Next up... Vegas!

Oh baby!  Next week I'm heading out to Lost Wages for the very first time!  I'm really looking forward to the trip but since I've never been there I have no idea what to expect.  I'm not a huge gambler, but I'm told that there are a ton of other things to do in Vegas. 


I'm heading there with a group of friends (about 10-15 of us) and I'm sure everyone will have their own agenda for the trip.  Lucky for me a few of my close friends have offered to take me under their wing and show me how to do Vegas up right!  


It's amazing though, how many people are just dying to share what they know about Vegas with you.  I've put the word out that I'm a neophyte when it comes to Sin City, and people are stepping over each other to offer me advice (most prominently - Don't Go!).  I love the ideas that have been mentioned too, and boy some of the ideas are pretty creative. 


Having said that, if you have any ideas for me, feel free to pass them along in the comments section.  I'm looking for tips on Restaurants, Shows, Shopping, Places to See, Things to Do, Things to Avoid, and any tips in general that might help me out!  Ways to save money are also greatly appreciated as I suspect I'll probably drop a few more dollars than I'd like while I'm down there.  *cringe*  Ah heck... it's my first time, lets just see what happens! So keep those suggestions coming.... 


Ok.... annnnnnd..... go!  

May Long Weekend

The May Long Weekend is just about here.  I'm really looking forward to getting out and doing some camping again.  Especially since I picked up a used Coleman tent trailer at the end of last season.  I've only used it once but I'm really stoked about getting some more use out of it this summer.


In the past we used to do a big group camp extravaganza out to the mountains every May Long Weekend.  We'd book a group site, round up about 20 people and party all weekend.  Since we had a group site we weren't bothering anyone and of course it's always fun to camp with a bunch of people you know.  The cost was relatively inexpensive too, since the more people that went out, the cheaper it got.  It was a lot of fun doing the group thing.  We played our own version of "campground bocce ball" which involved plenty of obstacles and lots of alcohol consumption.  We'd make huge bonfires, play cards or dice or whatever game someone brought out, enjoy the stars, imbibe more alcohol, tell stories & jokes, get hammered and just generally have a great time.  


Unfortunately as time went on, our friends started having families and stopped coming out.  So we tried to keep the group camping going by extending the invite to friends of friends.  Let me tell ya, that's the last thing you want to do.  We had people coming out that we barely knew.  We were trying to include them in our fun and we were trying our best to make new friends with them.  Yet, I think they were more interested in discount camping than in group camping.  We'd have group stuff going on, but these extended invites preferred to keep to themselves.  Not interested in playing bocce, hacky sack, cards or games.  Not interested in sharing a meal together in the cook house or hiking or fishing.  Not interested sitting around the fire at night.  We'd even go visit them where they had set up camp and make sure to invite them to whatever we were doing.  


Sadly they never did seem to fit in and after their second time out, they felt comfortable enough to complain to organizers about how much it sucked.  "Why do we have to double up on the lot?" "How come I can't just come for 1 night and not the whole weekend?" "Why do I still have to pay for the full weekend if I'm only staying one night?" "Why is it so expensive?" "How come there are no hookups?" "How come you guys have to be so loud?" Coincidentally they were also not interested in chopping or gathering wood for the group fires, but would help themselves to the pile so they'd have something for their own private campfire. 


Ironically when we decided to call it quits and pull the plug on the group camping, they were the first ones to complain about that too!  "How come you aren't organizing the group camping again this year?"  


After that things started to improve again.  The group thing was done, but the few of us that were left over from the "good old days" decided just to get a couple of sites next to each other at a public campground.  No real organizing took place other than to book side by side sites.  We still did a lot of the same things but on a much smaller scale (the fires were still big though!!).  And so it went for a few years.  Just 5 or 6 people out on a long weekend enjoying the perks of camping.  


Eventually the folks that went and had families started coming out again.  Their kids were old enough to come out too which made it easier for them to pack up the truck or van and join us.  The activities became more PG so that we were considerate towards the kids but we still managed to have a blast.


As you get older you also seem to have more earning potential as well.  One of our friends invested in a small cottage on a Lake north of Lacombe.  He extended the invite for everyone to come out to his place on the long weekends and thus another new chapter of camping was born.  Something that also comes along with earning potential is the toys.  A few friends bought boats and since the cottage was near a lake, we now had other fun things to do on the long weekends.  The massive bonfires were resurrected and the games were also brought out once again.  The good times were back on! 


