Having A Bad Day?

Not as bad as these employees:



Can you say "slightly pissed off"!

Cannobalism At Its Best

Grandma got this one in:

A large corporation recently hired several cannibals.

"You are all part of our team now," said the HR rep during the welcoming briefing. "You get all the usual benefits and you can go to the cafeteria for something to eat, but please .... don't eat any of the other employees."

The cannibals promised they would not. Four weeks later their boss remarked, "You're all working very hard and I'm satisfied with your work. However, one of our secretaries has disappeared. Do any of you know what happened to her?" The cannibals all shook their heads "No."

After the boss had left, the leader of the cannibals said to the others, "Which one of you dummies ate the secretary?" A hand rose hesitantly.

"You fool," the leader continued. "For four weeks we've been eating managers and no one noticed anything. But NOOOooooo, you had to go and eat someone who actually DOES something!!!"

Bill vs. GM

A late night forward that Denmark got in:

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics (and I just love this part):

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would run on only five percent of the roads.

6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed an Illegal Operation" warning light.

7. The airbag system would ask "Are you sure?" before deploying.

8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because! none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

10. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off.

Shake Your Head

Starting Jan 1, 2007 people illegally downloading movies/music via P2P can be jailed up to 2 years in Germany. I really don't know who's more corrupt, the movie and music associations and lobby groups, or the frigging polititions and judges who listen (and act) to them.

Here's something you don't hear me say/see me write every day: France got it right when they took the position of forcing iTunes to de-DRM. France logical, responsive and good; Germany illogical, unresponsive and bad? If it wasn't such a great sunny day for BBQ'ing on my patio with a cold beer I'd be alot more shocked than I am right now ;-)

What Did You Say??

A totally out of context quote from an e-mail thread this morning:

"...so multitask my balls..."

I'd fill in the blanks but it just wouldn't be near as funny then :-)

Hockey Commentator Woes

Everyone complains about Pierre Maguire but the real travesty is Greg Millen. This guy used to be booed off Ottawa radio and somehow he gets a national CBC deal??? Regardless of your personal preference for Maguire, Millen is the true idiot.

Best worst piece of insight from Millen during this past Saturday's late game (go Oilers!), quote:

"I have never seen that in a long time"

Millen, you are a retard. Your commentary is as good as your goaltending was... brutal!



Tags: CBC, Greg Millen, Retards R Us, EuroRoss

Links to the Sky

Surfing on trans-continental flights is da bomb! Thank god internet access is starting to become more common on international flights. Of course if I had known I'd have internet access I would have spent more time worrying about charging my battery beforehand :-( Anyways in the limited time left this is how I spent the last 40 minutes: exluding the 30 mins of porn of course ;-)

Funniest study ever, Frankfurt University did a study on Germans working in the SERVICE sector and found "enforced jolliness on the job is much more likely to make [Germans] fall ill". I remember trying to explain to a German friend of mine why it was important for a server in a restaurant to smile and make the customers experience a joyous one. They were perplexed and asked "but if the server is having a bed day why should she "fake" it with the customer, as a customer I'd be more offended if they faked it, it'd be like they were lying to me". Those crazy Germans...

Dare Obasanjo makes a simple and effective point on product/service name branding.

Weird Adidas sidewalk live human advertising:



This video has a great twist, it starts out with a bunch of video game losers but stick with it until the end :-)

Almost home after a quick get-away that took a bit out of me. Lots o' rest on tap for tomorrow!! :-)

Drop The Bag Mister

A very cool shopping bag:



Thanks Sandra who got this in...

Spider Monkey Days

Read this over on Cameron's blog and thought to myself: geez, some days I feel like a spider monkey :-)

In order to catch spider monkeys, hunters in South America simply walk through the jungle and drop heavy containers on the ground. These containers have very a narrow top and a wider bottom. Inside the containers the hunters drop a special kind of nut which is particularly attractive to the monkeys.

Sometime later, the spider monkeys come down from the tops of the trees, smell the nut, but the tops of the containers are so narrow they have a tight squeeze to get their hands inside. Once they grab the nut at the bottom, their fist is too large to remove if through the opening. And the containter is too heavy for them to carry.

So instead of letting go of the nut, the monkeys just sit there until the hunters come back, pick them up, and throw them in a bag.

Retard Gladiator

When idiots procreate and the offspring decide to fight.

Back For A Bit

March 22, 2006... almost there :-)

Haircut Required

I'm off to the hair dressers...

