Sportsmanship

Most athletes can rhyme off plenty of words about how sports teaches sportsmanship. Most coaches can tell you how important sportsmanship is to the teachings of sport. But many just don't get it. They have almost no true understanding of what it means to be a sportsman.

At dictionary.com , the word "sportsmanship" is defined,

Conduct and attitude considered as befitting participants in sports, especially fair play, courtesy, striving spirit, and grace in losing.

fairness in following the rules of the game

So tell me, where does "heat of the battle" and "bending the rules" come into this?

In a perfect world, excuses for not observing sportsmanship would be non-existant. But of course, we do not live in that place. So everyday, in the gyms, and ice rinks of the world sportsmanship is put aside in favour of the almighty "W". The "win-at-all-cost crowd" is everywhere. I see it on a regular basis. As a player, I see players take "cheap shots" at their opponents to gain some perceived advantage. As an official, I see coaches taking exception with the majority of calls, even the blatant calls that any armchair referee could make. As a parent, I see other parents telling their kids off for missing a check or making a turnover.

But fortunately, every now and then, I see someone who truly "gets it". I see someone who no matter the score, no matter what is at stake, they see the big picture. Sportsmanship. This weekend I was lucky enough to officiate at a game where the coach scolded his players for making comments about a non-call in the game. I was lucky enough to coach at a game where a coach applauded an opposing player's "nice move". I was even lucky enough as a parent, to see another parent say, "the ref was right".

So the next time you are at a game, think before you speak. Think about your conduct and your attitude. If you can't categorize your comments under words promoting sportsmanship, then you have two choices. First choice is say nothing, bite your tongue. If you simply must say something, say "Excuse me", get up, go home, and tell the mirror what you wanted to say. Now, see how stupid you look?

Allow me to Demonstrate...

I finished a couple of demo games over the last couple of weeks. Max Payne 2 was exquisite. If you played the first Max Payne then you pretty much know what to expect. The film noir settings and the panel comic strip type layout of the cut-scenes gives this game an edge not found in many games today. While game play is the usual shoot-em-up type, there is an underlying plot you are are trying to unravel. "Bullet time" is the big feature in the game. "Bullet time" allows the player to slow down time so that the players and bullets move in slow motion allowing the player to dodge the bad guys' bullets and fire his own weapons with deadly efficiency. If you complete the demo a "Deadman Walking" mode is unlocked. This allows the player to take on an increasing number of bad guys in a court-yard setting and clocks how long you can stay alive. The demo did its job and left me wanting more. The only thing stopping me from getting the full version are the reviews stating this game is rather short in comparison to other games. I may have to wait a year or so for this one until the price drops this into a bargain bin somewhere.

The second demo I played was Deus Ex 2: Invisible War. This is set in a kind of post appocalyptic setting. I found the interface took some getting used to. The good thing is that just about everything in the environment could be interacted with by the player. The weapons and gadgets available are very cool. The AI is weak. There is a point in the demo where you hack into a computer to control or disable a security system. While I hacked the computer the guard walked past me twice and never chased me off. The game also allows you to choose more than one path to progress the game and story-line. The game looks stunning with some excellent graphics.

The first Deus Ex was a kind of sleeper hit. This demo was well done but I can't say I am hungry for more. I suppose if you were a fan of the first game it would make sense to get the second. Since I never played the first I don't have any plans to pick this one up.

Basketball News

Alonzo Mourning announced his retirement from professional basketball today. At the age of 33, it is too bad his career has been cut short.

The Raptors are riding a roller coaster. One day they beat arguably one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference, the New Jersey Nets, and the next they lose, badly, to a sub-.500 team, the Milwaukee Bucks. Trade rumours swirl around the team. The trades that are being rumoured won't help the team in my opinion. Jalen Rose is the main player rumoured to be coming to Toronto. Players Rumoured to be leaving include Antonio Davis, Morris Peterson, Jerome Williams, and Alvin Williams. Personally, I don't see how Jalen Rose will help this team. The only thing he would bring is the ability to play three positions. He has at times played point, shooting guard and small forward. Rose has also stated he isn't interested in playing for the Raptors.

