Who needsem?
Topic: Hockey
Who needs the NHL right now? I've got playoff tickets!
Yesterday morning, I left the house at 9:50, got in the car, and drove up to the Aud (Kitchener Memorial Auditorium), pulling into the parking lot at about 9:58. I saw a lot of cars, and thought there might be a line-up, but then I saw the CBC trailer and realized that many of the cars would be there for the World Junior Figure Skating Championships.
I walked in the doors of the rink, and right up to the box office. There were two windows open, with one customer at each window. Within seven or eight minutes, I had 4 tickets for game two of the opening round OHL playoff series between the Kitchener Rangers, and likely the Erie Otters.
The cost? $62.00. Attention NHL fans. That's $62.00 for all four tickets, not $62.00 each!
When I turned around after buying my tickets, there were about 10 people standing behind me in line.
I walked over to the display on the wall, to read about the history of the building. Five minutes later, I turned around and there were about 15-20 people in line. Both of these games will be sold out, with standing room only attendance around 6,000. The size of the lineups has more to do with the fact that tickets are also available online, and by phone. (for an added service charge of 3 or 4 bucks)

On the way home,I stopped to buy and pour a quart of oil in my car, then arrived home, washed my hands, and started preparations to make a pot of chili for dinner.I had finished cutting up my garlic and onion, and thawing the meat in the microwave. The onions and garlic were in the pan with the olive oil, and just starting to make noise, when I remembered to look up at the clock. 10:50!!!!
When you can go down to the rink, and pick up your tickets, and do all those other things in less than an hour, think of the savings in stress alone!!!
When you figure in the cost of the tickets, and compare the overall impact against trying to get some NHL playoff tickets, there is no comparison. If you add the fact that it will likely be a much more entertaining hockey game, with a fast pace, and not so much clutching and grabbing, the OHL brand of hockey wins, by a mile!
Mr. Bettman,Mr.Goodenow, we don't need your crap.We will be watching top flight hockey, for a fraction of the cost, and with a fraction of the stress, while you two play with your fax machines.

The formula one racing season began last night, and wonder of wonders, I didn't have to listen to the German national anthem afterwards. Micheal Schumacher wasn't a factor in the race, (unless your name is Nich Heidfeld) Renault took 1st(Fisichella) and 3rd(Alonso), with Barrichello taking second for Ferrari. Congratulations to the new Red Bull team, Coulthard 4th, and Klien 7th.
The race wasnn't very exciting, other than a few fun passing, and contact moments, but the fact that Renault and Red Bull both did well augurs for good things in the rest of the season. Jacques Villeneuve was completely uninspiring in his Sauber debut, and likely prevented Alonso from finishing even higher than 3rd.
I have enjoyed watching formula one in the past, although the last few years have been brutal. The first race of this season looks like we might be returning to some real competition.

Finally inventory is over for another year.
Topic: Hockey
Inventory is over for another year. It is a little tense going through the preparation work, tying up loose ends etc., but when all is done it's worth it. I am one of those rare people who actually likes inventory. For a couple of weeks out of the year, everybody in the building is helping to do what you've been trying to do all year long, keep the warehouse organized. If the prep work is done well, then the actual counting, and verification is a piece of cake. You go through the warehouse row by row, making sure that things are where they belong, adjusting stock locations in the computer as required. This gives you an opportunity to adjust the spacing for different items, because stock levels change as new products replace old products, and customer demand changes. Precounting loose parts into marked boxes and bags, speeds things up on count day. Enough about inventory... While all that was going on, Mr. Bettman announced the cancellation of the 2004/05 NHL season. While fans are upset, I think it is important that they get this right for the future of the game at this level. But even though the NHL season is cancelled, does that mean the Stanley Cup shouldn't be awarded? After all, the trophy was meant to be a challenge cup,and not the express property of any one league. There are some interseting legal opinions on this matter. see Freestanley.com for more. I have been putting together a few hockey related pages of my own, and have just uploaded the first few at my site. (click to visit my Hockey Pages ) I have also joined the NHLFA (National Hockey League Fans Association), which is at well above 25,000 members strong.This organization takes polls of its membership, and presents the results in a dignified, concerned manner to the NHL, and the NHLPA. They have met with Mr. Bettman, and have had correspondence with the NHLPA. They have the permission of the league to use the NHL initials and name, in the name of the organization. This is a grass roots organization, seeking to have fans concerns brought before the appropriate parties. Visit their website THE NHLFA and join up. That's all for now, I am going back to work on my pages.

