Wednesday, April 30, 2008

That's Wakkie Nu Nu!

Don't ask me why, but this video reminds me of Dan and/or Dave for some reason.



Oh, and check out this guy's tattoo, esp. the arms. It's alternately awesome and really, really sad.

Now What?

I was driving to work today and noticed that my Service Engine Soon light was on.

When I left work, it was on again too.

That said, the car seems to be driving fine, there are no weird noises and no odd smells or leaks. I don't want to take it into the shop and waste money if there's nothing wrong but I also don't want anything to go wrong with it.

Stupid car...

Rook To King's Knight *Kablooey*

I swear, this kid is trying to pull a Scanners on his opponent.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

A Niko For Your Thoughts

So after 20 very freezing minutes spent standing in line last night before midnight, I was the proud owner of Grand Theft Auto IV. Woo! I didn't play a lot of it last night but what I have played was very, very good. The funny thing is that I spent almost all of the time last night (this morning?) watching the hilarious TV shows in Niko's apartment.

Let me get up on my soapbox for a second...

< soapbox >

I was floored at the number of kids at the midnight launch last night having their parents buying them copies of GTA IV.

I'm not talking about high school students. I'm talking about Grade 6-7 kids.

While I'm loving the game, it really got under my skin that these parents would buy this game for their kids. The best comparison I could think of was:

If you have no problem letting your kids watch Reservoir Dogs, then you'll probably have no problem with them playing GTA IV. If they're too young for Dogs, they're definately too young for GTA.

This is a game that will never, EVER be played when Garrett is around. It irks me that other parents don't seem to have a problem with exposing their kids to the level of very mature dialogue in the game. I'm not even talking about the violence... it's the dialogue that should get parents locking the game up and keeping it away from their kids.

< /soapbox >

All of that said, the dialogue, though vulgar at times, is hilarious and very well written. I'll be posting some impressions of the game once I've done more than, well, going bowling and watching TV, but it is a very good game so far.

Just keep it away from the kids!

Happy Birthday Grant!

It's my baby brother's birthday today. It's still technically the 29th, so I'm good!

I can't believe he's 28... That's crazy! I still remember him filling my Walkman's battery case with Crazy Glue back in the day... Now he knows how to blow up a bridge and put it back together again.

NOW FIX MY WALKMAN!

Monday, April 28, 2008

GTA in the GTA

I've been doing my best to avoid getting SUPER excited about tonight's launch of Grand Theft Auto 4, but I just can't resist watching this commercial a few times in a row.

5 3/4 hours to go!

7 Hours 15 Minutes And Counting...



Come on midnight... I need to get my GTAIV on!

Woah...

This video will blow your mind...

Sunday, April 27, 2008

That's Tight!

We've got a relatively new staff at work that I seem to spend most of my shifts with these days. He's a pretty cool guy and one of the few who is at least within a few years of my age.

That said, he's making me feel really old. He uses a bunch of slang when he talks to me that I just don't understand. I mean, I feel like I'm pretty up on the lingo of the kids these days, but when he talks to me, half of the time I have to run whatever he's saying through an internal buffer to decypher whether he's saying something is good or bad.

Why can't people just stick with 'cool' and 'awesome'? Does everything have to be 'off the chain' or 'on fire'? Does that mean it's cool? Does that mean it sucks? I DON'T KNOW ANYMORE!!!

Saturday, April 26, 2008

That Would Explain The Interest In Probing...

Last weekend, while on a trip to Brantford to see my grandparents, Garrett came up with this gem.

"Maybe the aliens put poop in my butt."

THAT'S MY BOY!

It's WAR Machine, Not WARM Machine... Sigh...

Soo....

I'm really excited about seeing Iron Man. REALLY excited. What's even more exciting is that at least two of the guys at work are calling dibs on taking me to see it :)

Ug... that sounds so much more romantic than it should...

Anyway, I'm definately seeing it with the guys at work at some point over the next couple of weeks. The thing is, Garrett really wants to see it too. He's got a pile of Iron Man toys, loves playing the demo of the game I have on the 360 and almost goes into some kind of fit whenever the commercial for the movie comes on, he's that excited.

Now keep in mind that he already loves watching the Spider-Man movies and that Iron Man is all about guys in giant robot suits blowing each other up, so on that front, I think he'd love it.

On the other front, Julie keeps scowling at me whenever I broach the subject.

