I’m in Cleveland Ohio this weekend doing some training for a company here on Dataface. This is my first time east of Manitoba and it is quite an interesting experience. My work schedule hasn’t allowed me to really see any attractions, and my hotel is kind of out of town so I can’t easily get around, but it is still nice to see the land and hear the accents of the locals.

I have to say that the hospitality has been unreal so far. A complete stranger paid my cab fare when the drive refused my Canadian money (stupid Canadian forgot to get American money before the flight), and the cab drivers (who make up 50% of the people I’ve met) make for some good conversation.

I’m flying back tomorrow afternoon and will be back in Vancouver tomorrow night. If there is anything anyone needs in Cleveland, let me know. Please pray that my planes make it home OK (I have this silly fear of flying – turbulence makes me neurotic).

Oscar De la Hoya will be fighting Floyd Mayweather Jr. for the 154 lbs title on May 5, 2007.

Undoubtedly this will be a major PPV event as De La Hoya is far and away the most popular boxer of the past 15 years and Floyd Mayweather appears to be the best pound-for-pound fighter of today. As a De La Hoya fan, I am excited and scared about this news. Excited because it promises to be a great fight; and Scared because I don’t think Oscar can win this one.

In his fights against the quicker Shane Mosley, Oscar was unable to dominate as he usually does – and at times was made to look slow. Mayweather is younger and faster than De La Hoya, and he is probably better than Mosley was, so the odds are definitely against Oscar on this one. If there is one advantage, it will be that Floyd is moving up in weight for this fight, so there may be a power advantage for Oscar.

Personally I think that Golden Boy Promotions would be better to get behind a Mosley-Mayweather match. This would match speed against speed as, right now, I think that Mosley has the best chance of beating Mayweather of any current fighters in the weight class. In the end, though, Oscar’s name carries much more hype and anticipation than Mosley’s so money must prevail.

Train hard for this one Oscar, I’d love to see you win this.

I have the world’s best fiancée. You may think that this statement is as pointless as “the world’s best coffee”, but in this case it is the literal truth.

What I love most about her is that she is true to herself, the world around her, and, of the utmost personal importance, to me. I have been quite difficult of late, being slow to accept certain life decisions and paths – and one might use a “wet towel” as a metaphor for my company. Despite this, however, she continues to be true and faithful to me by including me in her daily life – and not hiding those things for which I have demonstrated low aptitude for reacting well. I hope that, when faced with issues that are difficult for her, I can carry my self with the same level of openness and integrity.

I hereby make a pact with myself to wring out the dampness in my wet towel so that it can become a soft, warm blanket – as it is not fair to respond to her faithfulness with fear or her warmth with coldness or her openness with possessiveness – as I have never had reason to doubt our relationship and I cannot allow fear of the future to over-take what I know to be true today.

Let the fun continue…

My friend Mike is part of a hilarious sketch comedy group called Classholes. This is a video of them doing some comedy at a competition in L.A. this past April.

Classholes Live in LA

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For more information about the Classholes, see their myspace page at http://myspace.com/classholes.

We all know that Wikipedia is a great tool for learning more about various topics.  I just discovered another great use for it:  aiding in website translations.

My company, Web Lite Solutions, has hired someone to translate one of its web sites into Chinese.  The question arose: "What is open-source, i.e. how should it be translated to Chinese?"

The term open-source, in the developer community, takes on a greater meaning than the sum of its parts.  It is almost a brand name.  Hence it is important to get the proper Chinese translation, and not just a translation that means, more-or-less, the same thing.

 Wikipedia to the rescue!

I Went to the Open-source listing on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source).  Then I looked on lower left column of the page where it lists the different translations for this entry, and clicked on the chinese link  (http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%BC%80%E6%94%BE%E6%BA%90%E4%BB%A3%E7%A0%81).  Presumably the title of this page should be the proper Chinese translation for "Open-source".  In addition, my translator is able to learn a number of other related translations by simply reading the article.