Until I'm 75

Check out your life expectancy according to life insurance formuli. According to my results:

Results
Based on your answers to the above questions, your current life expectancy is 75 years. If you're not happy with the result, consider that by adopting a healthier lifestyle and avoiding various risk factors, you can increase your life expectancy by up to 15 years.

Your "ideal" weight for maximum longevity is: 161 lbs. [I guess I need to put on a few pounds!]

The three biggest positive factors that you have going for you are:

1. Age of parents
2. Age of grandparents
3. Education [I guess that MBA wasn't all for not!]

The three biggest negative factors that you have going for you are:

1. Family health
2. Gender [Doesn't it suck sometimes to be a man ;-) ]
3. Drinking [Um, no comment ;-) ]

The 1 Penny Podcast Project

Warning: Long post alert. In this post I touch on podcast advertising, the 1 Penny Podcast Project experiment (plus the little joke I played on my good buddies Steve and Chris) and babble on about some of my marketing thoughts. Feel free to tune in to tomorrow's post for our regularly scheduled web quick hits ;-)

So without further ado...

For every new media channel that is developed (telegraph, newspapers, radio, television... etc. etc.) a model (or many) for profitability must eventually emerge or risk the death of the medium itself. Advert supported content has long been an effective model for content producers and businesses alike (subscription and advert/subscription combinations being another popular method). The low costs associated with producing a podcast/vidcast make it tremendously easy and inexpensive for you or I to produce content online. As this content becomes increasingly popular, marketers start to look at tapping this new medium.

In this regard podcast advertising is not a new idea, just an extension of current advertising models in a relatively new medium - podcasting (although I would argue it's hardly new, rather it is just now beginning to be recognized by mass-advertisers). There are however numerous models used across the various forms of media and so it's important to find out which model is most effective and sustaining for the benefit of podcasters, advertisers and the medium itself.

Some advertisers are dipping their toes in the water and inserting small 10-30 second spots at the beginning, middle or end of podcasts such as Motorola on some of the "The Podcast Network" podcasts or Earthlink on Adam Curry's "Daily Source Code". Having listened to some of these efforts I'm not convinced this is the future for podcast advertising. The ads cut into the content in much the same way as television or radio adverts, a method which is becoming increasingly ineffective in reaching markets (ie. you and me Joe consumer). It's quite frankly getting annoying. I know how easy it is for me to tune these ads out, fast forward past or even just switch the channel. As someone who studies marketing I've got to wonder just how effective this type of advertising can be?

It's my personal opinion that placement advertising (like product placements in television shows) and outright sponsorship podcasting (similar to what Acuview is doing with the Heather and Jonelle podcast) is the way podcasting adverts are going. Certainly this brings up lots of ethical questions about how to deal with the distinction between paid adverts and the content itself (ie. like when a blogger is paid to post a positive review on a product without disclosing the fact that they were paid), but issues of transparency have been going on in every medium for a very long time (ie. when radio stations are paid to play the same crap songs over and over to drive sales) and need to be dealt with accordingly.

This brings us to Jon Watson's 1 Penny Podcast Project. It's Jon's opinion that the quantified intersection between the podcasters interest to generate revenue and marketers desire for value-for-the-money advertising in podcasting is the one cent price point. That's one cent per download to be exact.

[For the sake of this argument we're putting aside the fact that a download does not necessarily equal a "listen" (ie. many automatic downloaders like iPodder download many podcasts for users who never get around to actually listening to them, I know this from my own personal experience as I usually only get around to listening to 50% of my downloaded pod/vid casts)]

Jon's assessment is that for each (possibly targeted) earlobe a podcast captures, marketers will happily pay 1 cent to get their 3 line message across. I have to agree that this is pretty good value, or at least starting point for the industry. It is however the method of delivery which I find key to the whole deal.

What makes this arrangement work is that the ad is not a traditional 10-30 second sound byte, but rather a spoken audio placement within the podcast. This is more valuable to everyone involved as it's quick enough (and contained within the content stream of the podcast) so that it's not skipped by the listener, yet effective enough that marketers are confident that their message is reaching the intended audience. Without going into this in too much detail, keep in mind that I find the method of delivery of more experimental value than the actual monetary value of one cent. Nothing new here (this has been going on forever in radio already) just applied to a new medium, podcasting.

