Occasionally Wright

Friends Waiting For News From Burma

It boggles my mind that the government of Burma/Myanmar still isn't allowing much-needed aid into the country, and while disasters like this halfway around the world are usually pretty faceless, this one is hitting home.

Ruth and Aung Lawt are two of my mother;s best friends back home. She babysat their first two children and she occasionally takes care of them. They moved to PEI nine years ago and both of them are originally from Burma. Aung runs the sushi stand at the Superstore on University Avenue. Ruth runs the Monsoon tea room downtown. Both of their families live in Rangoon and neither one of them has been able to get in touch with any of their relatives. Aung would probably go back and try to find them himself if he was allowed back in the country. He's a former political prisoner though and can't go back without risking his life.

If there was an easy way to get aid into Burma I'd plead with you to do so, but as it stands the only way I can think of to help these people right now is to support Monsoon.Knowing Ruth and Aung they'll do everything they can to help their families when they get word form Burma. If you're looking for a good lunch in Charlottetown this week feel free to stop by Monsoon and show some support for this incredible family. The restaurant is at 79 University Ave.

Obama's Face Shows Up In An Odd Place

As far as I know nobody else is talking about this (aside from a very brief thread on the Thrashers' message boards).

So can someone explain to me why the Obama campaign is advertising on the site of an NHL team? That in itself is odd enough as don't imagine many sports teams would risk alienating their fanbase by taking money from one candidate and thereby showing tacit support for that candidate and party. But what's really odd is that the team is the Toronto Maple Leafs. Are there that many ex-pats living in Toronto that the Obama camp thinks it's worth their while? It's a big ad and it's in a prime location on the site so I don't imagine it came cheaply.

I first saw it more than 24 hours ago and I'm still scratching my head over it, so if anyone has any thoughts please chime in. And do campaign advertising/spending rules apply to advertisements outside of the US?

It's Almost Like Being An Athlete Again

By my recollection it was the first organized game of soccer I'd played in since 1997. Between now and then I played in one other game with no ref, shoes for goal posts, and about 20 people on the rock strewn field for each team. Even that was almost six years ago.

To say I was out of practice and out of shape going into tonight's game would be generous, but I held my own, didn't embarrass myself, and actually played a part in setting up the game-tying goal.

I'm playing as a spare in a 7-on-7 league where we use shortened fields (thank goodness) and no offsides. I have extremely limited ball skills, I can't steal the ball from a three-year-old and I have no idea how to head the ball. Fortunately I still have good speed (in very, very short bursts) and the opposition doesn't know that I have almost no ability to do anything with the ball if someone happens to get it to me. So I'm a good decoy. I can also stick with a streaking striker and prevent him from being open.

That's what I do now and that's what I did back in the mid-90's before I got kicked off my college rec league team for being bad for team chemistry. That's right- kicked off. The coach called it being cut, but who makes cuts a month into the season, right Gordon? One day I was on the team and the next the coach emailed all of us and said that "in the interest of team chemistry" he was cutting three of us. None of us were any good, but we tried hard. I guess they figured we were taking time away form the "stars" of the team that went winless in league play. And by winless I mean they routinely lost by half a dozen goals. Good thing they got rid of us scrubs though, or who knows what would have happened.

Now? Now I'm tired, sore, my lungs are still burning a bit, my ankle got stepped on, and I have turf burn on my knee. I feel awesome, and I can't wait to do it again next week. New cleats, new shin pads, new socks, and soccer under the lights on a top-notch field. I didn't realize how much I missed it.

Education Uproar in New Brunswick

It would seem that the education system in the province of New Brunswick is falling apart. I haven't lived there since the late 90's and I'll probably never live there again, but four of my eight nieces and both of my nephews live there, so it's not as if it has no impact on me.

The crux of the issue is that the government of the only bilingual province in Canada wants to shut down the early immersion program that allows children to become more less fluent before they hit grade five. Everyone that knows anything about second language acquisition will tell you that the younger the child is the easier it is for them to learn a new language. Apparently that doesn't matter in New Brunswick.

To learn more about the fight to keep early immersion in New Brunswick check out this site. The video below includes a snippet of my niece Hannah, who wouldn't have been able to read or write the letter she read in both French and English without early immersion.

