Wayne D's Blog

Or it takes them a while. A few weeks ago my wife forgot to watch Survivor and went to the U.S. network website to watch the show she missed. Unfortunately when someone from outside the U.S. ties to access the U.S. network site they get a message saying that only residents of the U.S. can watch. Peer to peer networks have been full of TV shows for quite some time and the U.S. TV networks have responded by either making there shows available for purchase from itunes or for free on their websites. For most shows Canadian's have the option of either finding out how to set up a U.S. proxy or learning how to use peer to peer to get the content. The Canadian rights holders are encouraging people to take the effort to learn how to bypas the legal content distribution channels by not providing one. In the process they are missing the opportunity to market to these viewers. If people get used to downloading their content from the Internet they won't bother to video tape the shows they want to watch  and viewer numbers will decrease. Less viewers means less money from advertisers.


SunTV in Toronto was showing season two of Veronica Mars over the summer. They decided to skip the last four episodes of the season to allow them to start showing the season three episodes in sync with the U.S. network. What do you fans of the show thought of that? On their website they say they will show the remaining episodes at some undetermined time in the future. The funny thing is that they doubled up on shows, showing two episodes on consecutive nights when they first started broadcasting season two but decided not to do that at the end of the season leaving the story arc for the season unresolved. How many people do you think ended up downloading those episodes?


It should be easier to buy what you want to watch than to steal it.

Bugger, I wrote half of this thing and Seamonkey crashed before I saved it. Let's see if I can remember what I wrote.


Last Sunday my brothers and sisters and their respective families went to Lonestar for lunch to celebrate my two oldest sons confirmation. The woman who led us to our table told us that our server's name was Corona. When Corona came to take our drink order I couldn't resist asking her whether her mother had called her Corona. She replied, not surprisingly,  that Corona was her server name. I didn't ask but I wondered if the wait staff in the restaurant adopted server names to protect their privacy, whether the company wanted them to use a name that reflected the Tex-Mex theme of the restaurant, whether the company recycled their uniform jerseys when staff turned over or whether it was just easier to not reprogram the restaurant's food and beverage system with new names. I guess I'll never know, irregardless, Corona treated us very well and we had a great time.


For the past ten years or so I have been playing NTN trivia on Tuesday nights with a bunch have guys that has remained pretty much constant over the years. Since I started we have had to change bars once due to an ownership and them change, before I arrived I think they changed bars a couple of times. One of the side effects of going to the same place every week is that you get to know the bar staff by name. The Tuesday after my visit to Lonestar I was late because I had a meeting at the church. In our rush to get everyone organized and off to lunch on the Sunday we had neglected to take the flowers from the alter that had been given to us to commemorate the boy's confirmation. I put the flowers in the car and headed straight to the bar.


When I arrived I decided to bring the flowers in with me and distribute them. On my way in I gave one to the security guy and the manager on duty whose names I will omit to protect their privacy. The security guy gave the flower he picked, which was a daisy, to one of the wait staff who was also our server for the evening. She took my beer order and when she came to the table to deliver it she was wearing the daisy in her hair. I asked her whether the name she gave us when we asked was her real name or her server name. Over the years we have found that when you treat the people who bring your food and drink like human beings they really appreciate it. I was surprised to find one night that another group who had been coming to the bar for at least three years didn't bother to For a second she looked at me as if I was from the moon before saying "of course it's my real name". I quickly explained the story of Corona and she decided that she was going to take Daisy as her server name. The other female server who was working that night took her flower into the kitchen to give to one of the cooks. She then came back and asked if she could have another one because the other guy in the kitchen was jealous because he didn't get one.


The moral of the story, if you aren't going to bring the wait staff flowers at least take the time to call them by name, and if they treat you well, tip them appropriately. To compliment the daisy theme of this posting I have included a couple of daisy pictures. If you are reading this on www.wdawe.com you have to go here to see the other daisy picture. To ensure there is no misunderstanding, the picture of Daisy to the right is Daisy Fuentes not Daisy the server.

I know you are all dying to find out what happened in my search for shoes. No need to wait any longer. My quest was actuallyu completed last Monday evening but I've been too busy to let you know of the outcome of my quest. Last Monday evening I girded my loins and headed off to Vaughan Mills the mega mall located close to where I work. I arrived at about 6:15 p.m. and about two hours and nine shoe stores later I left with a new pair of black Sketcher running shoes. Before making my selection I visited Foot Locker and found that the same Timberland shoes I had found at Hillcrest and coveted so were also only available up to size 10.5 there too. The Timberland store had a similar style but they weren't close enough to satisfy me. I tried on a pair of shoes at Ecco but the toes were a little too wide, found a pair that almost satified my requirements in Town Shoe Outlet but the toes were too shiny. Also visited were Sketchers, Soft Moc, Nike and Reebok stores.


I finally ended up at Shoe Factory where I almost bought a pair of shoes, the brand name of which escape me.  They looked nice on the shelf but when I tried them on there was no way I could get my feet into them even though they were supposed to be size 12. There were no size 13's available in that style of course. After trying on a pair of Nike Airs I settled on a pair of black leather shoes with a retro sneaker look. Picture of new shoes above, old shoes below. Click on the picture for a bigger version.

As promised here is my picture with the six string nation guitar. Click on the image to see the full size version.

It's time to retire my everyday shoes. About two and a half years ago I thought they were getting a bit ragged looking. Then some guy at the Toronto Golf and Travel show shined them up with some Super VII Leather Balm and convinced me to buy a tub of the stuff. It was money well spent, they looked good for the first year, OK for the second year but now the seams are coming apart and it's time to turn them into permanent water shoes, at least until they lose physical intergrity.


I expect the question popped into mind, why wear ratty shoes for two extra years? The problem is that I wear size 12 shoes and finding a nice pair of size 12 shoes can be quite a chore. My first stop was the ECCO store. My old shoes were ECCO's and I was hoping that they'd have something else, to be truthful, if they still stocked the same model I would have bought them quite happily. When I told the sales clerk that I wanted to replace my old shoes and asked her if they still made that model she said "no we don't". She then moved off to approach another customer who had entered the store. I was hoping she would have perhaps suggested something but she didn't seem interested in me. I browsed around a bit, didn't see anything I liked and left to search elsewhere. I tried both Zellers and Payless Shoe Source but neither store seems to carry any leather shoes. I'm a bit of a shoe purist and prefer, perhaps I should say  insist, on wearing shoes with leather uppers for everyday wear.


Next I tried Soft-Moc where I found a pait of Clark's that I really liked, unfortunately they didn't have them in size 12. The clerk was very helpful, she even took a shoebox to the head while searching through a stack of shoeboxes for size 12's. She did suggest a different model but it had a square toe. I prefer to keep away from shoes with square toes. It may be just me, but they look too much like clown shoes to me when blown up to size 12.


Then it was off to the Bay where they had the same model of Clark shoes as Soft-Moc did, and in a size 12! I put them on and walked around for a minute or two. Then I realized my left heel was beginning to hurt. Darn, was I willing to sacrifice years of foot pain for fashionable shoes? Nope, sadly I put them back in the box. As if to mock me, there was a pair of shoes on the clearance table that I liked. The last pair, but they were a size 13. I tried them on anyways, no dice, they were way too loose.


My next stop was Foot Locker where the Timberlands I liked were out of stock in anything larger than a 10 1/2 unless I wanted to take them in a bright tan colour that verged on orange.


Before I concluded my shoe shopping trip I took a quick look through Aldo but nothing said buy me.


The quest continues.