There's a 6:30am?

I woke up on the couch this morning at around 6:30 or so. I keep falling asleep there after work. Not good!

Anyway, I was going to just go up to bed but I was spotted on the way past Garrett's room. Julie was up too and none of us ended up going back to bed.

This meant that we could go and hit all the garage sales! Unfortunately, most of them were more along the lines of garbage sales. Sigh.

We did find a few neat things though. I picked up a copy of Kid Icarus for $3 at the Trunk Sale. There's this guy selling NES games for $9 which is absolutely ridiculous. He did slash his prices to a low, low $8, but that's still not worth it. $3 for an NES game is just right.

And Kid Icarus has one of the coolest villians of all videogame history. That's right, I'm talking about The Eggplant Wizard. I think I'll blame my hatred of all things photosynthetic on him. Mom was right! Videogames did mess up my mind!



The other thing we picked up is a board game called UpWords. It's made by the Scrabble people and it's essentially 3D Scrabble. You can stack letters on top of other letters to change the words. I think some of my friends are coming by tonight and we're going to try it out. It was only $2 for it. Ah, the joys of haggling.



It was wierd to be back home by 10am after walking all over town and hitting every garage sale around. Garrett's passed out now, so I'm going to go play some WoW or something.

---
What I'm Reading: Brilliance Of The Moon, Eberron Source Book
What I'm Playing: The Punisher, WoW
What I'm Watching: Batman Begins, The trailer for Serenity on the big screen (mmm...)

Some Pictures Of Garrett. Finally!

Now he can see where he's going. If the hat doesn't fall down in front of his face, that is. 

This was Garrett's final ride in the car seat before we flipped it around last Saturday. 

This is what happens when Garrett doesn't want to have a nap and someone *cough* me *cough* forgets to close the t-shirt drawer. 


Of course, he also managed to take off his pants AND move the crib over so it was close enough to the drawer for him to wreak the havoc he wreaked. [Wreaked? I mean wrought. I pity the poor English language after all the mangling I put it through. Ed.] Some people's kids, I tells ya.

Worst... Joke... Ever...

Did you hear about that new pirate movie that's opening in theatres?

It's rated "Arrrrrrrrr!"

Garrett The Pirate

Here's Garrett's pirate name.

Dirty Harry Vane

You're the pirate everyone else wants to throw in the ocean -- not to get rid of you, you understand; just to get rid of the smell. You tend to blend into the background occaisionally, but that's okay, because it's much easier to sneak up on people and disembowel them that way. Arr!

Garrett Goes To Day Care

Yesterday was Garrett's first day of day care and he seemed to have a blast. Supposedly he took a couple steps while he was there.

Sure... I'm home for 5 1/2 months and on my first weekday back at work he decides to take his first solo steps. Sigh.

The day care we're taking him to is great though. There are a couple other kids and the lady has a huge backyard, so Garrett gets to go out and play a lot more. They also have a big, friendly dog that Garrett is fascinated with. I just hope he doesn't decide he wants one. I'll have to introduce him to the wonders of cats before then!

---
What I'm Reading: Box Office Poison
What I'm Playing: Phantom Brave
What I'm Watching: The news. Rain fall horizontally.

Uh oh!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

The upside is that SW Ontario isn't one of the blood red death zones. The downside is that we're already stupidly hot so we don't have as far to go....

First Day Blues

Well, I survived my first day back at work.

It was pretty sweet, actually. The guys had decorated the place with balloons and 'Welcome Home' banners and even got me a yummy Oreo cake! It was a treat to see all the guys again.

It felt like I hadn't been gone a day. Hmm... I don't think that's a good thing. I think I'll go cry now :)

Ah well. By the end of the shift I'd stopped feeling sorry for myself that I wasn't on leave anymore and was starting to get into the swing of things again. Give me a couple more days and I'll be right as rain.

Now the big test comes tomorrow as that's the first day that Garrett will be at the daycare lady's house by himself with no Mommy or Daddy around. He's had a bit of a fever since Saturday but his temperature seems to have come down during the day today, so we'll see how he is in the morning.

I just wish we had a breeze of some kind to get the air upstairs here moving. The main floor is nice and cool with the AC on but upstairs it's really hot. Ah well.

---
What I'm Reading: Box Office Poison
What I'm Playing: Count the litres of fluid sweated out by the average human in 30 degree weather.
What I'm Watching: Whole lotta nothin'

My computer has a DNR order on it

Last night, in a fit of supreme stupidity, I decided to try to defibrillate my computer. I was thinking about plugging in my old hard drive so I could access some of the MP3's on it and burn a CD to take to work. I looked into my system and voila, there was a power plug that I hadn't noticed when I'd installed the fan for my video card a few months back.

Rather than turn off my system, plug in the old hard drive and boot everything back up, I decided to just plug in the hard drive while everything was still powered up.

BAD IDEA.

A little spark arced from the plug to the terminal on the old hard drive and my system shut down that second.

The bad part was that it wasn't turning back on. Suffice it to say, I freaked out a bit. I was hot, sick and already antsy because of my impending work startage. Then I go and do something like this. Thankfully it turned back on after much cursing, praying and fiddling with the computer, but man...

The wierd thing was that Julie's profile was working fine. I could access the internet, surf around, look on the hard drive. My profile, on the other hand, would load up the background but it wasn't connecting to the net or letting me do anything.

I had to make a new profile for myself and then I tried my old profile and everything seems to be working fine. Wierd. I guess that's just my system's way of sticking its tongue out at me for shocking it senseless last night.

The moral of this story is: NEVER EVER EVER plug in a live feed to a hard drive or anything else on your computer. I'm just happy that the system seems to be back to normal and I didn't have to dig out the Dreamcast so I could check my mail like the last time my system died on me.

I think I'm still suffering PTSD from the near loss of computer... I'm blaming the heat for doing that. Stupid, stupid Brock...

---
What I'm Reading: Something. I'm taking my library books back because I have too many out right now.
What I'm Playing: Wipe the sweat from my brow.
What I'm Watching: Primer (very odd movie), Le Grande Seduction (awesome movie)

All Good Things...