As far as I am concerned, I wouldn't want any player that didn't want to be in Toronto. Antonio Davis has stated he isn't exactly thrilled with life in Toronto. His play this season seems to be lacking his usual desire to "prove" something to the bigger players he usually faces every night. Could this be related to his desire to be elsewhere? I guess this only goes to prove that even if you were paid millions of dollars to do your job, you can always find some reason to not like it. But just like in the real world, I expect more from professionals (those that are paid to do a job). It would be a shame to see someone like Jerome Williams leave. That's a guy who wants to be in Toronto and has accepted everything dealt to him with a great deal of professionalism.

The big outdoor game

There is going to be an oldtimers game and a regular season NHL game in Edmonton today on an OUTDOOR rink. With windchill temperatures currently showing -32.6 C, this cartoon had me rolling on the floor.



The NHL has a plan to play the game Sunday, indoors, if the temperature is too cold or if snow should cause other issues. They won't say what "too cold" is though. They also have a 5 million dollar insurance policy to cover the event if does need to be cancelled.

Justice is blind....Pfffft!

I am a very lucky guy. I have a wife and two children and we are one very happy family. Well, most of the time anyway (inside joke). But I know many who are not that lucky. I know many people who are separated/divorced and have children. These poor SOB's just can't get a fair shake. Life never seems to move forward for them.

My friends in this situation will often confide in me many of the minute details of their situation. I don't ask. They just offer. I try to stay as impartial as possible and make, what I feel, are rational suggestions to help alleviate their particular circumstances. But increasingly, I find it is difficult to come to rational conclusions because the laws in this area are anything but rational. They are blatantly skewed and biased.

Justice is supposed to be blind. But don't forget that Justice is a woman, and she can see through the blindfold! I think the laws are fine in supporting women that are getting abused or trying to get away from abusive situations. I suppose they could be even stronger in this regard, as I have not one ounce of sympathy for a guy who lays hands on a woman. But I don't want to get into that. I want to illuminate the fact that if both the man and the woman are equally stable and able to provide for a child's needs, the courts will always side with the woman.

This in itself is not a great revelation. But consider this; once the woman has been given custodial guardianship of the child, all the cards are in her deck. The trump card is the child. Both ex-partners can get on with their lives to a point. They can re-marry, have more kids to other partners, buy new homes or get new jobs. But only three of those four things matter to the courts. Can you guess which one DOESN'T matter?

The new partner's income can be brought into the mix. Buying a new home may change the balance sheet so it can be considered in the courts. And of course, getting a better paying job (or just a raise) can be considered when the custodial parent decides more money is needed. But the fact that either of the ex's families have gotten larger is of no consequence to the courts. All that matters is the trump card that the custodial parent wields like a sledge hammer.

I strongly believe that any new children need to be factored into the equation! Otherwise, the new children end up on the short end of the stick. They get nothing in the way of extras while the children from the first marriage get all kinds of extras. How is it fair for one child to be able to enroll in hockey year-round or attend private schools while their half-siblings are lucky they get new running shoes when they need them?

I also have a problem with the fact that the custodial parent doesn't need to provide evidence of how the child support money was used. After all, it's called CHILD SUPPORT, shouldn't it be used to support the child? Things like clothes, food, education funds and a percentage of general household expenses would all be acceptable uses. Trips to the Caribbean, not acceptable. Especially when the half-siblings are lucky to be able to afford a pup tent they can put up in their backyard.

If you are a Canadian man in this situation, check out the Men's Divorce Centre . They can't change the crappy laws but they may be able to save you some cash in the long run. If you are not in this kind of situation, count your blessings, hug your loved ones. I am a very lucky guy.

Just like I said...

Well the Ontario Liberals are living up (or is that down?) to my advance billing on October 5. Never do these politicians make promises with provisos of checking the books first. They just make promises. I can only imagine how we would be castigated in our jobs if we made all kinds of promises and then when it was time to deliver, we simply bailed out with an excuse like, "Well when I made the promise I assumed our competition told us everything. Oops...sorry about that." Can you say "unemployment"?