It was a fun premise and I like the idea of getting involved to see what would happen (besides, it was the same cost as one of my green beers I had on St. Patty's Friday so what the heck!).

So what did I choose to advertise and why?

Originally I wanted to somehow tie in something with the City of Hamilton's Recreation program. I'm currently working for the city in Strategic Services on some marketing projects for Hamilton's Recreation Department and after recent efforts fell through to have the Mayor of Hamilton personally feature Hamilton's technology efforts (the Technology park at McMaster University for example) on the Toronto based weekly tech roundup videoblog CommandN due to a scheduling mismatch, I figured this might be a good time to focus on using some innovative advertising for our Recreation department.

Problem was, the Jak Attack podcast wasn't exactly targeted to our market segment as it's a Linux foccused podcast(although I'm sure there's a few Hamiltonian based Linux geeks that could use a little exercise... counting myself as one of said geeks!). Of course you can still help me out in this regard by checking out www.myHamilton.ca and letting me know your constructive criticism: (Rossiroo@hotmail.com)

1 - The City of Hamilton's "portal" site (layout, design, functionality, integration of community partners, etc).

2 - The City of Hamilton's Culture and Recreation Department's section of the "portal". (here's a hint, it's located here, not under the "Arts, Sports and Recreation" tab... confusing? You bet. Let me know your thoughts!)

3 - The registration process which uses the "CLASS" registration system (registrations for city residents started Saturday, non-residents can register starting Wednesday March 22, 2006 for the Spring/Summer session). Anyone have experience working with CLASS out there who wants to share their opinions?

4 - Our current recreation guide (pdf can be found here).

5 - Anything else that will help the City of Hamilton more effectively serve its constituents. (wow that's broad! ;-)

Anyways, so instead of this I decided to spend my 5 bucks in a totally unrelated endeavor, reaching out to my friends with a little humour. You'll have to check out the Jak Attack podcast #8 to understand what I'm talking about below (fast forward to 18:30 to get more background on the 1 Penny Project or go straight to 25:15 minutes in to hear my advert).

Done listening? Well here's the rest:

Why did Steve and Chris's relationship fall apart? Well Helen Fisher discusses why people fall in love with each other in the first place:

1. Timing
2. Proximity
3. Mystery
4. He/she/it fits into your love map
5. We naturally gravitate to complimentary brain systems

Steve and Chris now live 60km apart and perhaps no longer fit into each others "love map". I'm guessing however that in this particular case the "breakup" probably had something to do with an extra-relationship affair. Either that or the fact that they are two good buddies (both male) of mine that I'm playing a little St. Patty's Day joke on! :-) :-)

It reminds me of the time we signed up one of our (male) friends for some free tampon sample packs, imagine the look on his face when he had to sign for that delivery in his name!! :-)

Anyways the 1 Penny Podcast Project is an interesting experiment that I'm glad to have been a part of. I'm pretty sure this type of advertising will be commonplace in podcasting in the near future.

Going forward I think there's a few important issues podcasters and advertisers need to consider which are paramount to a successful podcasting campaign:

1 - Relevancy, both for the advertiser (to make sure they are spending their meager advertising dollars on the right target market) and the podcaster (to make sure there is a tie between the show and the advertiser). A podcaster focused on animal rights certainly wouldn't want to be promoting a fur coat store for example.

2 - Transparency, you've got to be transparent with your listeners/customers or risk losing them forever. Talk to Shel Israel or Scoble about the importance of transparency in blogging, it applies equally to podcasting.

3- Fun, ads need to get the core message across for sure, but they need to do it in a creative way that makes the listener want to listen. Some of this is achieved with relevancy (see above), but some can/should be attributed to the spirit of the medium, conversational fun.

As for the little joke... well let's just consider it an early April Fools for my pals out there ;-) Consider the Jak Attack podcast officially "EuroRoss-Attacked"! ;-)

Thanks to Jon and Kelly for letting me be the first "official" One Penny Project "advertiser" and to Stevie and Chris for being best buddies with such an idiot like myself. As the penny podcast ad says: "Keep your chin up" guys! :-)

Tags: 1 Penny Project, The Podcast Network, commandN, , Jon Watson, Jak Attack, EuroRoss

Goat To Be

I seriously cannot make this stuff up:

A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his “wife”, after he was caught having sex with the animal.

The goat’s owner, Mr Alifi, said he surprised the man with his goat and took him to a council of elders.

They ordered the man, Mr Tombe, to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars ($50) to Mr Alifi.