Well, as they say in Star Trek: The Next Generation, "All good things..."

I'm not sure what all good things do, because they never finish the line.

Anyway, today is my final full day of parental leave. Tomorrow I get sucked back into what some call, "Real Life", as I will be doing the 3-11 shift at ye olde group home. I was kind of annoyed to have to start back to work on a Sunday. Now that I think about it, Sunday is great because it's pretty quiet around the house and that should give me time to get caught up on everything that's happened while I've been away.

I don't really want to go back to work, but part of me is looking forward to it. I've pretty much done all the lounging about that I can do and Garrett is wearing me out with all the chasing around I have to do during the day. I'll still be pretty busy but I've gotten used to getting up relatively early, so I should be able to transition back and not explode.

Ah well. I just wish my final week off hadn't been full of a heat wave and miscellaneous illnesses. At least Doug came by today and helped me get the air conditioner installed! Hooray for AC!

---
What I'm Reading: Ghost Liners, Eberron Sourcebook
What I'm Playing: Haunting Ground, not much else
What I'm Watching: Supersize Me, The Seduction Of Doctor Lewis

Yarg!

My pirate name is:

Dirty Jack Kidd


You're the pirate everyone else wants to throw in the ocean -- not to get rid of you, you understand; just to get rid of the smell. Even though you're not always the traditional swaggering gallant, your steadiness and planning make you a fine, reliable pirate. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.

Keep your fingers out!

I think I need to build myself a computer case made entirely of fans in order to cool down my office... or at least me.

Just don't put your toes too close to it!

I'm being punished

I must have done something wrong because I swear that God is punishing me this week.

Ever since Sunday I have been sick as a dog. I thought I was actually hacking up chunks of lung tissue at one point. So I have developed an unhealthy addiction to Buckley's Cough Syrup and was finally feeling more or less back to normal yesterday.

As we went over to the Annual Condo Board meeting, my right eye started to itch a bit. I thought it was just sweat getting in. Then Julie commented on my eye, which was along the lines of, "What the heck is wrong with your eye?".

By the time we got home I was oozing really gross stuff out of my eye. Now I've got acid eyedrops to put in and I'm on an inhaler to top things off. Honestly, the eyedrops are an actual acid that I'm dripping into my eyes! Sigh.

My body must either be allergic to the reality that I'm going back to work on Sunday or my brain is subconciously trying to kill me so I don't have to go back :) If I'm blind, I can't do the van run, I guess :P

Top 11 Signs Your Dad Was A Geek

Saw this on BBSpot and had a chuckle.

Signs Your Dad Was a Geek Too
11. You ask him for computer help.
10. He was proud when you joined Chess Club because now the family tradition would be upheld.
9. Your allowance was always a multiple of $3.14.
8. He likes telling you stories about how computers were before they had keyboards.
7. He has more Legos now than you did as a child.
6. He can beat you in at least one video game.
5. He moderates a BBS.
4. His ring tone: the sound of a 9600 baud modem negotiating.
3. You learned a new coding algorithm that is named after him.
2. He made you wear a Spock costume to your first Star Trek convention because he wanted to go as Kirk.
1. He named you Luke just so he could say "Luke, I am your father."

---
What I'm Reading: Eberron Sourcebook, Instructions on my crazy medicine, Chill Factor
What I'm Playing: Baten Kaitos
What I'm Watching: The last day and a half of my leave slip away!

Dave Wager and His Infamous Head

Hey! My brother got into the local paper, albeit without knowing it at the time.

We went out to the Acton Library Book Sale on Saturday. Dave, Kate and Connor came with us. Turns out that while we were shopping, the Acton Tanner was taking pictures for this week's issue.

Now the funny part is that you can't see Dave's face. It's just the back of his head an upper back that are visible, but I tell ya, it has to be Dave. Julie took one look and said that it was Dave's hat and head in the picture.

So Dave is in the paper (at least the back of his head is).

The Inside

Did anyone else happen to catch the awesome show The Inside last night on Fox/Global? It premiered in the evening and I have to say that it is very good.

It's done by one of the guys behind 24 (Brian Grazer) and one of the people behind Buffy/Angel (Tim Minear). It's got a very cool feel to it. Sort of like X-files/Millenium but grounded in reality. Last night's episode introduced the FBI profiling squad in LA that was chasing a serial killer who liked to cut off people's faces and hands. Starts off with one of their own profilers being the latest victim and goes from there.

It had a few cool twists, nice gory visuals and very cool characters. I'm also happy that Adam Baldwin (Jayne from Firefly) has a new job as one of the profilers. There was also a character on near the end of the show who had a shirt that said, "Wolfram Security". Fans of Angel will get a chuckle from that.

I would love to see this show keep going. It's got great writing and it would be great to see where they go both with the characters and with the storylines.

Of course, knowing Fox, they'll air 5 episodes out of order, forget to promote it and pre-empt it with a cheesy reality show about marrying your obnoxious boss. Then say that the ratings were too low and cancel it.

Sorry, maybe I'm just projecting the curse of Firefly onto this one... Fox has awesome new dramas that they put out and then don't give the time to find an audience. If they let this go for more than a season, I'm sure it'll find its audience and could be the next X-Files. We'll see...

It's too damn hot...

I just want to go on record as hating each and every one of you freaks out there who actually spend the winter looking forward to this miserable heat and humidity called Summer in Southwestern Ontario.

It's the second week of June and I'm already hating the weather. Aside from a brief thunderstorm last night we really haven't had any rain to get the humidity out of the air since at least last week. I don't mind a nice sunny day with a temperature of around, oh, 23-25 with a nice cool breeze. That's fine. The problem is that the days have been getting hotter and hotter for the last week or so and according to the forecast they're going to keep being up around 31 (89 with the humidex) till at least next Tuesday or so.

I tell ya, I'm actually looking forward to going back to work if only to have air conditioning. Our AC isn't hooked up yet and I shouldn't have to deal with an early June heat wave...

Stupid summer. Sun's up too long and the days are too hot. I miss winter and the inky darkness it brings...

