Kevin's Ramblings…

I’m meeting with a possible addition to my coaching staff tonight.  Hopefully it will go well.  I’ve arranged to convene the Midget tournament in Niagara Falls at the beginning of August and in turn, they will let the team into the Bantam tournament at no charge.  I will have to make sure that we get buy-in from the parents, but, essentially, I won’t be giving them a choice.  It’s not like it is a tough job anyway.  Hand out scores sheets, line-up cards, etc.  Not too tough for a free tournament.

I do have to get going pretty quickly on setting up tournaments as well.  I hope to apply for them this week, probably before I am offically given the team, but if I don’t end up getting it for some reason I can withdraw.  I am really not sure where this team will fit in classification wise.  I guess I need to find out where they were classified last season.  I am thinking either A or AA anyway.  Since it is a District club it should be AA.  Who knows though.

Found out today that a co-worker was let go.  Don’t know what went down, not exactly anyway.  I feel bad for anyone who loses their job, especially given this job market – really sucks.  Best of luck.

Not much else going on – it was a quick day.

Well, it looks like I will be coaching the Major Bantams this summer.  Major Bantam’s are players turning 15 this year.  I will get approved (or not) this coming Sunday.  We’ll play in the Boys of Summer league which is based out of Western New York.

I received an email tonight from a possible coach.  We are going to meet tomorrow to go over the season and see if we might be able to work together.  I think that I am pretty easy to get along with on the baseball field.  At least a possible coaching staff is falling into place.  I am told that there is a possible pitching coach as well – that would be great.  I could then pick up a father to assist and all would be well.

It is too bad that DB doesn’t want to coach this summer – I do enjoy coaching with him but I don’t think he likes me being the boss – our styles are slightly different.  Oh well…

So, I guess I will see tomorrow night and then wait for Sunday.  If I am given the team it’ll be a lot of work from that point on.  I have to book tournaments, black out dates for the BOS league and what-not.  It’ll only be a few short weeks before we will be able to get outside on some stone diamonds and 5 weeks until we get on our main diamond.  So, that means that the season starts in 7 or 8 weeks.  That time will fly by I am sure.

Hopefully this season will run a bit smoother than last year did.  Not that it was a bad season mind you, it just didn’t go quite as I had hoped.  With Major Bantam I can at least schedule practices before games so the turnout should be WAY better than what I had last season.

Wish me luck.

I sold the entertainment unit in one day.  Not bad.  Apparently, Kijiji works.  If you haven’t used it, give it a try:

http://www.kijiji.ca

You can buy/sell/trade just about anything.  I picked up the other TV stand that I enquired about.  It was $50, had glass doors and a shelf on each side – quite nice actually.  I haven’t set it up as yet but that it my goal for tomorrow evening.

Went out for dinner tonight with both sisters, the brother in law and my aunt.  Hit Jack Astor’s – great good.

Nothing else too exciting happened today – regular day at work, not too busy, not slow.

Have a couple of baseball events this week – SCMBA meeting on Wednesday, registration on Saturday and an NDBA meeting on Sunday.  I’ve volunteered (why, I do not know) to be the Secretary/Registrar for NDBA.  I’ve done it before and now that we are down to a handful of teams it’ll be a very easy job.  As for minute taking, that’s easy too.  I am happy to help out – what else do I do on Sunday mornings?

That’s it for now – 4 more days to go.  Have a good week.

I went to the auction yesterday, not a bad experience for sure.  They had some great 3 piece living room sets that went for $900 for all 3 pieces and it was nice leather.  They had some smaller stuff as well, I picked up an iPod docking station for $20, not a bad deal at all.  T picked up a dish rack – how exciting.

I also went and picked up a really nice entertainment unit.  Got it home (with some trouble) and then I discover that the space for the TV isn’t quite big enough – isn’t that special …  So, I’ve re-posted it on Kijiji and I hope that it won’t be in my hallway for the next 50 years.

I have been in contact with someone else who is selling just a TV stand, it looks good so I think that I will pick it up later this morning, I just have to get myself going.  I was awake at 6:30 or so this morning and then went back to bed at 8 for a couple of hours.  A nap in the morning, not a bad idea to me.  🙂

Back to work tomorrow after 4 days off.  It will be interesting to see if a certain co-worker is back tomorrow or not.  Nothing else too exciting is happening in that area, as far as I know.  Guess we will see tomorrow.

