Happy New Year!

As 2005 is wrapping up, I just wanted to say, "Happy New Year" to everyone who either reads me compulsively (all 12 of you) or stumbles across the page (the rest of you).

I hope everyone had a good year in 2005 and will have an even better one in 2006. Since a giant asteroid is due to smash into Earth and end life as we know it in 2007, I guess this will be the last time I can say these things... :)

Now I have to get to bed so I can be up at 6am and go to work... sigh.

Best... Noodles... Ever...

Julie & I went out to celebrate our anniversary a few days early as we actually had people to look after Garrett tonight. We went to Lola's Lounge in Sarnia, which is a very neat restaurant.

If you're ever in Sarnia and have a few extra bucks to spend, I highly recommend Lola's. It's fantastic.

Julie had a very tasty steak with the best fries I've had (think of bridge fries but better) while I had a chicken breast stuffed with prusscuto and brie. The scary thing is that my chicken, albeit amazingly tasty, was not the best part of my meal. The skinny egg noodles with lemon butter sauce and sundried tomatoes were the best noodles I have ever tasted. I ended up scarfing them down and left my chicken for later. Mmm...

The atmosphere at Lola's is pretty interesting too. It's an old greasy spoon that has been turned into an upscale martini lounge/restaurant. Actually, it makes me think of a greasy spoon that was ground zero for an explosion of all of James's crazy blue glass.

My mom had said that there might be live entertainment and boy howdy, there was. This guy was sitting at the bar relatively close to our booth and he had obviously had a few too many. He ended up making friends with everyone who had the (mis)fortune of sitting close to him and since he's a cabbie, he was recognizing people that were fares of his. The best was when he was telling this guy that he recognized his daughter as a fare he dropped off early in the morning (and who didn't want her dad to know she was being dropped off early in the morning as opposed to late at night). What a kook.

We were supposed to get our martinis for free (the bartender told us that the drinks were on her because she took forever to get them to us) but alas, they were on our bill. We just paid for them because the food was so tasty that we felt good paying for the supposedly free drinks.

Anyway, we absolutely loved the meal and would recommend going there if you're ever in Sarnia and have a special occasion to celebrate. It did cost us $100 after taxes, tips and drinks, but it was well worth it.

Ludditis strikes again.

Sooo...

I hate Nintendo, EB and Tony.

I returned my DS to EB this morning because the two dead pixels were bothering me and I figured I'd put my ESA to good use and get a new DS.

Of course, when I got home my new DS had not two, but one dead pixel. This time it was off to the side of the screen and not very noticable, so I figured that I'd cut my losses and just keep this unit. Well, I'd keep it until close to the end of my year warranty.

So I'm playing the DS tonight and I noticed that the right side of the upper screen looked a little dim. I wasn't sure if it was just me, but after looking at the system several times it does indeed seem that the upper screen is somewhat dim on the right side.

Sigh.

Looks like I'll be putting my ESA through its paces this week. I'll probably take this unit back to EB in Milton and see if they, unlike the EB in Sarnia, have DS's that aren't buggered.

I hate Tony because he went out and picked up a DS today at Future Shop and it has no problems with the screens at all. Grr...
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What I'm Reading: The Claus Effect, The Year Of Our War
What I'm Playing: Ratchet & Clank 3, Warioware: Touched, FF IV
What I'm Watching: X-Play, my blood pressure rise with rage at Nintendo

Hoax or not?

Try this little test to see if you can figure out which images are fakes and which are real.

I got 8 out of 10.

A is for Monkey!

I'd just like to thank Julie for that awesome post title. Silly, tired Julie.

Anyway, I couldn't let this little anecdote pass into obscurity. Garrett must be humilated for years to come! I will warn you, it's kind of gross.

We were over at my parents' place this afternoon. Connor and Garrett had just awoken from their naps and were sitting on my Dad's favourite chair with Julie. Then Garrett coughed.

And thus began the, um, disaster.

He threw up a little blorp. It was a bit messy but just a bit on his shirt.

Then he coughed and threw up a bit more. This hampered the clean-up efforts somewhat, but we were determined to step up our response to this disaster.

Then Garrett let loose with a firehose spray of vomit that doused poor Connor and Julie. And the chair. The poor, poor chair.