---
What I'm Reading: Chill Factor, Condo board meeting minutes and financial report
What I'm Playing: Guild Wars, Haunting Ground
What I'm Watching: The Inside

My border crosser is an axe murderer

Ok. I'm all for letting us have a nice open border with the States so that people like, oh, myself, Julie and Grant can go across the border and not get pulled into the US Immigration Office in Port Huron like we did 6 or 7 years ago...

But we had to go sit in Immigration while someone like this gets to just waltz in with a BLOODY FRICKIN' CHAINSAW!!! Yeesh. I mean, would you let a guy like this:



into your country? I don't think you could look much more like Stereotypical Psycho Murderer #897 than that guy. Actually, he kind of looks like Dave with his old 'Chelsea hair'.

Ah well. There's actually a real explanation as to why he was allowed in, but I still think that if someone pulls up at the border with a blood covered chainsaw, they should check with the Canadian authorities to see if there are any legal issues outstanding (which there were).

---
What I'm Reading: Chill Factor
What I'm Playing: Guild Wars, Baten Kaitos, Raze's Hell
What I'm Watching: Doctor Who, The Insider

Kung Faux

As I've been lounging on the couch late at night, flipping through channels the last few Sundays and I've found a really cool show on Showcase after Trailer Park Boys.

It's called, wait for it, Kung Faux.

Two words describe this show. Awe Some.

It's essentially an old chop-sockey hong kong martial arts flick from the '70s that has been pared down to half an hour in length. Then the masterminds behind it have added in all these crazy comic book and videogame type panels and special effects and there's this thumping backbeat playing behind most of the stuff. And then there's the 'dubtitling', which is what makes it so funny. They recorded some rappers as they were watching one of these movies and made up the dialogue as it went along. I love it because it's what I do when I watch these things.

Actually, it's very remenicient of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 only with kung-fu movies instead of horrible sci-fi B-movies as the fodder for the show.

I just figured I'd pass that along to anyone who wants a good laugh late on a Sunday night.

I don't know when to fold them.

Yesterday was my first crack at playing some Texas Hold'em poker with the illustrious Touring Poker Tour of Poker over at the Garagio in Kitchener.

I think that the upside of the whole thing is that I wasn't out last and I didn't rebuy at all. The downside was that I was 3rd out. Ah well. It was a lot of fun regardless.

Texas Hold'em is definately the most fun variation of poker that I've played. It took me a few hands to get a firm idea as to what the heck was going on but once I figured it out, it was a hoot. My only problem, aside from just sucking in general, is that I tend to resist the urge to fold even if my cards are horrible. By the end of the night I'd learned that folding isn't for wimps. If only I'd done that earlier in the day!

---
What I'm Reading: Chill Factor
What I'm Playing: Guild Wars, Find the best interest rate, The Suffering
What I'm Watching: The Blues Brothers, the rain not fall, humidity soar

I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing

There's a website out there that sends out mystery shoppers, er, worshippers to various churches around the world and rates them. I think it's a very interesting idea. BUT...

Given the vast differences in styles of worship, denominational traditions and so forth, this could be a pretty bad idea in practice. For example, sending a Pentacostal worshipper to a traditional Presbyterian service would probably be an excruciating experience for the Pentacostal, but for the average Presby it's just dandy.

Rating the congregation on friendliness and being open to outsiders is fine. I think that if you have diametrically opposing doctorines rating each other then it could get messy.

But that's just my take on it.

TIE Desker

I wish I had a cool computer/computer desk like this. Man...



Alas, I'm still using my good ol' Wood On 4 Aluminum Legs model that I've had since, oh, Grade 9. Until the legs buckle, I may as well keep using it!

---
What I'm Reading: Chill Factor
What I'm Playing: Poker with real live people, The Suffering (which could be used to describe my poker game), Guild Wars, Undying, Warioware in various incarnations
What I'm Watching: The rain that was predicted for the last week or so NOT COME.

Watch out for the Thai Fighters!

It's Store Wars! Watch as your favourite veggies re-enact all of your favourite scenes from A New Hope. Sadly, the veggies act better than Anakin and Padme in Episode 3... sigh.

I really could care less for their "Organic is good, GMO's are bad" message, but as far as Star Wars spoofs go, this one is pretty good.

Hee hee... Chewbroccoli...

---
What I'm Reading: Wanted Words Vol. 1 & 2, Blankets, Ebberon Sourcebook
What I'm Playing: Warioware Twisted, Guild Wars, Guess That System Error, The Suffering
What I'm Watching: O Brother! Where Art Thou?

I lost on Jeopardy!, baby... ooo oo oo oooooo

Garrett & I braved the 1/2 off gas sale at the giant Q-store to meet Ken "I'm the end boss on Jeopardy!" Jennings down in Milton today. Of course, Garrett seems more excited by the stacks of autograph pictures than Ken himself. Sigh. Garrett did give Ken a really big smile AFTER the picture was taken. Ah well.  


On the upside, Garrett & I might be on a documentary they were making about Ken Jennings and why he's a good role model, etc. etc. A camera crew was interviewing the guys behind us in line and as they walked by Garrett smiled at them and the camera guy actually turned around and grabbed the boom mike guy and pointed Garrett out. I got to spin my yarn about how Ken Jennings was the only guy on Jeopardy! that Garrett knew as he was on every night from the day Garrett was born till that fateful day last fall. We'll see if we end up on the cutting room floor.

CN Tower shots

Here's Julie on the glass floor. Doesn't she look like she's having fun?  

This was the best shot I could get of the sunset last night at the 360. It would have been better had I not had 5 people between me and the window. As you can see, the struts which support the clouds in the sky are clearly visible in the foreground. 

I think that 90% of you will hate me now

I think the majority of my friends who read this blog will hate me now.

Why?

Oh.... Dressing Circle, Row B, Seats 31 & 32.

Yup. Julie almost missed having her name in the draw for the door prizes and lo and behold, she ended up winning the two tickets to see The Lord Of The Rings musical next February! Woohoo!

