Working, Weaponizers and WoW

This week's been brutally busy for me at work... the only normally scheduled day was Monday. Tuesday, I had my meeting after work with the various plaza merchants, which went very well - the brouchures were a big hit. Wednesday I worked a 1/2 shift in the evening at our Cloverdale store... Friday I worked 12.5 hours between 2 stores, Saturday was an extra shift, Sunday was the same... very, very tiring. Not much going on blogwise.

Aug 17 - Watching Art

Holy artwork, Batman! There's a taste of things a-brewin' over at BrianThomasWoods.com, where his newest 'speed paintings' have a depth of intrigue and style that I am frankly in awe of - they remind of several 'concept art' books from years back that simply oozed style and alluded to Greater Things to come. Bravo, Brian! Check out DeviantArt.com if you've bever been there before either... tons of great images, plus they support CoolIris to browse all their images in 3D!

Which brings us to: watches. I haven't worn a watch in quite a few years, as their function( timekeeping )seems to have been steadily replaced by the ubiquitos cell phone in modern life. Why have a watch, when your cell keeps almost perfect time and you have it with you anyway? I've been waiting( and waiting, and waiting... )for the two to merge, but things seem to be taking their own sweet time, despite efforts by the Chinese to push things along... though they could use some lessons in miniturization( at least they got the waterproofing spot-on ). ChipChick.com( a rather nice place to visit! )has a brief article about the latest cell-watch fusion attempt, though again unlikely to catch on, despite retailers trying to create their own hype - Dick Tracy, where are you?

Aug 18 - Cheap Junk

As someone who loves to fix things on the cheap, using nothing but the semi-cannibalized remnants of other possibly-still-fixable things from around the house, I just love ThereIfixedIt.com. All those creative solutions you sometimes see passing you on the road, or in a friend's backyard, put up on display for the world. Reminds me a little of why I liked Junkyard Wars when it was on TV around the turn of the milennium - building cool things out of scrap is always entertaining...

Yet... does anyone out there have an actual basement workshop? The only person I ever knew with a complete setup is my grandfather, but he was an engineer by trade for 40+ years before retiring so you kind of expect that. The next best would be the Ultimate Guy's Garage, where you could work on the car, boat or your latest home renovation project with equal ease.

Neil Gaiman: one can never have too much of this writer in one's life, and not a word he's written is junk, IMHO. Fortunately, to feed that hunger for the heights of the written word comes an interview with Neil, where he talks about the art of storytelling. Having heard him tell one such story years ago, I can attest to the power this man has with both the written and the spoken word... quite a height to aspire to, but why not aim for the heights, instead of the more crowded middle?

Aug 19 - Cars are Cool Too

ThinkGeek.com has some really neat stuff, along the lines of The Sharper Image from decades past... but far more easily accessed via the web instead of a silly shopping mall - which some people apparently will geek out over too when they open a new one. I particularly like this nifty( but expensive )handheld game emulator, that will run nigh unto every single older game ever produced - even Amiga games! Sometimes I just love tech... too bad it's not free, like this tribute to 8-bit games of yesteryear - done entirely in Lego!! And somehow I think this gadget's time has passed... it's good for a few stares at your local Starbuck's, but be prepared for that Pitying Look if you tell folk how much you paid for it!

Though if you pulled out one of these, it would instantly restore your Cool Factor. You may want to pre-order one... I'm still resisting, somehow.

Much like I'm resisting the urge to scour the 'net for actual watchable episodes of Weaponizers, a 3-part series from the producers of Mythbusters. Oh, the destruction: remote-controlled full-size vehicles set loose on each other with fully-functional weaponry in the middle the the southwestern US desert - check out the video teaser! My dreams of 80's Car Wars fandom brought to live in exploding glory, sans the silly frippery of Hollywood that made 2008's Death Race a bland, empty dry-firing flop - which is too bad, as it had Jason Statham of Transporter fame in it.

Aug 20 - Putting on the Moves

I just realized today that I still haven't seen Transformers2: Revenge of the Fallen, or quite a few other movies of late, come to think of it. Is it normal now to simply say "Oh, I'll wait for the DVD." and not even think about going to a theater? I mean, I am not one to answer, as I loathe sharing the aisles with people who seem to have everything except watching the movie on their mind... which is disappointing, as they're simply wasting their ticket money to annoy other people. So it goes... just looking at the upcoming releases at ComicBookMovie.com doesn't really get me all fired up to get out there to see an opening film, and the new trailer for Avatar has left a lot of people scratching their heads, wondering how the Blue Man Group managed to get so out of control with James Cameron's blessing...

This week, I've been playing COD4 for a little while each night, mainly to blow off some stress after working so much each day. Playing in Hardcore Mode is actually not too bad once you get used to it, and I've found that I'm dying less and playing smarter because of it. Still, there are exceptions, and tonight was one: I had to quit after a few games in a row where people were spawn camping( a hot topic )like crazy, though it wasn't as bad as what happened on the server this PC player played on!

Aug 21 - Cool Stuff Friday

Yow - what a combo! I've just learned the DC( formerly known as Detective Comics )is going to team up Batman and a Golden Age superhero known as the Man of Bronze... Doc Savage! I loved reading those old-school adventure books when I was young: gripping characters having memorable adventures in the far-flung corners of the world. Akin to the Tom Swift series of books, Doc Savage was a self-made superhero, much like Batman in his own origins... hence the perfect idea of teaming the two up to see what happens. I can hardly wait!

From the same era as Doc Savage there's this magazine cover, which somehow managed to survive 45+ years to amuse today's websurfers... with weasels!