Now I finally have a toy to play with too.  It's not much but my little tent trailer is definitely going to improve the way I camp.  It tows along very nicely behind my truck and holds the bulk of my camping gear.  No more will I have to trudge down to my basement and fish out all my stuff.  I won't have to creatively pack my truck to fit everything into it, and then unload it all at the camp site.  I won't have to set up all that gear only to take it all down again at the end of the weekend and cram it back into my truck - then drive it home and unload it, and treck it back down to my basement.  Finally I can just leave it in my trailer and only have to worry about it once I get to the campsite.  Soooo much easier.  Also I finally get to sleep off the ground!  Ahhhhh so much nicer. It doesn't come with a lot of perks but it certainly is a step up from "tenting it". :o)


So now I really am looking forward to May Long weekend.  It's another opportunity to hang out with friends, play games and enjoy the lake.  Also another chance to use my new (to me) toy. :o) I know fires are banned this weekend in Alberta, but we still know how to have fun even without a huge bonfire.  More memories coming right up! :o) 

Jailbreaking your iPhone

Well, I've been using my iPhone as a jailbroken device for a couple of months now.  I can't say that it has been all peaches and cream but I think I'm pretty happy with the perks that come with Jailbreaking.

If you're thinking about taking your device to the darkside, then I reccommend this article as a "how to" guide:

lifehacker.com/#!alwaysuptodateguide/5771943

So why did I decide to jailbreak my phone?  Well there a bunch of reasons but here are my main motivations for doing so:

• Access to applications that don't make the iTunes cut list
• Access to tweaks that let me customize the look and feel of my phone
• The ability to install apps that let me get more from my phone than Apple wants me to.

That doesn't seem like much of a list, but after using some of the tweaks and customizations for a while now, it seems hard for me to think about going back to the native iOS as Apple intended me to use it.  

For instance, I now have a customized lock screen.  My lock screen shows me notifications for things like - email, phone messages, and calendar appointments.  It has the ability to show me even more if I wanted, which might include things like an RSS feed, news updates, sports scores, or twitter notifications.  My lock screen also has a new "clock" icon similar to what you'd find on an HTC phone.  It has a weather feature and calendar feature built right into it.  Very handy.  You can get these updates using an app called "Lockinfo" 


I also have an app called "Mobilenotifier" that allows me to manage my pop up notifications better. Instead of being forced to deal with an SMS message in the middle of a game I can tap the screen to make it go away for a later time and then continue shooting Angry Birds at Evil Pigs. It caches unread notifications for me to deal with later so that I can don't accidentally miss something that requires my attention.


Another handy little app is one that gives me the option to do more with the folders that I create on my iPhone.  It's called "Infinifolders" and lets me put unlimited icons inside my folders and even lets me nest folders within folders.  The native iPhone folders functionality is fairly limited in comparison.  


Have you ever been frustrated by how deep you have to go into your settings app in order to do some of the simplest tasks?  Like turning on and off Bluetooth, or Wireless connections etc.  I kind of wish I could make a shortcut for those functions right on my homepage of my iPhone.  I would like to create these shortcuts the same way you can build a shortcut icon for webpages in Safari.  Unfortunately that ability doesn't exist as a jailbreak app either.  However "SBSettings" comes really close.  It gives you a window you can drop down from the top of your screen with some toggle buttons already provided for you to accomplish some of those tedious tasks.  There's a button for turning on and off airplane mode, for turning on/off WiFi, or Bluetooth, or 3G etc.  This makes it much easier than digging through a ton of menus in the settings app to do these simple tasks. 


A friend of mine was showing me a really cool app on his iPhone the other day.  I wanted it and so I went directly to the app store from my phone to download it. However, as soon as I tried downloading the app, I got a notice saying that the app was greater than 20mb and that I would have to wait till I had a WiFi connection before I could download it (that or download it directly via iTunes).  Now I have a 6 Gb data plan so downloading something bigger than 20mb is not a big hit for me.  I've since installed an app called "3Gunrestrictor".  This handy little tool fools my phone into thinking that it has a WiFi connection when I go into iTunes and thus lets me download my app.  More than that however, it will also allow me to make Skype calls on my 3G plan or to even use Facetime without being on WiFi.  Nice!


Those are only 5 of the apps that I make use of fairly regularly.  There are a ton of other selections out there, so you can bet there is something for everyone out there or at least pretty close to what you are looking for.  


Now before you go looking for these apps once you have freed your phone from Apple Prison, you will need to track down some new "package sources".  It seems that app developers for jailbroken iPhones will make their apps available from a wide variety of "package sources".  They are often called repo's.  So when you find an app that you might like to try out, then make sure to find out what "repo" you need in order to download it.  You can enter these "repos" into your Cydia app (basically the Jailbreak version of iTunes - but located directly on your phone).  Not all of the jailbreak apps that are available are actually free either.  These app developers want to get paid too and so some of the apps do come with a price tag.  You will most likely need a paypal account in order to pay for some of these apps, otherwise you'll have to search for the "cracked" versions and take your chances with those apps.