You can't really get much better seats than that. I'd pretty much written off ever getting a chance to see the musical as the tickets sold like hotcakes when they went up for sale a few weeks ago. Now we get to see it with seats that are pretty much the best in the house.

We could have put our name in for an iPod, a digital camera or the tickets. It made the most sense to go for the tickets as we already have an MP3 player and a digital camera and the tickets are nigh impossible to get. Did I say woohoo yet? :)

I just hope I don't get that guy with the huge afro and top hat sitting in front of me. I hate that guy.

Dinner at the top of the center of the world

Tonight was Julie's work's 20th anniversary and they took the whole company and spouses out to the 360 Restaurant at the top of the CN tower for dinner.

Mmm...

Julie had never been up the CN Tower before. I had gone last year and was able to show her around. Not that it's that confusing. The nice thing about this time as opposed to last summer was that there weren't very many people there tonight which meant that we could actually see (and walk on) the Glass Floor and also not feel like total tourists. Having the whole bar to ourselves (and 90 other employees) was nice too.

Dinner was absolutely delicious. I actually ate a good number of vegetarian quesadillas and veggie egg rolls during the hor d'ouevres section of the night, much to Julie's amazement. I even ate a bit of lettuce in my salad.

We had a delicious maple-glazed chicken with some fantastic mustard and garlic mashed potatoes. Thankfully there was just enough room in my tummy for dessert, which was this tower of dark chocolate mousse in a crunchy chocolate shell.

Of course, the best part of the evening was the view. It was a beautiful sunny evening when we went up the tower at 6pm and the sunset was absolutely breathtaking. Seeing the city light up for the night was just delightful. I'd wanted to see that from the top of the CN Tower ever since I went up last year and it was just dandy.

Garrett stayed at our friend's place for the evening. We thought we'd be back by 8:30 to get him, but we didn't even leave downtown till just after 10pm. Ah well. He was sound asleep when we got to Mississauga to get him and went right to bed after we got home.

Actually, that was another cute story. Garrett & I got home a bit before Julie did and the spring peepers were going crazy out in the swamp. Garrett's usually asleep before they start their racket, so we walked over to the edge of the driveway to have a listen. He had the biggest grin on his face as he kept looking into the darkness that was making so much noise. Ah, there's hope for him yet!

In all, it was a wonderful evening that I wish we could do more often. Alas, we haven't won the lottery yet, so I guess we'll just have to wait for another 20 years when Julie's work has its 40th anniversary :)

---
What I'm Reading: Hex & The City (almost done), Ebberon sourcebook
What I'm Playing: Guild Wars, The Suffering
What I'm Watching: Everyone get mad at me after they read the next post.

Zzzzz... Wha? It's done?!

As the guy on Evil Avatar said, "HOLY FREAKIN' CRAP! IT'S FINALLY DONE!"

Yes friends and friendettes, George R.R. "I take 9 years to write a book" Martin has finally finished the next book in what is probably my favourite fantasy series, A Song Of Ice & Fire.



Well, sort of.

Seems that Martin has exceeded the mammoth A Storm of Swords novel and churned out at least 1600 pages, by his estimation, for A Feast For Crows. So rather than "printing in microtype on onion skin paper and giving each reader a magnifying glass", he's split the book into two novels. A Feast For Crows will focus on the goings-on in Westeros and surrounding area, while A Dance With Dragons will take place mostly in the North and East.

At least this means that A Dance With Dragons is already halfway done and he's also said on his website that he figures the series will take about 7 books to finish. I think I asked him several years ago at a book signing if it was a trilogy or not and he said it would be 7 books (or was it 5?) so he's not too far off.

I like his suggestion. "And if there are those who don't agree, and still want their Big FEAST with all the trimmings set out on one huge table... well, there's an easy fix. Get both books, razor the pages out with an Exacto knife, interleave the chapters as you think best, and bring the towering stack of text that results to your favorite bookbinder... and presto, chango the Big FEAST will live again."

Now I need to go reread A Game Of Thrones and the other two books. I just got my local librarian to start reading the series, so hopefully she'll like it.
---
What I'm Reading: Hex & The City, Many a D&D campaign sourcebook
What I'm Playing: Guild Wars, The Suffering, Baten Kaitos
What I'm Watching: Miller's Crossing, Doctor Who, not much else (hooray for the end of the TV season!)

Did I just finish the final Thief game?

I just beat Thief 3 (aka Deadly Shadows) and it was great. I did play it in fits and starts over the last, oh, year, but whenever I'd sit down to seriously play it I was sucked in. Just like the previous Thief games, this one oozes atmosphere in a way that other games wish they could. Not only that, it essentially ties the three games in the series to a nice conclusion and sets up a new chapter for a new thief, should they decide to make any more.

Sadly, Ion Storm is out of business, Looking Glass Studios is out of business and I highly doubt that Eidos will bother letting the remnants of either studio make another Thief game anytime soon, given that this one didn't sell that well. Sigh.

I did have some problems with the game, but they were almost all either technical issues or just annoyances with the game due to the changes from the previous two. Technically, the game looked rather mediocre until I put the miscellaneous fan-made hi-rez skins on it. Then it looked great. The other problem is that they used the Deus Ex 2 engine which has got to be the worst game engine ever designed in recent memory. When I can run Half Life 2 on my machine with nary a hiccup, yet this much darker, much less impressive (graphically) game causes my computer to chug, well, that's some sloppy coding. It's not as bad as Deus Ex 2, so the fact it ran on my machine was nice.

I also had issue with a lot of the changes they did due to the game being designed with the Xbox in mind. The load times were horrendous and that wouldn't have been a problem except that there were some instances where I was wandering from section to section in the hub level of The City and having to load each section as I went back and forth. THAT got really annoying. And when I say long load times, I mean load times of almost a minute, and that's the quick load!

That said, the quibbles I had with the game were more than handily overcome by the sheer quality of the story, the atmosphere and the fun of blackjacking many an unsuspecting guard in the back of the head while robbing places blind and triggering the end of the world in the process. That, and the game is downright creepy. Shalebridge Cradle is probably one of the scariest levels I've ever played, and that's saying something.

