It may have been a regular season game but the energy in Rexall last night made it feel like a playoff game. The Oilers had climbed back from a tough losing stretch to be on the bubble of making the playoffs. With the regular season winding down every game was important, and when a rival is in town the stakes are raised even higher.

Last night I was graced with tickets to see Vancouver play Edmonton, and had a little moral support with Gord by my side wearing a Canucks jersey. The one thing I always enjoy is seeing how many Vancouver fans attend these games, it is nice to know you are not alone amongst a sea of copper and blue.

My history of seeing Edmonton lose to Vancouver is quite good and in a pretty exciting game Vancouver came out top winning 4-1. I will give Edmonton credit, when the team scores Rexall is full of energy and if you are cheering for the opposition it feels like you are the only one not standing.

Before the game started Kevin Martin and his team were honored for their recent Brier victory. Out of principle I could not stand up, but seeing as I was already cheering for the away team I guess I went against the majority all night.

This victory was huge from Vancouver as the team went from being chased by the 10th placed team to only being a point behind the division leaders. As the season winds down every point and victory, both moral and in the game, can make the difference from the post season or not. If Vancouver does make the playoffs I would not be surprised if they noted this game as a catalyst in their final push.

Last night was made even more legendary in that the final batch of Lost episodes aired. I am glad that ABC decided to end on the eighth episode rather than the seventh because last night was so good. A season and a half have passed since we last saw Michael and Walt and their whereabouts, hardships and other questions were answered.

The four weeks will be long but it will also give me a chance to reflect on everything we have found out in this season. The Oceanic Six and those left behind, who is behind the fake Oceanic 815 crash, the fate of Karl and Danielle, the powers of the island and its force on those back in civilization and everything in between will be enough to question during this hiatus.

Ten days ago I picked up my rental car, a 2008 Grand Prix, while the Jetta went in to have its black eye fixed. I love my car, and in the last three years it has been the only car I have known. I am quite used to it, and the annoyances I do have with the Jetta are overlooked because of other features.

After ten days of driving the rental car I can safely say the only highlight was the satellite radio. Maybe it is because I am completely in love with my Jetta, which has an upgraded interior, but there are some things about the Grand Prix that are incredibly annoying.

The stereo layout is awkward and not intuitive. The car feels huge, and parking is difficult because it feels like I am about to hit every car around me. A small detail, but one I noticed right away was the lack of cup holders. There were only two in the front seat and a very small storage area inside the door panel.

I’m glad to say that the Grand Prix is no longer in my life and I have been reunited with the Jetta. I originally had a whole post devoted to what I disliked about the Grand Prix but when I sat in the Jetta today all of that was forgotten.

As the snow melts, so should any hazardous conditions that may put another target symbol on the car. I was hoping to pick the car up when the roads were not as mucky because there is nothing like getting a freshly clean car, and since you haven’t driven it in a while it feels like a new vehicle in your hands.

In the last week I also had my plugged ear examined and it turned out to be an infection. Seeing as how the loss of hearing happened over night I guess that makes sense, but how it happened is still a mystery. My goal is to be moderately healthy for the wedding, and I hope that the ear infection is the last of my problems.

In the past six months I have had a checkup, blood work, ear infection, broken ankle, multiple nosebleeds and a cold sore so I think my quota should be met until July.

Research In Motion – LogoAfter several months without having FeedReader running I am back on the RSS wagon. In my opinion, not a moment too soon because I saw a pretty big story break this afternoon. The bolded emphasis on the story below is my own.

An outage has disconnected BlackBerry smart phones across North America.

AT&T Inc. says the disruption Monday is affecting all wireless carriers.

AT&T first learned about the problem at about 3:30 p.m. ET.

There’s no word on the cause or when the problem might be fixed.

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion did not immediately return a phone call.

CNN.com | NYT.com

The humor of that last sentence was not lost on me. Perhaps the CNN.com reporter was calling from his BlackBerry device?

Fender benderI have limited auto body experience. In fact I am pretty illiterate when it comes to vehicles. I know enough to maintain it and meet regular checkups, but that is the extent of my knowledge.

One thing I have learned these past two winters is that a small crack usually means there is something else broken and the cost for repair is double what you expect.

The estimate came in on the Jetta and it was over $2,000. Because this will be done through insurance the cost does not directly affect me, but I would never have guessed it would be that much. It is always more than just small piece of plastic that is damaged. There are large, molded pieces that require bracings and often hide other things under the surface that need to be replaced or repaired.

It is election time! On Tuesday, the day following Stelmach’s election announcement, there were candidate signs on the side of the road. I have to give the members of that campaign party for getting them up so fast.

This feels like a fairly important election and I will do my homework and make an effort to vote. My feeling is that there is much to be desired about the current government.

Alberta is a fairly strong province financially and if properly maintained, could be better. Our natural resources are only going to last for so long, and without future consideration we could be left without much control over what happens up North.

