I just finished watching Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (or Knocking on Heaven's Door, depending which title you want to use).

Very sweet anime. And there were some nifty trailers on the DVD for anime I know I'm going to have to wait 3 years for the imports of...

One's called Memories, and is a neat horror/sci-fi anime from the looks of it.

The other is called Steamboy and is by the director of Akira!

WOO!

Hmm... The sky is kind of, well, green here. That's never a good sign.

Time to power down my puter and wait out the storm.

I'm back in that in-between-games doldrums. I'm not sure what to work on. Do I go back and keep plodding away at Morrowind or do I work on something on the consoles? *shrug*

Meh. Of course, the day when I can't get any coverage is the day I am deathly ill for most of my shift.

Sigh. Isn't that always the case?

Luckily I seem to be doing better (again) this evening and with a good night's sleep I'll be right as rain!

Today is a year to the day since we moved in. Woo! Thanks again to Doug, Pete, Luke and Dave and especially Grant and James for all their help back last year. We'd still be lugging boxes from Mississauga without you!

Man, I can't believe I kept forgetting people!

Julie cleaned up my office today. I don't know... I kind of liked the Feng Junk motif I had going. But I have to say that it doesn't look like a bomb went off in here anymore...

Well, I seem to be feeling a lot better now after having a good hearty supper and chatting with my brother for most of the evening. I couldn't get anyone to cover my shift anyway tomorrow so I may as well just suck it up and get better!

I think it's my death-flu come back for a visit... I thought I avoided it this year since I didn't get struck down in February/March... hmm...

Ug. Yesterday at around 9pm I started to get a nice little scratch in the back of my throat. This morning when I woke up it was a full-on razorblade convention and the headache and sneezing was starting too.

I made it through my shift at work today, but barely. I hope I can find someone to cover me for tomorrow morning or else I'm going to have one FUN day at work :P

Ah, nothing like being a carrier of disease.

I just realized that I've barely started Harry Potter even though I've had it since Monday (I'm only 100 page in).

I think I'm doing some kind of subconcious rationing of it. I know it's going to be a while until the next one so I am trying to stretch this one out as long as possible.

It's really good though. I'm enjoying it so far.

I finally hooked my printer up a year to the day after we moved in here.

Go figure :)

If you're ever bored and want to watch an offbeat short film or listen to some unique music, check out ZeD. I like the show when I catch it on CBC TV, and the website is pretty spiffy too.

Woot!

I just beat Freelancer. What a fun game.

Now to sift through my pile o' games and see what to work on next... Probably more Morrowind.

This is neat. They've put out a Biblical setting for Dungeons & Dragons. Hmm...

I wonder if that'll get everyone who thinks that roleplaying is EVIL to hop on board.

Still, it's a neat concept.

It's funny how when people were pirating games and other software, people in the high-up positions in government never really do anything. The RIAA complains about losing money from Kazaa et. al. and suddenly Senators want to self-destruct people's machines.

The silliest thing about this whole ruckus is that if the RIAA actually starts targetting Jimmy & Sue Downloader all they'll do is piss off future customers rather than, oh, I don't know... make some kind of system that gives people an incentive to buy CD's.

Heck, even Metallica did this.. They hate Napster-like file-sharing, but they gave people who actually buy their newest CD a free pass to go into a locked website that lets you download gigs and gigs of Metallica concerts, b-side, etc. While they were overly loud about Napster and friends, this at least shows that they're willing to use the internet and give people an incentive to buy a CD rather than just rip one.

This is a post for the irony column. Senator Orrin Hatch in the States recently went on record saying that technology should be developed that would remotely destroy people's computers should they illegally download music (and possibly software).

The irony is that the Senator's own website uses pirated code. By the Senator's arguement, his own system should be remotely destroyed.

Sigh.

I just spent the last hour and a half or so playing Warioware.

All I can say is that the game is certifiably insane.

Fun, but insane.

I finally cracked today and picked up Warioware Inc.: Mega Microgame$ for the GBA. Not too shabby though... over a month between game purchases.

I think I've been playing too much Freelancer.