But I am not surprised. *sigh*

Racism?

Bouncing around the web can often lead you places you never intended to go. I read most of the blogs in my list simply for the entertainment value. Some only entertain while others can truly provoke deep thought from time to time.

I was following some links from Desitalk. She is a proud Canadian and so am I, so I thought I would check out some of the "I am Canadian" links she talked about in her blog. Being interested in other Canadian bloggers led me to a site called Canukistanian. I was pleased to notice that this site was from Brantford, Ontario which is very close to my home town and the owner is, I presume, a police officer. But then I started reading some of the postings. One such article left me cold and shocked. The article discusses the apparent fact that Marc Lepine, the man responsible for the massacre at Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, was born a Muslim by some other name. Which is all fine and interesting but the conlusions the author (Jack Davies) jumps to are completely unreasonable.

The worst atrocity that Canada has ever experienced -- perpetrated by a youth raised in a Muslim family and taught to hate all women. Tell me again about peaceful Muslims!

He goes on to say:

I have Canadian values and MUSLIM is NOT part of that picture -- especially if it reflects the violence against women perpetrated by "Marc Levine"(sic) -- a Jihadi bent on conquest!

There is the part that shocked me. How can an officer, sworn to protect and serve ALL members of society, harbour such a poor feeling towards one religious group? That's an awful big brush he is using. He may think he holds Canadian values, but if his values do not include all religions and races then he is missing the point as to what Canada is all about (I will save that for some other post).

Now, to Mr. Davies credit, he does go on to say police officers need to know what they are dealing with when they enter a situation. I agree 100%. If the suspect is a confirmed militant, extremist, psycho, whatever, the responding officers really do need this information. And perhaps they even need to know what type of the aforementioned nut-jobs they are i.e. Muslim, Christian, Jew, etc. But the religion on its own is not a category which defines the type of perpetrator an officer is dealing with.

I really hope Mr. Davies has oversimplified his statements. I really hope he just neglected to say "Muslim Extremist" wherever he actually wrote just "Muslim". Because I believe that the vast majority of Muslims ARE peaceful and ARE good people.

Pot Luck

ATI expects to see improved first quarter earnings. The result was a 6% increase in stock price. Its nice to see a tech company looking good, especially a Canadian one.

Pat Hentgen, 1996 Cy Young Award winner, returns to the Blue Jays at the age of 35. Hopefully he can regain some of the poise and power he has been struggling to get back since he left the Jays at the end of 1999. Hentgen's addition gives the Jays two Cy Young winners on their roster. The other is Roy Halladay. Combine that with the AL's second place MVP, Carlos Delgado, and next season has the potential to be a good one.

More baseball news shows MLB is going to have mandatory drug testing. I think all professional sports ought to implement drug testing. While I want to be entertained by great athletes, I don't want to look back at some of the great stars and say to my kids, "That -insert superstar's name here- sure was a great player...but he used some substances that made him great." It taints their accomplishments. I also don't want to look back and have no sympathy for someone that dies at an early age because they used these substances.
Of course the MLB policy is a bit of a joke.

A first positive test results in treatment. Any MLB player testing positive a second time will either be suspended 15 days without pay or fined up to $10,000 US. Suspensions increase to 25 days for a third infraction, 50 days for a fourth and one year for a fifth.

Umm, $10,000 dolars? Some of these guys make more than that in a game. Hardly a deterent.
I think with more and more sports allowing professional athletes to participate in Olympic sports, there are going to be some real problems for some countries whos pros have been using these designer steroids. I think mostly of US basketball and Canadian hockey. I would lay down cash money to bet there are users in both these sports. Careers are lasting longer and the money is so big that the incentive to use these previously undetectable steroids must be huge.

Canadian Football League

The Canadian Football League (CFL) finished another season today with an exciting championship game in Saskatchewan. The CFL is rich in history and has been around for a long time. In fact the Grey Cup, the trophy given to the champion, has been around since 1909. This year the cup goes to the Edmonton Eskimos who defeated the Montreal Alouettes 34-22. The game was exciting, as usual.

