Vulcan's vice grip on the computer

For the past few strips at one of my favorite online comic sites, they've been teaching the community about online ("trash") talk. A few days ago, they were discussing the difference between "newb" and "n00b" For anyone out there, newb's are users that are green to the field and need some lovin. n00b on the other hand are arseholes the love to trashtalk and just needs a good clear view of the backside of my hand. Today's venue was a a discussion about a way that online gamers use to show up other people in online shooter games. This is called (viewers discression is advised) "TEABAGGING". Well, I'd like to draw the attention to the final panel where the dude is holding a cup and dipping away. Yes.....dipping away.........very subtle....but dominates the rest of the panel. *crouch crouch crouch crouch crouch*

Alright, last night, after using my company's "discount" I bought cheap tickets to watch Lord of the Rings theatrical. I got really good seats, 6th row from the front, I was able to see all of the costumes in detail and the facial expression......and the backstage people getting ready.......stage right. There was some singing, dancing, slapstick comedy, lots of flashing things and confetties blowing around. The costumes and the stage was designed very very well I believe. Unfortunately, we only got the understudies for last night's show. They weren't all that good I think. The only really good actor was Smeagol/Gollum, he was at least a 11/10 on my scale. He was the only person that got the entire crowd to scream, whistle, cheer, stand. Legolas was a bit.........on the chubby and non-agile side (I think Orlando Blooms has really gotten into everyone's mind). Oh, I had one really really bad point to sitting so close to the stage. During many "elf" scenes, they wanted to have a bunch of "females" dancing...but I found out that 50% of them were drags.....yes.....guys in wigs and dresses and lipstick and stuff......kinda grossed me out a bit.
The story was very interesting. They did 80% of the first book, 30% of the second book and then the third book they totally just skipped and said that Frodo had the ring at the pool of fire/lava. Well, I guess they had 15% of the thrid book intact.
For anyone who's watched Clerk's 2, the dude did a very good representation of LotR Theatrical.............All in all, I think I'd give it a 6/10 doors for the good decorations and Gollum.

Underworld God being demoted

In recent discoveries, a group of scientists called a meeting with many more scientists to vote on what this decade may be known for..............the demotion of our final planet in our known Solar System.......Pluto. This small, icy mass of land was deemed unworthy of being a plant and has been demoted to a "dwarf planet". Sooooooo...all of our textbooks will need to be rewritten and everyone will need to go through a little phase of reprogramming. *waving hand horizontally while saying "There is no Pluto"*

In consolation to having Pluto demoted to a dwarf, we've gained another dwarf around the size of Pluto. It's the 2003 UB313, formerly known as the thing behind Pluto the ex-planet.

What I don't understand is how people can pay a group of scientists to name a star. How do I know for sure that my star hasn't been claimed by someone else? I'd really love to hear about some court case about verdict B scamming victim A of 20k for naming a star and finding out that someone else in the world has actually claimed that star already. Really........how would that case go?
"I paid this person 20k to name that star...sorry...evidence A.......and we have found out that someone else has named that same star something else. I need 5 billion dollars in compensation for my traumatic experience of losing out on my favorite star......evidence A."
riiiight.....

I just finished Dirge of Cerberus, the "sequel" of FFVII made by Square Enix. It's a shooter game (the first for Square Enix I believe) staring the mysterious character Vincent Valentine. Vincent (if people didn't know) has a daemon in him called Chaos (when released will cause......yes...Chaos........). DoC explains a lot about Vincent's past and how he become the daemon he is. At the beginning when I first heard the English voice actor for Vincent, I thought it was David Hayter because of the deep deep voice. The actual voice talent for Vincent is Steven Jay Blum. He dubbed the voice for my all time favorite Gundam character, Char Aznable. The game itself was ok, it was very easy to control and the customization of the guns was pretty good. All the CG's were in the same style as FFVII: Advent Children. All of the FFVII cast only plays a small role (except Yuffie, which as at least 5 more scenes than the other people like Cloud and Tifa). The ending is already posted on YouTube for anyone that wants to just spoil themselves, but the plot is fairly well written. Overall, the storyline was just below par, character development was weak, and gameplay wasn't all that exciting. I can really only give this a 6/10 doors because it had really kick arse CG and because it was made by Squard Enix. Oh, the voice over talent in English wasn't too bad either, I would've prefered the original Japanese voice as an option and then English subs.

