Doug And Jenn - Don't Read This Post!

I was out getting comics from the last couple weeks and noticed that the mystery store beside the Dragon was finally open. It had been empty for the better part of a year and then they started doing construction behind covered windows for the last couple months.

Well, it seems that what has gone into the empty store is a very nifty artisan cheese and bread store called Ouderkirk & Taylor. I'd link to their website but it seems to be down right now.

They have all sorts of awesome cheese made from raw milk and other crazy ingredients. They also have some baguettes. I got a baguette and some cheese today... for $26.

The baguette only cost $3. Do the math.

We are having people over tomorrow so I have to resist the urge to eat the creamy, creamy, oh-so-very creamy raw milk brie and the double cloth wrapped cheddar... mmmm....

This is a very special treat kind of place. I can kind of justify spending what I spent today because it's New Year's Eve...

Of course, if the baguette is delicious, I'll probably grab one when I'm getting my comics.

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone has a safe New Year's Eve and rings in 2008 without wrapping their car around a pole somewhere.

We're not doing much around Casa Del Wager tonight. Julie's probably going to go to bed around 10 and I'll stay up late filling out my EI benefits form and reading comics. Woo!

I'm hoping to snag a copy of Rock Band from the Movie Gallery tonight so that I'll have something to play when some friends come over tomorrow. We'll see though.

On a much more sombre note, it seems as though tragedy has struck in Acton today.

You heard it here first... I have the same head cold and sore throat that Julie & the kids suffered with for the majority of the last week. I expect that a fundraiser will be started to help me deal with the sore throat and runny nose that I'm experiencing during this most happy of seasons.

I take cash and paypal...

Home Sweet Home

Yay! We're home!

*kisses floor*

Ew... I need to vacuum/disinfect/call a HazMat team.. I'm just happy to see that eveyrthing seems to be in proper working order and that the house isn't a pile of ash.

Now to attempt to unpack!

I'll Probably Skip This One

Found an awesome site today. The Will Ferrell Movie Generator!

Will Ferrell plays Streeter Morris, an egotistical, obnoxious wedding crasher at the top of his profession. He and his sidekick, played by Jack Black, seem invincible until their dominance is threatened by a new rival. Streeter Morris's excessive pride causes him to spiral downward to comical lows. When he is at the depths of despair, he removes his shirt and bellows,

"Your Buick is salty, like Thor's sparkling corn-cob pipe!"

After a wacky training process featuring a surprise cameo by Paul Rudd and a marginally-developed romantic subplot, he enters into a climactic showdown with his rival and emerges victorious - but not without learning a thing or two about friendship.

Estimated Opening Weekend Box Office Returns: $47.1 million

Go Bunnio, Go!

This is alternately the most awesome video I've seen in a while and the cruelest. I started off laughing at the guy and by the end I was rooting him on.

The person who designed that course needs to be slapped and then hugged.

McCain's Pizza Is Evil

See the thread title.

I have come to quite enjoy McCain's International pizzas, especially the Canadian and the Parisian ones but dear Lord in Heaven, the regular pepperoni ones are the devil's handiwork. I probably haven't had one since I was in university because of the cardboard crust and nasty sauce but tonight, through no fault of my own, I got the chance to have another piece. I was hoping that they'd fixed the many faults of the pizza but nope.

It still tasted like cardboard and the sauce, if possible, tasted even worse! It was like the McCain's manufacturing plant had received an extra tonne or two of oregano and dumped the majority of it on our particular pizza.

Blechety blech blech blech.

To top things off, I think I burnt my mouth :(

Yup, it's time to call the Waaaahmbulance.

Where Was This A Couple Days Ago?

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. I don't even know what happened to the last two days. It's a blur of turkey, wrapping paper and Zelda on the DS, with some Apples To Apples and some cranky kids thrown in for good measure.

I think it's Thursday... right?

Humilations Galore

Want to know the true meaning of defeat and humiliation? Try playing some Guitar Hero 3 against a 13 year old girl.

Ye gods. I was watching Julie's cousins play GH3 tonight while we were over there and I thought, "Psh. They're going DOWN."

Then I went up against Melissa and got demolished. Same when I tried going against Bruce. Blah. I usually feel like such a rock star when I play against people who come by my place but I have to realize that these kids play all day long.

It was really discouraging to see Melissa actually finish Through The Fire And The Flames on Expert. That's when I just handed the guitar controller back to the kids and slunk back upstairs to hang out with the adults...

Christmas Cards From Game Developers

This is kind of cool. Gamasutra has compiled a list of all of the Christmas cards from the various game developers and publishers. Some of them are pretty funny (I love Bioware's Mass Effect meets Santa one).

Have A Virtual Reality Christmas!

This is an awesome vid that really shows how GOOD virtual reality for gaming and other applications is not very far off.

Crazy stuff!

