Monday, February 26, 2007

Late Night or Early Morning?

Hello there dear readership!

As my time stamp will probably tell you, it's about 4:30 a.m. on Monday morning right now. But what my time stamp won't tell you is that I'm currently doing laundry. Yeah.... about that....

So while it's not exactly odd for a student to be up at this hour (I saw quite a few dorm room lights on while walking over to the laundry place) it is a bit odd for someone with a regular 8:30 to 5:00 job to worry about to still be up. See, I was really tired tonight around dinner time so I decided just to lay down for a bit. Then I fell asleep and woke up a little after midnight feeling far too rested to go back to bed.

So I got up, played around a bit on the internet, found a few more songs to put on my memory stick, etc. Eventually I decided that as long as I'm up I may as well do something useful, so I put on my music and walked down to Sobey's. Now I'm back and doing laundry.

That first part there is all I wrote that night, I ended up finishing my laundry, doing the normal morning stuff and going to work. I managed to stay awake until after 24, then I went to bed.

I originally saved that post as a draft because I was going to add more to it, but I've got something else to post about now so I'd like this out of the way.

I would have deleted it, but it's just as easy to post and then you guys have something to read.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Tech Geeks Assemble!

Hi folks! I'm an interesting person who does interesting things, but right now you don't get to hear about it! That's right fellow readers, you've stood idly by long enough and now it's time to give back to the community.

Here's the game: I'm looking for software that does certain things, I will describe these things as best I can and then you (the readers) can post in the comments either the name of the software that does what I want, or (for more points) a link to where I can get said software (preferably for free). Things like price (being free is best) usefulness and response time will also increase the number of points I give. If you have a cracked version that I can get from you when I see you that still counts.

Without further ado I give you my software descriptions:

-converts video files to a file type that can play in DVD players/some DVD burning software that does said task.

-Alcohol 120%, because that's a great program but I don't know where the install files are on my PC. (I might look for them more thoroughly later)

-Software that allows you to do time-shifting, recording, and automatically skips commercials for PCs with cable hooked up to the graphics card. (If you find something that just skips commercials, that would also be great, maybe even worth bonus points.)

-Software that allows you to have two different backgrounds when using a dual monitor setup.

I had more ideas before, but I lost them while typing the introduction. Check back later to see if I edit the list, I'll add ideas as they come to me.

The challenge will last 15 arbitrary units of time. I will thank ahead of time all those that participate.

As for why I need said software, well, if things go through I'll make a post about it. Until then it will remain mysterious.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

The Force Is Strong With This One

That's right folks, I came upon a worthy foe today. The force is strong with him, but he is not a Jedi yet.

Yesterday at work Mike and I were putting together some office dividers and we got to talking about Star Wars. Talk turned to friendly quizzing, with questions such as "in which city does Luke meet Han for the first time?" and "who commanded the rebel fleet at the Battle of Endor?"

However, today Mike raised the stakes. He was in the secluded staging area and found some official and impartial Star Wars quizzes online to help assert his dominance. At first our hero faired poorly, Mike beat me in the first quiz. I thought he would be satisfied, but I was wrong. A second quiz was found, harder than the first. Again I was beaten. Mike could have claimed his superiority at that point, but he fell to the vices of the dark side. Pride clouded his vision, and he took yet another quiz, this one having 20 questions instead of 10.

Having sustained heavy blows already I drew my lightsaber and took the quiz... and won! This one had more to do with side-characters, and I had the advantage of having played many more Star Wars video games than Mike. (Thank you Wedge Antilles) His superiority having sustained a blow, Mike found another quiz, eager to regain his composure. I won again!

At this point it was lunch, and for the curious, it's not because we did quizzes all morning. We have lots of hard drives to wipe and we had a few laptops to image, so we were spending a lot of time in the staging area anyway. When you're doing that sort of stuff, there's a lot of rebooting so you get some down time.

Unable to leave well-enough alone Mike found another quiz after lunch. It was a tough one, and he only got 6/20. I gritted my teeth and took some hard drives to the back with me. By question 18 I had 6 points, 19 was too tough, but 20 I nailed for a nice 7/20. Boo-yeah!

So I'm currently Star Wars champion, since we didn't have any more laptops to image back there and wiping hard drives takes a few hours.