Next thing I'm looking forward to will be FFXII, looks very very promising.

I Scream Day

Today is yet another Wednesday. Every Wednesday since the beginning of August, my company started the Ice Scream treatment program. Our wonderful CTO decided that we should be given a pat on the back and some nice treats on the side. Everyone here in the building get's a coupon that allows us to redeem any product from the ice cream truck below $2.50. I'm saying he's a genius, we may have around 100 employees here so that's $250 a week or a max of 1k a month. That's very little to keep people all energized and happy. People here are all going...AGHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh it's ICE CREAM WEDNESDAY!!!!!! YEAH!!! YIPPIE!!!! 3-cheers for.........ICE CREAM!!!!! My condolences to those that are lactose intolerant. And there was much rejoicing.

In other news, I was kinda screaming with the rest of the world when I read that the Swedish news program had pr0n shown on it. So how did it happen? Well, some of the workers were watching the "sports" stuff on one of the TVs in the background of the newscast but forgot to change the channel. The same network company actually shows soft core movies on a separate channel during the time when this channel show's the news (so why would people want to watch the news then?!?!?!......). So bascially they had 5 minutes of pr0n showing LIVE on air..........yeah, you got it...all heck broke loose.

Entertainment wise, Hilton, Ms. Scandel 04/05/06, has told the media how she actually chooses friends. I'm flabergasted.......absolutely blown away. She says that she will go to a clothing store, pick out one outfit she likes and one that is ugly then ask the "friend" for an opinion. If the "friend" chooses the ugly one, Hilton will not be friends with this person anymore. Talk about materialistic and anal. But then again, ain't it a 50/50 chance to get it right? Maybe Hilton has a followup question of..."Why'd you choose this one?" and if they answer that "they just liked it...." it would be a basis to also not be friends.........

As the saying goes, "You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but don't EVER pick your friend's nose." AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhh....ewwwwwwwwwwwww

Expired

I just realized that I bought a bottle of Pommegranate Juice that is past the due date. Ok, it's only past the due date by 3 days, but that's still quite a lot. I would expect that my local store would check the due dates. I guess it should be ok, as long as I drink it all up by today. I don't really recall the last time getting over due stuff, but I do remember having milk that was WAY WAY WAY past it's life expectancy. Not a pretty sight...smell....or taste.........yeah........

So last night while doing some wedding planning with my co-MC, we kinda sidetracked onto a weird topic. We went through some 80's cartoons and had some questions (which some of them were often asked). Smurfs have been on my #1 for questioning. How in the world did the procreate? Ok, do a search on Google or some other search engine (there is another one?!?!?...really?) for "How do smurfs procreate" and you'll find millions and billions of hits. I really need to get a life I think.

Inspector Gadget, the cyborg guardian. At first, I was wondering how he actually procreated and had Penny.....who was the wife?!?!?....and he's a cyborg...how'd he..........ok...this was all answered after I quickly Wiki'd Gadget. It seems that I was wrong, Penny is actually his niece and hence her calling him "Uncle Gadget"............stupid me. But I'm still baffled by the intelligent dog Brain....."Woof woof bargh woof bark.."......"Yes Brain, Uncle Gadget is being stalked by a 70 foot tall MAD monkey that's a transvestite durian eating dip-SH*T!......OMG Brain........such profanity.....no more splif for you tonight...."............

