Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

The Canadian Blog Awards have entered the voting phase. I’m in several categories (thank you to all of my nominators). There’s also The Rider Prophet, Buckdog, Small Dead Animals, Politics ‘n’ Poetry/The Regina Mom, Tammy Robert, The Grumpy Voter, Regina in Pictures, Wheatsheaf, Accidental Deliberations, John Gormleys blog, Stubble Jumping Redneck, and probably several others that I missed seeing (or don’t yet know are written by Saskatchewanians.

Today I also learned of two other blogs from this province.
NorthVUs and C.J.’s Blog Hood.

I would have liked to nominate more Saskatchewan blogs, but it’s a little unseemly to both nominate a ton of blogs, and co-Operate the CBAs, even if the voters decide the winners. Besides, only one blog from anywhere in Canada can win in each category (with the exception of best blog post, and series), and with the political blogs there are some overlap.

Saturday was the 3rd Annual SaskBloggers get together in Saskatoon. The turnout was pretty good with 7 bloggers and 2 guests in attendance. I think we made more noise laughing than kids getting ice cream in the restaurant.

Saskboy (me), Lore_Weaver (whose blog has been spammed into malfunctioning), Jadon, Twyla, Tanya, Zach Bell, and Huffb1 came out to talk politics, pollution, technology, car sharing, blogs, and more.

On the way back from Saskatoon, Patty and I clocked a coyote with the front bumper at 100km/h. The bumper, and the coyote did not survive.

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In talking with my dead-tree-media relative later on in the day, he made a good point that once newspapers are no longer able to sell advertising, and professional journalism newsrooms give way to blogs and central TV news services, democracy is going to suffer a crisis. Spin doctors will feed bloggers, and they will flood media with mostly spin, without professional journalists to gather news and filter the filler from the facts. It’s logic counter-intuitive to bloggers who are distrustful of professional media, but undeniably there will be fewer bloggers attending court, or press conferences than there are newspaper journalists. Will bloggers step up, and gather news when the pros get other jobs?

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A news story on Saturday Report about Right to Play, reminded me that VANOC 2010 is not allowing Right to Play to appear at the Olympics because they have sponsors that might conflict with those who paid to sponsor the Olympics. It’s a fine example of how VANOC and the Olympics are totally corrupt, and place money above the spirit of sport and children.

With finances on the brains of a lot of people these days, here are some really interesting blogs I came across that have advice on saving, even in the face of economic uncertainty. There’s also a bit about how to take successful strangers out to lunch so you can learn what they did to get rich. There are great saving tips here too.

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Hat tip to Andy “Pow!” Nulman.

I guess, in the same sort of line of thinking, Saturday at 12:00 in Jerry’s Food Emporium (Saskatoon) would be a good way to learn from successful bloggers, since a group of us will be eating lunch and talking about the world.

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Wednesday night I watched “Harry Potter - The Chamber of Secrets” [8/10], about a week after I saw “Harry Potter - The Philosopher’s Stone” [8/10]. Both were better movies than I thought they would be.

/=S=/
The Saskatchewan Roughrider won their 5th in a row this season, making their best start to a season in modern history. I think even with the 3 costly injuries this week, we’ll pull together another win next week. It’s so impressive that we did this using 3 different quarterbacks.

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The SaskBlogs BBQ was yesterday, and the weather was perfect, defying the weatherman’s chance of thunderstorms. Unfortunately car trouble, ill family, the Rider game, and conflicting engagements all kept quite a few people away, so I’ll make a better effort next year to pick a date more people can make it. Monty from Canadian Money Advisor came out again, and several of my friends and family, and most of us got stuffed on hamburgers, hotdogs, noodle salad, chips, garden peas, and cookies.

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I watched “National Treasure 2″ [8/10] and the last hour of “Knight Rider” [5/10], and caught the odd first half of “Batman and Robin” [6/10] in the last weeks. When it’s not pouring rain, it’s been a very good time to get outside and enjoy the city, so blogging has naturally taken a bit of a back seat the last while.

Today’s the 3rd Annual SaskBlogs BBQ in Regina. Details at Saskblogs.ca
Hope you can make it. Bring some food and share at lunch, or stop by to visit.

I also hope that this stuff stays away from Regina until at least after the Riders beat the Argos and Kerry Joseph in the evening:

I’m hoping to make it easy to find Saskatchewan bloggers again. We’ve been without a virtual roof since the Saskblogs Aggregator had a bit of libel chill collaterally damage it out of existence due to the Warman lawsuits. Lance is still letting the blogroll operate though, and you can find the list conveniently at SaskBlogs.ca . Any time you need your Saskatchewan-blog-reading-fix, saskblogs.ca ought to be able to point the way to the good stuff.

A Regina BBQ for SaskBlogs is going to be in either July or August, and there will be something organized for Saskatoon as well. Any other suggestions are welcome and encouraged. Leave me a email or comment, or send something along to Huffb1 and I’m sure he’ll look after your suggestion if you’re afraid to email me :-).

National Post affiliated Regina Leader-Post is covering the story of the lawsuits launched against Small Dead Animals, among other blogs.

There was an error in the story claiming that all of Crooke’s lawsuits had been dismissed.

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Hat tip to Buckdog

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And speaking of stupid lawsuits, what’s up with eBay suing Craigslist?

Today was a good way of spending a day. For lunch I ate with my cousin, and Huffb1, Jadon, and Dani at the Park Cafe for a little SaskBlogs party.
The afternoon disappeared, and I went to supper at Passage to India (very fast service, and great food).

After supper my friend and I saw “Smart People” [8/10] at the Galaxy. It had a lot of intelligent humour, sort of rare for a Hollywood movie. After going home for the night I watched “Vacation” [8/10] with Chevy Chase. And now I’m part way into “Splash” [5/10] which I’ve also seen before, but not for decades.

Having an XO laptop might change the way I blog. I’ve “live blogged” twice today. Maybe it just seems that with a wireless laptop you can blog even while things are happening away from your “main” blogging station.