Which brings me to the down side of jailbreaking.  As you can imagine, when you open up your phone and free it from Apple Prison, you are also introducing a risk of instability to your device. Not all app developers code the same way and some of them take shortcuts or don't really know what they are doing.  Some of these "cracked" apps will cause your phone too become unstable.  You will notice that your phone will suddenly reboot at the most inopportune moments.  Sometimes an app can lock your phone completely and you'll have to do a hard reboot to get it back.  When this happens it can take a long time to troubleshoot what particular app is causing you grief.


I recently discovered that an app called "MCleaner" was causing my dialer to lock up my phone when I made or received a call.  This is really ironic considering that "MCleaner" is meant to be used to uninstall problematic apps from your jailbroken iPhone.  Once I removed this app I was back to normal again.  Definitely frustrating though.  Has that turned me off of jailbreaking?  Not yet but it was certainly making me question the value of having tweaks if I couldn't use my phone like other normal iPhone users would.  Now that I've solved the problem, I'm a much happier camper.  


Jailbreaking your phone is not something you should consider without reading up on it.  Make sure to do some research and see how much effort you'll have to go through in order to accomplish all the things you want to do.  Definitely find someone who has done it to their phone so that you'll have someone to talk to about the challenges you may face. They can often guide you through some of the stumbling blocks that many people encounter when they try this for the first time.  Even the process of jailbreaking can be intimidating and not everyone will be comfortable making sense of the steps that are required to get your phone jailbroken.  Definitely make a backup you can restore to if you do decide to go down this path.


There are still tons of things that I have to learn about my jailbroken phone but I'm still pretty happy with the results so far.  Who knows, maybe my next phone will be Android so that I don't have to hack it to get it the way I like it. :o) 

Cheering for a Canadian Team in the NHL Playoffs

I'm probably going to take a little heat for this post but that's ok, it's just my opinion.  You're entitled to think differently and I won't hold it against you. ;o)

One thing I've noticed this year is that there is far more interaction between the fans of different teams than there has been before.  Now that social media is becoming more prominent, I am noticing that it is far easier to be exposed to other opinions than ever before.  Fans have the opportunity to comment on sports articles, on blogs, on Facebook, and of course on Twitter.  It certainly builds rivalries where they may not have existed in the past. Of course I haven't followed Hockey as closely in the past as I have this year.  Maybe I'm just new to the flame wars that are happening online.

Well it has been more interesting to watch hockey this season when factoring in the comments from fans of other sports teams.  Yet at times it has been really annoying too.  Quite often this season I would frequent the TSN.ca page and read the articles (good or bad) about the Flames and of course see what other fans were saying about my team.  Naturally I would expect to read comments from fans of the opposing team that just finished playing the Flames.  An article would be posted about the game and both sets of fans would chime in.  Mostly good natured stuff from both sides.  However, sometimes fans of teams that weren't even playing that night would jump on the comment boards and feel the need to contribute - mostly with a bad attitude too.

Naturally you'd see fans from both teams bragging about one of their players or talking trash about one of ours and visa versa.  Both sets of fans would proudly declare how their team would be the one to crush the other in the playoffs.  This banter back and forth between the teams became even more heated as Calgary started to make a miracle comeback in the last half of the season.  Hope was being nurtured and life was breathed back into a team that looked like it was going to be relegated to the bottom of the Western Conference if not the bottom of the League.

Sadly the Flames didn't quite make the playoff run, but amazingly fans of other teams were starting to pull for Calgary also hoping we'd make it in.  Amazing.  Some were cheering for us out of respect for the effort the Flames had put in, others because they can't help but cheer for an underdog.  Some fans wanted to see Calgary in the playoffs because they wanted to watch a good series and some mostly because they felt that their team could walk all over the Flames in the first round and have an easy run to the cup. I can't help but enjoy the banter that passed between fans from all the teams.  Hell, even Oilers fans were cheering on the Flames if not at least acknowledging they had done a good job in the 2nd half.