Wow, I just read in the newspaper that someone in Brittain is actually petitioning against Starbucks from openning a store in his neighbourhood. He calls Starbucks a "cancer". It's spreading like wildfire around the world. They ARE the next generationg McD's I believe. The only difference is that McD's is good for all ages, while Starbucks doesn't have any happy meal toys. So Starbucks, if you're wanting to expand into new domains, start giving out Caffie-Meals with little toy figures of their new kiddie spokespeople, Donald Starbucks the coffee king (has his own card game like Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon), Twitch the espresso fanatic, Latte Gals, and much much more.

Riddle me this, riddle me that

For the past LOOONG little while, I've been doing a lot of newspaper puzzles. Since highschool, I worked on daily crosswords, JUMBLEs and sorts. The latest and greatest newspaper fad is the Sudoku. This thing has totally taken a spin of its own. Not only do I see 70% of the people in transit doing on, they're now making them in different shapes and sizes.

A collegue of mine decided that he'd spend a Sunday afternoon to program a Sudoku solver. Ok, my thought on that.......great.....now that you have an AI for that, you can be ranked Gifted Sudoku GOD cuz you've completed all the puzzles in less than 10 seconds. I do applaud for his skills in programming this, but I thought Sudoku's are nice puzzles to let you burn some time and also strengthen your brain muscles. Oh well.

So I was checking something online and saw that Movies are now into the Sudoku world. There are Sudokus that are based on movie themes. WTF?!?!? Ok, this world's commercialism is REALLY out of wack. So basically this version...let me find the quote...."We totally took regular sudoku puzzles, got rid of those safe 3-by-3 squares, and replaced them with "deadly snakes."" So, I'm going to take a while guess that people know which movie this is from. I wonder if Jackson get's any royalties for this.....actually, I wonder if the snakes get any royalties for this. And this puzzle book is called "Snakes on a Sudoku" Splittahs!!!!!!

Survey Says........

Once in a while we'll see these "TOP X of Y", and today I saw one of those on our friendly MSN/Sympatico page. The one I read was "Top 5 reasons your gf wants to dump you". Well, after reading that, I'm pretty much inclined to put up my smirky version.

1. She slaps you and says "We're through"
2. She catches you sleeping with her sister.....proceed to 1.
3. She catches you sleeping with her brother............also proceed to 1.
4. She's sleeping with your brother...............I think you get the picture for that one.
5. She kicks you in the family jewels with sharp high-heels, calls you a bastard and leaves

I think those are definate signs. I think they're pretty clear signs too. If you keep to this guide, you'll always know when your gf is giving you the signal that she wants to dump you.

Conversations with Snakes in Suits

Last night afterwork began with me going to wait for Chris at the usual area in the lobby. We were going to watch a movie called "Conversation with Women(s)". We got to the theatre a little bit early so we decided to go to the local pub around the corner and have HALF PRICE WINGS!!!!! I myself had a glass of Guiness (because they didn't have any Stella). 17 wings, a glass of Guiness and a glass of juice later, the bill came to $18 (tax & tips already there), I think that's pretty good for a meal that stuffed me.

We got into the theatre and proceeded to the ticket ripping person (there's a name for these people right?) . We were told to go straight and it's on the right. So we go forward, see the sign written "CINEMA #1 --->", so we turn right and see an escalator that goes down into the depths of hel.....ok it just goes to the basement. We go down and again we turn right and follow the signs written "CINEMA #1 --->". Finally we reach another sign that writes "<---CINEMA #1" so we turn left and proceed to go forward. At this point, Chris asks me jokingly "What is this? This is strange." We proceed and after another flight of stairs down, we finally reach CINEMA #1. It seems that the theatre only has 2 CINEMA....and we took the scenic route to CINEMA #1. We go in and grab some seats that were a bit far away.

