Marvel, Mickey and Muttering

A week ahead of... rain? Clouds? Sun? Who can tell?

Aug 31 - Four Billion for Marvel?

The entertainment news of the day: Marvel Comics is being purchased by Disney! Yes, you heard it right... Wolverine and Daffy Duck are going to be roommates. The news has spawned a legion of crossover ideas, but I think the most exciting of these are not related to the news at all. Instead, recently released dystopian visions of Disney icons make you brain spin in new directions - the Zombie Clockwork Goofy is especially chilling with its trademark smile. The folks over at Topless Robot have thoughtfully compiled a Top 5 Best and Worst of the Marvel/Disney merger, with some valid points.

Ouch... seems I overdid things this weekend playing COD4 for so long yesterday: my underarms are sore in ways I've not experienced since spending time on crutches when I broke my leg at 8 years of age. It's weird, but apparently not unheard of( especially Wii owners ) - trust me to find a way to injure myself doing nothing more strenuous than blasting away online with my friends. Dang... feels like I spent a few hours leaning on the ends of broomsticks, very uncomfortable.

What do do today when you're done your work? Why, check out IamBored.com - they have tons of things to do, and not a one of them work-related! 

Sept 1st - Not a Holiday

Up early today to head to the walk-in clinic... of which I ended up at the third choice, as the 1st was not( as listed online )a clinic but a doctor's practice and the second choice was closed today due to a doctor shortage - go figure. Anyway, after a nicely brief wait at the third place, the doctor told me that the swellings were most likely irritations from keeping my arms at my side all day Sunday - again, just as I had surmised. It was good to get a professional opinion, especially as he said they'd likely go away in a few day's time and had nothing to do with lymph nodes or other health worries - phew!

I've had cats for all my life, so discovering that being scratched by one can cause a disease is news to me - I can't recall how many scratches I've had over the years. But, like the song of the same name, Cat Scratch Fever is a real disease and one that you don't want to get; creepy, eh?

What's even creepier is the commercialization of MMO's: no longer are people safe from exploitation inside the fantasy world of places like World of Warcraft. Teams of spammers are now trying to make a buck within these worlds by trying to entice players to buy virtual goods or property using real cash. Strange or not, this is apparently a big enough problem that detective teams have been formed, closing hundreds of thousands of accounts - this article is rather surprising, and disappointing in that yet another venue has been found to exploit the public while they are trying to relax and have fun.

Sept 2 - 7 days until 9 - Borg?

In one week's time, the movie 9 opens, and I hope it's around long enough for me to find time to see it locally. As a matter of fact, since there's an IMAX theater in Victoria, I hope it makes it big and therefore translates to the IMAX screen - heck, if the recent Star Trek release can do it, why not an even cooler tale about creatures made of string, canvas and buttons?

While I haven't had the chance to talk to Telus yet about the extra charges on my bill, I did find this bit of interesting news courtesy of Pierre about cell phone contracts. I don't have one myself, but apparently Canadian cell phone users now have the right to refuse any changes to their contracts. Which I like, as they charge FAR too much if you decide that things aren't to your liking.

Work today was fairly long, as we switched over some parts of the computer system that runs our TCR machine - not that exciting really, but it means more work for us at the front counter and less for those at Head Office; not a great trade. Fortunately it doesn't seem to be that hard to grasp, so as we get used to it things should become second nature. Just one more thing to remember during what have become some very busy and very complicated days of late.

I also watched what will be the last broadcast of the local TV station, CHEK TV - they are being shut down by the money-losing CanWest owners, and tonight was a long farewell by staff on-screen, in the form of recalling their favourite stories. I really enjoyed watching them talk about all of the wonderful human tales they covered over the years, especially the one about the 86-year-old water skier who lives just down the road; inspiring! I hope that the employees of the CHEK station can make good on their plan to buy the station instead of having it closed, as it would leave quite a gap for local news on the Island.

Sept 3 - Comics and Books

I like comics... especially webcomics. From Angels 2200 to Dr. McNinja, there's a TON of talent out there that now has the 'net available as a distribution medium - you never know what you'll find. I'm still going to be headed down to the local comic shop to collect a few things this fall though, among them the new Farscape comic series, which purports to continue the storyline thanks to the talents of series writer Rourke O'Bannon - sweet! November 1st, baby!

