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.
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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