We had to spend the next while cleaning everything up. Poor Dave somehow got pressed into scrubbing all the clothes. Garrett & Connor got to have a fun little bubble bath and a good time was had by all (except Dave).

At least my parents hadn't had their carpets cleaned before Christmas. Now they have a good excuse to do it :)

I told you it was gross...

Christmas Madness!

Hey all.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas, whether you got lots of presents or just enjoyed the presence of your family and friends.

We had a pretty good time over the last few days. The Wager family did our usual book exchange on Christmas Eve and I got a new Pratchett book out of the deal. It's always nice to get Discworld books for Christmas.

Sunday saw Garrett opening his cool presents from Santa which included a nice drawing pad and some crayons to go with it. I think he also got a fancy shmancy wooden truck with a few wooden cars on it, amongst other things.

I got a drill from Julie & Garrett which will go great with the drill bits my dad got me 2 years ago. I can finally make holes in stuff without having to use a hammer!

I got some shirts, which are nice, and The War Of The Worlds DVD (the 1950's version). I also got several gift cards which I was able to put to use on BLACK MONDAY, er, Boxing Day. I hit the mall right at 8am and was out by 9am, just when the crowds were getting bad. What did I get for my troubles, you ask?

A shiny red Nintendo DS, baby! And a few games. And a new pair of boots (since my last pair was so worn down on the instep I felt like I was participating in a rickets simulation).

I LOVE the DS. The funny thing is that both of my brothers picked up PSP's over the last few days so we were having the battle of the handhelds at my parents' place. While I must admit that the PSP is one sweet little piece of hardware, there just isn't anything to play on it. Dave picked up GTA: Liberty City Stories, which was nice to look at but I didn't like the feel of the controls. Grant had Metal Gear Acid, which also looked rather nice but I didn't have much of a chance to play. I know that Lumines is supposed to be an awesome puzzle game but otherwise there just wasn't anything that really popped out at me as something I had to play.

The DS, on the other hand, is also an awesome piece of hardware but very different from the PSP. I was completely addicted to Meteos for almost the entire day on Monday and have put a bit of time into Mario Kart, which is insanely fun. Metroid Pinball looks pretty deep, for a pinball game (plus it has a rumble pack which is always a plus). Trauma Center is HARD, but for a surgery simulator it rocks. I haven't even tried Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney or Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time, but they both look great.

So, in my opinion, the DS is a better system if only because there are so many great games on the system... I haven't even mentioned the ones on my rental queue... The PSP is really nice, but just doesn't have any games.

Plus it's really fun to play Mario Kart over the wireless LAN here at the in-laws.
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What I'm Reading: The Claus Effect
What I'm Playing: All those DS games, Guitar Hero
What I'm Watching: Corner Gas

All I want for Christmas is a crowbar

Hooray for the internet!

It looks like Santa is currently right over Newfoundland & New Brunswick. Hopefully he'll be by the Greater Sarnia Area in the next couple hours so that Garrett can get his presents.

Go check out the even-better-than-usual NORAD Tracks Santa site. I found it a little clunky last year but this year it's working perfectly.

The Chronic(what?)cles of Narnia

It seems that 'tis the season to go watch movies. I've watched Serenity at least twice in the last 4 days, went to see King Kong last night and saw Narnia this afternoon.

Yup, good times.

Everyone should go and rent Serenity. Rent Firefly if you can, but at least rent Serenity. I've blathered enough about it though so that's that with that.

King Kong was great. Unfortunately, the first hour and a half could have been trimmed down to about 45 minutes and I wouldn't have missed much. Even after they get to Skull Island I wasn't sure if the movie was going to live up to the hype. Once Kong appears and things get going though... wow. It's pretty much non-stop for the rest of the movie.

I did come pretty close to physical violence at the theatre. There were some punk teenagers who were being a little yappy prior to the movie but were well behaved until this one somewhat serious part about 3/4's of the way through. Then they started talking... and talking... and talking... I even told them to shut up but they kept on going. Thankfully an older gent got up moments before I was about to give them a smack and he got them to shut up. The best part of the movie was when they got up and left about 15 minutes before it was actually done.

I do recommend seeing King Kong in theatre though because the Skull Island and New York sequences are fantastic and really should be seen on the big screen.