“We have given him the goat, and as far as we know they are still together,” Mr Alifi said.

Tags: Goat, Marriage, Goat Bride, EuroRoss

Links R Us

Lemmings is one of those old-school computer games that you can just waste an entire afternoon playing... and now it's available online!

How much is a Canadian worth? About $137k.

Hilarious when you don't read the article:



Headline sarcasm of the week: "Student recites 8,784 digits of pi, fights off chicks"

Everyone who isn't a morning person wants one of these:



I wish I did cool things like building roller coasters when I was in grade 8!



A cool pictorial map of where US tax dollars get spent. Where's Canada's tax map? Well it's right here ---> .
;-) Although in our defence, isn't the US who's supposed to be good at baseball? Then waddup with this!?!?

What things piss you off at work?

Indoor skiing in the middle of the desert (Dubai):



I love Frogger. I love real-life Frogger using a Roomba even more! :-)



Quote of the day:

"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn't matter if you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you better be running."

Lego Christmas

When I was a kid one of the best gifts "santa" ever gave me was the G.I. Joe toy aircraft carrier. It was HUGE! How envious am I that there's now a Lego aircraft carrier!

St. Beer

Happy St. Patty's everyone! Go enjoy a cold green beer with your mates!



Cheers me laddy for the pic! :-)

Wind Wackers

Tonight I'm cruising along on my bike commending myself on what a great idea it was to get out for some fresh air, man I'm flying! I feel great, I'm totally rocking the road, nothing could be better... well except maybe realizing that the wind was about 10 times more powerfull than I realized.

Seems as though that speed wasn't all EuroRoss-power ;-) When I turned around to go back I got a rude awakening. I swear the wind was so strong birds were flying backwards!! I could barely move forward on the bike, it might well have been faster to fake a flat and walk with the bike beside me!

Still don't believe me that the wind was a monster today? Well how do you explain this:



That's right, the wind tore off the metal bolted patio divider between appartments! Ripped it right off! Serious woh.

Of course the fact that I got lost on the way back didn't help the mood. When I got back into a section of the city this is the concrete maze that was presented before me:



What a wasteland!

I'll post the pretty pictures from the ride (and the weekend getaway)... soon ;-)

Tags: Bike, Wind, Hamilton, EuroRoss

Your Daily Pee

It doesn't matter if you don't know who Richard Simmons is or if you've never seen the improv comedy show "Who's Line Is It Anyways?", just know that Richard is flamming and this clip is absolutely pee-pants funny.

Lucy Southworth

Who is Lucy Southworth? Testing something on the EuroRoss site, spooged the pic from the Blog Herald Search Engine Herald:



Tags: Lucy Southworth, Southworth, Google Gal, EuroRoss

Whole Lotta Somethin'

The weekend links coming through...

Gotta love the Germans, this vid made me laugh out loud! If you're more into conspirasies, check this one hour video on 9/11.

Got a phone job interview coming up? Some tips.

Send an e-mail/sms to any cell phone for free (works only with North American phones, I'm sure there's something like this for European phones too).

MySpace is HUGE with the teenies, over 50 million of them. Perhaps MySpace grows into the social network of the future when all these teens grow up, or in growing up do they leave MySpace behind?

Quote of the week: "I feel like a fish in water." - Alexander Ovechkin (on how much he likes playing in the NHL).

Too easy an end.

Some fantastic airial pics around Mexico, I liked this one the best:



This fun site tracks money as it moves around the world. Check your bills and see where they've been!

These guys are the Olympic swimmer version... for ants.

Back to the grindstone...

Somewhere Only We Know

Walked across, an empty land,
I knew the pathway like the back of my hand.
I felt the earth, beneath my feet,
Sat by the river and it made me complete.
Oh simple thing, where have you gone?
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on.
So tell me when,
You're gonna let me in,
I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin.

I came across a fallen tree,
I felt the branches of it looking at me,
Is this the place, we used to love?
Is this the place that I've been dreaming of?

Oh simple thing,
where have you gone?
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on.
So tell me when,
you're gonna let me in.
I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin.

And if you have a minute why don't we go,
Talk about it somewhere only we know.
This could be the end of everything,
So why don't we go?

Oh simple thing, where have you gone?
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on?
So tell me when you're gonna let me in.
I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin.

And if you have a minute why don't we go,
Talk about it somewhere only we know?
This could be the end of everything,
So why don't we go,
Somewhere only we know?