We made it right on time. The ads were rolling and none of the previews were shown yet. Chris goes to the little power room to donate to the porceline god and I sit there admiring the new Johny.ca commercial. Suddenly the screen flickers and all is black. There is still sound, but the screen just is black. A few seconds later, the image appears back on the screen but it's very dim and the light pulses continually. Suddenly a bright *FLASH* and the screen becomes dim again while the commercial comes to an end, another commercial starts, still a very dim screen. Again *FLASH* GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh this is really annoying. Then something sparks in the back of my mind "Maybe this is some new subliminal message technique? They're trying to brainwash all of us. Or maybe this is like The Ring and after watching these I'll get a phone call and.........." Chris comes back from the powder room and suggest that we move up closer to the small flashing screen. We get up and go to the 4th room and settle in. Some of the people get restless and start leaving the theatre to find someone to fix the machine. *FLASH* The big self-promotion of ALIANCE ATLANTIS is shown on the on the screen. *FLASH* I start feeling a mild headache so I close my eyes and feel the pulsing light on my eyelids. Chris suggests that we leave and refund the tickets, I agree and we get up to leave. As we exit the door, one of the workers tells us that he's there to fix the machine and that everything is alright. Chris and I ignore him and proceed to refund our tickets. And there was much rejoicing **yeah**.

We then rush to the theatre 2 blocks over. We rush through the Indigo store and up the escalators and see if anything good is on. Hmmm.......X3...seen that.......Miami Vice....seen that.....Pirates..........Chris has seen it...................that new 9/11 movie........excellent what time is available.....NOOoooooooooooooooooo....we just missed it by 40 minutes. By now the headache is 80% there to becoming really really painful and unbearable. We meander back down to the Indigo book store below.

Chris starts looking at the photo album for "Wicked: The broadway." I start looking for a chair somewhere to sit. I'm at 85%. We head downstairs to the health/lifestyle and business area. Chris looks at some stretching book and I look at some Shaolin excercise manual. I'm at 87%....reaching critical mass soon. We head over to the business section. 90%....RED ALERT...RED ALERT..........oh my.......a book catches my eye. It's black all around and has the picture of a person, just showing the suit from neck down. The only thing that's weird about the photo is that the man is wearing a snake for a suit. "Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go To Work" OMG, wow, that's interesting. Me being a psych fanatic, I picked it up and started reading the inside flap of the book. Chris picked up "The Culture Code". 92%.......reaching meltdown point. We quickly grab the books and look for chairs. We find some seats at the corner of the store, settle in and start reading the books.

I read quite a bit of the book in one sitting. A lot of the information were common knowledge statements. Well, I think I'll try and get some more reading out of that book, it's very interesting. But the key note in the book is, "Don't go around judging people as psychopaths at work because the reader is not trained to do so." Well, I'm not too sure I'm going to go around labelling people anytime soon........*runs to mirror and points into mirror..........psychopath*

Side Note: I did learn the difference between Psychopath and Sociopath though.

The Land that Hums

For the long weekend I went down south the the land of the Hums. I stayed at a hotel called Park Central. It's a fairly nice hotel that's in the heart of South Miami. At first I was very scared of the area due to many news reports and testimonies from friends. The safety there seemed to be......quite interesting to say the least. I just think that when at every block there's a cop car, there HAS to be some issue there.

Miami Beach is split into the North, Central and South areas. On the far east is Ocean Drive, where all of the hotels and eateries lie. In one block is Collins Avenue that has most of the pricey shoping (only in the South Beach area). One more street in is Washington Ave., this is where the main "clubs" and the Miami Beach Police station is located. A lot of the clubs here have the windows painted black or somehow covered up. As the tour guide says, what happens behind those closed doors, stay behind those closed doors. Makes me just all warm and fuzzy inside. On the far west side is Alton Avenue. Very little lights on that side and it doesn't look like a place I'd want to be caught out after the sun has set.