Still Alive For Christmas

Oh, good ol' Aperture Science. This is an awesome little site, especially if you log in as CJohnson with a tier3 password...

Note: If you haven't played Portal, this site won't be anywhere near as awesome.

I'll Let The Holidays Be Happy This Time

I love this animation. It's just so nice to look at.

I'm Sure I've Seen These Around

I was debating about putting a big rant up about the "God Hates The World" song by the loathsome Westboro Baptist 'church', but instead I found an awesome site filled with loads of passive aggressive notes that are actually funny instead of bile-inducing.

Rockin Out At The CBC

Gotta love it when a game that isn't Halo 3 actually gets a news story on CBC. I waited until too late to start trying to preorder Rock Band and now it looks like I'll have to wait until a far-flung later date (and a significant lottery win) to get a copy of it.

Best Punchline Ever

I had to chuckle at yet another Wondermark comic.

Enjoy.

Even Earlier Christmas In Acton

Uncle Dan & Garrett rocked out to Guitar Hero 3 for a bit on Saturday. Well, it was more like Keytar Hero for Garrett.

If only I had a copy of Rock Band... Sigh...



Garrett loved the set of Toddler Mutant Ninja Turtles that he got from Uncle Dan, Aunt Faith & Baby Silas. He now has giant rumbles with the Turtles vs. the combined might of the Marvel Universe.



Kara got a funky new hat.



And a ride in the laundry basket with her brother.

Early Christmas In Acton

Between the early Grace family Christmas last weekend and my not wanting to haul quite as much crap back and forth to Sarnia this week, Garrett has been able to get his hands on a few Christmas presents a bit earlier than usual.

I saw this at Zellers yesterday and Garrett couldn't stop drooling over it (and it was on sale) so we picked it up. Little did I know until we got home with it that it had something like 450 pieces to it.

From Christmas 2007

Garrett spent the hour or so that it took me to put together the small (!) part of the secret base disassembling all of the figures that came with the set. I was very tempted to create some kind of horrible hybrid of Sandman, Venom and Mr. Policeman... so tempted.

From Christmas 2007

Here's the finished product. It's actually a pretty cool little base with a rail system for distributing the, and I quote, "Pumpkin Bums" (not bombs, bums), to the launcher. If you look closely, you'll see that the center screen on the monitors on the second level is displaying the Blue Screen Of Death. Looks like Windows is unreliable even in Harry Osborne's secret lab.

It's Not My Annual Videogame Expenditures, But It's Close

Of the many and varied reasons to be happy that I'm Canadian, this ranks right up there.

Hit F5 a few times to let the point sink in...

Wondermark FTW!

I've started reading a new webcomic called Wondermark and couldn't resist sharing this strip. There's a reason I try to stay out of malls and such during November/December.

Take That, Shorty!

23

It's Like Real Life Dig-Dug

I just spent the past hour and a half shoveling my walkway, the path in front of the house and a large part of the driveway, along with helping a bunch of other people in our parking lot get unstuck coming and going.

I wish, oh how I wish, that I didn't have to go to work today... but I do have to. Sigh. At least it's my LAST SHIFT EVAR!!! Or until April, which, right now, is close enough.

The sucky part is that I couldn't make it to church this morning for the big Celtic Christmas celebrations that we do every year. I like going because it gives me a chance to see the old worship leader who took all of the good music with him when he left :)

I couldn't justify possibly dying on the roads in order to drive to Mississauga though. Oh well.

Look! It's A Girly Looking Hero In A Final Fantasy Game That's Actual A Girl!

Man. These videos for the upcoming FFXIII games are really, really nice... I need to stop watching things like this to keep myself from trying to figure out which of my kids I could sell in order to afford a PS3.

WWRD? (What Would Rincewind Do?)

Arg! It seems as though my favouritest author in the whole wide world, Mr. Terry Pratchett, has early onset Alzheimer's. ARG!

Granted, it's not like he's suffered from a lack of books. Discworld is now, what, 30 some-odd titles long and he has a slew of other books to boot.

Gotta love his spunk though.

"Frankly, I would prefer it if people kept things cheerful," he continued, saying it was "too soon to tell" if the condition was immediately life-threatening.

"I will, of course, be dead at some future point, as will everybody else. For me, this maybe further off than you think.

"I know it's a very human thing to say 'Is there anything I can do?' but in this case I would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry."

Up All Night...

So I'm sitting here, Mass Effect is finished and the episode of X-Play on TV has already been on 3 times tonight...

Now, answer me, dear Kara. WHY WON'T YOU GO TO SLEEP?! I have to work the overnight shift tomorrow, so feel free to cry into the phone to keep me up then, but for tonight, I'd really like to get some shut-eye!

Edit@4:49am: She was wide awake and crawling all over the place until about 4 or so. Then she fell over, bonked her head and started crying until Julie came down to see what was going on.

Of course, I'm wide awake now. Grr. I got some stuff finished up for the weekend so I'm going to go hit the hay. At least I've got some practice for tomorrow night.

