Oh, my poor, neglected blog. I should be nicer to you. I get to tell you all sorts of secrets that no one else will ever read. Just between you and me. Anyway...
I'm off for the Caribbean! Holiday cruise #5 (Christmas cruise #4) over the past 8 years. Here's our route, as taken from the Holland America website:
Last time I went, I didn't even use their on-board internet, which was a first. Nothing really happening on the ol' 'net these days... I'm pretty sure the fad is on the downslope.
Maybe when I'm back I'll be more blogtastic... but I'm not making a New Year's resolution out of it. NYRs are for suckers.
Sometime around May, I found a rare nugget of motivation and decided that enough was enough... I was going to get some exercise. I had come across a running program called "Couch to 5k" and it looked like just the thing for me. The last couple summers, I've dabbled in jogging, but I never got that far, because I lacked a real goal, or direction... and it was really, really hard. But this program starts you off with only 60 seconds of running with 90 seconds of walking in between, for a total of 20 minutes. I totally can do that.
And I did.
The program is supposed to last 9 weeks. It actually took me 11 weeks, because I had to redo some of the later days. But I don't mind, because I miraculously stuck with it, and now I'm able to run for 5 km no problem, just under 40 minutes. It's not blazingly fast, and people running with strollers are going faster than me, but the speed will come on it's own time.
By product of all this is that over the summer, I've dropped almost 20 pounds. Now this is due not only to the exercise, but I've also been eating a bit smarter. Not Weight Watchers or anything. Just less fast food (much less), cut out a lot of pop, and chips are the devil. Also, to be fair, my weight was really out of control and the most it had ever been, even more than when I started WW both of the last 2 times.
Today I ran my fastest time for 5k (36:35) and ran my farthest run (7.25 km in 53:27). I think the cooler weather helps.
Since I had great success with the NHL adoptingmy idea for realignment, I'm going to do the same favour for Major League Soccer. In advance, you're welcome, MLS.
So, what need's realigning? Well, to start off, I think that most soccer leagues in the world have 2 important things going for them: a balanced schedule and promotion/relegation. I love the idea of a balanced schedule (play every other team twice... once at home and once away), because it means that the regular season standings are an actual representation of how a team stands compared to its opposition, instead of having some teams with inflated points totals because they play in a weak division. The MLS actually had a balanced schedule back in the 2010 and 2011 seasons until expansion made having that balanced schedule difficult due to the length of season. For reference, since 2011 each team has played 34 games in a season and before that it was 30. So that's the area I'm aiming for.
I also like the idea of promotion/relegation, because it gives all teams throughout the standings something to play for later in the season. However, true promotion/relegation like in European leagues would never fly in North America, because team support would drastically drop for any team in the lesser division with no chance to win... and MLS would not let that happen to any of their franchises. But, can we have a system that mimics pro/rel while allowing every team a chance to win it all? I think so. Here's my plan (finally)...
Starting in 2015, MLS will have 20 teams. I propose that the league be split into two divisions. The first division would be the top ten teams from the previous season and the second division would be bottom. The top eight teams in Division 1 make the playoffs as seeds 1 through 8 and the top two teams in Division 2 make the playoffs as seeds 9 and 10. A one game play-in round between 7 vs. 10 and 8 vs. 9 would be the first rounds and then it's a standard home and away three round playoff setup. That takes care of having every team being able to play for something.
Promotion/Relegation would be taken care of with the bottom two teams from Division 1 being relegated to Division 2 and obviously, the top two from 2 being promoted to 1.
A balanced schedule would be achieved with a team playing each other team in its own division twice (18 games) and in the other division once (10 games) for a total of 28 games. The teams in each division therefore have the exact same schedule.
There is one drawback though. The balanced schedule element of this would be destroyed by expansion or contraction, until the league gets up to 24 teams. However, once at 24 teams, the number of games reaches 34 in this plan... the exact number of games teams play now, while being balanced. Therefore, a 24 team league is perfect for this.
Again, you're welcome, MLS.
One last problem: out of all the people that I know that actually read this blog, none of them actually watch soccer or MLS... that I know of.
With the nice weather, and it still being early in the year, I thought that I might get ahead in the game and tend to the needs of the plant life that surrounds my house. In particular, the grass. Now my lawn isn't the greatest, many weeds and what seems to be creeping kind of mossy plant throughout. I've raked some of it up and pulled as many of the dandelions as I felt like, but it's left my lawn a little bare in patches.
I figured that while the time of year is still right, I would buy some of that easy grow grass seed that they sell. I've tried it before and it came in a plastic dispensing container, so I figured I'd get a bag as a refill and save by buying in bulk. I went to the store; it was $40.
As teased yesterday in my Twitter post, here's a picture.
Yep, it's that time of life again. Time for a new car! And it's actually new this time. My first new car is a 2013 Ford Focus Titanium hatchback. It's got some bells and some whistles. I can start the car with the key in my pocket with a push of a button.
I'm keeping the Jeep around for at least one more year... see how that goes. All I have to do is juggle the cars around in the driveway. Good thing the City recently allowed overnight parking onstreet.
With all the rain that's been happening this week, I'm sure glad that I had my roof replaced back in October instead of waiting until spring, like I had originally intended. Especially since I've been seeing my neighbour giving his roof and windows suspicious glances today.