Anyway, I'm glad to get it out of the way and now I have 2.5 extra gigs of space on my harddrive! Woo!

I've got friends in close places

This has been an interesting weekend. First off, the 9 straight days of torrential rains that I was eagerly awaiting since I rushed to finish my gardening on Thursday have yet to occur. We did get some thunder and lighting and a wee bit of rain today, but that's it. Sigh.

Secondly, I had not one, but two visits from far-flung friends this weekend. Not only that, but both sets are going to be not-so-far-flung in the near future.

The inimitable Doug of Doug & Jenn stopped by yesterday for an evening of playing Burnout 3, eating Snickers Cake and watching most of the first season of Corner Gas, which he had initially compared to Train 48 *spit*. Thankfully Doug changed his tune after he actually watched an episode of Corner Gas and proceeded to chuckle through another 4-5 eps till he had to go home. I guess that it's my new job to keep Doug company till they get their new house and Jenn can take over again :) I'll just demand payment in yummy cakes.

Today the tag-team duo of Yvette & Noel actually managed to synch their fly-by of Acton and find us at home. We had fun watching Garrett do Garretty type stuff for a chunk of the afternoon and then they got the call they'd been waiting for all afternoon. They're moving out my way! Woo!

We went out to Andy's Restaurant for supper and had a celebratory meal. From the sounds of things, you can hunt salamanders while riding wild coyotes through a river at their new place. I can't wait till they move in!

So it seems that soon everyone I know will eventually end up within a 30 minute drive from Acton. I can actually start cleaning off my pool table and setting up a D&D table in the basement :) Let the geekery begin.
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What I'm Reading: Hex & The City
What I'm Playing: Thief 3 (almost done!), The Suffering
What I'm Watching: Nothing. Absolutely nothing!

Sad, but true

This Dilbert comic is just too close to real life to be funny. But it is funny anyway. I need a nap.

IT'S TOO BIG FOR MY WEBSITE! CLICK HERE INSTEAD!

Coolest News of the Day

I was watching Daily Planet tonight and they said something about taking a helicopter flight to the top of the world.

I thought to myself, "Well, they can't mean Everest. Choppers can't get anywhere near the summit."

Then lo and behold, there's footage of a helicopter setting down and taking off from the summit of Everest!

I've got a kind of obsession with all things Everestian for some strange reason, so for me this was a really cool news story.

Of course, halfway through the story I had to go help Julie-The-Sick pin down Garrett-The-Wiggly since her sinus infection has weakened her to such a state that she couldn't hold him still to put his diaper on. Still, it was a neat story.

Speaking of mountaineering, Garrett has mastered the art of climbing down stairs. He spent almost all day today either going up and down our stairs or going up and down the stairs on the plastic elephant slide at the Early Years Centre. I was getting tired just watching him. He, on the other hand, was laughing his fool head off all day. The upside of this is that he was almost unconcious in his highchair just before 8pm :)

I'm smarter than you are.

Ken Jennings is visiting Milton next week to hawk some of his Quizzology CD-Rom games at the new Q store just south of the 401.

I guess his punishment for not winning the Ultimate Tournament Of Champions is to have to visit Milton. Poor guy.

We might go see him and get Garrett autographed. We'll see.

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What I'm Reading: Hex & The City
What I'm Playing: Beat Tales of Symphonia, Guild Wars, The Suffering
What I'm Watching: Garrett climb up and down the stairs about 800 times today.

Lost Musings

This is neat.

There is a website for Oceanic Airlines, the doomed airline is the lynchpin to the whole mess on Lost.

On the website there are all sorts of hidden clues, etc. scattered about.

For instance, there are not one, but two messages hidden in the source code (you can also see the edge of one sticking out behind the ticket info graphic on the homepage).

"If anyone should find this message, please get word to Sandra Rafflethorpe of Palm Avenue in Lewiston, Idaho that her sister, Sally is alive and stranded on an island somewhere in the South Pacific. Please send help soon. Things are bad. And they're getting worse..."

"Robert D. West, of Santa Barbara, California, USA survived a horrific plane crash and is stranded on an island somewhere Northeast of Australia and Southwest of Hawaii. In the event that I am never found, please forward word of my fate to parents, Mr. and Mrs. John West, of Tucson Arizona. Thank you."

Also, as someone on the ABC message board pointed out, there is an interesting bit of information with regards to the flight itself.

"On the home page is a message from the "president" of Oceanic Airlines in which he mentions a "tragedy" with Flight 815 that has put the airline out of business. Note that he does not say "crash". Others have noted that it is unlikely that a single crash would put an airline out of business. So what kind of "tragedy" would?

At the top, click on the link for "Track Flight" and on the page that opens, type in 815 into the Flight Tracker search box. The page that follows shows something very interesting. Flight 815 is shown as leaving Sydney at 14:04 (4 minutes late because of Hurley). Note that instead of "Landed", like the other flights, it says "Alert". BUT over in the columns for Arrival, it shows an ACTUAL ARRIVAL TIME of 03:23, only 7 minutes later than scheduled. The plane actually arrived in Los Angeles! It did not crash! So what was the "tragedy"? What was the situation when the plane arrived? Were all the people we see on the island not aboard, and the airline can't explain what happened to them? Maybe the plane arrived and no one was aboard! I don't know, but I am thinking this may be a BIG CLUE!"

There's also a seating chart for flight 815 that you can fiddle around with to unlock pictures of the cast as well as the Season 2 teaser. There's a how-to write-up here.

Just thought the rest of you Lostophiles would get a kick out of the possible questions and such that the easter eggs on the site hint at. Oh, and in the President's Message on the homepage there's a little grey line. It's actually a graphic with a missing page of the finale script. Neat.

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What I'm Reading: Hex and the City
What I'm Playing: Guild Wars, Tales of Symphonia, Thief 3, Get Garrett To Go To Sleep
What I'm Watching: The Future Is Wild, My Garden Grow

Ah, Sweet Sweet Bittorrent

I haven't done a lot of bittorrent downloading since I went on my leave, even less since all of the decent sites for anything from music to movies to TV shows went down. Granted, a lot of that is because I actually have the time to watch my TV shows and go out to movies now.

