What Happened This Past Week

I took a "vacation" week this past week, and it included a 3 day trip to Cedar Point. We went down on Tuesday, got Starlight tickets, then had 2 day ride and slide tickets for Wednesday and Thursday. All the while, staying in Hotel Breakers, right on site. Being the last full week of the summer, lines were fabulously short. Many rides were walkons, including Raptor, Magnum and Gemini. Longest lines included Millennium Force, Top Thrill Dragster and Maverick, of course, but none were longer than 30 minutes. We even did the water park, which is a first for me.

I think I've decided that there's no reason to not go on weekdays... it's completely worth the vacation days and the crowds are just so much smaller. Also, staying at Hotel Breakers is completely worth the extra $50 or so just for the convenience.

Next year, I'd like to try weekdays in early June. I think the crowds could even be less at that time.

Goal over the winter: get back on the weight loss, so the rides aren't quite so tight. I got on everything alright, but some were close.

What Happened This Weekend

We ended up 2-2 at the tournament this weekend and in 3rd place, which was our most likely finishing position going into it. The kids weren't able to pull of an upset, but made it exciting taking Guelph to all 7 innings, losing 7-4.

Now... back to my regularly scheduled life.

All Good Things Come To An End... Baseball Too

This weekend the baseball season ends for us, appropriately with the season ending tournament. We finished the regular season in third out of five, a couple games over .500, so it can't be considered a disaster at least. However, we had a terrible time trying to beat both Guelph and Kitchener and it got a bit frustrating as some games we were real close to them and some we were just blown out. We managed a win versus Guelph and a tie versus Kitchener over the course of the season... together with all wins versus Cambridge and Woodstock, we ended up with our third place.

Well, we got one last chance versus Kitchener tonight, but it was one of those "blow out" games. It will be hard for us to make the final now, as Guelph had already beat Kitchener (it's a round robin format). But nonetheless, we still have three games to go and at this age, I just hope they're having fun out there.

I'll have to reserve my thoughts on the experience of coaching for a later date. I'll say this though... we had our first practice in February. It's been a long season.

Well, That Was Needlessly Complicated

I tried updating the look of my good ol' blog here, but with all the alterations made to it over the years and it basically being a hybrid of the classic blogspot, the new blogspot and haloscan (echo) commenting system, the experiment was a complete failure. I couldn't get my title to display right (since I deleted that widget to get that picture up top) and I certainly couldn't get my comments to go back in. Good thing I saved a backup of the template first. Seriously, I should just let go and revert to the default commenting system on blogspot here.

Not Hiatus. Writing Drought.

I haven't had much to write about recently. Truth is, usually I don't but can find something inane to post anyway. But I can't even make something up this time. Since September of 2004 (almost 6 years!) I've managed to post something every month, except for one. I'd say that's a pretty good track record.

There have been many blogs started by people I know, and most of them quickly fizzle out, some after less than a month. That's too bad, because I think the blog is a great way to keep up to date with the happenings and opinions of friends... much better than Facebook. I can understand how it can get discouraging if you have a streak of posts with zero comments and you aren't sure if anyone is actually reading. On the other hand, it's really encouraging when you get some post with lots of activity in the comments (my bar for "lots" is set at 5 at the moment). Just a note to those who have blogged and stopped, if a link to your old blog appears to the right, I was always reading.

Here's the funny thing about this post. I started it as a post basically to fill the gap until I had something to write about and it turned into a post about blogging itself. See? That's how easy it is. You don't have to have great things of great importance to say, just put down a blurb every once in a while. So, if you haven't blogged before or you used to and haven't in a while, give it a go (again). Not everything on the internet needs to be shared through Facebook.

This Sums It Up Nicely

Today post over at Penny Arcade (starting at the 3rd paragraph) summed up why Microsoft shouldn't have cancelled 1 vs 100 pretty well.

I'm having trouble convincing myself why I should renew my XBox Live Gold account when it expires in October.

The End of 1 vs 100

Today, it was announced that there will be no more 1 vs 100 on Xbox Live. This makes me sad. It was one of those video games that I could get almost anyone to enjoy playing, even if they weren't a gamer. Trivia is liked by nearly all and playing against tens of thousands (sometimes over 100,000) other people at once was a great feature.

I understand how they had to find sponsorship to run it, since they offered it free to anyone with an Xbox Live Gold account. If they couldn't find a sponsor to cover it, then I guess there's not much that they could do.

I hope that they can do more Live Primetime games like this, because it really was a great concept. Until then... very sad.

Welcome, Human Child

Congrats to Joel, Pam and Anna on the arrival of Molly. (As announced on the recently restarted blog of Joel's)

World Cup Final

It's a pretty momentous day today... The Netherlands is in the World Cup Final match for the first time since before I was born. I got my KNVB shirt on, ready to watch the game starting at 2:30. I find it a bit surprising that most commentators are making Spain the overwhelming favourite, even though before the tournament (like most tournaments), the Dutch are picked as one of the favourites. However, it was the same situation as when Holland played Brazil in the quarterfinals... the amount of shock people expressed in the Dutch victory was a little much and a bit disgusting at the same time. The Dutch are always talented and are always a threat to win. They're on a 25 game unbeaten streak. I can't see how anyone would write them off.

My pick is Netherland 2:1 Spain in extra time.

One thing to remember is that Spain has proven one thing that The Netherlands has not this World Cup... they've shown that they can be beaten.

New TV Ordered

Thanks for all your suggestions in response to my last post. It seems the overwhelming opinion was in line with my original thought... go with LCD over plasma. I ended up ordering the Philips LCD set.

I'm glad I didn't rush into a sale in the store on Wednesday, because both of the sets I was looking at went on sale a few hours later in the Shop of the Future's online-only Canada Day Sale. I'm guessing the salesman knew about this, and while I can't blame him for trying to make his commission as opposed to telling me to buy it online, it really reinforces the fact that you have to really know exactly what you want when buying there, because you can't ever fully trust them.

Anyway, after the problem I had with my plasma and the other tiny day-to-day issues I had with it, it seemed silly to go with a plasma again. I would have really been kicking myself for that decision. I don't know why I even let that guy throw me off track.

Delivery is Wednesday afternoon. Exactly one day too late to watch Holland's semi-final victory over Uruguay. So, now my dilemma is do I watch it online, or just deal with the crappy picture on my current TV?