This could be the end of everything,
So why don't we go,
So why don't we go...

This could be the end of everything...
So why don't we go...
Somewhere only we know..?

- Keane

Tags: Keane, Somewhere, Lyrics, EuroRoss

They Don't Know It??

The NHL trading deadline was Thursday and the Toronto Maple Leafs confirmed that their management is as dense as their fans when they did not blow up the team to rebuild.

Luke Richardson? Yeah, that's the answer. There is NO WAY the Leafs can make the playoffs given the number of remaining games, their current position (11th), their overall skill level, the teams in the hunt above (and even below) them... the list is infinite. How Leafs management don't know this and clear up some cap space for next years free agency is beyond me.

On the bright side, this means the Leafs will continue to suck next year and for years to come while my Ottawa Senators stockpile championships :-) It hasn't been this low in Leaf-land since the Ballard years...



Tags: NHL, Trade, Maple Leafs, EuroRoss

The Goal

You don't train to have a good day at the race, you train to still have success in case you have a bad one...

dPolls

Added a neat little polling utility to the bottom of the blog (scroll down and enter your vote for this month's poll question!) from dPolls. Looks nice and it's easy to integrate, but not being able to control the size of the graphic relegates it to the bottom of the blog (it won't fit on the sidebar without frigging with my template) and without being able to extend the length means you can't see all the poll choices instantly (I didn't even notice the scroll arrow at first, and when I did it was annoying).

I'll leave it up for the month and see what happens...

Tag: dPoll

Hockey Talk

Sitting at home after a great sunny day enjoying the CBC Hockey Night In Canada game with a cold beer... and of course wireless internet browsing catching up on some links and feeds, this is the life :-)

So I come across David Daniels post "It Takes Leadership" where he posts his thoughts on why team Canada (men's hockey) lost at the Olympics in Turino this year, a sport where the country as a whole feels it is our God given birthright to win each and every year/4-year cycle (isn't that obvious??). Well there's a few points that I felt needed a rebutal from yours truely, hockey crazed Canadian and business enthusiast, since he was a bit off the mark. Quotations are in italics:

"what it takes to win at hockey is the same thing it takes to win at business....leadership, strategy and team building."

...and skill. A "minor" point he missed, but one which sets up some of my other thoughts later on. Clearly you don't win championships in this game without skill, perhaps steal a game or two, but not championships. Germany consistantly shows great awareness of their skill set (or lack thereof) and builds a great 5 man back defensive system that frustrates more skilled opponents until they make an over-aggressive more or mistake when they pounce (heavy focus on their special teams as well). Germany has all three of Daniels trifecta: great system (strategy), strong leadership (Sturm, Bender and Kolzi provide god-like leadership at each position for the rest of the mostly non-NHL German players) and team building; but they don't have the skill level and hense will not win a championship until they can elevate it to the level of the top 6 nations.

Next points break down his arguements in each area that he feels: "Team Canada lacked in each" and then I state the real reason they did not succeed.

"He [Wayne Gretzky] selected an all National Hockey League, all veteran superstar squad."

If you think havign the all time goal/assist/record holder in the history of the game who has captained more NHL, national and other championship rings than you or I have fingers put together isn't the best source of leadership available in the world then you need to check yourself. I'm not even going to go into the vast resumes of the coaches and players involved, the point that Canada "lacked" leadership is obserd.

[In addition the notion that choosing a team with "Very few rookies or newbies" was somehow bad for the team will be looked at when he addresses that obtuse idea in the third section below.]

Under strategy he starts by exclaiming "selecting seasoned players was to mititgate risks" while deriving the conclusion that "the team was configured inappropriately for the Olympic version of the game." Um, your point is unsupported, and while your conclusion is correct (as I will explain later), your reasoning is way off base. Because of the extreme depth of players Canada can draw upon to build their team, there is no reason to choose rookies or "newbies" as there is clearly enough players with the some level of skill and higher levels of experience available. There are always exceptions of course, but the player with more experience should always be chosen over a player with the same level of skill with less experience when your talent pool is as limitless as it is for the Canadians.

Similarly his remark that the larger ice surface "Result[s] in a more athletic game than in the NHL." is ridiculous. They are different types of games requiring slightly different skill sets for optimal performance, but they are no less athletic in nature.