The Chronicles of Narnia was probably better than King Kong, though King Kong was much more of a thrill ride as opposed to the solid story that is The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. I can't think of anything wrong with Narnia from a story or movie standpoint. I especially enjoyed the armour worn by the kids during the big battle at the end. Very nice work.

Anyway, that's what I've done so far on my Christmas vacation. I'm off to do the fambly thing now and might not be updating for a day or two. I will say this... There aren't any decent Boxing Day sales worth going to the store at 6am for... at least not unless you have several thousand dollars to spend.
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What I'm Reading: The Claus Effect
What I'm Playing: FFIV GBA, Dragon Quest VIII
What I'm Watching: King Kong, Narnia, Serenity, Scrubs Season 1

Further proof that Manitoba is the centre of the universe...

A rare first edition King James Bible was found in the University of Manitoba collection recently.

This goes to show that everything will end up in Manitoba at some point. Eventually enough stuff will accumulate and the mass build-up will trigger an implosion resulting in a massive black hole that will rip asunder the fabric of space-time and bring all of reality crashing down amongst us as horrors we cannot comprehend run rampant over the cosmos.

Or it just means that they got really lucky and found a very rare bible in the stacks.

I'm leaning more towards the latter, though the former theory would result in fewer blackflies.

Wheee!

Garrett went tobogganing today. He had lots of fun. I'd post more except I just spent an hour talking to Dave on the phone instead of typing this so you'll have to live with my paltry description.

If he's not real, who is NORAD tracking every Dec. 24?

Just wanted to throw my hat into the whole Santa debate a-ragin' across the various websites (well, both of them).

Dave Taylor, that HTML guru, has conclusively answered the question, "Is Santa Claus real?"

As for me and Grandpa, we believe...

I almost forgot!

I've been meaning to link to this for about a month but kept forgetting.

Child's Play!

It's a great charity started by the Penny Arcade guys about 3 years ago that has gamers from across the world donating games, movies and other diversions (plus buckets of cash) to children's hospitals around the US and now Canada.

If you're feeling like giving to a charity case this Christmas, give to me. If you want to give to someone REALLY needy, give to Child's Play. Either way you'll win.

And that's my PSA about why gamers aren't the vicious killers they are often made out to be. Heck, the PA guys have already raised over $420 million US and that's just from this year! Crazy.

ED:Er... I mean, $420 thousand dollars... Not million...

Hurray for research!

Soo.... I did a bit more digging after reading that Slashdot blurb and a bit of the EW article and it turns out that Serenity is not dead after all.

*gasp* *surprise*

Whedonesque (a great Whedon fan site) has a bit more info and words from Joss himself.

All right, now I have to jump in and set the record straight. EW is a fine rag, but they do take things out of context. Obviously when I said I had 'closure', what I meant was "I hate Serenity, I hated Firefly, I think my fans are stupid and Nathan Fillion smells like turnips." But EW's always got to put some weird negative spin on it. But so we're clear once and for all: If you read a quote saying "I'd love to do more in this 'verse with these actors in any medium" all I'm saying is that Nathan has a turnipy odor. It's not his fault, he doesn't eat a lot of them but everyone else in the cast noticed it and tht's not really something I'm prepared to deal with any more. And Jewel said outright she wouldn't do scenes with him except stuff like the SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER funeral scene which was outside in a high SPOILER wind. So if I do manage to find another incarnation for my beloved creation, it will have been totally against my will.

I hope that clears everything up. Oh, and when I say I want to do a Spike movie, it means I have a bunion on my toe.

-joss (by which I mean Tim)

(no, actually me.)
joss | December 21, 02:12 CET

Yeah, Joss is crazy, but he's essentially refuting everything above. Firefly the series is dead, that is pretty much a given. Serenity and the 'verse is likely very much alive. EW just took things WAY out of context. Bah.

Stupid people, getting me somewhat worried about a movie.

It's all an ugly Alliance plot...

So my copy of Serenity arrived today and somehow, in between two Christmas parties, I was able to watch it (with Joss Whedon's great commentary) and most of the extras. Great film, great DVD, awesome commentary.

Then I was looking on Slashdot and I see this.

