matt.heitto

Leaving on a jet plane to Hawaii this weekend.  Starting to get excited… and buried with work!

Here’s a quick itinerary:

1. Cruise: Norwegian Cruise Lines… boarding the Pride of America for a cruise around the different hawaiian islands for 7 nights.  We have some excursions booked, which include Volcano hikes, surfing,  snorkeling. and of course a Luau! Naturally, I can’t forget GOLF!  I just haven’t nailed down when and where quite yet.  My short list includes the Princeville’s Prince Course, Poipu Bay, or the Dunes at Maui Lani

2. Waikiki: Staying at the Sheraton Waikiki for 4 evenings.  Get to wind down from the cruise and float around the island a bit.  Nothing big on the agenda, except maybe some GOLF and possibly a Shark diving (in a cage!) excursion.

It’s 2 weeks that I’m looking forward to.  I’m hoping to get around to Tweeting about it, but I’m not sure on whether I’ll be bringing along the Crackberry along with me.

I’m sorry - I suck!  As the season of hockey is coming to a close, I’m not reffing as much.  Hopefully with this time, I’ll be able to put some effort into participating and updating this thing you call a blog.

The World Junior Hockey Championships are in Ottawa this year. It’s so close to home, I find it almost embarrassing that I didn’t make the short drive to catch a game or two. I was fortunate enough to catch an exhibition game between Sweden and Czech Republic. Either way, I watched a lot of the action on the tube since Boxing Day when the tournament kicked off.

Team Canada has been playing an exciting brand of hockey year the past number of seasons… often leading to winning the championship (they’re gunning for their 5th straight). This season is no exception, however I can’t help but to notice how their defense has been particularly strong. That’s also not to say they have great players on the blueline, but I can’t say they’ve been particularly defensive. With this, here are the 2 reasons why they will struggle to win the gold medal.

1 - No shutdown duo
Schenn/Doughty, Parent/Staal, Phaneuf/whoever… The combination of Teubert/Hickey just don’t seem to be cutting it. They seem to make a lot of mistakes with and without the puck, not only against the top teams, but with some of the weaker teams. The likes of Meyers and even Subban seem to be proving themselves as more defensively responsible than these couple.

2 - Goaltender confidence
Much like reason #1, when you hear the name Tokarski, it just doesn’t ring confidence. Steve Mason, Carey Price, Jeff Glass, and M-A Fleury are all guys in recent years who you knew would make the clutch save more often than not. Tokarski doesn’t seem to fall into this group of tenders. He reminds me of Carey Price, seemingly pretty calm and plays a steady game. But I can’t help but I notice a lot of weak goals from the wings going in. He doesn’t seem to have that winning edge. Maybe it has something to do with the pro contract he signed during the tournament itself.

Of course, their offense this year has proven throughout the exhibition and tournament that they’re more than capable of winning on that reason alone.

With that said, GO CANADA GO!!!

Christmas cards, gifts, and dinners. Boxing day sales. Reffing a number of minor hockey games. Watching the World Junior Championships (aka Canadian domination). New Years Eve parties. And, eventually my birthday. Sounds like the wrapping up of one year and the bringing in of another. Oh, this year’s version also includes bronchitis and pneumonia, but I digress.

2008 has been a solid year with not a lot of huge change on my end. If anything, I have finally been able to get settled and grow comfortable with where I am. 2009, I anticipate will be a year of growth and challenges. I want to get into the entrepreneurial world again. I want to travel. And of course, get married.

I feel I’ve missed out on the internet the past couple of years. I’ve been plugged in, but not as active as I once used to be. Because of this, I hope to transplant myself into some projects that will allow me try my hand at running a business again. Some extra cash will help as well.

With that, I welcome everyone else into 2009. Best of luck everyone!

Tomorrow, I’m off for a quick over nighter to Thunder Bay. The reason is to celebrate my dad’s 50th birthday (Happy Birthday if you’re reading this). Also, if he’s reading this, I guess the element of surprise is all but gone.

I was fortunate enough to jump on a seat sale at Air Canada for a $250 round trip flight. It would have cost me $160 in taxes just to use airmiles, so I opted to keep them and purchase the ticket. One thing I like about Air Canada (which isn’t a lot, BTW) is that you can customize your trip. You’re able to opt-out of certain value-added services such as collecting aeroplan points, checking baggage or the ability to change your flight. All in all, you’re generally able to save about $11 each trip.

Now, don’t get me wrong, WestJet is still my favourite airline from everything from the day-to-day prices and of course, general friendliness, but I must say that the opt-out abilities are kind of a nice feature.

I’ve been awfully busy working these days. Mostly because of a number of projects were near completion and that usually indicates a push to make them ready for launch.

At the same time, the days are often filled with stress and altogether craziness. But the end is quite fulfilling and the result was a new Investor Relations section of rogers.com and the completion of a 2nd phase of the fido.ca re-branding.

I’m now looking forward to the next set of projects at work that will be ready to go live in another month and a half. In the meantime, it’ll be a little less busy and hopefully that will allow me to finish my Christmas shopping on time!

Testing a plugin that synchronizes my blog posts with my livejournal account.  Oh, my long lost livejournal account.

I played in the Annual fall scramble at Cardinal Golf Club 2 weekends ago.  Some friends from work and I started last year and actually won it… so we decided to try it again.  This year, we weren’t so lucky, but we had a great time.  I actually played the most consistent round of the year.  I’m curious as to what my real score would have been.

Unfortunately, that was the last time I was out and despite the unusually warm weather of late, I’ve been stuck at work.  Golfless.

This season was a good one for me.  I got out and played some new tracks, met some new people and enjoyed regular company.  I resisted the overwhelming urge to join ClubLink yet again.  Played some solid and not so solid golf.  It was a good year.

With the wedding coming up next year, I doubt I’ll be able to enjoy it as much as I did this year, but I’m still optimistic.  With any luck, I’ll keep up with the golf industry throughout the winter and maybe write another blog or two, but I highly doubt it.

Until next season!

I’ve been working on a few projects, dipping into the development way of things… and since moving to my wonderful little town of Georgina, I’ve thought about developing a little portal for it.  Currently, there isn’t much of one, except the local newspaper yorkregion.com.  If you ask me, this site doesn’t have much in the way of Georgina compared to some of the other communities it promotes.

I think having a central point to check out the upcoming events and provide an interactive spot to socialize  is a big one… and Georgina definitely has a lot to offer locals as well as those from the city.  There just isn’t much in the way of anything like that right now.

I went to register my domain this morning and realized someone bought it up only this week.  I started talking about it a couple weeks ago… what a coincidence!

Hey everyone,

I just thought i would wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving to those across Canada!

I’m in the midst of preparing some more golf reviews and introducing some Vancouver Canuck dialog.

Enjoy your turkey and if you’re in the GTA, some wonderful weather!