Massively Effective

After a couple weeks of staying up late and waking up on the couch at 4am, I've finally finished Mass Effect. Awesome game. I haven't been that enthralled by a big RPG in ages.

First run through clocked in at around 42 hours or so, but that was with finishing pretty much every sidequest aside from the survey quest.

Now to play through it again as a Renegade. Mwahaha... I was nice the first time, galaxy... Now I can be a jerk!

4 More Days

I only have 4 days of work left and I STILL have to do the overnight shift, even though I was sure I'd be done doing them after last week's!

Sigh.

I can't wait for 11pm on Sunday... I don't go back to work until April!

Ninja ATTACK!

Who says Halton Hills is a sleepy place where nothing interesting happens?

It's A Girl!

Some of you might not know that Dave & Kate were expecting (since I don't think they've updated their blog for a good year or two) but they had a baby girl on Thursday!

Congrats, Dave & Kate!

They named her Buffy Sundin Wager.

I Heart Value Village

I went out to Value Village in Guelph with one of the guys from work the other day to get some winter clothes. It's been a while since I was there and I ended up with a couple good finds.

1) A pair of Reebok sneakers (black) for $7. I had almost bought a pair of sneakers a couple days before at SportChek for some obscene amount of money but thankfully resisted the urge to have a nice pair of Reeboks. I go to Value Village and find a pair of sneakers that are pretty much the epitome of what I concider a perfect shoe. I loved the old Reebok Hexalite shoes but they haven't made them in ages. I don't think that the shoes that I found were Hexalites but they're pretty close.

2) The coolest toy ever:



Now, it's missing most of the extra pieces but it's still awesome. Garrett is having a blast playing with it and I just like opening and closing it.

The scary thing is that I only paid $4 for it and after looking up some specs on the toy, I'm finding that several collector sites are selling it for anywhere between $88-175 US. EEP!

I'll Take Your Season's Greetings And Shove Them Up Your Happy Holidays

Talk about synchronicity. I'm not a huge fan of almost anything to do with Focus On The Family or Mr. James Dobson, but this video came to my attention today just before I was about to make a big post about Happy Holidays/Season's Greetings driving me nuts. This guy says it much better than I could.

The whole 'Holiday/Seasons Greetings' thing has really gotten under my skin this year, if only because it seems that NOBODY says Christmas this year, at least on the radio or TV. The thing that gets me is that many of the people I know that celebrate Christmas do it for the secular side of the holiday (getting gifts, having family over for a big meal), not because of the fact it's Jesus' birthday. Sigh.

I won't tell you how hard it was to get a photo Christmas card that actually said Merry Christmas...

I Beseech Thee, Oh Great Shoelace Gods!

I have had the worst luck with shoelaces over the past few months. It's driving me absolutely bonkers. No matter what I spend on shoes and replacement shoelaces, they keep untying themselves on a constant basis.

I could be standing in one spot, not moving a muscle and the shoelaces will STILL come untied. I've tried a few different types of shoelaces and no matter what I do, bam... they're undone.

I need to find a good cloth shoelace with zero nylon content. I don't like double-knotting the shoelaces as it's a pain to get them undone later, but it's almost worth doing to keep my sanity in check.

It's Only Free Speech If They're Saying What You Want To Hear

This news story makes me so... annoyed.

Muslim Students File Rights Complaint Over Maclean's Article.

I read that article and while I won't fawn over Mark Steyn's use of the english language, it wasn't particularly negative. It wasn't particularly positive either, but it was basically outlining what he saw as an inevitable shift in the predominance of Western Christianity and governments/cultures based on that foundation to a culture founded on the tenets of Islam.

The article discusses the high birth rate among Muslims and speculates that Islamic people could become the majority population in Europe. It also says some Muslims are violent radicals...
"To say that we share the same basic goals as terrorists … if you look at the theme of the article in the context, it is putting that label on all of us and I felt personally victimized," he said.

Maybe it's just me, I wouldn't feel personally victimized if someone wrote an article on radical Christianity and people who do crazy things in the name of faith.

At least a few people have their heads bolted on straight in this whole affair.

But Sohail Raza, a representative of the Muslim Canadian Congress, said Maclean's had the right to publish the article.

"This is Canada, not Sudan, Egypt or Pakistan, where the press is stifled," he said. "There is absolute freedom of expression and people have an opportunity to voice their opinion."

Alan Borovoy of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association said the organization is concerned about the human rights complaints process.

It's too easy to claim an article may subject a group to hate or contempt under commission rules, Borovoy said.

"Even truthful articles describing some of the awful situations in this world could run afoul of this law, it is so broad and such a potential threat to freedom of speech," he said.

One More Trip Around The Sun

It's my Dad's birthday today! The lucky guy had the church choir sing him Happy Birthday. It's hard to top that... but this one's for you, Dad.