The CFL suffers from poor attendance in some of its locations. The league and players never seem to get a lot of credit for their abilities. It really is a fabulous product. No it isn't the NFL, and no, player for player the CFL isn't as good as the NFL. But it is still great. It is different, and that's part of what makes it great. The field is bigger, the ball is bigger and the scores are bigger. With only three downs to make ten yards, you must throw the ball. You must throw it often. That translates into exciting plays. I like the NFL, plenty. But the CFL is special. It is uniquely Canadian. It is worth experiencing.

Politics

The Federal Liberal party officially elected their new leader tonight(Friday). And since the Liberal party is the political party with the most seats in the House of Commons, Canada also has a new Prime Minister elect. Paul Martin was overwhelmingly selected by the delegates. No surprise there. The convention results were a foregone conclusion for months. Sheila Copps, was the only one gutty enough to stand up and put her name on the ballot. Without her there would have been no need for a convention, no need for a tribute to Jean Chretien, and no inauguration for Paul Martin. Not everyone likes her. In fact if you believe much of the press about her, you might conclude she is despised. I neither like nor dislike her, but I do admire that she stood up for her party when it needed someone to do so. The Liberals have been painted as aloof and detached from the electorate for the last number of years. Complacent by 3 consecutive majority governments, the Liberals needed a new leader and at least the appearance of some new direction.

The Liberals started this ball rolling way back in June of 2002 when Martin and Chretien had a falling out. Martin was fired, or quit, depending on who you ask, and thus some distance was wedged between the outgoing PM and the heir apparent.

But I must say I liked most of what I heard tonight. Paul Martin made a lot of promises, and I am not gullible enough to believe them all. But I did like that he plans to reform how parliament works by allowing MPs to vote on matters as the voice of their constituents instead of strictly following party lines. I also like that he embraces our Canadian sovereignty in world affairs but at the same time wants to push Canada to the forefront of world policy makers and world shapers so that Canada's seat at the world table is prevalent and respected.

Paul Martin's rise to power is shown here.

Clans in the context of gaming

If you are a gamer, you owe it to yourself to check out the clan scene in your favourite game. That's Clan with a "C", not the nasty "K" that has marred American history for a couple of centuries.

Clans in gaming are just clubs really. They are groups of people that all like to play the same game(s). Often they are friends in real life but not always. The first clan I joined was called 30plus. They were all gamers over the age of 30. The group I am with now are called Over the Hill and while most of the members are mature gamers it is not a requirement.

Mostly, what these types of groups offer, is someplace to go that feels like you belong. Members talk about game strategies and likes and dislikes without fear of ridicule or being made to feel stupid for asking questions. Unfortunately, in online gaming, it is difficult to learn new games and many people won't take the time to show you the ropes. Clans take the time for their members. Mature clans take the time for anyone interested.
Good clans also offer a place to play where cheating and game exploits are frowned upon and mature clans will try to keep their servers "clean", meaning the language is generally rated PG (both written and verbal language).

So here is a tip of my hat to good gaming clans. Keep up the good work!

Video Cards

Speed. It's all about the speed.
Every gamer crosses the video card battlefield at least once in their gaming life. Usually more than once. There are really only two players anymore. NVIDIA and ATI. For a very long time NVIDIA has been the leader. Not only in benchmark speeds but in driver stability. That seems to be changing.