That said, I'm really happy to see that the guys behind Bittorrent have started up the Bittorrent Search Engine. It's crazy fast and hopefully won't be shut down in the next week.

Enjoy!

Lost: The End

The season finale of Lost was awesome.

It answered a lot of outstanding questions from the season but man, did it ever raise more. Not only that, we now have at least one less castaway, possibly more, the youngin's aren't safe and we STILL haven't seen either what's in the hatch or what Lostzilla is.

I'm starting to think that Lostzilla is an invisible, mechanical squid that is actually into gardening. That explains all the uprooted trees.

Hurley was outstanding tonight, as usual.

I don't want to have to wait till next fall. They'd better start this early!

The one thing I am wondering is what the "SPECIAL LOST LOST FOOTAGE" is that they're going to show on Good Morning America tomorrow. I'm assuming it's not anything terribly critical to the plot or else they wouldn't leave it on the cutting room floor. If it is, well, that's what the internet is for.

Just call me the Boy In The Bubble v2.0

It's always great when you go to the doctor and he takes one look in your ear and says, "WOAH! Now that IS infected!"

Yes, I somehow have contracted a malady whose victims tend to range in age from 0-18 months. Sigh. Thankfully I got in to see the doctor today as the infection hasn't spread too far into my brain cavity. Of course, now I have to use ear drops for the next 5 days or else they'll have to quarantine me.

Ah well. What can you do? Use ear drops, I guess...

Oh no! Connor has bite-activated his Thumb Of Doom and caused everyone's eyes to glow red. This also made Garrett go flying in the other direction. Poor fella. 

Garrett is trying out his wire-fu flying kick on the unsuspecting Connor. Who will prevail!? 

Over the barrel in a falls

Today we took a road trip down to Niagara Falls with Garrett. It was the perfect day for taking in one of the natural wonders of the world and watching people plunge to their deaths. Alas, the latter part of our visit to the Falls didn't happen, but maybe next time!

Garrett seems to have a real love for water and water related things, so the Falls seemed like the perfect place to take him now that he's big enough to appreciate things. He seemed to like looking at the water going over the falls, but I think that the noise of the falls, the crowds of people and the ever-present mist overloaded him. He spent a lot of the morning just looking around at people and the falls and had a really wierd look on his face. He wasn't happy, but he wasn't sad or upset. It was that look he gets on his face when he's trying to figure things out.

Ah, the scientist in me loves seeing that look :)

He did really like the gears and bubbling water in the Hershey Store. Of course, he also liked flirting with the girls at the checkout counter too. That guy...

We didn't do the Clifton Hill stuff (aside from the Hershey Store) because a) it's expensive and b) Garrett's way too young to enjoy the wax museums and such. Hopefully in a couple of years we can go back and just go the full-bore tourist route and have a lot of fun that way. Not right now though.

Unfortunately, Julie, Garrett and I are all sick to some degree. Julie's still fighting her sinus cold, Garrett had a runny nose and I've got some weird ear infection that is making the side of my face feel kind of numb around my ear. I'm going to the doctor tonight to see if I need a facectomy, but hopefully I'll just need some antibiotics or laser ear surgery and I'll be right as rain.

We still had a great day though, maladies and all. The weather was perfect and the Falls are always nice to visit when the tourists haven't completely overwhelmed them.

We took this picture down by the Whirlpool Rapids overlook. I think by this time Garrett was running on sugar from the Timbit we gave him at lunch time, as he hadn't slept since about 8 or so in the morning. I don't like this picture because I look evil. 

We couldn't pass up a trip to the Hershey Store over in the Clifton Hill (aka Tourist Trap) area of Niagara Falls. Garrett made lots of friends with the girls behind the fudge counter. 

Of course, nothing could stop Garrett from hording all the food and eating half of my tuna sandwich while we had our picnic. 

We had our first real picnic after we'd gone for a walk up and down the river. I'm not sure if it was a lack of sleep, the noise of the falls or being somewhere weird, but Garrett had a really wierd look on his face most of the day. 

This was taken quite a ways downstream from the Falls (duh). We actually walked all the way from Table Rock to Clifton Hill and then some. I haven't wandered that far downstream in any of the times I've been to the Falls in recent memory. 

I told you it was misty near the falls... 

Garrett seemed to like it a litte more when we got away from the crowds and the spray at the Horseshoe Falls. 

This was just an awesome shot of the American Falls. It was a gorgeous day down in the Niagara region. 

It was not the best day for taking pictures right at the edge of the Horseshoe Falls. The wind was blowing right back at us and that meant that it was really misty near the lip of the Falls. 

Ultimate Spiggy Man

I heard a bit about the upcoming Ultimate Spiderman game around the time of E3 but hadn't checked it out till now.

Oh man!

The various Ultimate graphic novels have been among the many titles I've read while I've been on leave. The art style for Ultimate Spiderman, especially, is excellent. I also like how all of the books have essentially rebuilt their respective franchises in a modern setting. Some of the storylines are the same as the canon, but a lot of the details have changed (and in the case of Ultimate X-Men, a LOT is different).

That said, check out the website for the Ultimate Spiderman game and watch the trailer. The graphics look awesome. It's this kind of advanced cel-shading technology that really works as a translation of comic book to moving image. I'm a sucker for cel-shading though, so just seeing it done this well and in this setting makes me happy.

Time to go read the Louis Riel graphic novel. Who knew Canadian history was so interesting? And that Sir John A. had such a big nose.

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What I'm Reading: Darkness That Comes Before, Louis Riel: The Graphic Novel
What I'm Playing: Tales of Symphonia, Guild Wars, Thief 3
What I'm Watching: The Future Is Wild, the Lost season finale (I hope)

A fun new game!

I saw this on Evil Avatar and thought that they said it better than I could. I'll say something anyway.

