2002-02-21-6:54 a.m.

We spent the evening with our friends Ty and Shannon tonight. Ty made this great roasted chicken served along with wild rice. It's good to get out and discuss things with people.

One topic discussed tonight was our other friends new business. Bart and Chris, these guys have started a business together. Chris is the sales/promotion part of the business, Bart is the production part. This is who I've been developing a website for the past 4-6 weeks. Actually, I've only worked on the site the past 2 weeks diligently because I haven't been getting any info from these guys. There's absolutely no content on this site whatsoever at this point. Chris did finally come through with content for me yesterday, but I question the pricing practices he's following and want to wait until I talk to Bart about it first.

My fear is that Bart isn't seeing the financial gain he should based on the pricing that I'm hearing from Chris. Their profits aren't going to keep up with their overhead the way I'm looking at it.

So we discussed this last night as Ty and I have known Chris and Bart since we all were 10 year olds. We're going to try to get out from these guys how exactly they plan on doing their business. Quite honestly they've been lucky, like with the website. I'm doing all that for free for them, not that I'm a professional by any means, or that I'm complaining. It's just that I want to see them succeed so I'm willing to give up a lot of time and effort in order to see them do good. But if they're not making sound decisions, I feel it's my duty as a freind to help sort it all out. We'll see what happens.

One other thing we discussed is how the Canadians are doing in the Olympics. Of which I have two comments.

Nothing against David Pelletier and Jaime Salé but I missed a lot of other events because of ISU and IOC press conferences. In one day alone, there was 4 hours of press conferences, and an additional 3 hours of coverage. I agree they should have gotten the gold medal, and they did...so let's watch some sporting events already. I don't want to hear how the ISU is going to do this, or how the IOC wants to do that. If I wanted all this red tape I'd watch C-SPAN. One hour, that's all they needed to say, "Due to a judging violation, the French judge is suspended indefinitely pending further investigation. That being said, we as the ISU and IOC feel in the best interest of fairness and sport, the Canadian pair of Pelletier and Salé will be awarded an additional gold medal which will be given to them in a ceremony along with the Russian pair on blah blah blah day blah blah blah..." How much easier would that have been? All the details they could've thrown on the late local news or on another news segment, after all, that's what it is...NEWS. There's a lot of other events than figure skating, some of which I would've liked to watch that day.

Second topic of discussion. Wayne Gretzky is nuts. His contention that everyone hates Canadians is about the most preposterous thing I've ever heard. Firstly, everyone loves Canadians, everyone hates Americans. That's how it's been for a long time, and I'm sure not much has changed as far as that goes. Secondly, the pressure that Gretzky and team Canada are recieving is pressure they and the Canadian press and populace has put on themselves. Wayne's comment about him being tired of hearing all the bashing of Team Canada in the press, well...play better...or talk less...or both.

As far as the tournament goes, last I saw, Team Canada was still in it. Gretzky and all of Canada should be proud of that. A 2-1 win or an 8-1 win, a win is a win. Ask Sweden, a gold medal favorite who got knocked out by Belarus, a team that everyone thought would be a pushover.

The whole point of the Olympics is supposed to be a celebration of culture and sport. It's turned into a media circus of who did what to whom. The things I'm most proud of in the Olympics so far are two Australians who won the first 2 gold medals ever for that country in a Winter Olympics, Belarus men's hockey, for doing the impossible beating Sweden, and this story.

d.