to approving them.
  

DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN!

OK, not quite. But this is close.

Unfortunately, the joke isn't nearly as funny when you see that the image of the book jacket is clearly marked, "To be published only in the event of a win."

Heaven in a cup!

I was at Costco today and on a whim picked up a tin of Schokinag European Extreme Dark European Drinking Chocolate.

Think of it as really dark hot chocolate, except instead of a powder, you're buying tiny dark chocolate chips dusted in cocoa that melt into hot milk. Yummy!

It reminded me a bit of Starbucks' Chantico drinking chocolate that the company used to sell. I had that once, and it was delicious, but the six-ounce size was actually too large for what was basically a cup of melted chocolate mixed with whole milk. The only time I tried it, I couldn't finish it - which was a badge of shame for this chocoholic.

The Schokinag isn't as thick as the Chantico, and isn't quite as intensely flavoured, but it's still the most delicious store bought hot chocolate mix beverage I've ever had.

Next time I make it, I might throw in a couple of shots of espresso and try a mega-dark cafe mocha.

UFC 81 - I'm wrong!

Judging from reviews I'm reading on the Net, last night's UFC card was quite entertaining and bordering on "awesome." (Which is a word that is massively overused, but that's another blog entry.)

Ah, well, I can't win them all. And neither can Tim Sylvia! Good for Big Nog beating Sylvia to win the UFC heavyweight crown. I'd love to see Nog vs. Randy Couture to unify the UFC titles. I will not be getting my hopes up, however.

Based on the clips I've hunted down this morning, Brock Lesnar was done in by inexperience, but was absolutely brutalizing Frank Mir before getting tapped by a knee-bar.

UFC 81

Tonight is UFC 81, featuring the very hyped debut of former WWF champion Brock Lesnar, who is facing ex-UFC heavyweight champ Frank Mir.

This was a show that for the longest time I had planned to buy. About a week ago, I changed my mind and decided I would skip this show.

It basically boiled down to deciding that watching Brock Lesnar's first UFC fight wasn't worth $45.

I have absolutely no doubt that I am in the minority on this one, because the buzz for tonight's show is gigantic, and UFC has very smartly cross-promoted the fight to WWE fans to get them to buy the show.

Bully for UFC. But I'm not plunking down $45 for a one-match show ... particularly when that match has the high potential to be a three-round snoozefest.

The secondary consideration in skipping the show tonight was that the only title fight is Tim Sylvia facing off against ex-Pride heavyweight champion Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira - and it's for the interim UFC heavyweight championship. (Interim, of course, because of the contractual standoff with Randy Couture, who remains the official UFC heavyweight champion for the time being.)

I have and will continue to pay for UFC title fights - even interim titles on occasion. (I bought the December show, which featured the interim welterweight title match of GSP and Matt Hughes.) But Tim Sylvia is hardly the most entertaining fighter in UFC, and this match is nearly guaranteed to be a five-round snorer.

Bottom line for me: I'm figuring there's not going to be $45 worth of entertainment out of this show. And if I'm wrong, I can buy the DVD for $25 in a couple of months.

Now ... the April show in Montreal featuring George St. Pierre unifying his interim welterweight title against welterweight champion Matt Serra ... nothing will stop me from watching that show on pay-per-view.

Casting Crowns - East to West (Live)

This song is the usual Casting Crowns nine shades of awesome. And check out the Hulkamania shirt being worn by the drummer!

Petra means rock

Insert quality-quantity joke here

The Newsroom: Bringing you more content in January than Colby Cosh and Andrew Coyne combined.