"...Despite Universal's best marketing efforts, the film only mustered $25 million. 'In the end, it was what it was: a tough sell,' says Whedon, adding that it appears the Firefly saga has reached its conclusion. He has no regrets -- and he's moving on."

Which is strange because not only does the article come out the day of the DVD release but from everything I had read he only needed to break even on the film in order to continue making the rest of the planned trilogy. He was only about 3/4's of a million dollars short. The DVD sales are likely to be much greater than the film's actual box office take so there really should be no issue from a contractual/monetary standpoint to making more movies based on Firefly.

This makes me wonder. Is Whedon really abandoning his baby and moving on to a big-screen Buffy (based on the TV show) or is this just something cunningly leaked the day of the DVD in order to rally the browncoats of the world to get all of their friends multiple copies of the movie so that Joss can actually make more movies?

I wouldn't be surprised if it's the latter. Serenity is the movie that should never have been and it turned out to be my favourite flick of the year. Maybe DVD sales can continue to perpetually raise this franchise from the ashes. Or not. I'm satisfied with the show/movie as they stand but it would be a shame to not see the further adventures of Serenity and her crew.

Stupid Hollywood. They can churn out the Star Wars prequels and 800 Star Trek movies but something as brilliant as Serenity/Firefly gets the shaft... or booted out the airlock, as it were. Just goes to show.

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What I'm Reading: The Year Of Our War (if I don't pass out before reading it tonight)
What I'm Playing: Finished Prince Of Persia: The Two Thrones, Eve Online, Final Fantasy IV
What I'm Watching: Serenity

Take me out to the black...

NOT SAFE FOR WORK!

I found a little video of David Cross (Dr. Funke) ranting about where the real problem lies at Fox with regards to the cancellation of the amazing Arrested Development.

It's got a bad word in it though.... You've been warned.

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What I'm Reading: The Year Of Our War
What I'm Playing: PoP: The Two Thrones, Darwinia, FFIV Advance, Guitar Heroes
What I'm Watching: My sanity decrease (yup, I worked another overnight shift).

Nice Desk, Peter...

This is kind of cool. It's a shot of what Peter Mansbridge sees as he gazes out from his crazy sci-fi desk every night.

Games to soothe the soul

Just figured I'd post about what games I've been playing of late.

Let's see...

Guitar Hero - I spent WAY too much time playing this over the weekend. It is by far one of the best games of the year, let alone ever. I have a newfound respect for those lucky people who can play guitar well.
Codeboy & Blitzy were over on Saturday and we ended up playing single & multiplayer until past midnight. They went out and got their own copy of the game so the next time they come over we're going to have dueling guitars. Hopefully they'll be ready for the medium difficulty level by then.

Prince Of Persia: The Two Thrones - I'm really enjoying the latest installment in the PoP series. After spending a lot of time with Warrior Within lately, playing The Two Thrones is a breath of fresh air. It is much closer to Sands of Time than Warrior Within. Sure, there's more combat but with the addition of stealth kills, the Dark Prince's killer bike chain and a less frustrating combat system, the action sequences enhance the game rather than drag it down. That said, the focus has been put back on the puzzle and platforming elements that made Sands Of Time such a good game. There are a lot of new moves for the Prince and some of the puzzles are quite tricky.

I have to say that this game, not Grand Theft Auto or some bloody first-person shooter, contained one section that made me so angry yesterday that I was THIS close to going out in the backyard to find something to break. The Two Thrones has a couple chariot race sequences that are a lot of fun... unless you have to do them 18 times in a row because you screw up right near the end. This particular race was rather long, somewhat tricky to navigate and often ended in my smashing into a wall or falling into a hole at top speed. THEN, after you finally get past this hellish race, there is a boss fight that is absolutely off the charts, difficulty-wise. I spent a good hour yesterday trying to get past it and only just managed to keep my temper in check (thankfully Garrett has a nice squishy ball that I turfed at the couch a few times to blow off steam). I have never been as mad at a game as I was at that fight. The worst part is that I ended up beating it, not because of my fancy jumping and finesse but because I got fed up and just started button-mashing and wailing on the one boss until it died. It's like it rewards crappy control.