Freebie Frustration: tonight I finally got around to installing MS Office... after much internal debate, as I really detest MS but their document format / editor is the prevailing champ on the market. Until now, I've been using Open Office 3.1 for about a year and while it's great... I'm not the only one who can't get the spellchecker to work. You can only cut and paste so many times to a web-based spellchecker like Orangoo before your frontal lobes begin to spasm. Much like what happened when I discovered that Hasbro and Norton have teamed up for a Gi-Joe version of Norton's Antivirus... I kid you not. Another sure sign that our world is warping way, way too far away from Reality Prime... yeesh! At least these figures from the Joe movie are cool - why didn't they get used in the movie instead of speed suits?

Cool Part Deux: Fridays are when I like to catch 2 shows later in the evening, convenient when I am working as I still get home in time to catch them. The first is World's Most Extreme Homes, followed by the Americanized version called Extreme Living. Both shows focus on unique homes the world over, some of which may be in your own backyard - like the Steel House tucked away in downtown Victoria BC! I've yet to actually see it, but I've driven by the block where it's located many times and one of these days I'll have to play tourist and snap some pictures. Some of the homes featured in both shows are not to my taste, but all are unconventional, unique and creative in their design.

Aug 22 - Writing What?

In keeping with that thought, I sat down to write up my blog entry for today... and was greeted by a blank page in ScribeFire from my browser. Noooo!

Also, nobody noticed that last week's blog had no bacon reference in it... the world managed to stagger on without realizing its lack though. So this week, I give you: 100 uses for a strip of bacon - with pictures! How's that for making up, eh?

No complaints about the teaser trailer for the fourth season of The Venture Bros... it looks crazy-good! Seeing as I only have the first two seasons, I will have to go hunting for the next two seasons - they're harder to find on the cheap than you'd think. Crazy goodness though; check it out if you haven't seen the show.

Yeah yeah, complaints at work... we've all had those days, like today when I cycled between the two branches( 20 mins either way )to fix our lovely TCR. While I didn't have a complaint today while at work, I had one afterwards - in a way. The branch had been closed for 1/2 an hour, I was all set to leave... then this guy in a pickup pulls up, trots out and starts pulling at the locked door, as though enough repetitions would unlock the Secret Door Device and let him in. He then stood there for 15 minutes, yelling though the door at me to "Call the boss!" so he could "Get in to cash his cheque." No matter that the hours are posted on the door he's pounding on... the open sign and lights are off, and I'm standing there staring at him with a bicycle helmet on my head. A few short words to the effect of "We're closed, come back tomorrow" later, he finally told me where to go( charming )and drove off... after spending 20 minutes delaying me from leaving while simultaeously entertaining the people but 20 feet away at Tim Horton's. Which is perhaps why we as Canadians like to hang out there: free Saturday Night shows!

Aug 23 - Workin' Sunday Thoughts

An interesting article from io9.com about why we can't let go of things. Which could explain how some fans( of any stripe or media-source )become too obesssed with the things they love best... like people's characters from their MMO such as World of Warcraft which was one of the main focuses of the recent BlizzCon 2009. A recent video about such things has gone viral on YouTube, with over 2 million hits - it's called Do You Want To Date My Avatar? and has a decently catchy tune, plus some decent visuals. Not up to Madonna-esque video standards though, but they are selling their tune already on Amazon.com - talk about cashing in. Good for them!

Today was a busy one at work - I did my usual imitation of a flair bartender for the first few hours, to keep up with the flow of people through the front door. Pretty typical for a sunny Sunday, really: people want to get out & do things ASAP, so they rattle on the door and flood through until it opens. Nothing like a lineup to spur one to move quickly... and at the end of the day, I still balanced to the penny - nice! Tired though; my own branch is not nearly as busy, so today was a reminder of how crazy things can get, especially when you're working solo.

Well, that's better... I recalled most of what I had written, with the added bonus of doing things again better the second time - the joy of editing! I really have fun surfing around during the week, putting ideas down in the entries and linking them around to various things I've discovered of late( and not so late ). Hope you've enjoyed this week's Double Edited Blog!

Superkids, Skeksis and Spinal Cords

Well, I'm still working on a daily blog post; I think to start I'll try to update a few times a week and see how well Blogger.com functions with that...

Aug 10 - Space Opera and Writing

This is cool to me: a gallery of famous writer's spaces at WhereIwrite.org - images of where some of today's most creative minds do their work. I think that Joe Haldeman's space wins, if only for the fact that he writes things longhand by candlelight! How cool is that in today's age of laptops? Maybe I should take a picture of my space here on the deck, overlooking Langford Lake - after all, it's year-round that I can write there, even if it's raining as I have a nice little overhang over the hottub. Which is also great for relaxing in to break those nasty writer's block days when nothing else works.

Which brings me to Space Opera - yes, the genre that Star Wars catapulted to the forefront of popular culture from its origins in mainstream scifi's Golden Era in the pre-WWII era. While series books like The New Space Opera have been hit or miss, some other works have been coming to the market lately, including Federations, which focus on a more human perspective than other works have to date. Sharing the same spirit as video games like Homeworld, these stories take you to new worlds, new peoples... letting you Boldly Go where no couch-potato has gone before( though there's still no new B5-themed books on the horizon, darn it! ). Next thing you know, Star Trek's transparent aluminum will be available at your local Home Depot, making broken windows a thing of the past - oh wait: it almost is now!

My first day back to work... and I spent it all at the back workstation, catching up on paperwork. I was thrilled to no end to have a trainee handling things up front, so that I could plow through emails, reports and whatnot to get myself back in gear. Luckily some things were taken care of by a visiting store manager while I was away, or I would have had even more to do...