Also in Strategy he mentions: "building for the future, the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, was missed. Many of the current team will not play on the 2010 squad given the natural rate of NHL player attrition. So the 2010 squad and its coach will have little Olympic experience as a result."

First of all Canada does not "build for the future", we play to win the championship. Canada has the best skilled players in the world, always have, always will. Every year we are the favorites to win, EVERY YEAR. We might not always succeed, but we will ALWAYS put out our best, because our best IS the best. Other countries need to "build" up teams to make a run every 3,4,5,10 years, I understand that. There's no point for example for a team like Germany (I'm picking on them because I love their effort so ;-) to play all their old vetrans if they know a younger crop of high skilled players are up and coming when they could give those younger players experience now which will pay off later. Canada will always be in a position to replace outgoing players with players of greater skill and with a plethora of experience internationally and from the NHL.

In fact, this year's Canadian team had the lowest number of returning players from the previous gold-medal winning team in Salt Lake! In addition over half of the current Olympic team will be around for the next Olympics in Vancouver (can't wait, already reserved my spot on a buddy's couch in Vancouver as I will for sure be there for the games!!). So his comment "So the 2010 squad and its coach will have little Olympic experience as a result." is just wrong.

His postering that the Canadian players must not have been drilled with a strategy is just laughable. In another case of getting the conclusion right but with incorrect supporting evidence, yes Russia "deserved the win" but not because they did more homework, but because they edged out the Canadians in an amazing hockey game between the two greatest hockey nations. Are you telling me that the Russians had some kind of superior "tactics" or "strategy" in that game which was neck and neck up until the very end?? Did you even watch that game?

At this point I would like to point out that I actually liked his post, thought there was some good insights and was of great interest subject wise. I may be harping on the negative, but please just take this as helpful tips so your next hockey-business analysis is a bit closer on the mark ;-)

Back to the lecture ;-)

Seriously it was a great post, other points he hits the nail on the head: "The team practiced once (the first time), then the next day they flew to Italy and the day after that played their first game". Ok that wasn't the first time they'd practiced together, they also had the summer camp, but it was definatly a mistake to fly the day before their first game (and it showed against Italy) and when the team failed to show "chemistry" by the third game they failed to make adjustments (other than some line changes) to fix it up. This chemistry problem was a direct result of the real reasons the Canadian team failed in Torino:

1 - They moved away from Wayne Gretzky's strategy of "taking the best available players". Wayne did this successfully in Salt Lake but success made him sway towards loyalties with his Torino team selections. When over 5 of the top Canadian scorers where not even on the ice for Torino you can safely say that he didn't pick the best available Canadian players. What the hell was Bertuzzi doing out there? He was no where near the playing shape/level of some other players left off the roster.

2 - Gretzky also didn't take enough account the effects the lockout had on older players. The conditioning and travel schedule did not help.

3 - We were missing our strong puck moving d-men due to injury, and more importantly the replacements did not fill that skill gap (McCabe instead of the fluid puck moving Boyle, pul-ease), that's on Gretzky too.

4 - Some players did not rise to the occation, most in fact with the exception of Sakic. Brodeur was less than average, Iginla ran into a rough spell, some players just did not show up.

5 -They did not have me on the ice ;-)

** To be clear, I'm not blaing Gretzky for the loss, although he was not as sharp as for Salt Lake and definatly deserves his share.

A long post, but a necessary one ;-) Time for another beer. So until next time, keep your head up and stick on the ice... :-)



Go Canada Go Vancouver 2010!!! :-)

Tags: Canada, Hockey, Torino, Strategy, Reasons

Pimp Das Auto

German engineers "pimping yo ride"... "and pimping"... "and Deutschpimping"...





Hilarious! Have a un-pimped weekend everyone!

Vegas Baby!

I thought I had posted this already but apparently not. Congrats to the G-man Mandel for taking it to the hole and winning a poker tournie in Vegas (yes that Vegas) a couple weeks ago. I guess flying to Vegas, winning half a hundy G's and partying it up constitutes a good day ;-)


Boo-yeah!

Tags: Poker, Vegas, Tournament, EuroRoss

eBay the Bastard

Bitsy gets this one in as her friend is finding creative methods for ex-boyfriend recovery:
:-)



Ouch, I feel that guys pain! Isn't there something in the Geneva Convention about not being allowed to sell someone else's hockey tix? Cruel and unusual punishment? ;-)

Guess the bastard deserved it... well if you're in the Edmonton area and in the mood for some great hockey and even better company (she promises no tears or ex-talk) head on over to eBay and get your bid in! :-)

Tags: eBay, Hockey Tix, EuroRoss

Tour De Lacking

Our Lady Peace, Canadian alternative band extraordinaire, have announced the Canadian portion of their tour. I doubt very much this is the entire tour, no Hamilton? no Toronto?