Going out for dinner with my sister tomorrow – not the sister that I regularly go out with, the other one, although they both may go.  They are going to a funeral for an old friend of my parents tomorrow.  I haven’t seen B since Christmas so I suggested that we do something.  Aren’t I a good brother?  I even said that I would pay.  Wow, I am a REALLY good brother.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Well, the Sportsman Show in Toronto today wasn’t too bad but not as good as I remember it being the last time I was there, mind you, that was about six years ago.

It was held at the Toronto Convention Centre this year, not sure how long it’s been there.  Admission was $19 and parking was $17 so not a cheap 1/2 day out.

I found a great pair of camouflage pants, grey/white style for $30 taxes included – not bad at all.  After wandering around for what seemed like forever we found the Wilderness Tours booth and I booked a trip for late September.  I am hoping that I can find some people to go with this time, I had some interest the last time around but everyone backed out.  I’d really like to go again – it’s the time of your life.

We went to Gretzky’s for lunch.  Great food, I had chili cheese fries and jambalaya for lunch and a cookie w/ ice cream for dessert – awesome.  The service was the slowest that I have ever seen, anywhere.  It wasn’t like that they were busy, it just sucked.  Oh well.

The trip to and from Toronto wasn’t too bad at all.  Better going in then coming home, we left TO at 3:10 this afternoon and had a few slowdowns but it only took an hour and a half to get home.

I won’t be needing any dinner tonight anyway, still full from lunch.

My sister goes in for a CAT scan this evening shortly after 11pm.  I hope that the results don’t show anything bad.  I think that I will go along with them, I can keep Dave company – I don’t think that I will be sleeping by then as yet.  I asked her to call me at 10, I will know by that time.

Nothing planned for tomorrow other than buying a receiver/amp and speakers for the TV.  I’d like to have some better sound for my TV.  It is only $100 which is a pretty good deal.

Hitting an auction on Saturday with Tracey – should be fun, never been to an auction before.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to everyone as well – I even wore a green shirt today.  No green beer for me though, thanks.

That was a very interesting three days at work.  I am glad that my work week is done. Done I tell ya, done.

It was a very busy three days, they went by very quickly – this is a good thing though, I do enjoy being busy.  Some of the people who call us for assistance are “interesting” we shall say.  No names though, can’t do that.

I hope that my co-workers have fun over the next two days.

Off to the Sportsman Show tomorrow, should be a good time.  I will try to take some pictures and put some on here.  We’ll see I guess.

I may have mentioned that the OtterBox (http://www.otterbox.com) broke for my Milestone, the part that covers the face of the phone.  I call the Telus store where I purchased it and was told that they don’t handle warranty items that I had to call OtterBox directly.  Good thing that they have an 800 number – I call, they don’t ask for a copy of the receipt or anything but they ship off a new case, the whole thing and it arrived today – pretty good turn around.  I guess if the rest of the case breaks I will have those parts as well – thanks OtterBox – I am sorta surprised that it broke at all, their cases are normally pretty darn good, should be for $40.

So, to re-cap, my work week is done and I am in relax mode.  Enjoy your weekend when it arrives.

So, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 9 sometime very recently, yesterday, today perhaps.  I had tried the beta, it wasn’t very stable.  That isn’t too surprising, beta’s sometimes are not stable at all.

I installed IE9 at work (32-bit) and it seemed to run ok, I didn’t visit a whole bunch of sites so who knows.  I figured that I would try it at home under Windows 7 64-bit.  Well, as soon as I tried to log into my blog and post something, it didn’t work.  It also locked up a few times in other sites (Twitter, Facebook).  Naturally, I decided to remove it.

I went into the Control Panel and selected “Uninstall a program” – low and behold, IE9 doesn’t appear in the list.  It is under Windows Components along the left-hand side.  So, I uncheck the box and IE9 starts uninstalling.  I restart the laptop and when it comes back up there is no IE9 (good thing) BUT there is no IE8 either – it didn’t appear to roll-back.  Nice job Microsoft.

So, I have no web browser on my laptop which is needed to download a web browser.  I downloaded Firefox on another PC and copied it via USB stick to this laptop to install it.  I think, because Microsoft pissed me off, that I am done, for the time being at least with IE (at home anyway).

So, that brings me today’s post:

The Auction – I received a flyer today about an auction this coming weekend at White Oaks.  I was going to see if my sister wanted to go but then remembered that she works on Saturdays.  I called Tracey who loves auctions and she is joining me – should be fun.  I have never actually been to a “real” auction.  They have furniture, appliances, computers, etc.  I am looking forward to it – I am hoping to see some living room furniture, cheap would be great.