GREY OWL
Still have this cold. It somehow got into my right eye. Welded shut when I woke up. Shotglass and clean water cleared that up. I watched the movie GREY OWL, starring Pierce Brosnan last night. Somehow I missed seeing it before. It was the best acting job Mr. Brosnan has ever done. Grey Owl was a leading edge conservationist, well before conservation became fashionable. While the movie was a "sanitized" version of Archie Belaney's life, it was nevertheless an engaging hour and a half. Sadly, as popular as Grey Owl was during the last stages of his life, his message was buried and forgotten for too long after his death, surfacing only when it became "fashionable" to care about the wilderness environment. Of course, I will have to make a point of reading some of his works. LINKS BIO Bio and some excerpts from his works Director Richard Attenborough's comments on the movie This subject matter has always been dear to my heart. Although I was born and raised in Toronto, the north country, and the outdoors has always captivated and drawn me. I don't know if it is the fact that my birth mother was of Ukrainian and French Canadian descent from Cochrane. Being adopted, I don't know a lot about my genetic family's history having met only one aunt, and a cousin for a few brief hours in Brower Township just outside Cochrane. I got to see the farmland where my mother and aunt grew up, just across the Little Abitibi River. I passed the house of my uncle who is a hunting and fishing guide into the wilderness. Is it the French Candian voyageur blood running through me, or is there some Ojibway, Abitibi, or Cree blood mixed in there as well? That would be a great honour, and also explain some elements of my persona. The nickname Wolf dates back to high school, where originally my older brother was Wolf and I was Cub. The meaning of our last name is "Swift council wolf", and although this name is mine by adoption, it has become an intimate part of my being. Conservation is not just about the great wilderness spaces. I have lived in Kitchener for over 10 years now, and have seen some farmland and green space disappear to the developer's bulldozer. Why do we take an area, and bulldoze all the trees, mature and young, to the ground, only to build a subdivision, and then plant a few baby trees? Why can't we build in lower density, smaller communities, each surrounded by protected green space. It was said that when the white man came to America, a squirrel could travel from the Atlantic to the Mississipi without touching the ground. I could imagine my dog following that squirrel, running from trunk to trunk. I saw a dirt road and a natural creekbed in Toronto get turned into a concrete flood control ditch surrounded by high-rise apartments. I see a similar fate gradually befalling Kitchener, although thankfully we have the Grand River Conservation Authority, whose very existence owes a debt to Grey Owl.

START UP
Mood:  a-ok
Ok, I'm finally beginning to publish this project. (PHENOMENON: Migrations of Love, hereafter to be referred to as P:MOL) It's been under construction on and off for around 3 years, but has resided only on my hard drive. Actually it has migrated once from the old computer to the present one, but still hasn't found a home on the web......until now.

While I have a great many pages in a more or less state of being done, there are just as many that are bits and pieces of research, not yet compiled in a presentable form. Another issue that needed to be resolved was the directory structure, and publishing the page forces me to tackle this long overdue issue. It will take a bit of time to move the images to an image folder, and update the links on each page. As they are updated, I will upload the images and pages. There are also the copyright and citing issues to deal with, which weren't much of a concern while the project resided on my hard disk.

I will start with the Table of Contents, as that is the navigation page, however there will initially be a great many links that aren't live yet. As I upload each page, I will place a report here.

As for the WOLF WATCH portion of the site, I think I might just post links to the old WOLF WATCH site for now, and then gradually update. That site has not been updated since early 2002, and the links will have to be checked.

Similarly, the personal pages resided on Geocities, although there hasn't been much in the way of updates there either. Some of the pages are far out of date, and need to be either deleted, or updated. There are however a few things over there that have stood the test of time, so I may just link to them first.