It's sad when you're sitting in a meeting with the head of the organization and all you can think about is what the best loadout for your ship should be...

If you get a chance, check out the anime Voices Of A Distant Star. It is a pretty cool anime given the fact that the guy made it on his home computer all by himself.

Time to bust out my Flash program and give it a try...

The nice thing about working though was that I got to try out the new Japanese place around the corner from work. It was pretty good. I got a heapin' helpin' of raw tuna and wasabi for lunch and enjoyed it thoroughly.

It's not Yo Yo (my favouritest restaurant in the whole wide world!), especially on the ambiance side of things, but you have to give them credit for good food and about as traditional a feel for a Japanese restaurant as you're going to get in a brand new strip mall.

I ordered the new SNES, er, Gameboy Player for the Cube from Futureshop Online. I wonder if/when they'll end up shipping it. It'll be nice to get though.

I also am really thinking hard about ordering this MP3 player for my trip up north at the end of July. Hmm...

Oh, I had to work this morning :( Sigh.

Blogger wasn't working last night :( Sigh.

It does seem to be working here (point in case...)

Well, yesterday (Wednesday) was my day off, so I just relaxed until it was time to dig the car out of the snowbank where it is parked and went and had some suicide wings. mmm...

My cold seems to be mostly gone. I was hacking up weird green stuff all day though... oh well.

On the upside, I'm around 50 hours into Xenosaga and probably 1/2 done the final dungeon! WOO! Not too shabby concidering I just got the game a week ago. Ah... sick days.

I almost hope I wake up with a racking chest cough and vomiting so I can spend the last few hours that I need to spend on the game and finish it properly!

My brother Dave doesn't have the best of luck at times.

He was at work and some punk 15-year old girls in a stolen Honda Accord came whipping around the corner and hit the gas instead of the brake, skipped the curb and plowed right into the back of Dave's car.

Luckily nobody was hurt, and the girls got charged with about 10 different counts of various vehicular mayhem charges and got a free stay in the local jail! They even tried to take off before the cops got there, but it's not a great idea to try to leave the scene of an accident in front of a group home with 6 big male staff on... you won't get very far :)

Oh, and did I mention that yesterday was his anniversary? There's a nice present...

< geek >

Mmm... Cel-Shaded TMNT... I am definately getting this the second it comes out.

I miss the Turtles. I did see the sort of 'Turtles Extreme' version of the show last year sometime, and I'm not sure if that's the style they're basing the game on. Classic TMNT was the best. And it had the best theme song ever for a cartoon. I hope that if they do bring the show back again they keep the artwork like in the game and the classic comics, but keep the writing like they had in the older cartoon. And ditch the new song and bring back the old one.

Actually, after looking at that screenshot below, that robot that Donatello is fighting IS the robot they had to fight during the one episode of the updated Turtles cartoon that I actually saw. Hmm...

< /geek >



Heroes on the half-shell. Turtle Power!

And yes, Penny Arcade is my #1 favourite site on the net.

I swear that Amazon.ca is becoming my most expensive to visit one... I found myself this very evening in line at Chapters, books in hand and cash in wallet, when I realized that I really should just see if I can get them cheaper on Amazon. Scary...

Though at this point, anything I can do to keep a penny or two out of Heather Reisman's pockets is fine by me.

Is 27 too young to be an old codger?

I think it'll be snowing, or at least raining on Thursday though, so I've booked that off instead. Though now I have to go to Kitchener in the evening, so maybe I should have just worked :)

I was thinking of taking Wednesday off work, but then I realized it's supposed to be 42 degrees (Celcius) with the humidex tomorrow and I don't have air conditioning at home, so it's off to work I go!

Sadly, I'm able to relate all too well to the latest PVP storyline.

Cool! Wired has done an interview (both text and audio) with the creators of Homestar Runner (my second favourite site on the web). Very entertaining.

Or pretentious even...

Ok, enough ranting. I was falling asleep playing Freelancer so I'm going to go read Hirsute Slinger of Clay whilst waiting for sleep to claim me.

Oh, and I hate it when people use the term 'dialoguing' or 'dialogue' to replace the word talk.

"We were having problems out East. We need to sit down and start dialoguing or we'll never solve our problems."