Anyway, that’s it for tonight.  Have a good one.

Daylight savings time started today.  I guess it sorta sucks that we lose an hour of our weekend, come on now, we all have to go back to work tomorrow.  I really don’t understand why we keep switching between daylight savings and standard time.  Just leave it alone.  They (yes, the all powerful “they”) say it is to make it so we have more light in the evenings to save electricity costs for lights, etc.  Well, what about the fact that we have to have the lights turned on in the morning to get our days started?  I don’t know, I am obviously NOT one of the “theys”.

I am going to look at a loveseat and chair that a coworker have for sale today.  It is a dark brown leather, looks great in the pictures and pictures are supposed to be worth 1000 words, but, I’d like to see them for myself.  I REALLY need some “new” furniture in the living room.  The black leather couch that I purchased about 6 years ago for $500 has seen better days.  It has a large tear in it from when Zeus decided that he wasn’t getting enough leather in his diet and the one cushion has sunk way down – no support at all on that one.  It doesn’t owe me anything for being a 6+ year old couch anyway.  The loveseat that I have, also in leather is still very comfy, it was obviously well constructed.  It needs to be cleaned though.  I think both of these pieces will go into the basement which I am turning into a sort of a rec-room.  I am going to move my air hockey table down there – that will be fun, it weighs in at about 200 lbs.  So, hopefully this loveseat and chair will do the trick – I don’t want to go out and spend $2000 on something decent.

Having dinner tonight with J&D.  No, we aren’t going out, I am cooking.  Nothing fancy, homemade chicken fingers and fries.  Eleborate, isn’t it.  My project for the day is to clean up the dining room, actually turn it back into a dining room from the current baseball storage area that it has been for nearly a year.  I am also planning on cleaning up the office which really needs it.  I guess I am currently stalling, making this blog post, drinking coffee.  I work better under pressure anyway. 

The weekend has otherwise been non-descript.  Took it pretty easy yesterday, got my hair coloured.  It looks all right, but, under the “wrong” light, it looks more yellow blonde than white blonde.  Oh well, I’ll live.  Only cost me $20 so that isn’t too bad.

I am heading to the Sportsman Show this week, on Thursday (St. Patricks Day).  I haven’t been there in a few years – 6 or 7 anyway.  It is at the Toronto Convention Centre as opposed to the CNE grounds – I will likely get rapped for parking downtown, but whatever.  Going with BP.  He says that he’d like to drive but I am going to veto that idea – I am not sure that I want to drive on the highway with him.  He recently got himself a new car, used, but new to him.  It’s a Saturn ION I think.  Not sure why he picked a Saturn seeing as they won’t be making them anymore, but he liked his first Saturn so hopefully he’s happy.

That’s all for now, I REALLY have to get started on the house work stuff.

The weekend is finally here.  Wow, that was a long week.  I had to work 9am – 9pm on Thursday, long day there.

Friday was interesting.  Normally, Friday’s are rather boring.  This past Friday was anything but boring, it was one of the if not the busiest Fridays I have ever had at work – this isn’t necessarily a bad thing though.  The day did zip right by.

No real plans for this weekend.  Going to do some work around the house and that’s about it.  I plan on de-cluttering the office and dining room.  Doesn’t that sound exciting?

It was Tuesday evening that I purchased an iPad.  It is awesome, does exactly what I want with it.  Very cool indeed.  Since it is a first generation iPad, I saved some bucks as well – as we are all aware (I am sure), the iPad 2 is coming out, tomorrow, I think.  Thanks again to Anthony for recommending it even though he didn’t remember recommending it at all.  Perhaps I could have avoided a few headaches if I had listened to him, BUT, I wouldn’t have learned what I needed to know about the other devices available (already “reviewed” in my blog).

I signed up for an @me.com account.  I have a free 60 day trial.  After that it is $99 per year or something along those lines.  Does anyone actually pay for this?  I can’t see that it is worth it unless perhaps I am missing something.  $99 for an email account and syncing with your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch?  Really?

Maybe I am missing something – I will have to investigate and report back.

I am in the middle (well, 2/3 of the way through I guess) a VERY long day at work.  I am working 9am until approximately 11pm – perhaps I will get out of here sooner, time will tell.  I am doing IT support for a committee meeting, not sure what the topic is tonight, sure to be dull though.  Wish me luck.

Update – 20:57

Well, the meeting still isn’t over.  I am done with what I had to get done so perhaps I can head out soon.  I am bushed …