Category Archives: Misc

Haaaapy Anniversary

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Today is the 5-year anniversary of my laser eye surgery. It was a lot of money ($1000/eye), but it was definitely worth it. I now have better than 20:20 vision, and have had zero side effects. I’ve heard of people who have problems seeing at night, or other things like that, but I’ve had no problems at all.

You’d think that my insurance company would be willing to pay for at least part of the surgery, since I will no longer be making $200/year claims for new glasses or contacts, but no such luck. Gail’s looked into it, as have my other almost-blind friends Faisal and Jeff, and none of them is a candidate for the surgery. Of course, all of them have far worse eyesight than I did (I was about -4 to -5 in each eye; Gail is -15 in one and -13 in the other). Faisal has talked about corneal replacement, though it’s kind of experimental now. Gail has also been told that this is an option for her, but not until she’s about 50 (though I don’t remember why).

The NLL has announced expansion (yet again) – Edmonton and Portland will have teams next year. The last time the NLL had two consecutive years with exactly the same teams was 1992 and 1993: the list of changes is here. I’m not sure how I feel about this – expansion is good, though I’m not sure that there’s enough NLL-caliber talent out there to fill up two more rosters. The constant changing of teams may also indicate instability in the league, which is the last thing potential investors would want. Then again, the league just got two more investors in the Edmonton and Portland ownership groups, so they’re obviously OK with it. The strange thing is that commissioner Jim Jennings has stated that the league was primarily interested in joint ownership with NHL teams, and then they grant franchises to two non-NHL-related owners. He did say that potential owners must not only pay the franchise fee ($3 million, I think $1.5 million), but must also have about $10 million in cash available, to avoid another Vancouver, so I guess even if the new owners aren’t involved in the NHL, they have buckets of money, so that’s a good thing.

Graeme on the radio

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I made my major market radio debut this afternoon on the FAN 590 during Prime Time with Bob McCown. Bob was talking about Monday Night Football moving from ABC (where it’s been for 30 35 years) to ESPN. He mentioned that ABC has been losing money over the years, but it was worth it to them because it allowed them to advertise other ABC shows during football. He also mentioned that back in the 70’s when there were only a handful of stations to watch, having people fall asleep while the football game was on was good for ABC, in that when they turned the TV back on the next day, it was already on ABC. Anyway, they decided that it was no longer worth it to them, and ESPN decided it was. Bob said that ESPN figures that they have plateau’ed in terms of subscribers, so changing their programming is the only way to get more subscribers. This is where I come in.

I was driving home from work at the time, so I called in on my cell and was very surprised when the phone actually started ringing (I’ve called in a couple of times before, but always got busy signals). They took my name, then put me on hold for about 10 minutes, then suddenly I heard Bob say “Graeme in Kitchener, go”. I asked him how many people does he think watch Monday Night Football with any regularity that don’t already have ESPN, and consequently, how many new subscribers do they figure this will get them? I figure that anyone who watches Monday Night Football often enough that they’re willing to start paying for it, when they didn’t have to before, then they’re probably enough of a football fan that they’ve already got ESPN. Not only did he say it was an interesting question, but he said he agreed with me.

Anyway, it was my first time ever on the radio, so that was very cool.