Why on earth do they not say talking rather than dialoguing? I hate jargon. At least meaningless jargon. I guess saying that they need to sit down and talk their problems through wouldn't sound as portentious.

Oh, and Harry Potter & The Order Of The Phoenix arrived this morning. I'm 10 pages into it and already I've had a 'Harry Potter Is Evil And Leads Kids To Wicca' arguement at work about it :)

Amazingly the other 99% of the fantasy novels I read at work never elicit this response even though they're by far a lot 'worse' with regards to the various wacky supernatural goings-on contained within their pages.

All I have to say is that I, unlike maybe all the other impressionable people running around reading Harry Potter, can distinguish FANTASY and FICTION from REALITY...

Wow! What a concept.

Sometimes I wonder how people go through life with such a lack of imagination.

I won't even get into the fact that a lot of my sci-fi/fantasy novels have had some very interesting philosophical and religious questions and/or overtones that gets me mulling over tidbits of my own faith that your average sunday sermon might not touch on. And a lot of times some of the books might be critical of Christianity or tenets thereof. The arguements they give in some of these books get me thinking of how I would best debate someone with that kind of viewpoint. They at least show me the methodology behind why people might think that about either Christianity or religion/faith in general...

But man, it's like people think that I'm going to go start sacrificing goats to the Dark Lord Satan because of the devil-witch J.K. Rowling.

Sigh.

Have I ever mentioned just how much I despise summer? I mean, I enjoy the nice sunny days where it's around 20-23 Celcius and there's a nice breeze, but unfortunately those are the exception rather than the norm. Instead it's just a lot of hot, humid, sweaty days that I just want to have over so we can get back to freezing like the true Canucks that we are!

I have to say though, today hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be. It's hot, yes, but at least there's no humidity. It would be nice to have at least SOME breeze to help push around some of the air in here...

Spent the weekend downloading Chrome. It's a cool looking game, gorgeous graphics and everything... unfortunately it's all in Polish, so all I can do is run around a bit on the first map and that's about it.

Sigh.

I even tried to see if I could puzzle out the written text, but it's like having a really bad reading disability. I can make out some of the words (like kilometeroj) but most of the rest are just jumbles of letters to my untrained eyes!

Oh well. At least now I know that it seems like a pretty cool game so once the US version is released I'll probably pick it up.

Hmm... I think I've gone about 3-4 weeks without even stepping into an EB, let alone MY EB.

I think they must have had to lay off some staff by now what with my not contributing my usual 70% of their revenue. They're probably down to just the manager and one part-timer.

This has been a fun weekend.

Spent the day yesterday going to garage sales and the trunk sale in the morning, then watching kung-fu all afternoon and evening with my good buddy James.

Then we went to church this morning, had a yummy barbeque afterwards and then I spent the afternoon outside reading my book and playing Advance Wars on my GBA (and finally getting past the level I was stuck on!)

Well, I'm off to go read a bit more of my book. Hopefully I'll get it finished what with the 5th Harry Potter book arriving in my mailbox tomorrow morning!

We went to the drive-in to see The Hulk and Bruce Almighty. I really liked The Hulk. It was an interesting take on a comic book movie, in that they filmed it almost like it was moving frame to frame in a comic book...

It's hard to explain, but you just have to go see it :)

Finally finished watching Buffy Season 4. I actually thought it was the best of the first four seasons. But then I'm just wierd that way.

Off I go to work my whole 2 hour shift... yippee.

I gad fun at the circus tonight though. I think this guy almost died falling off the trapeze... it's hard to tell though if the crazy death-defying fall is an act or he actually slipped...

And they did that crazy Sphere-Of-Death where they get 6 motorcycles whipping around the inside of a little metal globe. That was neat, especially since we were about 30 feet away from it. And the elephants were neat.. it was just neat.

Though having a circus inside a hockey arena is kind of odd. At least for me.

And the guys from work had a blast. They were smiling from ear to ear the whole time.

Woo! Just got home from a 14 hour shift. At least tomorrow I only have about 2 hours or so that I'll really be needed at work and then my weekend begins!

