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Archive December 2004 - January 2005

Here Are My NFL Weekend Picks:
In the , atPittsburgh has to win because they are my last hope for any money in the pool. Sorry New England and all my friends in Mass.

Meanwhile in the , it's at . I am cheering for Philly in this one. I want to see an all-Pennsylvania Super Bowl. It's like a Penguin/Flyers Stanley cup. So Stan, If you read this, my picks are the 'P' teams. As usual, pick opposites if you want to do well. Sorry about cheering on the Eagles. I would now take that back because I just realize that Jeff Loria was their owner when they won. Boo Eagles!

Scotts Martin and Brett Quigley in Final Pairing at Sony Open SundayJanuary 16, 2005

Two Mountain native, Scott Martin is in Hawaii this week, caddying for Brett Quigley who is just one stroke from the lead going into last round. Brett will paired up with Shigeki Maruyama who is leading the tournament thanks, in part, to a hole-in-one on the 4th hole.

The TV coverage is really good, you should get to see and hear Scott giving advise to Brett who is vying for his first PGA win ever. Brett has had two second place finishes. TV Coverage is tonight on TSN from 7:00 to 10:30. Go Brett! Go to Scotty's page for more pictures.

For a great interview with Brett after round 3 click here It could take a minute or two to load but Brett has some good comments about Scott.

Scotty says hi to everyone back home rooting for him. Final Results

Picture is from Round Two

Karaoke Strikes Again at the Tartan Saturday January 15 2005
Another Friday night at the Tartan. Oh NOOOOOO!. Paul pulls something out of his pocket Oh NOOOOOO!. It's the On-Key Karaoke Mike. Oh Noooooooo. the Fitzmorris's are there. It's all downhill from there. Check out the Tartan page for the slide show of the evening or click on Kelly to go there faster. For Tartanites that like a quiet Friday evening, I promise not to bring my thing out more than once a month and that goes for the Karaoke mike too.

Sonny's Super Squares All Filled Up.
For some unknown reason, Sonny let me have custody of the box top containing this year Super Bowl Squares. On Thursday evening, in front of a handful of witnesses, Dave Upton and Bill Fenn drew the numbers. If you own one of those squares, you can look at the grid on the pools page.

My New Website Celebrates It's Monthaversary and It's 1000 Visitor on the Same Day
I want to thank all my visitors in the last month who have made it worthwhile to invest the $10(US) to get my own domain name and the $6/month to keep it running. I am still using only less than 5% of my new space so this is lot of room for pictures and stuff. The best month I had on my geocities site was 964 visits (August 2004). The 1000 visits is not a monthly record yet as it spans 2 different months. It's like the Tiger Slam.

The lucky winner of the 1000th visit was my good friend and regular visitor Mike McKeown. Mike, I promised you a prize. You (and only you) can claim it by clicking here. If you are not Mike, you should be honest and not click there because the prize is his. You can go for the 10000th prize. UPDATE:  I have been examining the stats on the prize claim page and Mike has told me that he has not visited 25 times therefore some of you are sneaking a look. For that reason, I have made it harder to claim the prize(s).

A Great  0 for 4 NFL Weekend For My Picks
If anyone wants a tip for picking team in the NFL playoffs ask me which teams I took and go the opposite way. I am 0 for 4 with my last hope Green Bay Packers getting whooped. Check out the pools link on the left for an update of the Super Bowl pool. I have lost two of my three teams in that pool. Those were random picks and now it leaves me with only Pittsburgh that have to win the Super Bowl. Go Pittsburgh.

 
The Tooth, Nothing But the Tooth
There hasn't been much happening lately except all the holiday stuff of course. Since some of my readers are starved for new material I decided to write about me and my tooth. I have more than one tooth but this particular one has made me pay more attention to it lately. Click here to read about it.

LTMHS Reunion Gets Own Website Tuesday December 28, 2004 excerpt from e-mail below

Exciting news!  Thanks to our tireless Webmaster, John Mathews (grad 61), we now have a dedicated Reunion 2005 website:  www.ltmhs2005.com  E-mail address: info@ltmhs2005.com

Check it out!  All current information has been posted, including a listing of over 250+ participants we have on hand to date. We've even got an online registration form for those who have not yet registered. So pass the word on!  The more the merrier!  We will be updating and posting info as and when it becomes available, so suggest you bookmark site and check in on a regular basis.
Paula Kay (grad 67)
Head Coordinator

If you click on the LTM crest above you will go there directly.

WNDL Mixed Fun Darts (Wednesday 29th @ 7ish)
Another Christmas time tradition lives on with the annual fun dart tournament hosted by the WNDL at the Tartan on Wednesday. For many people, this is the only time of the year that they play darts but since the system usually 'partners' you a regular player, the competition usually pretty good. Everyone that know somebody in the league is welcome.