Ah well. I think I'll definately take him to see Speed Racer as that looks fun, but in a goofy, Spy Kids-esque kind of way. I might wait until I've seen Iron Man with the guys at work first. At least that way I can vet it and it would give me an excuse to see it for a third time to see if it meets the Spider-Man movie test, by which I mean it's as good as the second Spider-Man movie.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

The Nightly Grind

Guess who is the proud new owner of a hunk of plastic that goes in his mouth at night!

Yeah, me.

I finally picked up my nightguard thing to keep me from grinding my teeth down to the stubs during the night. I'm interested to see how it goes. Granted, I think I need this little (and expensive) hunk of plastic with the shenanigans going on here.

Not only do I have that stupid dishwasher thing to deal with (they're currently trying to find another dishwasher of the same make and model to replace this hunk of junk) but this morning I woke up to find that for some strange reason, my Tim's card was declining my credit card to do the auto-reload thing.

Grr...

I even called the credit card company, who said that there were some charges on the credit card from last night and this morning when I tried loading the Tim's card via the website... which, according to the credit card company, meant that the problem was on Tim's side.

I call Tim's and was essentially told that from what they could see, no money was added onto my Tim's card so obviously the problem was with the credit card.

ARG!

I'm going to wait until tomorrow and see what's going on. If a charge ends up on my credit card but doesn't show up on my Tim's card, I'll be even MORE livid!

Granted, I should be happy that these little annoyances are about as rough as my life gets. That said, THEY'RE REALLY ANNOYING!

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

It Served Five Tours Of Duty In Kosovo Before Ending Up In My Kitchen

So I called the plumber today to see if/when he'd come by to put a new faucet in so we could finally use our shiny new dishwasher. Unfortunately, he wasn't around so I had to leave a message. I decided that the dishwasher had been sitting in our kitchen, still in the cardboard and plastic wrapping that it was delivered in, so I might as well unpack it and figure out where to put it.

Well, what to my wondering eyes should appear but... well, you take a look and see if you can spot the problem:



That was the first thing I saw. I couldn't believe it. So I went to move it and noticed that there was a bit of a wobble to the dishwasher. So I take another look and lo and behold, THIS:



And in realizing that there are now TWO major issues with my 'new' dishwasher, I see THIS while checking out the (ex)wheel:



Now, while the dishwasher was a floor model, it definately didn't look like that in the store when we bought it. Suffice it to say, I was a little livid, which, when coupled with my still not 100% wellness rate, didn't make for a fun call to Zellers to yell at people.

Actually, the lady there was pretty pleasant and understanding of our plight, but she has to wait until she talks to the lady at the store who sold it to us. Sigh. At least I didn't wait until the plumber showed up to unwrap it.

I'm sure the actual dishwasher mechanism works fine. It's just the metal sides (and the missing/broken caster) that need repairs. Unfortunately, it seems that it is beyond the means of the fine people at Zellers to actually repair the thing. Grr...

Don't Use The Google Moon Tool!

I accidentally clicked on one of the buttons on my Google Toolbar today and it gave me a list of other buttons I could add to the bar. I saw one that said, "Google Moon Tool", which purported to give me new and exciting pictures of the moon every day.

I thought it sounded cool (who doesn't like a neat moon photo?) and so I added it.

I click on the button (when I finally figured out which tiny icon it was) and where does it take me? Some CellPhoneStyle.net page. No moons to be found, but there was a grumpy sick person staring befuddled at the screen for some time.

Very, very strange, esp. for something that seems to be on the up and up from Google.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Son Of Death-Cold

It's spring, so that means it's time for me to come down with some kind of funky viral infection.

It hit me mid-afternoon on Sunday. I was home sick on Monday and I knew I had to be really sick because I slept for about 4 hours in the afternoon.

I never sleep during the day (heck, I rarely seem to sleep at night)!

I was already scheduled off today but I probably would have called in anyway. The worst thing about this year's death cold is that it's not really making me cough up gunk or run a 110 degree fever. Instead, I feel like I'm drunk, only I haven't been drinking anything. Just ask Julie how incoherent I've been over the last day and a half.

I had a really strange dream that I witnessed a person getting decapitated by a car last night. I was sure that it was real (I even dreamed I watched the news reports) but nope. Doesn't seem to be something that I've been privy to.

Anyway, I'm going to bed as soon as I finish watching Cloverfield. The best part about having it on DVD is that I can skip the first 20 minutes and get right to the monster parts.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Happy Birthday Kara!

Kara's the big 1.0 today. We had a little 'party' yesterday (Julie's parents and grandparents stopped by on the way through to Coburg) and we continued the tradition of letting our kids thoroughly demolish a chocolate cupcake on their first birthday.