Well, it seemed that Mariah Carrie was having her concert on the weekend at the American Arena.....centre...thingy there. I was waiting outside Bayside for a bus and since it was beside the arena, all the cars from all directions were headed that way. Traffic was really heavy and some things were quite strange to me. People didn't really signal with lights or honk their horns at all. They'd roll down their windows and point with their arms and kinda say out loud, "I want to go there in front of you." Now here's the funnier piece to it. 1/10 cars there are Hummers, yes, H2 and H3. I don't think they need to roll down any window at all..they just edge into the lane and well, I don't care what car you have, you're going to STOP in your spot and let the hummer through.

Oh, I kinda miss the ability to carry open liquor around the place too........maybe I should've tried to share some with the local bobby.....

Day Three

Ok, it's not the phase in which it's quite painful going cold turkey. The day starts and when people ask questions, my response is..."Go ask Mar...........shit...........dammit...ehmm...gimme a sec there...I'll think of something." After many long moments of glazed over eyes, I'm still at a loss for an answer. I'm left with the only viable option, "I dunno *shrudge shoulders*, I'll think of something."

Today is going to be a big day for me. I'm going to pickup my first car. I've managed to budget myself for a Mazda 5. Phantom Blue....some call it dead man's blue, but I'll call it...the blue that you see at really nice beaches down south.

In local news, it seems that we're in a severe thunderstorm watch right now. I'm looking at the graphs and the satellite images and..yup....storm it is. Right now as I'm typing, the winds are dropping down to a lull (0km/h). The calm before the storm.......this will prove to be interesting. I didn't bring my umbrella today...so I'm pretty much shafted. And I'll be picking up the car tonight...meaning...more so shafted.......dammit.

Last night was very exciting for me. I had a case planned for my SJA fellow members. it's the annual competition. It would seem that my props were not good enough and people tend to not notice things. This will cost them quite a bit for not noticing.

Alright, enough of me typing in a journal style.
So last night on the bus, I got a seat that was beside the door. Some lady (30's, and obese) stood in front of where I was sitting. I understand that it's quite crowded during rush hour and there isn't a lot of standing space. Anyhow, the lady decided to play footsies with me. It wasn't really a game, more of a stampede. As the bus moved, she shifted and stepped on my foot, and without lifting her foot or appologizing, she stood there thinking it was the floor. I'm not too sure, my foot has a definite incline on it, any fool would be able to tell they were stepping on something. So I quickly yanked my foot free. A few minutes later at a red light, the bus jerked on the acceleration and again, the lady ended up on one of my feet. I was fairly sure by the 3rd time that either she didn't know she was stepping on me, or she was just being annoying. I don't recall in my past life that I ever stepped on her toes.....but maybe that's because I don't really remember anything from my past life.........if I HAD a past life. So I ended up with one resolve, it's an eye for an eye..or in my case, a foot for the gas. Yes...I dealt a really nasty one......I appologized really loudly, because I affected the person I sat beside. But the lady did decide to back off a bit. For the rest of the ride, it was nice and calm, and a bit nauseating.

I wanna cry if I want to....

Today is the first day without Mark here. And there was NO rejoicing.

I would like to take the next few minutes in silence as we all share in mourning.








And now a big round of applause for Mark's decision to join his local University's bookstore as the manager. And there was much rejoicing.

Rain Drain's the Brain

This was supposed to be posted a week ago, but I've been way too busy to finish this blog. I feel like just writing something right now. Some really big changes have happened recently in my life and it's quite a twist........well, I might just finish my posting from last week and I'll blog about life changes tomorrow...or the day after....

I've always said that once it rains or snows, people lose the ability to drive.

