The good old Hockey Game Chapter 1 · Saturday March 1, 2008 by colin newell
In the last week I have been to three hockey games; 2 Victoria Salmon Kings games and one Vancouver Canucks games.
Yes. This is a fairly recent phenomenon for me.
And prior to seeing the Canucks play last November of 2007, I have not seen a regular season game since the era of Bobby Hull and Bobby Orr.
No, I am not kidding and yes, I feel like I have been asleep for 100 years.
Here is the thing. I have seen 3 Salmon Kings games in the last month and I am sold. I love these guys and I’ll tell you why:
The Salmon Kings play at the Save On Foods center which is an intimate space at about 5000 seats. The Canucks play at GM Place, which I think seats about 17,000.
Salmon Kings hockey is totally family friendly right down to the folksy intermissions with short pee-wee hockey games, multi-generational families clustered in rows of affordable seats, familiar faces and collections of arena geezers who could be anyones and everyones grand-pa. The waft of popcorn and hot-dogs drowns out the fragrance of hops and malt at the Salmon Kings games.
On appearances, Canucks hockey is a great big corporate experience with tickets so generally un-affordable as to be out of reach for the average guy. If it wasn’t for periodic work-related visits to Vancouver with hotels provided, the NHL hockey game would be out of my reach.
Molson Canadian Beer! Canucks hockey is less a sports experience and more a giant beer garden…
with lots of really big men… I mean, where do these Bear-sized males, who look like they eat steak three times a day, come from? Surprisingly, despite the zillion gallons of Molson beer that are served at the average Canucks game, the audience remains pretty sedate. Everyone is, after all, reminded frequently to behave themselves – there is even a 1-800 squeal line you can call if your adjacent revelers get a little out of control.
Back to the Salmon Kings. These Victoria boys give good hockey for the $20-something ticket prices and they really work at it – I mean, they have nothing to lose and everything to gain if their talent shines through.
The Canucks, on the other hand, are all millionaires… and it shows. The crowd is more blinged out, more angry by the sounds of all the expletives that drift through the crowd… and yea, generally less family friendly.
So. Give me the smaller arena and the small town home team with the 20 dollar tickets… and I will save the Canucks for that, ahem, special occasion
Your daily bread #1 - · Tuesday February 26, 2008 by colin newell
I would hazard a guess that if you took a snap-shot of what the average person is thinking about over an average hour of an average day…
Some of those thoughts would include elements of sex, food, work and basic survival.
And although some of us probably do not think about sex or survival every hour of the waking day, I am almost positive that snippets of food pass through our cerebral cortex very, very frequently.
And not just about food in general, but meal planning and food economics.
Hey. Everyone can be a food economist. And if they are not, they should be.
So, it was with this thought that I took the mobile coffeecrew blog roadshow to an Estevan Village Cafe to discuss food economics with someone who knows it way better than the average Joe – Bubby Roses bakery’s own Mark Engels.
I have been thinking about food a lot lately, especially about the increasing cost of staple items, like flour… and no one knows flour like Mark Engels.
Check this out: I probably use 10 pounds of Whole-wheat and Unbleached white flour in my baking adventures every 6 weeks or so.
Mark’s crew at Bubby Roses Bakery use upwards of 80 kg every day or so.
Uhm – that is my weight… give or take a few kilo.
And despite the fact that flour is on a steady up-tick, the prices at Bubby’s remain pretty static – but do not expect that to last… at Bubby’s or anywhere else.
And although I have never really paid much attention to the cost of a loaf of bread, I have started to in the last few months.
For instance, we like a good cheese bread, and at Thrifty’s, in Victoria, the price has jumped from about $3.19 to $4.19 in about 1 year – all the while Safeway’s has stayed pretty steady at $3.69 – not bad considering that there is less than 25 cents worth of flour in any of those loaves.
Naturally, I wonder what has been raising my bread!
So I asked master baker, Mark Engels, “What’s up in the bakery?”
Mark says that there are a wide variety of things going on in food World that most of us are blithely ignorant of – and that’s just the issues surrounding the humble grain supply.
“We are clearing fields of wheat to plant corn for ethanol…” “There is a trend away from the food supply to the fuel supply… and this is a global trend.”
“Factor in global warming, emerging markets, the roller-coaster ride that is coffee, chocolate, oil and yes, wheat on the trading floors of the stock exchange… and you have the recipe for a global food crisis..”
Ah. Thanks Mark. Something more for me to worry about.
I think I will take this moment and think about sex for a while.
Ok, so food issues are a big deal. In this, the beginning of a continuing series of short blogs on the food supply, I will do my level best to dig deep into the minds of the food masters to bring you, the readers, the straight goods… on food economics.
Sun to set on common sense in 2009 · Sunday February 24, 2008 by colin newell
A December 2005 headline read… Congress is poised to make Feb. 17, 2009, the hard-and-fast date for the national conversion to digital TV — ending the more than 60-year era of analog broadcasts and potentially making millions of analog TV sets obsolete…
Hard and fast date? Hardly. The date of the analog expiry date has been bounced around more than the average basket-ball at a Nicks game.
Why? Why the space race to land-fill 75 million analog TV sets in the U.S.A. ?
Well – The government and the FCC (once considered the same thing, now hardly!) hope to collect more than $10 billion by auctioning off the spectrum now used for analog TV, allocating some of it to emergency services. Brilliant economics?
According to the FCC, people who want to keep their analog sets will be able to apply for subsidies. Each household can get up to two vouchers, worth $40 apiece, that will help pay for boxes that convert digital signals to analog. The bill sets $1.5 billion aside for that purpose.
Now hang on one moment. I live in Canada and I view converted digital signals from my cable company down-converted from the slightly superior digital to the analog signals that my HD Ready Sony is more than capable of slurping up.
So. Instead of forcing 75 million household to ditch their classic TV’s or add yet another set top box to their already straining consoles… why not get the cable companies to do it for you with the option of buying a box for the extra features?
No. That would make sense wouldn’t it!?
In summary, this whole affair is considered one great big gift for the tech companies and cable monoliths – thanks in full to the highly cooperative FCC which is little more than an imaginary government agency in corporate clothing.
Canadian dementia report #1 · Thursday February 21, 2008 by colin newell
The Songwriters Association of Canada will reveal a proposal Thursday that would see every Canadian’s monthly Internet bill increase by $5 in exchange for the ability to download as many “illegal” music files as they choose.
Uhm. Excuse me? Excuse me. Excuse me!
I have never downloaded a music file. Illegally or not. Never. Ever.
Yes. There are some people that do. I am not one of those people.
Yes, I have friends that steal music. I do not advocate it. It is not in my best interest to steal music… being a part time musician after all.
A friend of mine – who has a family… 3 daughters and a wife… is an advocate of stealing music at whatever cost.
Quoting my friend: “My girls need to have their music downloads”
Ok, I acknowledged, one day while trying to fix his computer after he had installed a bad copy of Kazaa or Lime-wire.
Bad meaning that his computer was kidnapped and every time one of his teenage girls tried to use their internet browser, they were taken to a porn site.
I said to friend: “Dude, your girls need” their free downloads, but their computer is being over-run with porn.”
Oh, he said. They are OK with porn.
They need their free downloads after all.
As 1/2 of a child-less couple: Color me speechless!
Yes. He is part of the problem for the music industry of Canada. Not me.
I mean. Why not get every Police force in Canada to mail traffic tickets to every Canadian… because after all, they might actually speed one day.
It is demented. It is retarded. It is part of being Canadian.