Sigh. I just had to get that off my chest. I was just surprised to have a fight that was so off the charts from a difficulty perspective given the general difficulty level of the rest of the game leading up to it. Since that part it has been more platforming and puzzles, so I'm happy in that respect at least. Hopefully I'll finish the game in the next day or two and send it back for something else on my list.

World of Warcraft - Sadly, I haven't spend a lot of time in here over the last week or so. Witness the fact that Tony, the guy who I used to have to browbeat to go online once or twice a week has now hit the level 60 cap and is Mr. L33T D00D in our guild. Meanwhile, poor Guboo is still plodding along at level 53. Sigh. Hopefully I'll have a bit more time in the next few weeks to go ingame. If not, after New Year's I should be able to get ingame more. I tend to put my Massively Multiplayer games on hold if I have good console games to work on, so WoW will not be worked on that much over the next little bit. Ah well.

Which brings me to Dragon Quest 8 - A fantastic RPG with gorgeous graphics, a huge world and incredibly fun old-school monster killing. I can't really say enough good things about this game. Just go on Evil Avatar and look up any of the DQ8 threads (or half of the other threads about anything as they keep getting hijacked by myself or Kelegacy as we ramble on about the awesomeness of DQ8). Sadly, I haven't spent much time on it over the last week as I've been busy trying to finish Prince of Persia, but once I head home for Christmas, it will probably be the game I play while I'm in Corunna.

Today I spent my $40 Christmas bonus (thanks CH) on the new Final Fantasy IV Advance for the GBA. While it's no FFVI, it is one of the best Final Fantasies and the remake is fantastic. The music is incredible (I forgot just how many of the great FF tunes were from FFIV) and the graphical upgrade is top-notch. It is also VERY fast. Cecil the Dark Knight must have some kind of super running shoe on as he just zips around in town. Nothing like one of the best JRPG's of all time in portable form. I highly recommend it.

So that's what I've been playing in the rather limited time I have to play games between work, looking after Garrett and doing the various Christmas things that we've been busy doing over the last couple weeks. I can't wait until January when everone just stays inside and hibernates. Maybe I'll have time to relax a bit and actually spend more than an hour at a time on my games then!

Wrath of the Telemarketers

Hey all.

I'm still alive. The Family Wager has not exploded or been abducted by aliens. I've just been really busy over the last week or two and when I have had a free moment I've been trying to just zone out and play a game or two. Heck, I've barely read any of my book that I'm reading... sadly, I've gone entire days lately without reading a page. Sigh.

Let me just say that work has been hectic to say the least. I've been putting in extra time doing the occasional overnight and I'm the one staff who is working the least amount of overtime lately. I'd probably be working more except that it's hard to look after a toddler when you've been up for 24 hours straight.

What else is new? Hmm...

Well, over the last week or so I've been having a real string of bad luck with telemarketers and people on the phone in general. First off, Bell suckered me into signing up for their High Speed Ultra package ("ONLY $5 EXTRA PER MONTH!"), a move which was quickly rescinded when Julie got wind of it.

Thankfully Bell actually let me cancel the upgrade with minimal fuss and bother, although the guy I spoke with this afternoon about it spent the better part of 10 minutes offering me increasing trial periods at ever reduced prices. You'd think they had a gun to his head and I was sentencing him to an early demise the way he was pushing the package. He finally gave up after I used the "My wife doesn't care how much faster my online games run" card for the 3rd time. Sigh.

Right after that, I had to get nasty with another telemarketer. For the last 2-3 weeks, a lady from a company called GeoHolidays has been hassling me to go to some information night to learn more about the fantastic prize I won ("We're not selling you anything and it's not a time-share!"). Thankfully I did a bit of research and they're definately not a company I want to have any dealings with.

"He slowly (and I emphasis slowly) explains everything to us. The total
cost for the package came out to about $40,000 something. The membership
is for 45 years. I'm thinking... these guys must be nuts!! And that is
just for the package itself... let alone the annual maintenance fees of
around $500. He does some calculations and says I will only have to pay
$900 per month to get this package. Yeah, right!!"

So when she called today I told her that I'd read some information about her company and I did not want to have anything to do with it, thank you very much, goodbye, *click*.

I also have had some very entertaining (yeah, that's the word for it) dealings with one of the parents at work that made me want to yell and laugh at her at the same time. I tell ya, work is never boring at my new place.