Aug 11 - Medical Superheros

This is so cool too: a real-life superman... who is only 2 years old. Liam Hoekstra has been blessed( and some say cursed )with an ultra-rare muscular condition that has given him 40% more muscle mass than the average person. Which means that he's burning a ton more energy just sitting there, as muscles use 3 times more energy than fat... and also means the kid has to eat 6 full meals a day. Luckily, he was adopted into a family that has the means to provide the food and care he needs... kinda reminds me of the Marvel Comics origin story for Colossus, whose poor Russian parents agreed to allow their son to participate in 'research' that caused him to mutate and grow into a superhero - with a massive appetite. Strange how reality starts to reflect fiction some days...

Plus, wonderful news on two separate medical fronts! Firstly for those who have been afflicted with injuries to their spines, new hope: a common blue food dye may hold the cure - can you believe it? Read the article... the discovery seems to have come out of left field, which seems to be like most major discoveries - take penicillin for example, which was just a failed experiment that resulted in millions of saved lives over the decades. The other bit of fantastic medical news? Canadian researchers have succeeded in creating stems cells from normal skin cell samples, eliminating the moral questions of using embryonic stem cells from foetuses to treat patients. As a bonus, their method does not have a high possibility of inducing additional types of cancers that previous methods risked - and to think I've only just heard about it now, when it was announced back in March 2009... seems to have flown under the radar. Great news, indeed!

I spent a good part of the day fiddling with my old workhorse colour printer, theKonica-Minolta Magicolor 2200. My laser toner refills had arrived last week while I was away, so I popped out the toner cartridges one at a time from the printer and refilled them - not as easy as it sounds. While the process was less messy than I had thought, it turns out that one critical step was omitted from the rather nice instructors packed from the eBay seller: how to properly re-seal the toner cartridges once you've refilled them. I opened the laser printer after a few hundred pages had been run, to discover the ultra-fine yellow toner coating the insides of the printer - seems the plug wasn't all that well sealed. The solution? The handy-dandy hot glue gun that everyone should keep in their crafts cupboard. A few large helpings of that around the toner plugs, and all was well. I've been printing off about 1500 colour brochures for Millstream Village, as our newly-formed Merchants Association needs them to get a leg up on getting shoppers to perceive it as a one-stop shopping solution instead of heading into Victoria. The group provided the paper supply( not cheap )and I provided the toner for the first run - seems to be working out well, though I had not counted on the fumes from the laser printer being so potent. Whew! Open those windows and crack out the fans again... because a recent study shows that prolonged exposure to toner particles may be bad for your health!

Aug 12 - Two year old Tax Troubles?

After reading this article about how Canada has the third-highest cell phone rates in the world, I've decided to put my own cell phone on 'vacation disconnect' for a few months - enough is enough. Seeing as I already have a store cell phone to use for work-related matters, plus a home phone and a Vonage 'net phone( for all those Niagara folks who never call...? )it just makes sense. I don't get out much any more, so the thing mainly gets used for calling into work and the like - a waste of the $50.00-plus a month I've managed to 'reduce' my bill to. So take that, Telus... I'll be away from the phone when you call. *grins*

I spent most of my morning gathering paperwork for the CRA, going through old bills to find those related to my moving expenses in late 2007, almost 2 years ago. I found most of them, and even managed to get WestJet to email me a copy of my ticket purchase for the flight out here - THAT was a triumph! However, I have the sinking feeling that the CRA are going to be jerks and disallow some things, though I have no idea what - their website is frustratingly vague, and when I filed with QuickTax.ca there was no disclaimer or context-help that popped up to break down what I could and couldn't claim, so I used common sense as best I could.

Bonus: for no particular reason: here is a size comparison of various movie monsters. Just because we all love monsters, except when they're corporations...

Aug 13 - Gold!

Yes, it's true... MMart is ramping up to start buying gold by the end of the month. Jumping on the same bandwagon those low-production-value TV ads blare at you about, we're going to be buying people's scrap gold. Watches, rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings... even broken jewelery are all accepted. But first we have to learn how to tell if it's real gold or not, so that's why I was in for training today at 9:30am in Victoria. It was mostly a pleasant experience, though I was a little wary of some of the procedures and ended up needing some more practice on a few of them - other parts I grasped quite easily, I was pleased to discover. Though I had to train today, my store won't be buying gold immediately as we're an Open Concept store, meaning no glass. So no gold being handled for security reasons in-store - yet.

Also, it doesn't help that my laptop's wireless connection has been flaking out all this week, losing its grip on the DIR-655 router a few times an hour and necessitating my physically resetting the wireless each time. Very, Very Frustrating... and Gateway has been little help, as their second response to my email told me to check to see if there was a problem with my internet provider - idiots. I had told them my parent's laptop was working flawlessly on the same router and ISP connection, yet they tell me that? My third email got a response to go through this checklist to solve the problem... which annoyed me so much that I sat down and brainstormed all the things that I myself thought might be the problem... and fixed it!

And who the heck is Roger M. Wilcox? You tell me...

Aug 14 - Gaming Goes Bust

Sadly, it seems the gold rush is over for the video game industry: sales are in freefall right now, so I guess it's a good thing I didn't decide to move to Edmonton in 2007 to try to get a job with BioWare Inc. - who incidentally were recently purchased by Electronic Arts, one of the biggest companies in the industry. Perhaps more people are finding out about sites like Good Ol' Gaming.com and buying the 'better' games of yesteryear, rather than the high-amperage low-value cheap shots that they call games today. Though I am partial to some flash-based games out there, like this one: Defense Fleet makes shooting spaceships fun again!