I think this is my favourite shot from the event.



It's also my Grandpa's birthday today too, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDPA! Unfortunately, I don't have a similar picture of him demolishing a cupcake...

Friday, April 18, 2008

Tweet Tweet

I knew that the app I was looking for existed. A little birdy sent me over to Desktoptopia and it is exactly what the doctor ordered. The wallpapers I've been having delivered to my computer dynamically have been pretty slick so far and it took about 3 seconds to download and install. Pretty sweet stuff.

Oh, while I'm at it, check out the Soul Calibur IV trailer for some pretty cool appearances by a few unexpected (if you haven't been following gaming news) guests.

A Lean, Green Jedi Machine

This should bring a smile to anyone's face. It's a 60 second version of Empire Strikes Back... very cute, esp. given that everything was built from scratch.

Happy Birthday Mom!

It's my mom's birthday today and to celebrate, she is on a train RIGHT NOW on the way to Quebec City. She just loves the poutine...

So happy birthday, Mom! The card is en route.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Stumbling Into The 20th Century

After over 2 weeks of waiting, we finally got our dishwasher here at Casa Del Wageros.

The annoying thing is that we still won't be able to use it until next week when the plumber, who is currently experiencing a mild outbreak of Ebola or Hanta Virus, will hopefully be able to reconstitute his liquifying internal organs and stumble over here to put a new faucet in so that we can hook this baby up.

Goooo Portable Dishwashers!

Do The Mario!

I saw this over at Buttonmashing.com and thought it was pretty cool.

Ah, the fun people get into with RC cars and empty beer bottles.


http://view.break.com/487616 - Watch more free videos

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Changing The Wallpaper

I was wondering if anyone out there knows of a program that I can use that would automatically change my desktop wallpaper on a daily/hourly/whateverly basis. If I could jack that into a photo feed or one of my photo directories on my computer, all the better.

I know you can get screensavers that dynamically update the images... there has to be something for desktops.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

The Quotable Garrett

"My favourite pet is a chicken. A pink chicken."

"Cooper told me at church that pink is for girls but I like pink and I'm a BOY!"

Garrett's going through a pink phase. First it was Princess Peach all the time in Smash Brothers, now he's talking about everything being pink.

Sigh.

Zoomp!!! Phump!!!

The Clone Wars movie trailer was leaked sometime this weekend (and taken down pretty fast by Youtube) but you can still see it here.

The scary thing is that this looks like it might be better than all three of the prequel movies. The fact that it's mirroring the Gendy Tartovsky animated Clone Wars series helps immensely.

Garrett might be a little too young for the sheer mind-blowing awesomeness of Iron Man this summer but he and I are definately seeing this and Wall-E.

Speaking of Star Wars, this image that I found on Extralife was too funny.

Friday, April 11, 2008

If A Tree Lands On A Violinist, Does It Make Radio 2 Listeners Cry?

This is an awesome story about one of the world's best violinists busking in a busy Washington D.C. metro stop. The story is about how art is appreciated and whether the average person will recognize great music out of the usual context of a concert hall.

It's a very interesting read and, once again, something I found over at the incomparable Dubious Quality.

At least notL33T isn't dirty...

I know this isn't new, but it's too funny not to pass along. It's a list of inadvertently bad domain names.

1. A site called “Who Represents” where you can find the name of the agent that represents a celebrity. Their domain name… wait for it… is:

www.whorepresents.com

2. Experts Exchange, a knowledge base where programmers can exchange advice and views at:

www.expertsexchange.com

3. Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at:

www.penisland.net

4. Need a therapist? Try Therapist Finder at:

www.therapistfinder.com

5. Then of course, there’s the Italian Power Generator company:

www.powergenitalia.com

6. And now, we have the Mole Station Native Nursery, based in New South Wales:

www.molestationnursery.com

7. If you’re looking for computer software, there’s always:

www.ipanywhere.com

8. Welcome to the First Cumming Methodist Church. Their website is:

www.cummingfirst.com

9. Then, of course, there’s these brainless art designers, and their whacky website:

www.speedofart.com

10. Want to holiday in Lake Tahoe? Try their brochure website at:

www.gotahoe.com


There are even worse ones over here.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

SBCG4AP

Have you noticed something around the internet lately? An increased smell of burnination? The cries of millions of Lappy486's suddenly going silent?

Well, have I got news for you.

Strong Bad, star of Homestarrunner.com, my once weekly, now every so oftenly visited favourite website on the whole internet, has a game coming out on the Wii! It's called Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People (or SBCG4AP).

