Elite XC debut on CBS

Thumbs in the middle.
Best fight: Gina Carano's fight
Worst fight: Kimbo's fight

Well, after the Gina Carano fight was done, I thought the Elite XC show was going to be a big thumbs up. Unfortunately, by the time it ended, it was a thumbs in the middle show due to the no-contest between Robbie Lawler and Scott Smith and then Kimbo being totally exposed as a bad fighter (yes, we're all shocked ... ) in the main event. And there's no excuse for such terrible time management on such an important show. Running almost an hour overtime is inexcusable, particularly given that this was the kind of show a lot of MMA fans would just set on the DVR and watch later tonight or tomorrow.

In the end, this really did remind me of the old late 1980s AWA or early 1990s WCW trying to run a big show pretending they were major league when they so obviously were not. The announcers (Mauro, particularly) constantly referring to Pride and UFC didn't help matters any. It was entertaining (mostly) but in the end, it's not going to change anything in the MMA world.

Legends of Fighting Double KO

More wacky!


http://view.break.com/505060 - Watch more free videos

King of the Cage Double KO

Wacky!


http://view.break.com/509146 - Watch more free videos

Scott Keith's new book: Dungeon of Death

A free plug for my buddy Scott Keith, who has a new book coming out soon on Chris Benoit called Dungeon of Death.

More details and a look at the cover available on his blog.

Raw rating slips to 2.9

wwe triple H
Originally uploaded by DBZ fusion

Gee. Wonder why?

There are no words

MICHAEL JACKSON LOVES THE UFC

Kurt Angle's latest neck injury

It's at about the 4 minute mark.

Insert Police "Force" joke here

WWE has brief moment of self-realization

WWE: Top 25 Most Annoying Gimmicks

I have to say, I strongly disagree with Numbers 15, 9 and 2.

Where to watch UFC shows in Edmonton

There's a UFC pay-per-view tonight, so time for my monthly post on where to find a bar to watch UFC in Edmonton.

From the Department of Self-Evident Headlines

Feds Say Angry, Suicidal Pilots And Truckers Aren't a Good Idea

... you don't say ...

Good customer service

I'm going to take the positive approach on this one and praise the good customer service I received from my local postal suboutlet at the grocery store than the strange customer non-service I received from the post office itself:

I ordered something last week from the U.S. I had been tracking it online and through e-mail updates.

Yesterday afternoon, I was sent an e-mail notification that Canada Post had attempted to deliver my package and was unable to, so I was to take my attempted delivery card to my new postal suboutlet a few blocks from my house.

There was only one flaw in this plan: There was no attempted delivery card left for me. It wasn't on my door. It wasn't in my mailbox. It wasn't in my "supermailbox" down the street.

And, of course, my wife was home during the period in which the e-mail said Canada Post had made the attempted delivery - in fact, she was sitting at the computer which is right next to our front door, so she would have heard him walk up the steps to drop the attempted delivery card in our mailbox.

So I have this feeling that the "attempted delivery" consisted of taking the package straight to the suboutlet and dropping off the attempted delivery card at a later date. I suspect when I get the mail today, my missing attempted delivery card will have appeared. (EDIT: Yup, it was in the supermailbox today. Unreal!)

Nonetheless, armed with my e-mail, I went down to the suboutlet last night and calmly explained that I had received the e-mail, but no attempted delivery card, and asked if he could get me my package anyway. The gentleman tracked the package in the system using my address, and pulled it off the shelf for me. I signed, paid the customs duties, and was on my way.

He could very easily have said "I need the attempted delivery card" and stymied me. Heaven knows, I've had that happen to me before.

Instead, he decided to solve my problem rather than compound it. Good for him.

Crazy Raw booking explained

William Regal suspended for 60 days.

See, there's a logical explanation for anything ... including last night's illogical Raw.

Geese!

Me and my new friend

P1020386
Originally uploaded by mjenkinson Getting cozy with a goose at Hawrelak Park today.