The big moneymakers these days are MMO's... apart from World Of Warcraft and Second Life, there's not many of them that can boast over a million members. At least, not yet. Star Trek Online should become one of the Big MMO's when it's released... whenever that is, as no date has been set even tentatively. Until that happens, Trek fans will have to content themselves with things like this glorious gallery of screenshots from the developer. Myself, I just want to see how well put-together the thing is, as the franchise has millions upon millions of fans the world over - I got a kick out of playing Klingon Academy back in the day( circa 2000 A.D. )on my old PC, simply because the ships were so beautfiully rendered... and blew up Real Nice.

News has reached me from my friends at io9.com that the sequel to The Dark Crystal has entered the pre-production stage! One of my favourite films of all time, the epic fantasy without a single live recognizably-human actor still stands as one of the landmark works of imagination put to film. I own the AnniversaryEdition DVD, and some of the extras show what an incredible amount of hard work was poured into making every detail of the film unique according to the vision of Jim Henson, may he R.I.P. - we miss ya, Jim.

Aug 15 - MS Office at long last

I stopped by Future Shop before work this morning to pick up a copy of MS Office 2007: Home & Student, which was $50.00 off this week - quite a bargain, though still not as cheap as I'd like. While I've enjoyed using OpenOffice for some time now, I haven't been able to get the spellchecker to work - at all. Cutting and pasting things to online services like Orangoo.com is cheap, sure... but time-consuming and that's something I find myself having less and less of as the summer winds to a close. So with the Legal Copy of MS:Office, I can actually install it on 3 different machines, as it comes with a 3-unit lisence - nice! I also finally scored a copy of the fifth season of Alias, which I've been wanting for some time but been unwilling to pay up to $42.99 CAN for - that's damned closed to robbery, in my books. So I've waited for a few years now, patiently, until I spotted it on sale... and thus, it was mine. Now that I can't recall what's gone on since I last watched the show, I've begun again from Season 2's midpoint... but now I can finish the run!

Work today was rather steady, which was nice to see, as my bonus as a manager only kicks in if we actually start making decent progress towards our revenue targets... things for the last while have been hard to predict and thus stressful as I try to figure out ways to get people in the door on a more regular basis. Plus, my trainee was sick today, so I didn't get much Manager Stuff done at all, as the door kept summoning me back to the front counter - it is always better to get a rush of customers, then a steady... plodding... pace... of one every 10 minutes or so. You can't get anything done: you are sitting for about a minute at the back work area when the door rings again - sigh and repeat.

Aug 16 - Call of Duty day off

Ah, at last... my weekly day off. So nice to relax... and do everything I couldn't during the week. First off: install 2 grab-bar handles by the hottub, so that my mom can actually use the thing once the weather starts cooling off. Or anytime really, when you think about it. Nice to get them @ 40% off too, a large and a small one, stainless steel both. Which made the installation harder, as the screws had rather soft heads on them, meaning it took longer to carefully get them seated in the wall and resulted in some rather impressive blisters from doing it all manually - nice start to the day.

So I took some hours off and gamed, playing COD4 with Matt, then later joined by Dave and a new friend, Steve... who also brought in some friends. I played 'Hardcore Deathmatch' for the first time... meaning no radar and much more damage per shot. So I died. A lot. I called it quits in the early afternoon for a bit, after a game where I scored 2 kills... and died 18 times - how's that for feeling frustrated, eh? I've been spending the other parts of my day recording things off my parent's DVR to make room; I managed to clear about 8 hours worth of movies like Shrek2 outta there onto recordable DVD's - those things never really caught on as much as the DVR's did, as the DVR's are so much easier to use for the average person.

The evening saw me head back to COD4 with Lucas, Dave, Bill, Steve and others... and it wasn't too bad. I put in a solid showing, though I faded towards the end - I managed to run up a few kill streaks, including several Air Strikes - not too bad considering the more difficult nature of Hardcore Mode in COD4. I still miss my Halo days though, truth be told - I guess that's why I've never traded in my copies of Halo2 or Halo3, despite the limitations of the 'outdated' gameplay modes. Hard to believe that something that was so much fun is now considered 'unplayable' by so many people, but that's technology for you: always advancing and leaving things in the dust.

I have to say, I feel much better after the vacation, though I'm still a bit tired. Seeing as I managed to 'beat the heat' by leaving Niagara when I did to head back to BC( and the weather here is going to be cool for the next long while too! )makes me all the happier - sorry folks, try to keep cool back there!

Luminara, Luna and Learning

In less than a week, I'll be in Niagara - booyah!

July 20 - Bees and RPG's

Bees - they're in trouble, and the whole world's been a-buzz about what may be causing the massive decline in bee populations, termed 'Colony Collapse Disorder'. Much like my mention last week about the world's coral reefs dying off, the loss of bees would mean the collapse of most plant life on earth. Today news arrived that the culprit is not widespread cell phone use, as many had surmised... but instead is the spread of a tiny parasite called Nosema ceranae. Now that the cause has been identified, steps can bee taken to bee proactive to prevent further losses and eventually protect against the little monsters. Good news for honey lovers everywhere! Update: According to Lucas, who has the ear of a local beekeeper, larger hives have often been placed too close together in an area, resulting in too little work for too many bees. How about that, eh?