Although last night wasn't raining, I could say that the gas prices dropped a bit (by 5 cents) and people were swarming gas stations like hungry vultures on carcuses (sorry for the horrible visual/graphical display....but you'll understand in a bit why). So I chose one of the lineups that was shorter and did the gas station waiting dance. Inch forward, turn off ignition, turn on ignition, inch forward, repeat...lather until you get to the pumping station itself. My car was 3rd in line when a blue jaguar pulled into the pumping station I was in line for. The person that was "supposed" to be next got out of the car and told the blue jaguar dude to back off. Everyone in our line had been waiting for 30 minutes and Mr. Jaguar here thinks that it's a do-not-need-to-line-up system. So Mr. Jaguar stands there and doesn't move, Mr. Angry holds onto the pump so Mr. Jaguar can't get his gas. After another 10 minutes and me going to another line, a lady steps out of her car and starts yelling at Mr. Jaguar. Then more people get out of their cars to tell Mr. Jaguar to go away. Finally, after another 15 minutes, I'm pumping in gas, they resolve the issue by Mr. Jaguar cursing and cussing while driving off to another line. People clap. And there was much rejoicing.

Finally...I can post this........

Justice is Blind, and PMSing too

So it seems that there is some labour law that says we can not be relieved of our job because we refuse to do OT. Really? But I guess we just do OT because we're such great team players. The only setback is that we aren't really compensated for our OT. Oh well, I'm just happy I have a job I guess. Many many more years ahead of me.

I've been on youTube lately watching a lot of funny videos that people from different University/College and game fanatics have posted. One in particular has really caught my liking because it has a really catchy tune on it. Viewers/Listeners advised, mature subject matter. It's called "Not just another Love Story". With all jokes and all, I really do think the premise of the song to be oh SOOoooooo very true. With all the weak laws surrounding the internet and all, no wonder it's a huge spawning ground for such piracy. I would like to add that this was a parody of something from Avenue Q.

On a side note to the above, new technology surrounding disc media that stores a lot more. The two competing brands to see the market are the Blu-Ray Disc and HD DVD. BRD (backed by Sony, Disney, Apple, etc.) is capable of holding 25Gigs while the HD (backed by Toshiba, Intel, Microsoft, etc.) will have three different versions, the single (15 Gig), double (30 Gig) and maybe even a TRIPLE (45 Gig......that's the size of my HD a while back). Ok, two points I want to make here, first is.........more space to store "backed-up" **STUFF**.......and second, I just found out that there is going to be one driving factor for which medium will be used commercially (unlike the ZIP drives, BETA, etc.). I would like to thank my gf's good friend Serena for enlightening me on this point. The Pr0n industry actually drives which medium it's going to be. Since they make up a huge portion of the sales for videos, the industry looks towards them for guidance. So here's what I say, Disney and Gates better start visiting the Pr0n lords and enjoy their show, cuz they'll make it or break it. Hmmmm......I'm wondering what kind of movie Disney's going to draw up next? Can anyone say "dōjinshi"? Ok, I'm sorry if I've offended any weak of heart here.

**Mature Flashback Ahead, Read at own risk. You have been warned**
Oh my, this actually triggers a memory of the last workplace that I was at. I used to create weekly newsletters about "What's going on in the company for COOPS." I had people write some columns about their thoughts of their past week and I also had my own comic strip and a column on weekly weird news (that I took from various newsprints). There was a time (also my last posting) that I wrote something about contraceptives and how there was a phone helpline that people could call in and ask for advice on which contraceptive to use. I made a wisecrack about who in the world would call into this because my immature mind went "Aren't all the contraceptives the same? And is abstinence the best from of contraceptive?" Well, after the publication went out, a coop (female) from the Stratford division sent a "complaint" to the coordinator and said that she was heavily offended by my writing. I was immediately contacted and repremanded for it. I was also to give a public appology to this person for my inappropriate action. Well, public appology she got but an onset of emails came in from my readers saying that I should continue but it seemed that my mass email capabilities were limited and that I was now in the bad books in HR. And thus Lady Justice sang and it was the end of my era.

