One more before the game starts, see not all the pics are stupid drunkie... this one is from the last night in europe 2 years ago with all 8 of us (I still can't believe we all were able to organise meeting at the same place/time) traveling around europe at different times/places, great times...

So I'm in the big T-Dot (Toronto for my friends outside Canada), oh yeah!! Lots to tell from the last couple days, actually just lots of work (and chores) before cuming down to Toronto and the loo for the extended weekend, but some other news and gossip for the site later, but for now just getting ready for the game.

One quick thing, it's always nice cuming home to visit your buddies and seeing some pics that you don't even remeber from before, please don't ask me what I'm doing here (pic from when these guys came to visit me in Germany last year) but I'm sure there's some kind of help hotline that the Smart car can call for its now traumatized life :-)

I'm going to explain the 3 day rule, and I'm not talking about old food in the fridge or long weekends. I'm talking about when you go home to your parents place. For the first couple days everything's great, they pamper you with cooking/cleaning etc and shower you with attention. Four days after returning home however and you get something like what happened to me.

So I'm working on my laptop (god bless you IBM Thinkpads!) and my father opens my door and asks for some quick help on something. Three and a half hours later I finish reinstalling carpeting. My skinny hairy chicken legs are covered with concrete glue and I'm seriously thinking that I've ingested more of it than when I was in kindergarten and used to eat play doe.

Three day rule, live by it!

Here's a short article on the comparison between HP (innovator) and Dell (copier/licensor). HP is clearly winning the battle right now (being as established as they are) but will they win the war with their declining sales of desktops and even reduced distribution channels? Time will tell but if the frigging margins I just paid for a new toner cartrige (after only 4 months) is any indication, then there's plenty of profits for all.

Terminal 2E of the Paris DG airport collapsed killing 5 people yesturday. That was the same terminal I went through cuming home just 2 days ago...

What a disappointing weekend in sports. VFB Stuttgart not only didn't catch "BM" (I don't want their disgusting real name on my website) for second, but the loss pulled them downto 4th and a lowly UEFA cup spot. Karlsruhe has been losing all season whenever I watched (with the sole exception of the game all us MBA's went to, which I purposely picked as it was against the worst team in the league) and yet they were able to win against my personal favorite Aachon on the last day to eliminate their chance of moving up to the Bundesliga. Tampa Bay beat Philly to get into the Stanley Cup finals and Kelowna beat our neighbour Hull (or Gatineau Olympics as they are now called, although they will always be the Hull Olympics to this old man!) to win the Memorial Cup... a disappointing weekend in sports I say!

At least Schumacher lost today's race in Monaco so not all is lost :-)

Finished "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (which was pretty good and didn't take long at all... at least compared to the length of the flight home) and hope to get alot of NON-recreational reading done over the "break"... wishfully thinking? :-)

There's a geek action figure out now! My only question is what are they thinking because I have dark hair and no glasses :-) While we're on the topic of geeks, I can't believe it but there's still development of new games for the old Atari 2600. Long live the 2600 which was the source of many a good time in my childhood.

Note: For those IMP's reading this post that have no idea what a 2600 is, I don't know either since I'm not old :-)

Not only is Cassie Campbell physically beautiful in her own right (with a personality to match), the fact that she's one of the best women hockey players in the world and a multiple Canadian hockey champion makes her absolutely irresistable :-)

Cassie Campbell.bmp

So let's get some of the housework out of the way:

A video movie (scroll to bottom) of a model Starship Enterprise flying around (geek interest post).

Want to get into the club but don't want to carry a purse or risk getting your wallet stolen (which we saw occur more than once in Lisbon)? Tired of running out of money in clubs that won't accept credit cards? Just implant a RFID tag under your skin and become a VIP member of the club... oh yeah and you can skip the line too :-)

Wondering what time of day you're most tired (and lest productive)? Check out the new "Knacker Factor" test... my test result was 23:30 hours a day :-) (basically this website is just a scam to sell anti-drowsiness pills)

Finally, here's a pic from our VFB Stuttgart trip last month before things all went bad and Bochum tie-ing the game :-)

I'm back online and back home!

Posts have been sparce lately to say the least due to my overwhelming school and personal schedule before departing for home sweet home. The flight back (Air France) was surprisingly great, semi-on demand movies, games and flight information, a couple episodes of "The O.C." primed on my laptop, great leg room (the seat next to me on one side was empty and the other side filled by an interesting French exchange student... more on that later :-)

I've got lots of articles/websites, pictures and news queued to post so you'll (hopefully) start seeing some new stuff sporatically over the weekend (if I ever stop eating, the food here at home is awsome!!).