Good one, funny joke guys, now enough of that, when are you playing Hamilton/T.O.?

It's Over

The free ride is over. The cable guy showed up today.

When I moved in it took me almost a month to realize that the cable hadn't yet been turned off. Living in a large appartment complex means the cable guys usually only come around every month or so, bingo a free line for the Ross-myster :-)

I'm sure some of you consider this stealing, but maybe access to hockey night in Canada should be a birth right for Canadians no? ;-) Philisophical discussion aside, the cable gets cut tomorrow. Please do not bother me tonight, I will be sitting in front of the TV soaking in as much as I can like a human sponge... sniff sniff...

On another note, futures on EuroRoss productivity levels have just shot through the roof ;-)

Things Are Goinna Go My Way

Despite the fact that it's bright, sunny and warm out here in Hamilton (defying the laws of nature I might add, but that's another story, who said there's no such thing as global warming?) I seem to have been KO'd with the flu :-(

After a long night out in Toronto and a full day at McMaster University (great on-campus restaurant/bar there called "Phoenix", tres bon) I dragged myself home and passed out. Thank heavens I woke up just in time for the Leaf-Canadian game tonight (which by the way will knock Toronto out of the playoff hunt for good, yippie! Go Sens Go!) .

It seems like I'm not the only one. There's a double shot going around. While some like myself are battleing the flu bug, others have hit relationship woes (which we all know suck even worse). To everyone out there, suffering in one way or another I offer this small piece of advise: (click the photo for small mp3 audio clip)



...and remmeber, when you're feeling blue or under the weather, just take solace in something that makes you happy, things will eventually turn around and go your way. :-)

Tags: Pig, Enormous, Pink, EuroRoss

BIG

This was one BIG weekend. Lots of good times, exercise, hockey (no BIG weekend is complete without some hockey!)... the list goes on. You know what they say, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and for a BIG weekend you need a BIG breakfast!



That's one BIG ass box of Shreddies! :-) That brick would kill somebody if I dropped it off my balcony... hmmm a box of Shreddies off the balcony... hmmm...

I also finally got around to uploading my Vancouver and other pics, to be posted... soon ;-) BIG sleep time tonight!

Sat Night

It's Saturday night, time to get stupid... :-)=

Goodbye Hotmail, Hello Gmail

I'm increasingly using my online e-mail accounts (I have 10+ e-mail accounts which for a geek is pretty low but for regular people seems... well geeky). Simultanously I find myself happy with Hotmail less and less while loving Gmail more and more.

This was not always the case, I wasn't really into the "archiving" functionality at first but now find it liberating as it allows having a near empty inbox at any given time while able to quickly (that's key, because I can search e-mail boxes from my other accounts but it's very s...l...o...w). Google also didn't have an easy to access "delete" button before which was totally annoying, but that's changed now as well.

I started using Gmail becuase it gave me 2GB of storage over the paltry 250MB for others, but now that's even a consideration for the reason I like Gmail more than all the other accounts (better spam filtering, speed, search, archiving, one stop storage, UI... the list goes on). Well done Gmail in adapting and growing into a "must-have" e-mail account for me. Shame Hotmail for going from my durable always used travel account to a growing fungus on my butt.


PS> For the lonely few who still do not have a 2GB Gmail account (isn't it public sign-up yet?), just shoot me an e-mail and I'll sent you an invite.

Tags: Gmail, Hotmail, eMail, EuroRoss

Cursive Musings

The Predatory Wasp of The Palisades is Out To Get

Thinking outrageously I write in cursive,
I hide in my bed with the lights on the floor,
Wearing three layers of coats and leg warmers,
I see my own breath on the face of the door .

Oh I am not quite sleeping,
Oh I am fast in bed,
There on the wall in the bedroom creeping,
I see a wasp with her wings outstretched.

North of Savanna we swim in the palisades,
I come out wearing my brother's red hat,
There on his shoulder my best friend is bit seven times,
He runs washing his face in his hands.

Oh how I meant to tease him,
Oh how I meant no harm,
Touching his back with my hand I kiss him,
I see the wasp on the length of my arm.

