Serious Hardware Problems.

I have good news.

The hardware related problems on my personal computer are now history and I can resume my normal online activities!

I have experienced serious problems connecting on the internet over the course of the last month and those problems affected this blog greatly. I managed to post a couple of stories during the course of the last four weeks and barely kept this blog alive.

But now I am glad to announce that those problems are solved. I apologize if those problems affected your reading pleasure in any way.

I am always open to new ideas. Feel free to post comments or suggestions in the ''suggestion box''.

Thank you for your time.

Montreal Canadiens: Jacques Martin Promises A Captain.

The Montreal Canadiens' head coach, Jacques Martin, met the press only minutes before his annual golf tournament and promised that a team captain would be in place before the start of the season.

The Canadiens have played the entire 2009-2010 season without a team captain. Nobody wore the C since the departure of Saku Koivu. The speculations on who could be the next captain are going since a year already.

Yesterday's announcement from Jacques Martin revived the rumors. Yesterdy was also a big day for defense men Andrei Markov who officially became a Canadian citizen. Markov's love for Canada and the city of Montreal was officialized during a short ceremony held in Montreal.

Is there a link between Jacques Martin's declaration and Markov's new citizenship? We should have an answer in a couple of months.

2010 FIFA World Cup: Semifinals.

We are approaching the conclusion of the 2010 FIFA World Cup as we now know which teams will engage for the final battle for the title.

Before I begin, I have to admit that I am not a hardcore soccer fan. But I have to say that I have followed each and every World Cup with growing interest since 1990.

Each edition of the World Cup that I watched brought something special to remember and this year will be no different. Except that this time it will not be for the good aspects of the whole event.

If I could resume this 2010 World Cup in five words, those words would be: deception, awful refereeing and noise pollution.

I use the word ''deception'' because of the large number of teams that miserably underachieved. For example, France and Italy are two recent past champions that did not manage to do anything on the field. France was not only bad during the competition, they made headlines because of internal disputes that boiled outside the locker room. The players even refused to be part of a public training.

The second part of my resume, ''awful refereeing'' is an obvious choice for me. A couple of results during the pool round and a couple of 1/8 final matches were directly influenced by the work of referees. The 1/8 final match between England and Germany itself could be named ''the pinnacle of awful refereeing'' resulting in a blown second half.

After the Germans took a 2-0 lead, England struck twice before the end of the first half. But the ball on the second goal came out of the goal before the referees could see it. From that point on, the match was tainted.

I chose ''noise pollution'' for my third part of my resume because of the noise produced by the horns used by the fans gathered in the crowd. The ''vuvuzela'', when used without interruption creates an annoying vibrating buzz that a pack of flies would produce.

Now that my resume is over, I will try to pick a winner between the four remaining teams in the competition.

Semifinal No. 1: Uruguay-Netherlands.

While Uruguay needed the penalty kicks to evict Ghana in their quarterfinal match, the Netherlands defeated the powerful Brazil in regular time, an impressive result for the oranjes.

I will favor the Netherlands for this semifinal.

Semifinal No.2: Germany-Spain.

The German scoring machine has not seen any sign of slowing down. The loss of Michael Ballack has not been a factor yet as the German team managed to produce goals in quantity. Spain's defense will give a strong opposition but will it be enough to win?

I favor Germany to win this second semifinal.

Be there Tuesday and Thursday to see who fill be the finalists of this 2010 World Cup.