Another tradition, is going out to supper before. This year, that will be at the Asian restaurant (the old Two-Mountains restaurant). It's bring your own wine and be there for 5:30 as we don't want people waiting for us too long at the Tartan.

Remember The 'Guy' on the Top Left? Click on him for Carnival news

Read About Boxing Day For you people who are not shopping today, you can read about the origins of Boxing Day here. The website is a great site for debunking Urban Legends. It's called Snopes.com.

Impromptu Karaoke Strikes Up a Chord Thursday December 23, 2004

Was the Thursday before Christmas and all though the Tartan, all the creatures were singing ....more

LTMHS Reunion Friday December 24, 2004

The holidays have taken a toll on the organizational aspect of the upcoming LTMHS May 2005 reunion but I have been told that a major blitz will start in January. Just to whet your appetite, I will be posting pictures of some of the potential attendees. If you have any good pictures of someone that went to LTM and is willing to take part in my picture gallery, please scan and send them to me and will gladly post them in a special section. I am not sure yet if I want to do a then and now, it could be like a reverse 'The Swan' . Anyway, we got the idea last night when the picture on the right came out. This handsome young man will be at the reunion to meet you, although technically he is not an LTM grad. I won't identify him yet, although you should figure it out. A message to the organizational committee: Send me your grad pictures and I will put them on your profile page.
If you want to see a lot of old pictures, go to the LTMHS Alumni Yahoo group . Click on  the picture here to make it bigger.

No News Is Good News

Christmas party season is taking its toll on my updates. Sorry, I don't have more news for you. I have been to too many Christmas parties lately to write this column. Last week, I had two suppers and I have three this week. Throw in the shopping and there's not too much time for typing this. Plus, I finally received my Christmas gift, so I am now busy installing it and figuring out how it works. What do I mean I finally got my Christmas gift? I got myself a Zen Micro and paid extra for the fast shipping. I ordered it last Tuesday and finally got it by Express Post the following Tuesday (today). One day more because we weren't home to sign for it. I had it sent Canada Post because it is more convenient to pick it up on 20th if were not home. I learned my lesson with my Dell computer order last year. Some part were shipped Purolator and ended up in Boisbriand. Worst still, when you are not home for FedEx, you have to go to Mirabel airport to pick it up. Fortunately, my Bombardier friends can pick things up there otherwise it is a real pita. Anyway, my new gadget is the mini iPod competitor. It is a great little toy and anyone who knows me, knows that the lack of sunshine of the late fall and early winter somehow makes me buy electronics. It's a mystery to me, but I would say that 90% of my purchases of electronics happens in November and December. I guess the shorter days make me a little antsy.

Anyway, there will probably be more updates in the next week when work winds down. I am off over the holidays, so I may find more time to update this although the schedule looks pretty busy. Remember to click on the tree in the banner page if you haven't yet. Also coming soon is a good 'tooth' story. For now, keep your stick on the ice.  

More Outsourcing News from the North Pole Click here

Forget Global Warming - How would you like some Global Support?

As you may know, I have been working with computer systems for longer than Ken Jennings, the Software Engineer from Salt Lake City Utah has been living (almost). Actually I was coding Fortran at school with Dave Upton in 1972 and Jennings was born in 74. When I actually started working with computers in 1977 there was no internet. We didn't even have screens. Punch cards, I tell you but I digress.

Life then was so simple. Now, the global village has changed everything. Back in 1985, I was running a software called Laderman Utilities. This was used by many major companies to migrate ADSO programs to production environments. Whenever I would run into a problem or the product was missing some functionality, I would call their support desk. Mr. Hugh Laderman himself answered each one of my calls. Now barely twenty years later, when you call for any kind of support, expect to be connected to someone anywhere on this planet. In the new global village, they call this off-shore support or outsourcing. Some companies refer to it as 'follow the sun' support, where calls are transparently rerouted around the planet to people who are supposedly working 'normal' shifts. One of the supposed advantages of this is, that if your problem is important enough, it can be passed from, for example, Philadelphia to California to Singapore to Germany. As a matter of fact, if you are unfortunate enough to report a problem after 8pm in the evening (5pm pst), your call is actually answered by staff in Singapore.

I won't mention the company (you try and figure it out), but this is an actual reply left on one of my support staff's voice mail. I am not sure which part of the planet this came from (believe it or not I think it's Ireland), but this was the answer to our support question. I was actually going to scroll the translation across the screen but I couldn't make it all out. Listen to Message  It could take a little while to load, but it's worth it I promise. This is not a joke. It happens everyday and I guarantee it will happen to you one day. Give me global warming

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