Which neatly brings me to: Neil Gaiman's library! Finally we can see what the inside of a top writer's library looks like - and I cannot imagine any top writer in the world not having a library of some kind at least worthy of the name. I love that even the one chair visible in the room is covered in books; a classic sign of a true book collector.

Tick... tick... tick. No, that's not the sound of a clock in Neil's library, but you're half right. News that men's biological clocks are ticking too is not really news to me, as I've suspected as much for years. Which means that if you're really paranoid about mutations to your man-juice, then you'd better go see these guys - fast. And bring some cash... or you may end up with offspring like this. I wouldn't complain though.

Sept 4 - Lego my Ego!

Today was a busy day at work, which was very gratifying to see as it means that our branch's business is picking up: a sign of better times ahead? I hope so - we did double our projected business today, which was fantastic as there's no calendar reason for people to be jamming themselves into the lobby. I also received a performance review today that was very favorable, so that made me perk up somewhat under the mountains of paperwork that keep ambushing me at my desk.

From work to play: where would a lot of us be today without Lego? Well, aside from the folks employed by LegoLands the world over, that is. For two guys whose fascination with coloured plastic building bricks never really ended, the answer is simple: build some really cool stuff and put it online on their website! The Brothers Brick have a gallery of some amazing things they've built, helped no doubt in a large part by all the specialized bits and parts that Lego has released in the last 20 years, a far cry from the simpler bricks I remember having at my disposal as a kid. They're still with me, though they've not seen the light of day in many years unfortunately... and from what I've seen, the sets have only become more expensive over the years. Especially if you want one of these! Or you could just build an 11-foot long Lego version of the Space Battleship Yamato...

But on the other hand, it seems Mega Blocks got the rights to Halo... two years ago, I was looking at this nice list of toy stores for cube dwellers, whose limited space means they can't spare the space for a decent collection of building bricks, or a 1/6 scale replica of the Eiffel Tower.

Sept 5 - Windy Weekend Weather

Today was a fairly steady day at work, enough so that by the time the afternoon was well on its way to evening, I was feeling rather tuckered. Which was the perfect time for my DM to show up for an audit; she must have heard my eyelids scraping closer to being closed. Thankfully I run a tight ship, and we fairly well flew through the audit in a few hour's time. I was tired enough that when I headed home, I walked my bike up the hill to the halfway point, grateful that the rain had paused and the winds had died down completely - it was howling up to 65 kph here at times but thankfully little in the way of debris or branches were loosened due to the brevity of the gusts.

In the evening I played a little of the Batman: Arkham Asylum demo, and I liked what I saw. It was dark, moody and atmospheric - everything that a Batman game should be. Yet there are always dissenters, as this guy seems to be - is he being critical just to write an article, or does he have some good points? Have a look.

Saturday night: traditionally, it's the evening where you go out and enjoy yourself, free to entertain and imbibe until the beer goggles give the world around you a much more pleasing glow... and fuzzy outline. Along the same lines, there is also The Beer Goggler, which focuses more on curvy outlines attributed to imbibing - any night of the week.

Sept 6 - Feeling Slow, friend?

I spent the earlier part of the day trying to resolve some network issues( insert yawn here )at home. Seems that I didn't notice when I first set things up here, that I hadn't thought out how things would work to get the best speed out of my hardware... oops. So my parent's PC was happily connecting using a slower speed... which meant that my nice super-fast router was slowing itself down to accommodate them - doh! Today I dug out their 'old' router( brand new in mid-2008 )to hook it up and configure things better. Once I get the bugs out, it should mean that they connect to their router at their own pace, while my own hardware should sing along at a faster pace - we'll see how it works this week, after I run some daily tests. Here's hoping... at least the soreness under my arms has gone away, like the doctor said it would.

It rained on and off for most of today, whilst I divided my time between COD4 and writing, as well as a little Halo3 with the downstairs neighbour( he's extremely skill3d, by the way ). It was heartening to hear the rain coming down steadily; although it likely spoiled a few people's long weekend plans, the area around here has been so extremely dry that even people's discarded cigarettes had been worrisome in some rural areas. Soon enough, lawns around here may be green again, instead of the bright, dead brown that they have been all summer long thanks to the heat and water restrictions. Still, Australia's apparently had it worse than anyone this year.

To finish off the blog for the week, here's... the Oracle of Bacon! You can probably figure out how it works.

See the above link for Bacon-related goodness, and good-bye for now!