Next topic; I beat Zelda: TP. This post will be spoiler-free for Jordan's sake, and I'd appreciate it if the comments keep it that way. I enjoyed the game thoroughly, though I wish I could have played it in a two week stretch instead of having to do the second half when I went home on weekends. It's much easier to stay in the Zelda mood when you can play 3 or 4 hours a day, every day (like on Christmas holidays) rather than trying to just get as much done as you can on a weekend, or worrying about hitting a big exciting part right before I go back to Waterloo. I did manage to squeeze about 60 hours out of it in my first round, though most of the "extra time" I spent was before Christmas holidays ended. I think I spent about 10 hours in that fishing pond and in the fishing hut, and I would have spent much more time had I not felt my weekend time was precious. I was proud to finish the game with all 20 hearts, that's the sign of someone who cares more about sidequests and exploring than beating a game. :P

So it's Valentines day tomorrow, and I am proud to say it's costing me zero dollars this year. How about you Jordan? Fraser? Ba ha ha! I know, I know, you get to have sex, but I found valentines day stressful and expensive the last 2 years, and I am quite happy to have it being neither of those things this year. Though I did find something interesting on CBC.ca about it. This is what the author of the Vagina Monologues has to say about Valentines day:
Eve Ensler, who wrote The Vagina Monologues, thinks Feb. 14 should be V-Day. V, she says, is for vagina, violence and victory and people should reflect on ending sexual violence against women and children, not just mushy, romantic love.

"It's a perfect day to affirm that people should love each other, and be nice to women," she writes, "instead of hurting them or killing them."

Wow. Just wow. You have to be one serious feminist to complain about a day where men are expected to buy you expensive shit. Like seriously, go fuck yourself. All I see are jewelry ads and flower-ma-bobs on TV and you actually have a problem with that. I really don't think her idea will fly well anyway, I mean a "get each other gifts and have sex day" is going to be a lot more popular than a "talk about wife and child abuse day." It's simple marketing Eve.

The only reason I brought it up is that I saw some girl call it "vday" on a Facebook wall comment, they were asking a fairly attractive girl I know if she would like to go out to dinner with the girls and then watch "the Vagina Monologues" on vday. What program is she in do you ask? Why Sex, Gender, and Marriage studies of course. I can't make this stuff up folks, I checked. On the plus side, the girl she was offering to doesn't seem to be a feminist, just single methinks.

Though I think Karate will be canceled tomorrow, and here's my reasoning:

Sempei Andrew: He hasn't been around much lately, pretty busy with school methinks, so he won't have time to teach.
Sempei Devin: Engaged, nuff said. He's the one doing the kicking, Will is getting kicked.
























Sensei Will: Currently doing military training in Gagetown, NB
And finally Sensei Jaime: Pretty sure she's got a boyfriend, and she's definitely way too good-looking to be single.
Really, I didn't have to do the pictures, but I figured maybe a few of you would be curious as to what these people look like, plus I have them all added on facebook. Oh, and here's a random picture of Sempei Andrew lifting a truck, bonus points if you can spot me!

Nevermind, blogger won't let me load it, I probably have too many already. If there's enough reader interest, I'll post it next post.

Okay, I've stayed up way too late typing this, so goodnight everyone.

Also, it's officially 12:30 as I finish this, and Liam has gone more than a month without posting. For shame. I do hope he's alive and well.

-Danger

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

So I Lied

Sue me.

Not Binks though, he might have some success there. I don't want to deal with that.

Yeah, it's been two weeks and you haven't gotten your post yet. I've been keeping busy though, I've got plenty of material, just no time to type it up in a humourously amusing fashion.

For example, this week I have:

Tuesday: Class 6:30-8:00, Midterm 8:00-9:00, Karate 9:00-10:30.

Wednesday: Karate 8:00-10:30

Thursday: Hockey 9:00-10:00, though getting there and getting ready means I have to leave at 8:00 and post-game shower/get home/hang stuff up wraps up 45 minutes after the game.

Plus I never get home from work any earlier than 5:30, and sometimes later than that.

But it's all good.

I'll try to sneak something out there in between one of those 5:30-8:00 slots. I've been studying lately, and playing some sorely missed Xbox in those times so far this term. Or grocery shopping, which since I'm walking takes about 2 hours round trip.

So hang tight loyal readership! To pacify you, I offer you these pictures:

Yes, those are my boxers, I'm extreme...

extremely stupid! Stu took forever taking this picture, he was laughing too hard from me yelling "take the damn picture!" I was trying to make a snow angel, but my feet were too buried.

This was all that was left from one of the greatest cardboard tube fights of all time. I don't know where they came from, but Stu and I had one 6-foot tube and two 3-foot tubes. It was epic.

-Danger