Other things to consider are Stelmach’s election victory over Dinning and Morton, recent disappointment regarding energy royalties and constant criticism with regards to not focusing on important topics like health care, provincial development or savings. All of this added together tells me something needs to be done.

For as long as I can remember Alberta has always been under some form of PC control and history would dictate that trend will continue. My only hope is that if they continue to lose seats then the message should become clear about what Alberta wants.

After the accident on Friday all I wanted to do this weekend was play BioShock, NHL08 and possibly start Assassin’s Creed on the XBOX 360. There would be some wedding planning to take care of but with Jenna working, the TV, couch and XBOX would be free for me.

Over the last few days I have been reading about hardware problems with the XBOX 360, how to recognize the signs and what to do when it happens. Most of the issues were with machines that were released within the first year of launch. Mine was a newer build, only four month old and the warranty is good until December so if anything happened I was covered.

XBOX 360 Red Ring of DeathThe earlier 360’s were plagued with a high percentage of failures. Microsoft countered this with a warranty extension on all serviced machines and were adjusting the hardware with releases. Still people were sending their machines in, even after they received a newer build.

I became a little paranoid but I would enjoy the machine while I had it and if I was greeted with three red rings I would accept it. I made sure to extend its life as long as possible by ensuring it would not over heat, the games would not be scratched and that I treated it right.

Perhaps this was karma coming back around, but on Saturday morning the disc tray would not close. I power cycled, manually closed the tray, held the eject/open button on the console and none of them would do the trick. A surprisingly fast call to XBOX support and it was determined that the console be returned to the Resurrection Ship for repairs.

Maybe they will replace the drive and I will get back the same unit, or perhaps I will get back a new console and one with a later manufacturer date than September 2007. From what I have read the turn around time for receiving the repaired console could be several weeks.

This will get me back to playing NHL07, Splinter Cell and Burnout Revenge on the original XBOX in the meantime. I had finally caught up to the Canucks in their regular season with my Dynasty Mode and will have some catching up to do when the 360 returns. Maybe by then Vancouver will have gone on a winning streak and improved their place in the standings.

I needed gas. The roads were slippery. 99th street was backed up so I took a side road. I stayed after work to let the traffic down down. It was Friday afternoon.

These are all reasons why it happened. Any one of those could have been the cause, or none of them are relevant. The truth is that him and I were taking a detour from our regular drive because of circumstances.

After work yesterday I was hit by another vehicle that failed to stop at a stop sign. I saw it all play out before impact. I had little room to work with in the intersection, and road conditions were not helping. I did what I could to make the impact less and I am glad I did.

The sound of plastic breaking on a car is so surreal. It has a literal crunch, and the sound is accompanied by a shake in the driver seat. Both times I have experienced this I have been alone, and no one was hurt.

Vanilla Sky: AccidentWhen I think of accidents, big or small, I am often reminded of the car accident scene from Vanilla Sky where Julie Gianni drives the car over the bridge with David Aames in the passenger seat.

Metal, glass and plastic bent and break at once and then it is followed by silence.

Although the speeds were low the Jetta did take some damage and will need some panelling replaced. There is always a bright side to fender benders like this, and it could have been worse. We were both injury free and that is something to be thankful for.

The exchanging of insurance information was very smooth, and the passenger of the other car commented it was the most cordial one he had witnessed.

While we were swapping information I had my hazards on and could not help but wonder if someone who drove by us, or someone from the windows counted me as one on their very own hazard game.

iTunes LogoAnother year and another cryptic error message. This one is not so much the message, but the port that it is happening on. My port to the power of three is apparently being a nuisance and not letting others into my shared music.

I did a search for this error message but it was pretty unsuccessful. There was information about restriction across firewalls but that is not the case here. Incidentally, the user trying to access my iTunes shared was having problems accessing other shared collections so perhaps his iTunes was the problem?

On a completely different, but perhaps similar note, iTunes 7.6 was released following the Macworld keynote speech today. Sure, there was a MacBook Pro Air, Time Capsule and updates to Apple TV, but what I am most concerned with is letting people access my machine on port ^ 3 and if iTunes 7.6 can prevent that.

I realize the purpose of having a presence in the air for the police service is to have a birds eye view of a situation. If you are in pursuit of a vehicle on the highway a helicopter will allow the officers a chance to track the suspect. At night infrared and a spotlight can track down someone on foot.

The other day I wondered if the Eurocopter EC-120, more familiar as Air One, is equipped with sirens. As with most things that cross my mind, they are senseless, but maybe this one has merit? Throw a giant cherry on the helicopter, turn on the siren and tear through the skies.

Cessna’s and Boeing’s alike would be getting out of the way if Air One had sirens a blazing. I say, put a siren on even when it is being used to follow a suspect. Add some color in the air and give those in a high speed chase something to look at through their sunroof as they speed through traffic on a crisp and cool autumn evening.