The only fans that I didn't like reading comments from were the Vancouver fans.  They would chime in on an article about the Flames on nights when Vancouver was playing some other team.  They did it just to take the opportunity to trash Calgary and the team.  They would literally troll the articles for an opportunity to cause some shit. The Canucks weren't even playing the Flames and the 'Nucks fans would chime in.  When it was becoming clear that Calgary was going to miss the playoffs these fans would gloat and cheer on opposing teams and generally be complete dicks about it.  Sure I'm a bit sore about the Flames not making the playoffs but there were few if any other fans that went out of their way to completely trash the Flames while gloating about their own team.  Not once did I read - "Hey good season, nice comeback, better luck next year" - from a Canucks fan.

Even on my twitter feed I had to read entries from Canucks fans in my Timeline that were aggressively cheering *AGAINST* the Flames.  NOT cheering for the other team because they liked them, but cheering against the Flames because they hated Calgary.  Vancouver had long sewn up a playoff spot and were well on their way to winning the Presidents Cup trophy.  The Flames weren't even a threat to the 'Nucks and still their fans wanted to see Calgary stomped on.  Nasty stuff.  So needless to say I don't care for the Canucks fans.  They are poor winners and very poor losers.  They show no grace in either defeat or victory.

Interestingly enough, fans from all over the league generally feel the same way I do about the Canucks fans.

Well that's a hell of a pre-amble to my main point.

People have often asked who I would cheer for in the playoffs now that my team was out.  Most assumed that I would pick a Canadian team and show a little national pride.  Even more just assumed that I should cheer for Vancouver since they were the most likely team to win the Stanley Cup.  They liked to call them "Canada's team".  So being a good Canadian they expected me to don the blue and green and fly a Canucks flag from my car window.

Imagine the dirty looks and nasty comments that I received when I said I would be cheering for the Chicago Blackhawks.  A team that barely made the playoffs and a team that had decent fans who were always good natured towards Calgary.  Canucks fans could barely contain their disbelief when I told them my choice.  Oh sure I would also wave a flag for the Habs but I would not be cheering for the Vancouver Canucks.  The horror.

In fact since the Hawks have been eliminated, I have actually been cheering for any team that plays against them.  Sadly I think the Canucks have a really good team, and if it wasn't for their fans, I probably would raise their flag and cheer for Vancouver.  Too bad their fans suck. So until next year I'm cheering against Vancouver.  yeah I said it.  Yeah it makes me petty, but if it grinds on the nerves of those dickhead 'Nucks fans, then it makes me feel better.  :-p

(note:  Not all Canucks fans are complete dicks.  Some are pretty good natured and appreciate the competitive nature of the sport.  The banter from these fans can be heated but there is always an undercurrent of respect for the other team and what they bring to the table.  To these fans I raise my glass and say "Cheers!")

Post League Pool Playoffs

As promised, I thought I would give you a brief update on how our Pool Playoffs went.  Well, they came, we won 1 set and then they went - after we lost the next 2 sets.  Still we ended up taking home $400.00 so it wasn't a total bust.  


We actually finished the season closer to the middle of the pack than we did last year.  We came in 10th out of 14th teams and last year we were 12th.  However, this year our team spent some time in 5th spot.  So we weren't completely lame. As a team I think we really started to come together this season.  Everyone finished with higher averages, won more games and took more "total" points than we did last year.  Definitely an improvement.


As far as my own performance goes, I think I peaked somewhere around January.  After that I seemed to fall off the pace a bit.  I'm not totally unhappy about it though, since I started the year strong.  I also managed to finish the year strong too actually.  Of the last 8 games I won 7 of them.  My average capped out at an 8 and I had a dead even 50% win average.  If I hadn't won the last 7 games I wouldn't have been able to secure that win %.  As far as being the top player - well there were at least 2 other players that finished stronger than I did.  I'm happy to be in the top 3 though.  So I'm very pleased with that.  Next year I'm hoping to be right at the top. :o)


I did well enough in the playoffs, but I fell back into making some rookie mistakes.  So I was kinda down on myself and it showed in my play.  I know I'm capable of more and just couldn't produce it.  *sigh*  At least I continue to get better.  I think I only really got blown out in one game (losing 10-4) but all the others were close (mostly 10-7 games).  Sadly a few of the games that I lost 10-7 or 10-6 were games that I controlled till the end and then made a slip up to give it away.  I was essentially 1 or 2 balls away from having a great playoffs, instead of a "meh" playoffs.  


I'm going to have to make more of an effort to play in pressure situations next year so that I don't get rattled when we get to the finals.  This summer I will likely take my cue in for alterations too.  I want to narrow the tip on my cue so that I have a bit more control over the cue ball.  I think I'll really benefit from the tweak.  In the meantime I'll try to enjoy sunshine and stay out of the pool hall till closer to the end of August. ;o)


There ya have it.  Our playoff results. Not as exciting as the NHL playoffs I know. lol.