Speaking of people with bees in their bonnets: Kingdom of Loathing is a bare-bones, dead-simple online RPG that's free and ludicrously funny - how can you go wrong with stick figures holding swords, where you can choose a class such as Accordion Thief? You owe it to yourself to check it out... but don't loathe me for it. In a related vein, UrbanDead is an online survival horror game, where you.... well, try to survive. It's a little like being inside a slow-motion version of Land of the Dead, but unique in that you can play a zombie - how's that for fun? Brains... need brains. Yum!

And what would today be without mention of the Lunar Landing Anniversary, 40 years ago today, 4 years before I was even born? I remember as a child looking up at the full moon of nights, thinking "Wow, we've actually been there, all that distance away... we can do anything." Then I'd go back inside and watch some more TV - what does that say about the modern yearning for exploration? Couch surfing, that's what it says - bring it to you with a remote control, instead of going out and putting boots on the mountaintop.

July 21 - Test Screening

I went into Victoria for a late doctor's appointment today, to see if any cause for my lingering nausea could be found. Alas, the specialist was unable to make a firm diagnosis, putting me on some 'test' antacid pills for a few months and booking me a 'scope appointment... in a year's time. Yeah... I hope to have that moved up somewhat, as I really want to ferret out whatever lingering cause I have for the unpredictable nausea. Ah well... at least it's on the books.

On the way home, I purchased a few lengths of 2" wide cedar from Home Depot, which I cut down with a handsaw once I was home. They are for my screen door project - I've never built something like that before, but I've thought it through and it seems really simple. The wood I cut today will make the frame, with two smaller pieces for corner supports... and a bit left over for mistakes. No time today to do the rest though... I had to look into some nice news that the PC Gaming Industry is not dead, as everyone keeps saying year after year for the last decade or so. Though the guys at EP Weekly have said repeatedly that the "best gaming value for your dollar" is to run things on a Macbook Pro laptop - who knew? Check out some compelling facts on the topic here - you may be surprised!

I also checked out RoboGames.net, which is the home of robot combat - for real. Much like Robot Wars of years ago on TV, the RoboGames have robot combat, as well as other pursuits like robo-soccer and other similar events. Yet the crowd favourite by far is when one metal machine is bashing the heck out of another - some of the designs show incredible talent and skill, not to mention the tactics used in the combat itself.

July 22 - Whadda mean, receipts?

Joy of joys. Almost 2 years since I moved, yet just now I get a letter from the CRA asking me to prove my moving expenses from back then..? Good thing I keep all my receipts, so it looks like I'll be spending a day or two gathering things together to send out as proof. Just when you think you are ahead, something else tosses itself in your path like a garden rake wanting to meet with your nose when you're smelling the roses... I wonder how many IRS agents are gardeners, in the US?

On that note, a good site to visit for tons of good free Canadian financial advice is CanadianBusiness.com, home of several magazies including a fave of mine, MoneySense.ca - pick up a copy at your local store if you get a chance, it's well worth the investment. You should also ensure you are VERY aware of the many ways that you can be a victim of identity theft these days - just recently, a local man close by to where I live was arrested and found to have been a major ID theft criminal; read about the story here. Criminals are becoming more and more sophisticated, getting organized to the point where their activities resemble that of large corporations, as this article talks about - scary stuff. Learn how to protect yourself( plus educate your friends & family )against this sublte but life-changing crime here.

Of course, you could always wait and try to win the lottery. But in this guy's case, it meant he was immediately sent to jail..!

This evening was slightly annoying, as I kept getting calls from our HelpDesk - as a store manager, I'm responsible for my store, and right now we're having... issues... with our internet provider. At least, we think it's the provider. As I'm not able to go into detail, I'll leave it at that I received a total of 6 calls tonight, on my day off... none of which I could ignore, and none of which ended with me able to actually fix the problem - that's somewhere up the pipe. Frustrating, but eventually we'll get it sorted.

July 23 - Happy Halo Daze

Happy Birthday to Simon, who is graciously hosting me while I stay in Niagara this coming week. I have quite a few fond memories of gaming days at his place, gathering with the guys for some pen-n-paper RPG adventure, or the louder & more frenetic Halo Days. A dozen guys packed into the place, beer & chips scattered amongst cables and humming Xbox consoles, eyes glued to glowing screens and faces lit by flashes of pixelated destruction - great fun! Did I mention the insults? "Pete, get your stick on the ice!" was my favourite - thanks, Dave. Too bad there's no 'duck & cover' button for any of the Halo games...

After work, I made an unscheduled stop for dinner with my parents at the Smokin' Bones Cookshack, which has been on my list of Places to Eat for some time. Located in central Langford, it's not much to look at from outside: just a place at one end of a plaza, without even a patio. We arrived at the perfect time: a little after 5pm, just before the dinner rush which meant we managed to score one of the 'spare' tables near the entrance - the rest of the 40 or so tables had already been reserved far in advance! The menu was simple, with decent prices - I chose the 1/2 smoked chicken with gluten-free BBQ sauce and garlic potatoes. It was fantastic! The meat was perfect: moist but not greasy, firm but not underdone... it peeled away from the bone with a slight tearing sound I have never heard from any roasted chicken before. The skin was a perfect blend of smokey BBQ and tasty texture, combining with the potatoes for a sumptuous taste feast, made all the better by the fact that the restaurant only uses local food sources, supporting the local farmers 100%. I had to take some home, as there was simply too much to take in all in one sitting.

Fueled by the fine meal, I completed the screen door project in a little over an hour, screwing the frame together using a milk crate as a set square. The screen went on with the help of my dad and a newly-purchased staple gun from the nearby Home Depot( conveniently located next to where I work )with nearly straight lines holding down the screen. Total cost of the project, including wood, screen, stapler, staples and screws? $42.00 with taxes... read into that what you will. All in all, I am very pleased with the results, especially as it is going to get very warm here in the coming few weeks - projected around 33 degrees with humidity, on average. Catching the cool breezes in the morning and evening from the lake, while closing up the house during the day, should keep temperatures well below the sweltering 30+ degrees we suffered through in early June this year.