Oh great sights upon this state,
Wonders bright, and rivers, lake,
Trail of tears and Horseshoe Lake,
Trusting things beyond mistake.

We were in love, we were in love,
Palisades palisades palisades,
I can wait, I can wait.

I can't explain the state that I'm in,
The state of my heart, he was my best friend,
Into the car, from the back seat,
Oh admiration in falling asleep,
All of my powers, day after day,
I can tell you, we swaggered and swayed,
Deep in the tower, the prairies below,
I can tell you, the telling gets old,
Terrible sting and terrible storm,
I can tell you the day we were born,
My friend is gone, he ran away,
I can tell you, I love him each day,
Though we have sparred, wrestled and raged,
I can tell you, I love him each day,
Terrible sting and terrible storm,
I can tell you...

- Sufjan Stevens

Warning!

I don't know if you shop at Wal-Mart, but this may be useful to know. I am posting this to warn you of something that happened to me, as I have become a victim of a clever scam while out shopping. This happened to me and it could happen to you.

Here's how the scam works: Two seriously good looking 18-year-old girls come over to your car as you are packing your shopping in the trunk. They both start wiping your windshield, with a rag and Windex, with their breasts almost falling out of their skimpy t-shirts. It is impossible not to look.

When you thank them and offer them a tip, they say "No" and instead ask you for a ride to another Wal-Mart. You agree and they get in the back seat. On the way, they start having sex with each other. Then one of them climbs over into the front seat and performs oral sex on you, while the other one steals your wallet.

I had my wallet stolen last Tuesday, Wednesday, twice on Thursday, again on
Saturday, and also yesterday.

Stay safe, it's a real jungle out there...

Change Me

Marta got this site in that fits perfectly for today:

Change Me...



Go check it out.

Tags: Change, Life Pictures, Change Me, EuroRoss

New Skype

Skype 2.0 is out of beta and was officially released yesturday. The big feature added: video calling.

I've been using this feature already for a couple weeks now and although it's semi-slow or unsynched at times it really does rock if you've got 2 people with a webcam. Lots of great application here ;-)

Go upgrade your skype now. If you don't know what skype is, get on it!



Update: If you're in France, Italy, Denmark, Spain or Germany you can also go here for a skype gift (free calling credit). But hurry, you've got to click by midnight tonight!

Online Retail Strategy

Strategy and Business has a great article this month on what works for online retailing and why. The synopsis that I gleaned from the article is to sell products that:

1 - Don't require large amounts of customer support.
2 - Don't require re-packaging for shipping (or one step better, can be shipped directly from the supplier to customer).
3 - Sell products with long product lifecycles.
4 - Sell products with a small number of SKU's.
5 - Sell products with low return rates.
6 - Sell products with predictable selling volumes
others...

They roll these characteristics together into their term "cost to serve". Of course if selling was as simple as limiting your sales to products conforming to the list above everyone would be selling the same 10 products. Part of business is tackling the risk with one or more of those variables to turn a profit. We had a saying at one of my old companies (that serviced other businesses) whenever something was difficult to implement: "if it was easy to do, we wouldn't be hired to do it".

Tags: Business and Strategy, Online Retail, eBusiness, EuroRoss

Disappointment Abounds

Italy looks great going into this summer's World Cup of soccer tournament having not lost in their past 16 international tests. Germany does not :-(

I don't need this after a crappy Canada men's hockey team showing at the Olympics, step it up Deutschlandermanshaft!

Lame-O Kraft

Bummer:

Thank you for visiting our http://www.kraftbrands.com/
website and for your interest in our promotions and offers. Unfortunately,
this promotion is only available in the USA and Puerto Rico. We can only ship
within the U.S., its territories and military addresses.

Please visit the promotion section of our website again soon and we
hope you'll participate in another one of our offers!

Kim McMiller
Associate Director, Consumer Relations

Well Kim, I'm betting if I check back for "another one of our offers" I'll be treated to the same "do not ship to Canada" exemption that's all too common. You ship your frigging products to Canada, heck I buy them here in Canada, why don't you run promo's that are open, not only to those living in the good old USA but also to all us saps that live in other countries you peddle your products in.

Not offering a promotion to countries you don't sell products in is understandable, not offering it to countries you have no problem shipping product to is lame.

Shame Kraft, shame.

Tags: Kraft, Crappy Promo, Lame-O, EuroRoss