In talking about the game today, I've realized that I haven't really visited the site since about the time I was on leave with Garrett. The really odd thing is that most of the people I've talked to about it also stopped visiting the site around late 2004, early 2005. Strange...

I need to go catch up on all of the Strongbad E-mails and other nuttiness on that site.

Halva Nice Day

The deli at one of the local grocery stores had samples of halva the other day and I had to pick a slab of the stuff up because it was so good.



Halva is one of my guilty pleasures that I have every so often as a special treat. As delicious as it is, I can't eat too much of it or it goes from being a yummy treat to being just disgustingly sweet. It's definately a treat one should eat in tiny slivers.

This find got me thinking about another treat from my childhood that I can't seem to find anywhere. Does anyone know where on earth I can find a bag of pfeffernüsse (go umlaut!)?



There was a store that my mom used to buy them from when I was younger but I don't think I've seen them outside of that store in Sarnia. You'd think I could find these yummy cookies around the GTA but noooo...

Holy Pain, Batman!

This must have hurt... a lot...



Thanks to Extralife for the linky. Click on the picture for the full size shot (to the face).

Exorcise Your Pot Rights

I had a very odd day yesterday at work.

To start off, unbeknownst to me, one of the workers from another house got it into his head that I was evil incarnate and decided to have a prayer vigil for me so that my taint wouldn't spread throughout the house. I've never met the guy and don't even know what his name is, but I'm honoured that I somehow inspired such revulsion that he'd try to cleanse my filthy spirit from a distance. I think I was working on the May schedule at the time.

When I found out about this spiritual intervention later in the afternoon, I couldn't stop laughing. It didn't help when one of my co-workers told the guy that I used to play Dungeons & Dragons and videogames. I think they were just trying to rile him up at that point though :)

The other strange thing was that I got into a very impassioned arguement about the proper way to scrub pots and pans. It was a soak or no-soak, steel wool vs. elbow grease kind of debate that went nowhere fast and boggled my mind the entire time I was in the middle of it.

I swear that there are days when things are just so surreal that you can't help but laugh.

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

One Small Step

Yay! Youtube is working again, so behold! Kara walks!

(Don't forget to turn up the volume for even more inspiration!)

Video Footage!

I actually have some footage of Kara walking and I cobbled together a little video for it tonight but, go figure, YouTube is down. I did send it to a couple of people and will hopefully have it up on the net shortly.

Saturday, April 05, 2008

It's Like The Bellagio But With More Bile

How does something this cute:



produce more vomit in one day than Linda Blair in The Exorcist?

Every time either Julie or I come near Kara today, she ends up drenching us and any furniture near us in puke. It hasn't been fun...

The annoying part is that she's otherwise in fine form and good spirits. She'll be walking around or crawling somewhere or slapping Garrett on the head and then she'll cough and the floodgates open.

Sigh.

I'm hoping she gets whatever is in her out of her and doesn't spread it to the rest of us!

What The Frak?

Last night saw the glorious return of the best show on TV, Battlestar Galactica. I quite enjoyed the first episode of the season and while it kind of sucks that this is the last season, I'll be happy if they wrap the show up properly instead of having it drag on too long (like X-Files) or end before it should (like Firefly).

For a recap of the first three seasons in 8 minutes, check out the video below.

Friday, April 04, 2008

Upgrade In Progress

Go figure. Just like with Garrett, my return to work has sparked the upgrade process in Kara to migrate from her old software (Cruising v.1.5) to a new and exciting OS (Walking v.0.5). She was taking a few steps on Wednesday night (when I was at work, of course) and yesterday and today has seen her moving even further before landing on her butt.

I've tried filming her walking but, as usual, the second I get the camera out she reverts to her old crawling ways. Sigh. Hopefully I'll get something on the weekend.

I apologize for the severe lack of updates this week. I've been working evenings every day and I have to go in for a 12 hour shift today (blarg). I'll try to post a bunch of pictures and stuff tomorrow.

I Shall Call It... GHIBLAR!

This is a pretty sweet little movie (not sure if it's pre-rendered CGI or a tech demo) that I just stumbled upon today. It's like Pixar had a baby with Studio Ghibli.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

The Triforce Of Awesome

I can't believe I hadn't heard anything about the Legend Of Zelda movie that's coming out next year. Man, it looks awesome.

The cool thing is that Garrett was able to identify pretty much every character in the trailer without the sound on. Who says you don't learn anything from videogames (specifically Super Smash Brothers)?