July 24 - I tune, You Tune..

Work today was hectic, but several problems I had been dreading the appearance of never surfaced or solved themselves, so by the evening I had breathed a large mental sigh of relief. In case you missed it last week, you can relax of an evening watching episodes of Family Guy for free at FamilyGuyDirect.com - again I have to say, it's VERY rare to find such a site outside the USA, where media contents rights usually mean such sites are only available within that country's borders. Boo!

After much annoyance, I finally managed to get an iTunes account working with my credit card( seems many people are having problems with iTunes and their cards )so I can now use it with my new iPod Shuffle( won it @ work free a few weeks ago! ). I also snagged a year-long pass to Stoked from iTunes, not wanting to wait for it to pass me by on Teletoon at odd times of day - I am three hours behind here in BC, y'know. Sweet! Definitely be sure you check out some of the episodes on Teletoon.com if you haven't already; the animation is stellar( hi Mike! )and the show is just plain fun to watch.

Ever since Dr. No, people have wanted to hug a nuke. Now, you can. Sweet! And here I thought post-apocalyptic themes were all doom & gloom...

July 25 - Luminara Windows

Do you hate Windows Vista, or even just dislike it more than the next person? There's a good article at TechRepublic that covers 10 Reasons Why Vista Haters will Love Windows7... which I have preordered, so we'll see how the final version turns out - it was recently announced that it's on track for an October 2009 release. C|net also has a nice video that talks about how nice Win7 is... but then we heard that about Vista previous to it's release too, didn't we?

For the Mac users among you: here's a YouTube video demo of someone running the Windows7 beta on a Macbook Pro - very cool!

Sooo... if you're brave enough to upgrade, you should know by now what you should do: Back Up Your Data. I have four external hard drives here, plus a few others kicking around, and I still find myself looking for a bit more room some days( though recent advances in 1TB drives means things are a LOT faster under the hood ). Yet eventually every hard drive will die on you - if you're lucky, it will only be corrupted yet still spin up when powered. In which case, it would be damn handy to have a USB stick with a few data recovery programs on hand to rescue those pictures of your kid's first steps, that recent birthday party, or what-have-you. Because it will happen to you - losing data is an experience you only ever do once, because once it's all gone you never, ever want that sort of thing to happen again.

Until the next time you put off that regular, boring monthly backup... especially if your area is experiencing extreme rainfall, causing flooding - like the last 3 days in Southern Ontario / Niagara! It rained here tonight, which was a welcome respite from a month-long dry spell - forest fires are a very real danger here in the summer, with tons of dry fuel just waiting for a spark. I actually heard some rolls of thunder last night too, for a few minutes - very unusual here,

Tonight was also the annual Luminara Festival in Victoria, which quite literally was a washout thanks to the rain as mentioned above. Which is too bad, really - it's quite a nice night event, but I didn't attend this year as I don't really have anyone to go with. Last year, all I did was wander around with a camera trying to capture the lovely images with a device that wasn't really suited to the low-light conditions.

July 26 - Hot COD4 and Civ!

Hoboy, it's hot out today - highs reached 30 degrees, plus humidity thanks to the rain yesterday, lots of moisture out there to bake out of the ground and plants. My screen door's proving useful, though again only in the morning and evenings as it's too hot to let the wind blow through the place - it'd just add to the heat, so we try to limit the hot airflow during the 10am-4pm period. S'working well so far...

The heat hasn't stopped the crowds from gathering in the park next door though - once again the dock is packed with people baking themselves silly in the sun, where the smarter few of the bunch soaking in the cooler lake waters. A few of them will likely get sunburned... and perhaps develop some skin problems because of it. Which, being in Canada, means that our health system will foot most of the bill - unlike in the USA, where 46 million people don't have any form of health insurance. That's a scary thing folks; even scarier is that within 50 years, projections show that the majority of the United State's GDP will be going towards supporting pensioners and the failing health care system, easily outstripping defence spending. What kind of a country that will create is beyond my imagining right now.

I want, SO want, one of THESE for my next birthday. The big questions: where to park it, and when to use it? In the meantime, I still want one of these too.

Typical plan for my Sundays off is... Morning: do stuff around the house, play a bit of COD4. Noon: sit out on the deck, read a bit until the Noise Next Door gets too distracting, then inside again. Afternoon: work on the blog, watch some shows like DottoTech TV, which is a great ongoing show whose genial host Dotto goes over useful new tech for the g33k in all of us, and best of all: it's a 100% Canadian show.

In the late afternoon, I played a game of Civ:Rev with Lucas & Nigel... at least, we tried to. The 4th game lasted the longest, though Lucas was eliminated early on - payback for the Spanish Debacle! Connection problems caused the last game to tank though, so we gave up for the night on that - disappointing. Bill, Matt & a pal of his and I turned to COD4 again for a few hours and though we didn't do so well, Matt showed me a few things about different game matches I didn't know, plus some tips on using some familiar weapons in different situations - very helpful, thanks! For those interested: the M16A4 has a 3-round burst, very useful when paired with a red-dot sight on most medium to long-range boards. Quick and accurate, it really helped me balance my score in several matches, though I still have to work on my close-in game. Matt also suggested a UAV Jammer paired with a silencer, again a winning combo for the Lone Wolf Assassin. A few more minutes downloading some things from XboxLive, and then I turned in for the night.