I just hope it's not as deadly hot as they're predicting. Bring back the drizzle I say!

While insane, the Japanese can do some pretty good airbrushing.

This is further proof that the Japanese are either vastly more intelligent than us, or else absolutely insane.

And I started reading The Dead Zone by Stephen King last night (Sunday). It's kind of neat so far, though now that they have the show based on it I know the general premise. It's still nice to go back and read the original oeuvre that it's based on though.

(Yeah, I used oeuvre to describe a Stephen King novel... shoot me now :)

Freelancer is neat. It's very odd to play a space-combat sim with a mouse rather than a joystick, but I'm getting used to it. Still a pretty cool game though.

Uh oh. I think I might have that new W32.leech virus that's going around.

I just followed the simple instructions to see if I'm infected...

1. At the Start menu, select Search->Files or Folders
2. Search for *.mp3 and then for *.avi
3. If no files are found, your computer is safe.

Yup, looks like I am.

I watched a really cool show on HGTV of all places today. It's called Holmes on Homes and it's this contracter (named Mike Holmes) who goes around the GTA tackling really majorly botched renovations.

The frustration on the guy's face everytime he goes in to check a leak and finds out it's something a little more, well, deadly, like not having a foundation on the addition you just had installed or having a non-grounded, metal light fixture IN YOUR NEW SHOWER STALL... And the worst thing is that about all he can do is fix everything and use the show as a means to drive home the point of DO YOUR HOMEWORK and CAVEAT EMPTOR!

He even had one show where he tried going to Metro's Finest and was pretty much told that the Criminal Code doesn't deem that having someone take over $100K for repairs and not only not do them but destroy your house is fraud or any other crime. Yeesh.

The only thing I didn't like about the show is that the main title music is a very blatant rip-off of that song used in the Mitsubishi commercials (the get up get up put your body in motion song)... it keeps ALMOST sounding like the song, then they change a chord here or there and it sounds like your usual rip-off rock :) Oh well. Other than that, very cool show.

Bah. I ran over a bunny on the way home from work. Oh well. He should have crossed at the stop sign.

Got home from work and there must have been a cloud of mosquitos hanging around outside my front door... probably had about 20 of them follow me in and I had to spend about 10 minutes squishing the buzzing cloud...

Wow. That shift probably went by the quickest of any shift I've ever worked. Granted I was pretty busy until 8pm and by then most of my shift is done, but still... I like fast shifts :)

Man.. Just got back from the Trunk Sale.

Got Unreal 2 for $2 and Operation Flashpoint: Game Of The Year Edition for $2...

Yup, $4 for both games. Brand-new, sealed...

Gotta love deals like that... Unreal 2 is at least $60 or so at the stores as it is. I almost got Neverwinter Nights too, but I decided not to.

You are The Cap'n!

Some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some slit the throats of any man that stands between them and the mantle of power. You never met a man you couldn't eviscerate. Not that mindless violence is the only avenue open to you - but why take an avenue when you have complete freeway access? You are the definitive Man of Action. You are James Bond in a blousy shirt and drawstring-fly pants. Your swash was buckled long ago and you have never been so sure of anything in your life as in your ability to bend everyone to your will. You will call anyone out and cut off their head if they show any sign of taking you on or backing down. You cannot be saddled with tedious underlings, but if one of your lieutenants shows an overly developed sense of ambition he may find more suitable accommodations in Davy Jones' locker. That is, of course, IF you notice him. You tend to be self absorbed - a weakness that may keep you from seeing enemies where they are and imagining them where they are not.

What's Yer Inner Pirate?
brought to you by The Official Talk Like A Pirate Web Site. Arrrrr!

And just to give you some advance warning, September 19th is Talk Like A Pirate day.

Watched 28 Days Later... tonight. Pretty cool. It's not scary, but there is a good quantity of gore... and a few jumpy moments. It's cool though, and creepy in the kind of way that having almost the entire population of England wiped out can be.

Which OS are You?

And I found this today. Stupid Things My Girlfriend And I Argue About.

Hee hee...

