The passing of a good person

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I was out most of yesterday. My Aunt Eleanor Bayne passed away recently after a very full 87 years of life. So yesterday was her funeral. There was two parts to this funeral, the first was the viewing at the cemetery early-ish in the morning, followed by the internment. Then in the afternoon there was a memorial ceremony. Aunt Eleanor was a very good person, and I'm sorry I never really got to know her as well as I probably could and should have. The bulk of the time we spent at her house was when I was too young to appreciate good conversation over tea and her wonderful baking. Well ... I appreciated the baking, but not so much the conversation. I do know that she was well loved and that she was quick to give her love out to the people who were a part of her life in any small way. She will be sorely missed. I (thankfully) haven't had to deal with death very often in my life. There have been a few funerals I've been to since I was old enough to start to understand what death meant. Each time, particularly for the three that were untimely, you kind of have to think about how short life is, and how precious it is. It makes me wonder if I am doing all I can with my life. Is it enough to just be happy and comfortable? What else is there to make life worthwhile? Twice in my life I've had to deal with someone in my grade or university year pass away in an untimely fashion. Both times it was a shock - how can death come to someone so young? How is that a fair way to go?

As much as we will miss Aunt Eleanor's presence in our lives, I am very thankful that she lived a very fulfilling life. In the past couple of years she has been suffering a great deal due to health problems, and in the end this may be for the best. I really don't like to see people suffer for long periods of time. I certainly wouldn't want to go through that much suffering.

The funeral was nice for the most part. I had a few complaints though. The internment was held in the cemetery which is a naturally wide open area. The wind was blowing, and it was pretty cold (although at least the sun was shining). The pastor drew the service out much longer than I thought was appropriate for the several older people in the crowd (and really for my comfort level too). My Grandparents were of the same opinion, so I wasn't alone on that score. Later, the same pastor did the Devotional near the end of the memorial service, and I was none too pleased with the full three point sermon he gave. It felt entirely inappropriate to me. But I will attempt to delay that rant for a future post because this is not really the place for it.

Other than my complaint about the pastor, the memorial service was excellent. We got to hear from several of the people in the family. Their memories, stories, and gifts of music were shared, and it really was a lovely ceremony. Very fitting for someone as lovely as my Aunt Eleanor.

Heraldk

Predictions

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I'm not going to give my predictions for the upcoming NHL season, although I suppose it has already started officially since there's been a couple of games have been played over in London. I am, however, going to rant a little about the predictions of other "experts". It seems that hockey experts agree that the Oilers have no shot at making the playoffs this year. I have one thing to say: why do these so called "experts" always sell the Oil short? It doesn't seem all that long ago when the Oilers were pushing for the 8th and final playoff spot a couple years ago. They were a team that was fighting it's own potential. I knew the team had a lot of talent, but it seemed that every couple of games, they'd lose a you-should-win-this-game type scenario and they'd slip back a notch. They did it, but barely. In the first round that year, they were up against the high powered Detroit Red Wings. Everyone wrote Edmonton off and had them down in out quickly. Surprise, surprise when the Oil suddenly became the team they were capable of becoming and took down not only Detroit, but San Jose, Anaheim, and almost Carolina en route to the stanley cup final.

Last year was a painful year for the average Oiler fan. The team struggled in mediocrity for most of the season and then got hit by a terrible injury streak that took most of the regulars out of the lineup. As a result, the team skidded to a halt and failed to win most of their remaining games.

The offseason was a high-drama period where the Oilers made a large number of moves and almost completely re-tooled. Powered by the new blue-liners of Pitkanen and Souray, they have far more power on defence than they had last year. Penner adds some size and some scoring punch and Sanderson is a wily veteran who should contribute as well. The real exciting thing for this upcoming season though is the chance for some of the youth to shine. The Oilers have several young players, in addition to Ales Hemsky, who all have a shot of hitting it big this year. These guys include Gagner, Nilsson, Brodziak, Pouliot, and Cogliano. To me, this is super exciting ... and I have a hard time believing that the Oilers are going to have trouble making the playoffs.

But lets take a look at what the experts think. One of the oft-quoted stats from last year is +/-. I'm not sure how they can compare player's +/- stats correctly when these numbers are so very biased on the team they were playing for. For example, Souray and Pitkanen both played on teams that didn't make the playoffs last year. This typically means that those teams got scored on more often than they scored (duh). So take two important defencemen who play big minutes for their teams and put them on clubs that are losing. What happens to their plus minus? It plummets. Whoop-dee-doo. I'm not saying the statistic is meaningless. I'm just saying that you need to make sure you keep in mind what you're trying to compare.