Next time I update the blog, it will be from Niagara! Yee-hah!

Rings, Retro and Recovery

Just a few weeks to go!

July 5th - Travel

As above: in less than a month as of today, I will be in Niagara - I board my flight early the morning of July 31st from BC, and stay until the afternoon of August 8th; over a week! Thanks again to Martin's massive generosity, I shall be able to visit the place of my birth once again, see many of my friends and do Lots Of Relaxing. I'll be bringing my laptop of course, as I also hope to get some writing done whilst said Relaxing is in progress. There's a few spots I recall as being most excellently suited to such activities, with the minor addition of some ice cream and / or soft music, both of which are readily( and cheaply )available thereabouts. *grin*

For those of you with more means or wider-ranging travel dreams than I, may I humbly suggest bookmarking LonelyPlanet.com. The site is packed with travel tips and information, as well as inspiring ideas of places to travel to on this huge spinning blue marble we all share. Heck, they even have a section where you can debate( or discover? )what the Best Beer in the World is! I do also miss my 1,000 Places to See Before You Die calendar from last year, which is why I was pleased to see this recent article from Yahoo Travel on the same topic - now all I need is to figure what one of the many How To Get Rich Quick ideas to use.

Nah. I'll just take the financial advice in this article instead - much great chance of success, though over a longer period of time.

July 6th - Old Made New Again

You knew I was going to mention it: United Breaks Guitars. Watching that hit counter grow every day from thousands, to hundreds of thousands, to millions - wow. That's viral marketing at work, folks - the power behind such shows as Britain's Got Talent and all those. Media magnification© at it's finest!

Video games have always been near and dear to my heart, though I am the first to admit I enjoy the actual playing of them more than finishing them; more of a 'journey rather than the destination matters' thing, I suppose. I have a LOT of games on the shelves, more than I realized... far more than I ever collected compared to the few numbers of CD's, so I guess that's where my money went in those days, rather than into the vast music collections some of you hopefully still retain. As I look over my collection, there are quite a few gems there... so I was pleased as anything to discover that quite a few of those great games have been updated and collected for sale at GoG.com.

Good Old Games, as they call themselves, has updated dozens of older PC game titles for download and use on Windows XP and Vista( even 64-bit like mine! )at incredibly low prices - most of the games are $10.00 or less, with titles like MDK2, Descent( which made me ill the 1st time I played! )and the original Fallout. It made me smile to see so many, and I think I will have to get a few of my favourites to play again on my new laptop, along with a few I missed the first time around. Outdated as most of them are, the gameplay is where they shine, not the graphics which have marched solidly onwards over the years.

Yet there is a lot to be said for new technology... when it can bring you images like these. That's right, robot fans - Mechwarrior is back after being on hiatus since 2002. Bring on the battle tech! Best of all: MechWarrior 4 is going to be released for download soon, free!

July 7th - Coral and Contests

Scary news today: what with the current global economic crisis, Korean tensions, H1N1 and the loss of Michael Jackson, do we need more bad news? Sorry but yes... it's a big one. Despite warnings about Global Warming and the ozone layer, most people are not too worried about the environment crashing, thinking that films like The Day After Tomorrow are overdoing things in the usual Hollywood style.

But what it the world ended with a whimper, not a bang? That's just what scientists studying the world's coral reefs told reporters today, warning that this critical food-chain link is in jeopardy and may die out completely within the century. Think about it: dead oceans... dead planet. I'm scared all over again, now.

For those of you who enjoy entering contests, but are wisely wary of scam-sites that will sell your contact info to phone marketers like the scum at Imperial Majesty Cruise Lines, who pestered me some months back until I simply told them I was not planning to take any vacations in the next decade due to a total lack of money as a perpetual student in school. They stopped calling, amazingly. After much searching, I located LookContests.com, which is a wonderful free site that compiles ONLY legitimate contests from companies such as those from Ford, Skittles, etc - no chance of fraudsters taking your info here. A neat feature of the site is that it sorts the contests into categories such as daily, weekly or unlimited entries and lets you keep track of the ones you have already entered - great for those contests that will disqualify anyone attempting more than one entry in a certain time period. So far, I've not won anything... but as the saying goes: nothing ventured nothing gained. Better yet: no noticeable increase in my junk mail, even after a few months.

July 8th - Pedal Power

Today was a hot day, which means power use was up as people ran their A/C more to keep cool. In the future, as we all know, demand for electricity is going to outstrip supply, which is why it is important we develop things like the Smart Grid all the sooner. C|Net has an excellent article on the topic, which reveals many exciting possibilities, one of which I touched on previously concerning electric cars that may be used in their millions to assist the Grid at peak demand times. A sure sign that this is going to be the wave of the future are the various power-generation kits now available at places like Canadian Tire, hopefully just the start of simpler ways for people to reduce their demand for electricity. I know that such a unit here would easily generate energy most evenings, when the wind is high from the north over the lake; setting up a battery system to store that free juice would take a little doing, but it excites me that such things are now a semi-realistic option without huge expense or training involved. Even Vancouver is getting on board, with news that they are going to require all new development to accommodate electric cars, with plugs installed for charging. Progress!

Though it was rather sweaty today on the road, I'm back to riding my bike to work most days. At less than 2km( with a large cardio-improving hill smack in the middle )the ride there and back is a good workout but not such a drain that I arrive winded, or can't do it after a long, wearing day... I am glad to say that I am feeling very much recovered from my surgery, though I am going easy on the exercise - slow and steady are the increases, says the doctor. The same with my diet; I have had few nausea attacks since the operation, which I accredit to my system getting rid of the last of the poisons my malfunctioning gall bladder had splashed around during its overextended stay. I hope by the end of the summer to be back on track to proper health, while avoiding any temptation to fall into bad food habits - McDonald's has not seen me for the last ten years of my life, nor shall they ever again. Bleh!