Yes, I know ... I need a new ball cap.

We stand on guard for thee!

UFC® : Ultimate Fighting Championship®

The link above is to a UFC news release on its new closed-circuit PPV agreement with Canadastar to broadcast UFC PPVs in Canadian bars and restaurants.

The announcement is notable for the following quote right at the bottom:

Canadastar has been established as a household name to sports oriented bars, restaurants and casinos throughout the dominion.

I have to admire any news release that for whatever reason, references Canada as a Dominion.

Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1

Mozilla Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 is Out | Compiler from Wired.com

As mentioned below, I upgraded to the release candidate of Firefox 3 today (actually, late yesterday), and it's really fast and "light." In that regard, it's a tremendous improvement over version 2.

My only complaint is that yesterday it was remembering all my saved passwords and logins. Today, it is not. And I can't figure out why. Basically, every time I start the browser, it requires me to re-enter all my login names and passwords. And when you've got as much social media stuff going on at the same time (like Blogger, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, etc.) as I do, that's a lot of logging into stuff several times per day.

I tried to downgrade back to 2.014, and it wouldn't let me, so I'm just hoping that the final release version of FF3.0 fixes this problem. Cuz if it doesn't, I'm going to have to nuke my installation, including my profile, start fresh, and rebuild all my logins and bookmarks from scratch, which won't be much fun.

Testing the ScribeFire posting system

I upgraded to the release candidate of Firefox 3.0 today, and while it disabled most of my add-ons, I found a really cool one called ScribeFire, which lets me blog pretty much anything from anywhere on the Net using a push-button on my browser toolbar. This is my first test post from ScribeFire. Let's see how it looks.

I mean, I'm a wrestling fan, too ...

WWE RAW
Originally uploaded by rockhoward001

... but not like this.

Banff panorama

P1020073-P1020075
Originally uploaded by mjenkinson

My wife took these pictures last weekend while on a band trip with my older daughter. I put them into a panorama this morning.

EDIT: More! Click the pictures to see larger sizes.

Two years ago this weekend ...

... we were in Disneyland.



It was way more fun that I thought it would be. I wrote a couple of columns for the Edmonton Sun on it when I got back because I went to Anaheim expecting a cheesy theme park and instead found myself immersed in a wonderfully fun vacation in two clean and well run theme parks that - expensive food notwithstanding - were utterly exceeded my expectations in every way.

Glorious heat!

I checked the weather at 3 p.m. today and it was 26 degrees in Edmonton, which makes it the hottest day, so far, of 2008.

Given the winters we have, you will never hear me complaining about the heat. I'm going to go for a nice, long walk tonight and enjoy the outdoors.

Weird Combo Of The Day: Microsoft Surface Model Now American Gladiator

Weird Combo Of The Day: Microsoft Surface Model Now American Gladiator

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Mike Jenkinson has shared: Star Wars: R2-D2 Cake Brings Balance to the Force, Dorkiness to Wedding

Mike Jenkinson wanted to share this with you:

Star Wars: R2-D2 Cake Brings Balance to the Force, Dorkiness to Wedding http://gizmodo.com/389413/r2+d2-cake-brings-balance-to-the-force-do...

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Starfield speaks about Abbotsford concert accident

Family Guy meets The Matrix

Choppers!

My younger daughter and I were out at Hawrelak Park today, and the Edmonton and RCMP police helicopters were out, along with the STARS Air Ambulance, and a whole bunch of other emergency responder kind of stuff. It was "emergency preparedness" day or something - fire trucks, HazMat units, ambulances, tanks ... all kinds of things.

Apologies for the crappy picture quality, but my wife has our real camera in Banff this weekend on a band trip with my older daughter. (And sorry about the thumb.)

Meanwhile, the younger daughter was thrilled to see helicopters in person.



While at the park, I also got the chance to chat with Tory MP Rahim Jaffer and Edmonton Mayor Steve Mandel. Good times!