A lot of analysis seems to compare how a team has changed from the previous year. Unfortunately, this also is a problem. How do the experts know that the "winners" of the free agency craziness (the rangers and the flyers) are going to gel and mesh the star players they signed? Who's to say that teams with a bunch of young talent are going to not mesh and start winning games? The past doesn't necessarily tell the future, folks - especially when so much has changed from last season.

One of the things I think many people forget is that the new collective bargaining agreement is giving teams some level ground to play on. It's not completely level, that's for sure, but teams are much more evenly matched than they used to be. Remember the Oiler's heyday way back when they were winning cups every year? That team was so stacked that you had to expect great things from them. Fast forward to today - there are far fewer teams that looked that stacked in comparison. Maybe the penguins look a bit awesome at the moment ... but the division from them to the next closest team is far smaller than for the Oilers back in the day. The salary cap helps balance out the skill players among the teams, and as a result, nearly any team has a chance to do well enough to hit the playoffs. So I don't think last year means nearly as much as the experts seem to think. I also don't think they have ever given the Oilers enough credit.

So I think the Oilers have a good chance of doing well this season, and we'll just have to see how it turns out.

Go Oilers! Heraldk

The New heraldk.ca

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Welcome! I have decided that it is more than time to put some work into this website again. As part of this work, I'm re-introducing the root level heraldk.ca as a new blog-style format. In it, I'll be posting my rants and thoughts about things. At first, it'll probably be fairly sparse, but I will fill it in over time (hopefully fairly frequently) with my latest rants. I hope the quality will improve over time and that you find some use out of it.

One of the reasons for this is I want to make a distinction between my personal diary style blog entries and some of the more content heavy posts. As well, I want to keep this blog free of poker related content so that I can once again serve up some google ads. The reason they've been lacking is because the policy for google ads does not allow you to place ads on sites with gambling related content. By separating these, I can keep this content separate -- plus many of my random readers probably don't really care that I won $25 in my most recent session of poker.

So I hope you enjoy my new site, and the forthcoming new look for both heraldk.ca and my personal blog.

Heraldk

On Doing Good Business

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It seems to me that there is a certain subset of businesses operating in today's world that just don't seem to get it. If your business treats me with respect, then I will be far more inclined to do business with you. If, on the other hand, you treat me like an idiot, then I will avoid your business like the plague. Take, for instance, the numerous credit card offerings I get in the mail. The chances are, if you have sent me 20 previous offers for credit cards, I will refuse your latest one that presents no added benefits compared to the previous bazillion other offers. So STOP SENDING THEM! I don't care that I get a low interest rate if I transfer an existing balance to another card. The reason I have good credit and can get a platinum card if I want to is because I'm smart enough not to carry a balance!

I also find that many advertisements on television and the radio seem to want to go out of their way to annoy me. I know that creating a good advertisement is a difficult and expensive proposition. But so is running a good business. Put in some effort to make the ad effective without being annoying. If ads start to annoy me, I start to actively avoid going to those establishments.

The thing I like to see businesses do to gain my respect and my money is for them to display a strong image taking the high road. If you treat your customers well, have a good product that you support very well, and don't annoy me or treat me like an idiot, then I will likely do business with you!

Examples of the wrong way to do this:

  • CapitalOne credit cards (the reason I'm ranting about this to begin with)
  • anyone doing telemarketing calls (particularly the pushy ones)
  • companies that utilize those automated dialing systems (the ones that call you and saw "please hold for the next available service representative" ... YOU CALLED ME! Please tell me you've got enough time to deal with your valued customer)
  • Annoying ads that say the same thing at the same time slot every morning. Good examples of this are the ads that are placed in between news segments on The Bear radio station. I will never buy a mattress from Sleep Country, Jeep-Dodge-Chrysler, or the handful of others that had ads that I didn't want to listen to EVERY morning when my alarm went off. (kinda defeats the purposes of advertising if I don't go buy stuff from you).

I really like how there are some really upfront companies that treat their customers with respect and do a good job doing what they do. Examples of these companies (note that I am not paid by these companies for saying this ... they are just an example of what I mean. The PSO link does give me referrals if you signup with them, but that is their standard referral program):

  • Poker Source Online has gone over and above their call on many occasions. I'm not as active a member there since I've finished nearly all the promos they offer, but as long as you follow the instructions for each promo they will take care of you.
  • NearlyFreeSpeech.net is my current webhost, and they do an amazing job. Unlike many web hosting services that attempt to offer packages which do not suit the needs of the person buying that package, nearlyfreespeech only charges you for what you use. Their FAQ and other documentation is incredibly refreshing to read. They tell you exactly why they feel they deserve your business and do not cut corners or fudge the truth. If you're looking for a good webhost this is certainly the way to go in my opinion.

