Thursday, August 28, 2008

MISC: This and That

Aaron Hill, out of the Toronto Blue Jays' line-up because of concussion after-effects, is apparently well enough to make a few bucks acting. He's co-starring in the TV series, Greek, as Beaver. KIDDING! It's a different Aaron Hill completely. But it's still shocking to see the name flash across the screen as a co-star in the show, when we have been missing Hill in The Big Show!

Embarcadero, the latest owners of Delphi, my programming language of choice, have officially announced Delphi 2009 and are taking orders. I've been watching the sales webinars (seminars over the web) all week and I'm a tad bit tempted to make the leap from Delphi 7, the flavour of the Pascal language that I favour. Nothing has leapt out to grab my attention and bucks. BUT if they find away to lower the cost on Blackfish SQL licensing, I'd have to seriously consider it. That and letting me ditch the single document interface (invented at Microsoft, boo hiss boo) for the multiple document interface I bought three monitors for.

A bad loss to Hamilton on Labour Day Monday will end Rich Stubler's head-coaching career. It's one thing to lose to the Montreals and Saskatchewans of the CFL. Losing FOUR straight to the Tabbies, including the one in the pre-season, just can't look good to Argo ownership. The club ditched the wrong quarterback this past weekend, sending Michael Bishop to the Roughies in Regina, then dunkirked Orlondo Steinauer less than a year after earning all-star honours in the defensive backfield. The owners, who have FOUR other former head coaches on the payroll, have laid the blame on the players thus far. Another loss, and the long walk home from Hamilton will be as an ex-coach. Look Pinball Clemons to stay on the sidelines if that happens. Steve Burrato or, less likely, Greg Mohns, will be running the show the day after a loss to the still Casey Printers-less team from down the 401.

The Middleman has been the hit of the summer and Natalie Morales is now the IT Girl for all the geeks into comics, science fiction and just plain adorable TV. Count me in the group. The season's been cut down to 12 episodes from the original 13 ordered by ABC Family, but that's allegedly with the agreement of the creative staff. Next Monday night, a 'mirror universe' episode, might be it for the show. If that's the case, SCI-FI better RUN to the negotiating table and rescue the show from oblivion.

You have email. You have an inbox. That should not contain ALL of your email. Set up folders, yearly folders if necessary. Move the email OUT of your inbox and into the folders you create. People who have thousands of emails in their inbox are LAZY MORONS who should NOT BE ALLOWED to have an email account. Clean out the mail box. Delete all of the email in the junk folder. Then EMPTY the trash. And do it weekly. Or I will come live with you. And you can't afford that.

This summer was the first in two decades where I didn't participate in a baseball roto league. Apparently, you CAN live without perusing the line-scores first thing every morning, and then spend a good hour a week plotting trades to take advantage of the poor sots battling for second place (behind me, or course). With the hockey draft about a month away, give or take a week, I'm wondering if I will put the effort into hockey that I have in the past. Lest the rest of you losers REALLY think I'll give it a less-than-winning effort, Fuhgeddabut it!

McCain IS the king of french fries. The 5kg bag at Costco is not only a financial bargain, it's a tasteful triumph of the warm and toasty sliced and diced potato. And each bag seems to contain only perfectly rendered french fries. I've seen none of the little remainders that end up burning into ash in the oil, shortening the life-span of the shortening a fair bit. Oddly enough, the store-bought McCain fries seem to hail from a different factory in a different country entirely. Just the beige appearance of the store-bought kind is enough to tell you different isn't better. The stark-white pristine chips in the Costco bag are a welcome sight when I can get around to getting them.

Motion sensor lights at the front door, instead of the old overly-bright naked light bulb, are a REAL GOOD IDEA. It's going to save money aplenty, even factoring in the cost of buying them and having them professionally installed. The electricity alone will make it a winner of a deal, considering how often I turn on the outside light and then forget to turn it off. Besides, I was up that first night when the paper delivery person delivered my morning paper. The look on his face was precious.

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