Why Newspapers Are In Trouble, Part MXVIII

For the fifth time in the last 21 days, our Edmonton Journal was not properly delivered today. The previous four times, we didn't get a paper at all. Today, we're "only" missing one-third of the sections. (Even the Edmonton Sun's spotty delivery record didn't match this level of mediocrity.)

I know as well as anyone that the newspaper business is in trouble. The industry should not accelerate its demise through poor service to the dwindling number of customers willing to pay for a dead-tree version of the product.

A Hex on the IFL

Because the six-sided ring worked so well for the popularity of TNA Wrestling, didn't it?

Mike Jenkinson has shared: Report: Hardcore Championship Fighting Folds - MMA on Tap

Mike Jenkinson wanted to share this with you:

Edmonton-based Hardcore Championship Fighting has reportedly gone out of business according to recent comments made by promotional CEO Keith Crawford.
The news comes from Sherdog.com, which was informed by Crawford that the organization had been forced to fold after a potential sale to Canadian television network The Score fell apart.
Crawford believed that the promotion, which had essentially frog-leaped TKO Championship Fighting as Canada's premiere mixed martial arts show after signing a slew of big-name fighters over the past year, expected HCF to move into contention to become MMA's next big company with the move.
An official announcement regarding the purchase was expected to come at some point this weekend, when Crawford and company were slated to have held their latest show, which based on the fighters rumored to have been participating, would have been the organization's biggest showing to date.
The fates of those fighters under contract with HCF are unknown at this time. Crawford has also mentioned that he and business partner Dave Houshiar will continue promoting inside the sport, but as separate entities.

Report: Hardcore Championship Fighting Folds - MMA on Tap http://www.mmaontap.com/mma/entry/report-hardcore-championship-figh...

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The new WWF logo

Wrestling fans will get the joke. Everyone else can enjoy all the other great content found here!

Tip of the hat to Bits & Pieces.

Get another pack of Bantha burgers

The joys of the DVR

I put the DVR through a good workout last night as I "taped" Monday Night Raw (I'm going to be using the term "taped" for a while thanks to a quarter century of VCR use) and then started watching the program about 30 minutes in. The "chase" feature allowed me to start the show at the beginning and fast-forward through commercials. It didn't take me very long to "chase" the show back to the point where I was watching it live again. And during all of it, the program was still being recorded. Very cool.

As an added bonus, I discovered a Picture-in-Picture feature that I hadn't seen in the manual before that allows you to watch something you've recorded and put a little window in the corner with something live on TV.

I realize that those of you with Tivos or PVRs from your cable or satellite company will be laughing at my great enthusiasm for technology that is hardly cutting edge, but whatever. I'm enjoying my new toy.

So I bought a DVR today ...

After having had the opportunity to work with a DVR in my professional life, I decided that it was time to ditch the VCR and buy a DVR at home. So one of our TVs now has a Digital Video Recorder attached to it - with a 250 gig hard drive and Super-Multi DVD player/recorder. The timeshift and chase play features were the big selling points for me, and I'm sure I'm going to get many hours of use out of it.

Amanda Falk - Beautiful

My first YouTube video to hit 2,000 views, which it did yesterday.



(And, no, I'm not awake now, sitting in front of the computer posting. I used the scheduled post feature in Blogger to put this up in the middle of the night.)

Human head found in hamburger

Windows XP Service Pack 3

I took the plunge tonight and installed Windows XP Service Pack 3, even though it has not been pushed to the Windows Update servers. However, it is available from Microsoft if you know how to get it. All the details on how to grab the official file from Microsoft are available here.

So far, so good. Nothing appears to be broken, which is always a plus when installing a major update.

An interview with Scott Keith

A good interview with my buddy Scott Keith is linked from here. Scott is the author of several good books on professional wrestling, and has a new book coming out on Chris Benoit.

Marking an anniversary

It was one year ago today - May 1, 2007 - I started my new career working for the government.