To top things off, I had to take my car in today for an oil change and brake cleaning & inspection. What was going to be a pricey $189 service soon ballooned to $600 after I got my incredibly rusty and dented rotors replaced and my black brake fluid flushed and replaced with minty clear brake fluid. Sigh. At least Julie is happy that I didn't stick her with the bill this time :) Merry Christmas dear!

I'm going to try to post a bit more in the next little bit. I've pretty much finished my Christmas shopping (only one gift left to buy) and after tomorrow work will be much calmer (stupid government inspections). Then I have a week off from the 23rd to the 30th, so I'm happy.

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What I'm Reading: The Year Of Our War
What I'm Playing: Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Guitar Hero, Final Fantasy IV Advance
What I'm Watching:

Meedlymeedly meedly meedly MEEEE!

My copy of Guitar Hero came in today, finally. Supposedly there was some crazy mix-up with the packaging and all of the stuff was in french and they had to send it back to the distributor to get English packaging, thus delaying its arrival on our fair shores for several weeks.

But it's here now and I can finally realize my dream of playing pretend guitar. I've picked at guitars here and there and suck. You'd think that my manual dexterity, honed after years of gaming, would result in my having the coordination needed to play a guitar. Something about the strings and frets and musical ability seem to plague my efforts at every turn.

So thankfully there's a game that comes with a guitar shaped controller (yes indeedy) that will let me pretend to have some musical talent, at least when it comes to guitars.



Between this and my Taiko Drum Master sets, I just need to bust out Garrett's plush piano and I have a band! I think I have this on my christmas list but if anyone DID happen to get me another one (har de har har) I would be happy as a clam as I could then have guitar battles with people when they come over.

EEK! My kid's a nerd!

 

Nerrrrrrrd.
 

Beware The Oculas

If anyone still needs to get me something for Christmas, please feel free to pick me up an Oculas.

If you have the zillion dollars it costs, that is.

I'm pretty sure I heard him ask for an Xbox 360...

 

We took Garrett to see Ol' Saint Nick at the Georgetown Mall on the weekend. He's very strange around Santa.

We went back today and I had to hold him back to keep him from charging up during another kid's turn. When he got just within arms reach, Garrett stopped and just stared at his boots. I had to pick him up and put him on Santa's lap and Garrett just looked off into the distance, staring at everyone except Santa. Then, just as Santa was about to hand him back, he sort of turned his head ever so slightly, looked at Santa out of the corner of his eye and smirked. Then he got down and wandered off down the mall with me.

Of course, Garrett wouldn't say a peep while Santa was holding him but he was waving and saying, "Hi!" to everyone who passed us on our way out of the mall... Silly kid. 

No more Night Awakes!

Yarg!

I've done the second overnight shift since Thursday and I didn't even plan on it!

The upside is that I don't have to go in to work my 11-11 shift this morning. The downside is that I have to go to church now and get all of the multimedia stuff set up and working and can't sleep like I really should. Ah well. I'll snooze this afternoon.

The shift last night wouldn't have been so bad if I had known that the guy scheduled to do the overnight didn't know he was supposed to do it (hence my being stuck there). Doing the overnight shift can be fun (even if it means you're exhausted the next day) because I can just watch movies and play games till 7am. Alas, last night was a surprise so I didn't even have a book to read.

Let me tell you, TV overnight on a Saturday night sucks, even on Express Vu. At least I had my USB drive with a bunch of Escapist articles to read.

Actually, I did have my fancy new electronic Sudoku gizmo that I had picked up at Walmart on Saturday morning but the stupid thing has a glitch on one of the rows so I can't actually play it. Thankfully I have the receipt so I'm getting a new one. HOLY COW! I just looked up that Sudoku thing and it's 30 pounds in the UK. Mine only cost $14 Canadian. Talk about a bargain.

Zzz...
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What I'm Reading: The Year Of Our War (when I am not falling asleep on couches or working)
What I'm Playing: WoW, Prince Of Persia: The Warrior Within, Dragon Quest 8
What I'm Watching: Crappy overnight TV, The Iron Giant

Happy Birthday Dad!

Yup, it's my dad's birthday.

My brothers had better remember to call him.

Hint, hint.

Happy birthday Dad!