Lots of funny things like this gem:

" Margret doesn't like to watch films on the TV. No, hold on - let me make sure you've got the inflection here: Margret doesn't like to watch films on the TV. She says she does, but years of bitter experience have proven that what she actually wants is to sit by me while I narrate the entire bleeding film to her. 'Who's she?', 'Why did he get shot?', 'I thought that one was on their side?', 'Is that a bomb' - 'JUST WATCH IT! IN THE NAME OF GOD, JUST WATCH IT!' The hellish mirror-image of this is when she furnishes me, deaf to my pleading, with her commentary. Chair-clawing suspense being assaulted mercilessly from behind by such interjections as, 'Hey! Look! They're the cushions we've got.', 'Isn't she the one who does that tampon advert?' and, on one famous occasion, 'Oh, I've seen this - he gets killed at the end.' "

Hee hee... just listening to Wierd Al's new album. Very funny stuff, as always.

Sickness sucks. Though I have been able to curl up on the couch and watch a lot of Buffy. And read my book.

On the plus side (esp. if I end up having to curl up in a ball on the couch for the next couple days) my Buffy Season 4 and Angel Season 1 DVD sets arrived today. They escaped Ottawa it seems.

Bleh. I've been getting run down today. My head has felt like there's a pencil sticking into my eye for the better part of the day and I'm also feeling rather... hmm... discombobulated is the best word. I feel almost like I usually do right before my crazy death cold, but not quite that bad.

While I've pretty much made arrangements to take tomorrow off (and I wouldn't mind having it off) I really hope it's not CRAZY DEATH COLD because that would suck. I don't mind having it in the middle of March but not mid-June.

This is cool. There's a happy face on Mars. And it's real. Heh... go figure.

Heard an excellent piece on IDEAS tonight on the way home. It was all about Urban Sprawl and the Soul.

The speaker (Christopher something) had an excellent analogy to describe urban sprawl and development.

Imagine they started replacing trees and plants with aluminum trees and plastic plants. At first people would just think it's a novel idea that is kind of interesting. Unfortunately soon you would have no real trees left and the ones you DID have would be a quaint rarity.

That's exactly what has happened to urban areas (and not-so-urban areas) in the late 20th/early 21st centuries. If you find something that hasn't been churned out of the cookie-cutter of urban sprawl development, it's an amazingly quaint little town or area of town.

He then goes on to describe how this disconnect to the land and the natural way in which a town should develop has led to people not being able to fully experience and enjoy life. Very interesting listen.

This is funky. David Hasslehoff sings!

Woah. They've updated Blogger

Grr...

I think that Amazon.ca has, for some inexplicable reason, shipped my Buffy and Angel DVD's to Ottawa rather than Acton.

Grr...

Oh, and the financial planner was very good. Scary...

Best

Strongbad

E-mail

Ever.

"I will never ever ever ever ever write a song about Sibbie."

Watched Jackass: The Movie tonight. Very dumb, but very funny.

My favourite part is when they go to Japan and snort wasabi. Man, that must hurt :)

I'm afraid to sleep. Giant robot mice will chase me down and sing to me...

Badly...

Never ever ever will I agree to have a staff meeting at Chuck E. Cheese's again. EVER!

Well, I'm going to bed. And it's before 5am.. Yikes.

Gotta get up early to go to a meeting thingy with some financial planners (got a free consultation with them as part of our Welcome Wagon stuff a year ago) and then I have a staff meeting at noon. Yoy.

Morrowind is nifty. I am wandering around an area I've never been in before. Then I found this cool room in the bottom of an abandoned shrine.

Trust me, when you're playing it and it's got the torchlight flickering on the huge statue, it is just too cool.

The people with big sticks who come out and beat me if I get too close aren't so cool though.

Oh man. Download this Matrix screensaver now and drool.

Thanks for that link Doug. Absolutely amazing screensaver if I do say so myself. Something has finally kicked Homestar Runner off my screen.

Ah ha!

Plain pink Sensodyne toothpaste is really just highly concentrated Pepto-Bismal... try them both and you'll see.

Another conspiracy unmasked by Brock and his band of sleuths.