The drivers are the codes that allow the video card to talk to the rest of the machine. ATI suffered for quite some time with a reputation of having drivers that were somewhat unstable. This problem was one of the main reasons I have shyed away from these cards for a long time. The last thing I want is to be playing a game and have a lock-up or blue screen of death pop up in the middle of an intense battle. But ATI has been not only raising the video card bar but also stabilizing its drivers. Meanwhile NVIDIA has endured its own driver scandals.
Over the summer, NVIDIA's drivers were shown to contain special coding that effectively cheated the standard benchmark tests into thinking NVIDIA cards were faster than they really were. NVIDIA had cheated, using a speed hack to put it into gamers' terms. To NVIDIA's credit, they removed the special code and announced a policy that stated they would not create drivers that had "application awareness". Both ATI and NVIDIA include optimizations in their drivers but at least they are not specific to an application (especially not a benchmarking application).
Enough of the drivers, let's get back to the cards. ATI has been doing a terrific job raising the bar over the last year. So much so that NVIDIA has now found themselves reacting to ATI's cards rather than leading the market which they had done for so long. The top ATI card is still outperforming the latest NVIDIA cards. ATI is also offering a trade-up program that lets the consumer order the latest ATI card, try it, then send back their old card for a $50 (USD) rebate. Given that many gamers are tech-hungry, I think this is a brilliant idea. I may be switching to ATI cards.

And all this from a company based in Markham, Ontario Canada. Not bad, eh?

Messing Around

I was messing around today and somehow ended up at a Harry Potter site. Sorting-hat.com lets you take a quiz to see where you fit. I ended up here:


I'm
a Ravenclaw!

So I started poking around for others and ended up here: Where do you belong? It had more questions but let me pick whatever house I wanted...except Slytherin. hmmmm. :)
Anyway, if you want to know what each of the houses stand for check this out here
Isn't it amazing how you can be doing nothing in particular on the web and end up at different interesting places without even trying. In real life terms, you are actually lost. But in a good way. Too bad getting lost in real life doesn't always turn out so interesting. In fact getting lost in real life can be deadly. What a shame.

Children and Sports

This year I decided to help coach my son's basketball team. Probably not a big deal to many as there are so many who give their time as volunteer coaches. But making the decision to coach got me thinking about my own sports background and how it influenced my life not only as a child but as an adult.
Being Canadian, you would expect that I played hockey from an early age. But that isn't the case. I remember pestering both my parents to sign me up for hockey but they always claimed it was too expensive.
My first organized team sport was not hockey, but soccer when I was about 12. It was great. The man who volunteered to be coach was terrific. He was always very positive and encouraging. Sure he wanted to win, but he never lost sight of the fact that he was there for the children and not the other way around. I think some coaches can lose sight of that.
So my goals (more like guidelines really) are to keep the kids' fun level way up. Hopefully, along the way they will learn a few basketball fundamentals. But more importantly, I am hoping they learn some life fundamentals. Things like the importance of trying your best, whether you win or lose; showing good sportsmanship and respect for others (players and the officials); and the enjoyment of participating in a physical activity.

New Rig

I have been wondering if it is time to buy a new rig. I like to have close to the latest and greatest but just can't justify, in my head, the need to have the very latest. I am usually satisfied with this method as I can get a couple of years out of my purchases before the new games coming out simply won't run well on what I have. My current machine is a little over a year old. It is a Pentium 1.8 GHz machine with a NVIDIA Ti4400 video card. I haven't had any real issues running anything yet. The real problem lies in my second machine, or as it is affectionately called, "The Kids' Machine". This is the machine my kids use for whatever they are interested in and I use it as a backup for business files. This machine is a 833MHz machine. It has a TNT2 card in it. It is starting to show its age.
The first sign was Halo wouldn't run on it. When games start coming out that complain about your hardware, it is time to think about upgrading within the next 6 months or so. My dilemma is, I think it is the wrong time to upgrade my main machine. It still has plenty of punch and new machines out there just don't give enough bang for the buck. The newest Intel chip the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition looks good but it is coming out as a sort of bridge product. That means it is an improvement that consumers can get while they are waiting for the BIG improvement due out later. In this case the next big thing is code-named Prescott. If Prescott comes out in the fourth quarter as expected, then the Extreme chip will fall in price at that time. That would be my typical time to buy. But it is unlikely Intel will have product in the supply chain in time for Christmas.
So I guess I hang tight and hope "The Kids' Machine" can keep chugging along a little longer. Then of course there is the "spousal approval" game that must be played out...but that is a whole new ball game.