So get your golf clubs out boys cus beaverdale is a-calling!

What's going on in Iraq is very disheartning, the beheading that recently happened is one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen. The new Bin Lauden building is going to be the largest in the world (in Dubai) and I'm still looking for a concept picture to see if it really is like the twin tower monument lights... disgusting.

For those of you "riding the pine" don't feel so down on yourself, these bugs only get action once every 17 years! :-)

Gotta get going on the projects, assignments, presentations and homework before going back home in less than 2 weeks. It's buck up and bear down time!

Calgary goes up one game to none, Canada takes the gold medal and... BMW drivers get more sex than porsch drivers?!?!? I wonder if the index they use goes by just straight quantity or it's a quantity/quality weighted ratio :-)

worldcupwin.bmp

"I was just going in on the forecheck, I don't know what happened,'' said Niedermayer. "I didn't really knick him at all. He was flopping all game.''

Agreed. Even I'll admit that the winning goal that sends the Canadian team to the gold medal game today at the world hockey championships was directly the result of a debateable call behind the net, but when the slovaks are diving like it was some kind of summer olympic outdoor event then what exactly can you expect? Serves them double right to cry wolf all game.

Go Canada Go!!!

Wow. Sometimes things get so crazy at work, school and play that life seems to speed by faster than my Vitara on the autobahn. Without any planning whatsoever we decided to play hooky from class and just hit the town Wednesday, our mission alcohol, women, gambling and fun.

Starting to drink on a sunny day starting at noon sounds like alot of fun, but it's also hard work. The question of sustainability (my own take on Kurz's "sustainable development") of course would cum into play, but to be honest with everything that ended up going on it was more surprising when the night came to an end than I originally thought. We started out with the plan to get some grub to build a base for the night ahead so we hit a new pizzaria that cums highly recommended. It totally lived up to the hype and after months of searching for a decent za have finally laid that baby to rest. Long live Pizza Ferrari!

Next stop, some pool, gambling and frolicking with the local Russian imports. Da да это было хорошо!!! (real Russian!) :-) Not to brag but despite not playing pool since my last disaster of a gamenight a couple months ago, crappy pool cues, a broken ball dispensor and an extremely more skilled opponent I ended up two beers on the day. Must have been the distracting view :-) The night was soon upon us and continueing with our trend of hitting less visited pforzheim spots we went out to really do some damage to our livers.

Mission accomplished.

The point is, the highway of life is short and fast, don't forget to pull over every once in a while to take a piss :-) To all my Canadian friends who are at home or abroad, this beers for you, we'll double up when I get back to see yall :-)

Admitting that you've made a mistake, whether in business or in your personal life is a very hard thing to do. Today I made the mistake of mixing peanut butter with my carrots... deep.

... and also... Go Flames Go!!! The last Canadian team in the playoffs!!! That will be / should be, in every one of my posts until they win the Stanley Cup!!! :-)

Having a close friend or business partner/coworker tell you a bite-ing criticism is tough to do, and take!... but the learning effects can be invaluable. I'm still not sure I'm able to take a personal C without attacking/defending with full force but hopefully if there's one thing I take from this MBA it's the ability to accept business criticism. Thanks to all tonight that participated in the open discussion (extremely valuable for the future) and a double thanks/congrats on the impressive acceptance by those that had C's leveled against them. I hope you also take the value from these discussions as well as we did, in fact just by the classy way in which you accepted these C's showed how well you are able to listen and absorb contradictory ideas and opinions.

Cudos to you, seriously!

The Calgary playoff train keeps chugging along, as per request:

A bunch of websites and notes that I've been meaning to catch up on:

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An interesting study on the ability to supress pain when brain activity scans are shown to the patients. Interestingly this doesn't work for pain that comes from the heart :-(

Dusting off the old resume and starting to look for jobs/internships? Check out some tips from the human resources department at Microsoft.

We should have/enter more of these types of MBA competitions. Note for those of you reading the article, Queen's is only an hour from my house, Ross driving of course :-)

Some more indepth info on Google's new e-mail offering, Gmail, that I wrote about earlier.

Finding it hard to cope with reality? Here's a good blog entry on the difficulties with reality and the prospects for human and artificial intelligence using chess as an analogy.

Cool. Yes I'm a geek.



McDonalds has started a pilot offering at some stores for free wireless access. I already go to McDonalds WAY too much! (no link cus the article sucked... actually it's just not onine anymore :-) )

A study that showed that over 70% of people would reveal their password for a bar of chocolate. There's really nothing that interesting in my e-mail inbox anyways :-)

For those of you experienceing problems turning off your machine etc, it's the Sasser virus, take your computer to the doctor.

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More later...