There are a few other companies that should stand out here. I'm a fan of Apple, Nintendo, and Blizzard - companies that release great products with a great eye for detail and quality. They also tend to have top-notch support which certainly doesn't hurt!

So ... if you want to impress me and earn my hard-earned money ... keep this in mind. I'd also urge you to not support the business models I mentioned earlier. I don't believe we'll see a change away from these terrible things that annoy me so much, but its nice to dream!

Heraldk

Playoffs!

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When the Oilers are in the playoffs, this is my favourite time of the year. Well, maybe not my only favourite time of year ... but it certainly ranks high! The Oiler game last night was exciting playoff hockey. Despite the disappointing finish, I think the Oil can certainly recover from the loss and come out strong tomorrow. I'm frankly confused with the "afternoon" game tomorrow though. The game starts at 11:00 am mountain time, and the only reason I can think of that they have it that early is because they want to put the triple header of hockey all day on Sunday.

But hockey players are used to coming out to play in the evening. The Oiler game is in the MORNING for us Albertans. Pro or not, those hockey players are going to be way out of their normal hockey game routine ... and I have a feeling we're going to see a sluggish game tomorrow morning despite the importance of the game.

Why is it so important to have a triple header of hockey? Frankly, I don't know.

Anyways, now that I'm done ranting, I watched the Montreal-Carolina game tonight, and was really impressed. I'm kind of a closet Montreal Canadien fan ... they're my favourite team from the Eastern conference and I was glad that they made the playoffs. I was even more happy to see them come out and play a really strong game against Carolina, which is apparently one of the best teams in the East.

Hopefully Edmonton can get their cylinders firing up and take on Detroit with all the skill I know they posess. I'd love to be cheering Edmonton and Montreal all the way to the stanley cup final!!

Heraldk

Why do people Blog?

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An interesting question came up the other day when some friends and I sat down for coffee. "Why do people blog?". Its an interesting question, and one that I can't quite be sure of the answer right away. The purpose of my blog is to have a kind of journal that I will actually keep an interest in maintaining. One of the problems I've had whenever I try to start a personal diary or journal is I tend to write stuff that I don't find useful later - its just embarassing. A blog though, is much more public than a personal diary, and thus even as I write it I need to evaluate whether I want other people to read it or not. This keeps my posts much less filled with future embarassment, and as a result, I find I can actually go back and read some of the stuff I've posted awhile ago and say "cool, I did on ".

Aside from that, I use my blog as kind of a personal soapbox. It doesn't matter that I don't have many (or any) readers. What matters is that I have an area where I can vent my frustrations or give an outlet to my daily cynicism at the world at large. In the days of geocities and tripod, I started a webpage called "The Domain of the Herald". It has long since died away, and the only remnants of it are on a recordable cd I have somewhere in my house. However, this was my first foray into online editorial writing, and I found it was pretty fun to have this personal soapbox. Since then, I've always enjoyed a chance to rant about the latest media outrage for instance.

So that's the big reason why I blog. Primarily, it is a place for me that just so happens to have public access for those who are oddly interested in my life, thoughts and feelings.

There's a lot of reasons that other people blog that don't really fit why I do, but are common as well.

  • Anonymous. The internet seems to give people this layer of anonymity that allows people to say whatever they want. As a result, more people tend to be willing to jump out and say things *because* they don't have to worry about someone knowing who they are.
  • News. Some bloggers take it upon themselves to help relay the news as they see it. A lot of these bloggers have inside connections to various places and are able to get news out faster or in a better way than your standard news sources.
  • Commentaries. There are a lot of blogs out there that strive for readership. They consistently put out interesting articles and stories that bring back people to their site over and over. A good example is Daring Fireball, a site that has often brought up some very interesting things about the latest developments by Apple. Its blogs like this that really shine in this area.
  • Other. Man, there are a lot of blogs out there, and a lot of them don't fit into the standard things I refer to. Many blogs are a blend of these types. Some are very personal, some are totally not personal. Some are factual, some rely on conspiracy theories.

I guess one of the biggest things about blogs is they are a nice way of presenting a history of things. If you can formulate what you're trying to say into this structure, than a blog will do wonders for you. Its simple, its easy, and there's a lot of nice software out there to deal with your blog's history for you so all you have to do is write. Its really quite wonderful.

Heraldk