Bunch of dorks... I don't mind restricting the selling of games to minors, so long as adults can still buy them. Imagine if they made it so that the only movies that could be made were rated PG or G? The uproar would be insane. I think it's the blanket statement below that games are neither art nor media (which in itself is a stupid statement, as the senator obviously doesn't understand the definition of media) and are only sims that bugs me the most. What kind of sim is a Pac-Man game? Is Donkey Kong a barrel jumping sim? Will my skills in Katamari Damacy aid me in rolling up a giant snowball next time it snows? Sigh.

Here it is.

Illinois Senate Give Thumbs Up to Video Game Restrictions
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Here's a fun game. Read this story on Yahoo! News:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050520..._te/video_games

...and count how many times you want to punch stuff.

Here's my personal favorite from the article:

The sponsor, Sen. Deanna Demuzio, denied the measure would interfere with free speech rights.

"Video games are not art or media," she said. "They are simulations, not all that different from the simulations used by the U.S. military in preparation for war."

Absolutely brilliant.

LOOOONG WEEEEKENNNNND

Granted, every weekend is a long weekend for me, at least for the next 3 weeks.

We went down to Sarnia this weekend to visit the grandparents and give Garrett a chance to climb stairs that weren't in our house. It was a relatively relaxing weekend except that Julie was sick with a cold going down there and I think I got it sometime yesterday. Ah well. It's not that bad. Just a stuffy nose this time around (I hope!)

Anyway, on Saturday I went out golfing with my Mom and Dave. I got a 72 on a 9 hole course. Granted, you have to take into concideration that I only go golfing about once, twice per year, if that. I play more golf on my Nintendo than I do outdoors. I had fun though and it gave me a chance to try out my clubs that I rescued from the junk day garbage pile a few years ago.

Saturday evening saw Dave, Tony and I going out to see Episode 3. Dave must have been out in the sun too long because I had to keep elbowing him to wake him up. He did stay awake after the first half hour, so he didn't miss anything too crucial.

On the way home we had a very odd encounter. Dave's car has a personalized license plate. We were driving Tony home and this big SUV from Michigan pulled up and these teenage girls leaned out and started yelling, "ALFREDO! ALFREDO!" Dave had never had a bunch of girls calling out for his car before. At the next light we looked over at the SUV and this time one of the girls leaned out of the window, yelled, "ALFREDO!" and proceeded to flash us!

We lost them shortly thereafter. Suffice it to say, it was a very memorable drive home :)

Other than that, the weekend was rather calm and nudity free. I'm still sore from my golf game, but that should be remedied by tomorrow after I get a nice sleep in my own bed. I played a bunch of Tales of Symphonia over the weekend and hopefully I'll get that game wrapped up in the next couple of days.

Well, time to go get ready to watch the 2 hour finale of 24!

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What I'm Reading: The Darkness That Comes Before (I'm finally getting into it), finished reading Artemis Fowl and the Eternity Code over the weekend.
What I'm Playing: Catch up on my RSS feeds for the last 4 days
What I'm Watching: 24, Jeopardy! Tournament of Ultimate Fighters

Episode 3 blip (aka Just Call Me Stubbs)

I'll write more about Episode 3 and its sheer awesomeness tomorrow when I'm rested (ha) and awake. Suffice it to say, it makes up for the rather lackluster Episode 1 and a half (the second part of Ep. 2 was great).

If Lucas had used the quality of Episode 3 as the benchmark for the series and worked up from there, the first two wouldn't be so reviled (I hope).

But anyway, Episode 3 was great from start to finish. The roasted Ewok scene was hilarious. General Grievous was amazing (as I expected) and they did a good job making Anakin's downfall believable (or at least giving it a rational explanation).

The only really horrid parts were, oh, any time you had Amidala and Anakin alone on the screen and talking. You could have had Pinocchio and Stephen Hawking delivering their declarations of love and devotion with more passion (and less woodeness) than those two. Ug. They do approach something akin to emotion in their final parting scene, but aside from that you should just plug your ears with cotton anytime the two of them are in the same room.

Hmm... I probably don't need to write anymore on this (right now). I'll let everyone go and see it and I'll yammer about it on the weekend or next week. I'm just incredibly pleased with the film... for once...

And any Star Wars film that has me really liking Yoda (who I never really cared for in the first trilogy) is a good Star Wars film. He r0x0r5, as the kids say these days.

Oh, we only had to wait in line for about 2 hours and had seats in the middle of the theatre, 3rd row up on the upper seats, which is a pretty prime location in a theatre with stadium seating. Gooooo us!

T-Minus 4.5 Hours and Counting

Well, it's a little less than 5 hours till Episode 3 starts! Woo!

I'll be heading out to Guelph after Lost and hopefully there won't be as many Star Wars nerds out there as there are in Toronto. We've got our tickets though, so we'll be getting in regardless.

I'm really stoked about this movie. From the reviews I've heard or read, it's the movie we Star Wars nerds had wanted from the beginning of the Prequels. The shots I've seen on Daily Planet look rather cool as well.

I'll probably write a review of it either tonight when I get home or tomorrow sometime. I've been resting up today (I even had a nap in the afternoon) and I think Tony & I will be wide awake for the show.

Woo!

Speaking of Tony, when he arrived in Acton yesterday he made the startling confession that he hadn't seen Episode 2 yet. Yeesh! He'd seen the first half hour or so, but that was it. Thankfully that gave us an excuse to watch it last night.

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What I'm Reading: Whittling down my stack of Graphic Novels, trying to decide what novel to read
What I'm Playing: Watch Tony play my Xbox
What I'm Watching: Episode 3 stuff, Lost

Return of the beast

I'm not sure if Garrett has a cold of some kind or is cutting his molars (which I think is a definate possibility) but ever since Saturday he's been a downright grump.

The worst thing is that during the day when he gets really grumpy he starts saying, "mum mum mum". Of course, when he's happy he says, "Da da da da daddy". Just goes to show who is the comforter and who is the fun guy :)

He didn't have a good day today either. He's trying to walk and kept bonking his head when his little walker toy would go too fast. Not too hard, thankfully, but enough to give him a scare and elicit a torrent of "Mumumumumumum"'s. His stair climbing is going rather well though. I think he made it up the entire flight in less than a minute.