One of my favourite shows of the last couple years has been Community. It was unique and never seemed to fall into the usual sitcom routines. Sure it had some ridiculously wacky plots sometimes, but those always to pay off and served a purpose. But after seeing the first few episodes of the new season, I've noticed that it's style is gone and mostly so is the comedy. How does the best show on TV become just another mediocre show so quickly? Those wacky situations seem to be done every episode just for the sake of trying to be ridiculous. It's been failing... hard. If I wanted to see a barely funny show that used all the sitcom cliches available while sacrificing comedy for some misguided attempt at cramming in a bunch of emotional moments between characters, I'd watch NEARLY EVERY OTHER SHOW.
You know what really grinds my gears? Guys who use a straw brooms to deliver their shots in curling. You don't need that archaic thing. If you have to use a special broom that you can lay flat on the ice, at least use a synthetic one so you aren't leaving your crap all over the ice... Ice that's only moderately clean on the best of days. Just because you've used it since 1978, doesn't mean you should keep using it. No one thinks you look cool with it. You look like a fool.
The opinions in the preceding post may have been magnified by a getting our ass handed to us tonight. But I assure you that the principle of the matter would be the same on any given evening.
I didn't watch the entire Brier final on Sunday, but I saw enough. I'm glad to see Northern Ontario win for 2 reasons: It's nice to see someone other than the usual 3 win it and also it justifies the continuation of having a Northern Ontario team, from a competitive point of view anyway.
But the final wasn't exactly an exciting match to watch. NO went up by 3 early on, and given how good and competitive the teams are, chances were slim to none that Manitoba would catch up. It's a bit of a flaw in the game as it is right now... And early lead of more than one usually will mean a certain outcome, especially with the top teams consistently curling in the upper 80% to 90% range. The free guard zone rule has given the "slim" chance for a comeback, which is better than the "none"-only option.
What's the solution for more comeback opportunities? I have no idea. More free guards? Maybe. But they should start thinking on rule tweaks, if they haven't already. Or else, with the athletes getting better and better all the time, we may just end up with robo-curling.
Maybe they should start having big tournaments on crappy club ice.
Despite the fact that there was plenty of warning that EA's attempt at an always-online DRM scheme would create nothing but problems, I went ahead and bought the new SimCity anyway. Because... well, it's SimCity.
I wasn't able to play it last night, due to overloaded servers. I was able to pop on at lunch time to finally do the tutorial city. But tonight, server congestion seems even worse. I get a message that says it's too busy along with a countdown clock of 19 minutes saying that's when it will attempt to log in again.
The situation is just so mind mindbogglingly ridiculous that I don't even know what to say at this point. I guess the message here is, according to EA, the only way to stop piracy is to stop everyone from playing games.
I went to Canadian Tire tonight to buy a bag of ice salt for my driveway / sidewalk. Looked all over the store for it... not in the middle of the aisles, not by the snow shovels, not by the windshield washer fluid... not even by the hockey equipment. So, I walk through the checkout with nothing, walk out the door and what do I see? All the salt. "Well, that's a stupid place to put them", I thought. But I grabbed a bag anyway and went to walk back inside towards the checkout.... but the "exit" doors don't open from outside. I'm not going to walk all the way around to the entrance with a bag of salt to just work my way back to the checkout. So, I'll go somewhere else for salt.
It'd be pretty easy to just walk off with a bag without paying, though.
Last week I found myself in the Caribbean with my family on a boat. For the fourth time, we've gone on a cruise over the holidays, however instead of it being over Christmas, we did it over New Year's.
Our adventure started in Ft. Lauderdale aboard Holland America Line's ms Eurodam. Our first port of call was Half Moon Cay, the private beach island where despite a cloudy and windy morning, we did some swimming and took a hike through a trail. A trail which we've walked on before (it's part of a Historical Nature Walk excursion, although we do it by ourselves). This year, we found that signs had been posted at the start of the trail saying it was dangerous and prohibited. We ignored that sign and went anyway even though we ended up not knowing where we were going. We survived.
We then had a day at sea, which was on New Year's Eve. It was quite the busy party on board and we rang in the new year in the Piano Bar in the midst of a mostly-drunken sing-a-long.
Our next port of call was Grand Cayman, where we did a snorkel and stingray petting excursion. The idea of stingrays creeped me out beforehand, but they were quite docile and fun to pet. However it was a very rough day on the sea, so the snorkeling was a bit difficult.
Day 5 found us on the island of Roatan, off of Honduras. I didn't do an excursion that day. Just hopped off the boat and walked around. Not much to see or do around the port in Coxen Hole. The exit to the port leads right onto a pretty poor street with eager vendors of cheap crap... Still better than Paris though.
Our last port was Costa Maya, Mexico. We did an excursion to the Chacchoban Mayan Ruins, which were neat. Not very big, but interesting. One thing I didn't know was the the temples have all be rebuilt (with the original stone, mind you) by archaeologists. At least there were there... I'm not sure of other sites. Our boat was docked at a shopping complex (most ports are), where I bought one of those Mexican blankets and got harassed to buy a bracelet that said "Blue Jays" (since I was wearing my Jays hat). Half of the port complex was actually a Senor Frogs, which meant there was no cheap beer to be had like in Cozumel.
Finished up with another day at sea, flew back from Ft. Lauderdale and now I'm back home... where I found my furnace wasn't working. It was 6 degrees inside when I got back on Sunday. Fortunately, it was an easy fix and as of today, it's up and running again.
One thing that was different this time was that I decided to not use the on board internet connection. I'm glad I didn't, not so much because it was expensive (50 cents per minute) but because when I finally connected back on land, I had barely received an email or saw anything interesting that had happened on Facebook.
Here's some photos I put up on Flickr. There's a few more in there than the ones I put up on Facebook.