July 9th - And I thought they smelled bad...

Some amusing news: if you want to travel into the future, apparently all it takes is to move to northern B.C. where the clocks are running fast... for over 65,000 people, that is.

A bit of a letdown today, regarding one of my more-liked shows on HGTV. It seems that Restaurant Makeover is not as highly thought of as I had surmised, though I admit it is somewhat formulaic and contrived at times. Still, I like seeing places go from blah to rah! so to speak, and it's an entertaining hour of non-violent TV which is fairly rare these days. Everyone needs a break from explosions, people screaming at each other and stress, wouldn't you agree?

Thus, the question runs to purchasing one of these - word is that they'll be available soon, though not in what sizes. Oh, the uncertainty - just like surviving a night outside on the ice planet Hoth!

And for those who may have thought I've left bacon out of this week's blog - think again.

July 10th - Debating About Working

Today was a Development Day at work, where another manager and I were walked though the Golden Path of Enlightenment, as envisaged by MMart. I was surprised by the depth of some of the material, and pleased that though it was challenging, I could see myself getting my head around it - albeit with the requisite hard work. It looks like my time at work for the next while is going to be even busier, what with managing the store, training a new hire and getting myself on track with new expectations and responsibilities. While I fully realize that I am not making as much as some managers in other businesses, I do not think I would have received even half the wide-ranging training I have been getting now at this company. What annoys the $%#@! out of me though, is all those earlier wasted years at CCCorp in ON, where I steered myself out of management for several good reasons, not the least among them their haphazard, half-assed promotion and training practices.

One of the topics covered was assisting employees in reaching their goals, be it at work or at home, including helping them save for things like vacations without breaking the bank. A possibility for them would be to work from home, for a few months to help supplement their income, without necessitating them taking a second job and so making their primary job( ie. MMart )suffer from the overload. A good site to help in finding reputable home employment is Monster.Ca, which has some tips on the topic, as well as WhyDoWork.com - I love the name!

Darn it, why can't we all just toss off the shackles of capitalism, to embrace something better? I recommend that you sidle on over to CreatedDebate.com to see what thousands of people have said about the mishaps and merits of the capitalist system designed to make the rich richer, and the poor, um... unemployed. Having seen myself some of the consequences of failing social systems firsthand in Mexico, I have to say that many of the socialist aspects of Canada are heartily endorsed by yours truly. Though I also feel that indeed, the rich get richer while the middle class goes in circles, and the poor get turned into mailboxes.

July 11th - Sad in Sunshine

I was definitely glad to be off today, as I was feeling rather sad... odd, given the sunny weather; not sure why, maybe events are catching up to me - hard to say. I think my annoyance of the afternoon gave way to melancholy, as I tried yet again to enjoy the deck out the back but was defeated by the idiots at the park next door. John Q. Public, take note: if you are in a huge park for the day, where the houses are mere specks in the distance, enjoy yourself and let your kids romp.

However, if the park is a tiny postage stamp nestled into a neighbourhood where the homes are RIGHT NEXT TO THE PARK, don't let your pack of little monsters scream their fool heads off ALL DAY LONG while pushing each other off the dock on the nice, QUIET lake. People like myself may come out onto their decks, some fifty feet away or so, and stare at you with their arms crossed, perhaps becoming angered to the point of calling the police to have a chat with you. And that's what the nice, calm neighbours might do, at the very least. Be warned.

In any case, I settled inside for most of the day, where closed windows and earplugs abated the noise and consoled myself with words. I read a good deal of a book I've not looked at in over a decade: The Ring, by Daniel Keys Moran and was loosely based on Wagner's tale Der Ring des Nibelungen. Moran also wrote Emerald Eyes, another novel concerning telepaths. I wonder what he might have been like if tapped to write a few episodes of Babylon 5, where telepaths figured prominently in the major plotlines. Interesting thought, and amusing along the same lines as this never-published article about how he came to write The Ring... which is a warning to authors everywhere.

In case you haven't checked out his site recently, Neil Gaiman's been quite busy in his usual excellent way. Being one of my favourite authors, I find his semi-regular journal a great read, as it shows his writing style at his informal best without adding in the( many )extra passes that editors and himself make on his words. Stellar.

July 12th - Duty Calls Again!

Popping onto xBoxLive! today, I ran across the guys playing COD4 online, just like last summer - so much for COD5, yay! I happily spent a good part of the day gaming with them, enjoying the banter and the basic pleasure of blasting the crap out of the enemy; very cathartic. Damn, I know I've said it before, but it is just awesome to be able to game with some of my good friends from thousands of miles away - great to 'see' you, guys.

The evening saw me working on my NWN project, talking with several of my project comrades and plugging away at my current slice of the pie. I am writing up small 1 or 2 sentence random item descriptions, to be integrated into our own unique item generation code. Simply put, it will randomly generate 'treasure' items based on a number of factors in the game, allowing a vast range of uniquely tradable( and thus valuable )items to be made without needing to hand-create thousands of them one by one. In essence, we will allow players the thrilling possibility of getting some Really Cool Stuff when they adventure, with a little hard work on our part beforehand translating into a fantastic in-game experience. I'm really gobsmacked that I've managed to assemble such a talented and dedicated crew to do all this, so doing my share is as vitally important to me as keeping the whole thing on track.

So, it's back to work... I've items to imagine!