I just hope he's feeling better tomorrow. I had to take him for a country drive this afternoon since he was crying whenever I'd put him down to play at home. I haven't had to do that since he was colicy back in the early days (or as we call them, 'The Dark Times') of the first month or two.

I did come to the conclusion that the town of Orton doesn't exist. I followed several road signs to it and never actually found it. I found a nice cow pasture though. No Orton.

Happy Anniversary

Happy Second Anniversary To Grant And Suzie!

Isn't The Second Anniversary The Capitalize Every Word Anniversary? If So, Then This Is My Gift To You. A Post With Every Word Capitalized!

Bohemian RPG

Saw this on BBspot and loved it. I figured I'd repost it here since not everyone has the strength to click on the link buttons :)

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Bohemian RPG
By Francisco Rangel and Cam Boyes
Care of BBspot.

(To the tune of " Bohemian Rhapsody " by Queen)

It's not the real life. It's just an RPG.
Caught in a dungeon. My escape from reality.

Open your guide, look up dwarven stats and see,
I'm just a fighter, magic is not for me
Because it's easy loot, easy gold, level high, level low
Any way the dice rolls really really matters to me, to me

Mama, just killed an orc. Swung my axe against his head
Rolled an 18, now he's dead.
Mama, I just rolled a one
My boots of speed won't let me run away
Mama, ooh, running low on my supplies
I'm running out of food and out of arrows
Gotta run, gotta fight, hope my sword and shield don't shatter

Too late, my dwarf is dumb
His wisdom's down the drain, his intelligence is lame
Got no constitution, charisma's null
Gotta run, but my dexterity's uncouth
Mama, ooh, I don't like this die
I sometimes wish I'd rolled a much better char

I see a little amulet-o on the ground
Is it cursed? Is it cursed? Where'd the rest of my clan go?
Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very fright'ning me
Magic Missile (Magic Missile) Magic Missile (Magic Missile)
Magic Missile, Thunderbolt
I'd better go. I'm so alone now, monsters attack me
He's just a poor dwarf, playing this RPG.
Fighting alone with this monstrosity
Easy kill, easy blow, let my level grow
Experience! No, your level will not grow.
(Let it grow!) Experience! My growth rate is too slow.
(Let it grow!) Experience! I want to wield my bow.
(Wield your bow) Let my crystal glow.
(Let it glow) Land a crushing blow. (Crushing blow)
No, no, no, no, no, no, no
(Oh, mama mia, mama mia) I can't fail this saving throw.
Beelzebub is a demon and he's after me, help me, HELP ME!

So you think you can beat me by rolling a five
You can't harm me, if you did, I'd just get revived.
Oh, slay me, no way that you can slay me
Just gotta take out, just gotta take out my new spear

Rolling really matters, dice are what you see
Rolling really matters,
Rolling really matters to me

Any way the game goes

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What I'm Reading: Not sure... so many books, so little time...
What I'm Playing: WoW, Guild Wars, Tales of Symphonia, Lego Star Wars, Ico, Ace Combat 5 (that's mostly just from the weekend)
What I'm Watching: The Dead Zone Season 1, 24, Appleseed CGI remake

Garrett the Mountaineer

It may have taken him till midnight, but he's finally made it to the top. Hooray! 

He's almost at the summit! 

Here's a shot of the mighty Sir Garrett of Actonia at the beginning of his climb of the might Mount Stairsmore. 

Sir Garrett of Actonia is doing his stretches before attempting the dangerous summit attempt of the dreaded Mount Stairsmore. Many have perished because they weren't properly acclimatized and didn't have the right sunglasses on. 

Firefox meet Notl33t. Notl33t, Firefox.

Yay! Thanks go out to Deborah for going out and recruiting some Firefox geeks to find the problem with my code. Turned out it was the Precision Counter code (the comments to be exact).

This just goes to show that Firefox sucks because it can't handle a simple broken comment. Yup. That's my story and I'm sticking to it :)

*waits for the flame war to start*

Not worth the magnetic tape it's recorded on.

Ye gods... did anyone else watch the MTV Xbox 360 Revealed show last night? They aired it after The Daily Show on CTV.

Go read today's Penny Arcade for a pretty good summation of my thoughts on it. It was a piece of garbage from my perspective. What little gameplay stuff they showed must have amounted to about an entire minute of the half hour 'show'.

It made the Our Colony video look downright jampacked with tech. The special was a bunch of 'celebrities' yapping about how they like to play games and generally being annoying. Some band called The Killers did a couple songs too, which ate up even more time.

The thing that drove me nuts was how much time both the MTV special and the Our Colony video devote to raving about the RING OF POWER, which is essentially just this glowing green light that goes around the power button. Much like the current generation XBox's green glowing light around the eject button. Woop dee frickin' doo.

Yawn.

At least I taped it so I could fast forward through most of it.

Here's what Gabe had to say about the MTV thing:

"So how about that Xbox 360? I am assuming that everyone watched the MTV show last night and I am also assuming that we all agree it was garbage. The important thing to understand here is that, much like Twisp and Catsby that show was not for us. When I say us I am referring to the hardcore. The sorts of people who perhaps downloaded a torrent of last nights MTV show. The sorts of people who had to call their cable company to find out what channel MTV was on. The sorts of people who had their Tivo or media PC grab the show for them so that they could watch it at their leisure. Last nights unveiling of the Xbox 360 was not for us it was for the people who were already watching MTV. It's true, there are human beings out there who watch MTV in the same way your mom might watch ABC. Sitting through show after show and watching as rides are pimped and celebrities are punked. Last nights show was for them and when you look at it that way I have to say I think the show was a success. I cannot imagine those sorts of people not being entertained for the entire 30 minutes by the flashing lights and famous people. Gaming is cool now. Isn't that awesome."

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What I'm Reading: Sentinel Digest, A.F. & T.A.I.
What I'm Playing: Lego Star Wars, Guild Wars, Ace Combat 5
What I'm Watching: The Dead Zone, Appleseed: The CGI remake

Two screenshots and a baby.

Here's a shot of Anakin and Obi-wan.