Micosoft Publisher

I've been using Microsoft FrontPage on my work laptop for just about three years now and it perfectly suits my needs. I don't have a copy of it at home but we just got a dirt cheap version of Office Enterprise 2007 for the home PC. I installed it tonight and I've been poking around in Publisher 2007 to see if it'll get the job done for me if I want to leave the laptop at the office.

Publisher has a web publishing app but for the life of me I can't find a way to view a given page in code view. The 'Help' option didn't live up to its name and Google came up short. Surely a fellow web geek can help me out? How do I view the source code of a page I've built in Publisher?

The Storm Has Been Weathered

For those who were wondering, we made it through the tornado fine. It was downtown and we were not. On Saturday afternoon we got some severe hail, and I'll put up a picture or two and a video clip later.

Philips Arena escaped the storms relatively unscathed. I don't think it even lost a window. My office building on the other hand sustained some damage, though our floors were more or less fine. we have double paned glass and a few windows lost their outer panes. Windows on other floors got completely blown out, but we did a lot better than other buildings in the area.

Here are some pictures that a co-worker took this morning. My building is the big glass one with the "V" at the top. The tangled mess of aluminum siding with the Philips logo above it is the facing of our parking deck.garage. Just cosmetic damage.

Nash-tastic

This might be the most impressive goal I've ever seen.

Georgian Winter

It's kind of funny that this was the cover of the Sports Illustrated waiting for me in my mailbox today. Not ha ha funny- just funny because I left work early to drive home in the first snow I've seen in almost three years. I'm not one of those crazy people that freaks out when I have to drive in a little bit of snow, but my tires are bare and I don't trust the four million or so people in the city that DO freak out over snow. So I beat some of the traffic and got home incident free.

Well, before you knew it the little bit of snow was well over an inch of snow on our back deck. Still a little bit by Canadian standards but a lot in Georgia. I believe they said on the news that today was the first time since 1993 that all of Georgia got snowed on on the same day. It snowed for about five hours before switching over to freezing rain and now it's just cold. There's going to be a nice crunchy mess in the morning if it doesn't warm up. That bodes well for rush hour traffic. Tomorrow being a game day (Thrashers/Canadiens, 7 pm) I'd rather not be late getting to the office and then the rink.

Here's the evidence of the snowfall in case you're skeptical. That's the very early stage before it started accumulating. Our dog has played in snow before so she didn't mind it- she loves the cold anyway. The cat on the other hand is an indoor cat but he got to go outside for a few minutes and he couldn't figure out why stuff kept falling on his head.

We got enough snow for the people across the street to make a snowman and for me to lob a few snowballs. It was also enough for people coming home from work to stop at the top of our hill and think about whether or not they wanted to try to drive down the steep grade which is probably over 30 degrees. Steeper than the back side of the big hill in Canoe Cove if that means anything to you.

Anyway, I expect almost all of it will be gone an hour after the sun comes up, but that will probably be too late to prevent schools from closing. There's only a handful of sand trucks and plows in the whole city so it's not like they can do much to clear whatever's left on the roads.

So that was winter in Atlanta. Six more weeks and I should be able to plant the garden. As nice as the snowfall was I'm okay with going another three years until I see it again. By the way, they're already calling this the "Storm of '08".

A New Perspective On Remembrance Day

I'm a few months late in posting this, but here's my brother (who is a former reservist and current RCMP member) serving as one of the sentries at the National Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa.

And here's an article about Remembrance Day that just came out that I'm quoted in.

For some reason this was the year when something clicked in me and Remembrance day stopped being just about the people that served in the World Wars and Korea and started to be about the people serving now. Maybe it was the fact that three guys who were kids in my cabin when I was a camp counselor more than a decade ago had just gotten back (unscathed) from Afghanistan.

Going to Nashville

Wow. 6 weeks since my last post. I'm not into resolutions but let's see if I can get back to posting at least once a week.

Anyhow, I'm going to be in Nashville this weekend and I'm looking for stuff to do, particularly on Saturday. Any recommendations? I'm looking for a good site with live music listings since Pollstar is only showing a few bands, and this is Nashville we're talking about. There's got to be stuff going on.