Spent a chunk of the afternoon pricing air conditioners for our house. Not cheap... not cheap at all. I hope it's a nice mild (by Southern Ontario standards) summer.

and full...

sooo... tired...

I do have to say that the wedding I was at was 2 Fast and 2 Furious for my usual tastes. Gotta love having a veritable rice boy convention at the wedding.

I thought they'd do a 21-coffee-can muffler salute.

I had fun at the wedding I went to today. I like fast ceremonies (about 25 minutes for this one) and then I got to chase geese around in the park.

whee!

Something must be wrong with me. I went to Microplay while they were having the sale to end all sales and I didn't buy any games or anything else for that matter.

Must be SARS :)

I think my friend James initialized a climate exchange with the Seattle area. He just got back from a 2-3 week vacation there and we've been having rain and cool temperatures (IN JUNE!!) and they've been having sweltering heat.

Gotta love it. Bring on the cold and the damp. They can keep the heat and humidity.

This is a pretty good article about some of the proposed changes to Windows and PC gaming in general. I don't agree with a couple of the ideas, but I have to admit that you'd get a lot more people playing PC games rather than Console games if you made it so you didn't have to have degree in computer science to run them.

Yeah, I know I have a rough life, but I'm once again in that sort of limbo between games. Do I delve into Morrowind and lose another 100 hours of my life or so, or do I putz around with some of the games I've started and almost finished but never actually completed?

Decisions, decisions.

My Animatrix arrived Wednesday morning. Man, it rocks. I think that Final Flight of the Osiris is probably one of my favourites, if not my favourite piece. It just shows that Square Studios is the best computer animation company hands-down. Sure, Pixar has better stuff on the more cartoony side of things, but the stuff that Square Studios puts out is scary with regards to how digital actors are easily a possibility.

I was also thinking that it would have been even better had they incorporated FFotO into Reloaded proper... sigh.

Is a sign of insanity when you start using the words "Musical Genius" and "Bee Gees" in the same sentence?

Heh. I feel bad for my friend James. He upgraded to High Speed Ultra, but his modem doesn't work with the new signal and he won't be able to get to the post office to get the new one they shipped him until the weekend.

3 days unplugged... How can he do it?!

Picked up Ghost Ship, Red Dragon and Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets today. Not a bad haul for $30. Gotta love the video store here in Acton. Cheap DVD's and a Buy 2, Get 1 free offer!

Oh yeah... just beat Planescape: Torment. About time, too. Only took 4 years from when I originally started it.

Great game, amazing story and you have got to love an RPG that lets you talk your way through almost the entire thing with only minimal fighting.

The real kicker is that I could have just finished Torment back about 3 years ago but I had heard that you needed to keep a certain alignment to get the best ending and I had gotten stuck and didn't want to do something to lose the alignment my character had.

Turns out that the endings don't depend on the alignment of The Nameless One at all. It totally has to do with how you dispose of the end boss. Sigh.

Still worth playing through for the second time though. Not too shabby... only about a week and a bit to finish it from start to finish. Helped having two days off to just play all day :)

hmm... I probably should go to bed. At least I took tomorrow (today?) off so I can sleep in.

This is kind of neat. It's an excel spreadsheet that shows you just how much you'd get paid for a freelance piece for the CBC.

Not too shabby. 2 minute piece nets you a couple hundred bucks...

It was kind of nuts today. Turns out there was a murder last night right across the street from where the guys at work work. Sad thing was that I didn't even notice the police tape, 6 cruisers and the mobile command post until I'd been parked in the parking lot and looked in my rear-view mirror... Sigh.

Goooo Captain Observation!

Bah. I can't get it to work properly. Oh well.

Hmm... just trying out this little daily tech news blurb that automatically updates... gotta fiddle with it a wee bit.

This is kind of scary. I think I'm getting relatively close to finishing Torment. Probably will have it finished by the end of the week at this rate. It's scary because I just started it about a week and a half ago, tops... and it's a huge RPG that should take me a lot longer than that to finish!

And this is with my Spider Solitaire addiction factored in too... sigh.

OOOOH man. Burnout 2 for the Xbox is my new favourite stress relief game. SO fun.

I hate Spider Solitaire.