Empty Chairs and Empty Tables

Today is the last day for one of my coworkers. She was hired at the same time I was. She has chosen to continue to study the arts of cutting........gem cutting.....*OOOOOOOoooooooo* *Aaaahhhhhhh*.
Ever since I was very little, there has been some sort of dark aura that surrounded me. I felt as though time had stood still and all that surrounds me just went on.
In elementary school, I went to an extra curricular "cultural" school on Saturdays where I learned move of my native tongue and history. People came and went, year by year, until the final year there, I was the only original left. All my friends left me.
In highschool, I was part of several extra curricular groups. When I joined the groups, they were filled with people that wanted to participate. Especially the Yearbook committee, my pride and joy of my highschool carrier. I was trained by THE "Hannah Sung" (I can't believe she's on Wiki). But as people like Hannah left, the committee became smaller and smaller until most of the work fell upon 4 core people.
As life went on, I was accepted into a University of my choice and again, I joined a group (actually two groups but they were pretty much one). I joined the cultural group that had a radio portion of it. I became the director of the radio division. I was on air every Sunday night. As the terms went on, I saw members come and go, there were some weeks where I was the only one on the air.
Today I'm part of a first responder brigade. It seems so hard to retain people. A few months after I became a member, resignation letters flew in from left right and centre. People left for job opportunities around the world. Some had to return to school out of town.
Is it me? Why is this happening to me?

Defective products, too late for a refund

I'd like to make a formal complaint to M&M's for their defective bag of Milk Chocolate M&M's I bought. Actually, every bag I bought was defective, I've had enough and I really think something should be done. I bought the bag and was very anxious to open up the bag and pour out a handfull of the contents within. To my disbelief, I saw a bunch of defective ones. So I just sucked them in and ate the bag, went back to buy another bag to confirm my suspicion. Maybe I was just so unlucky to buy that one defective bag. So I buy a 2nd one the following day, again I go back to my desk, gently tear open the mouth and pour out the contents..........MORE defective ones. Well, I wasn't going to take this from the big candy corporation. So I pick up the phone and dial their customer's satisfaction line. When I reach the representative, he introduces himself as "Red" and continues to ask me what I called for. I started my complaint "In my bag of M&M's milk chocolate, only 20% were really M's, I got a bunch of 3's, E's and W's. I think I should be fully compensat..." *click* *dooooooooooooooooo*. I can't believe it, he hung up on me. What kind of service is this? Geez, that's just.........gosh......I'm going to try to call them again later..........the nerve of them.......

So I recently got an upgrade for a really really cool address finding system. When someone tells me that I need to go to 555 Redridge Ave it just zooms right into the location by path.....I mean location. The upgrade has a small defect to it, for some strange reason now it finds the address for all the houses on Redridge, and even the the street beside Steepes Rd. Then after getting all he houses, it goes to each house and asks me, "Is this the one you're looking for?" "No? How about this one?" The worst thing is, there is no order to this. What kind of upgrade is this!?!?!?!? I complained to them but I got this from them.

I seem to have really bad luck lately with products. I got this financial tool that allowed me to do all these really funky things like plot 3d graphs, project into the future with random numbers, generate false entries so that when you do bank reconciliations it would be hell, magically complete the tax forms on April 1st of every year then delete the entries on April 2nd while popping a message "SUC-KAH!!!!", and it makes toast with strawberry jam. There was a clause at the bottom, "All the above functions available if you program it yourself". I didn't realize this until it was too late. Anyhow, these wonderful functions, it can't do the simplest of things, it can't add numbers, it can't round numbers to 2 decimal places, it can't even truncate the values. After emailing the company, they told me that no plug-in/fix was going to be issued for this because they just aren't going to give it at all. So I'm stuck with a $499.95 (& tax) OEM product that looks nice and collects dust. I should've just bought a warehouse of tissues.

BTW, it would seem that today is the happiest day of the year.

Listen, and you may learn something

If you talk and no one listens, is there still a point in talking? Sometimes I just feel like I'm talking to myself but the problem is, there is no response......maybe I should just take up talking and answering myself or I can just take up wrestling myself like Graham Chapman in Flying Circus, at least that would keep me entertained until I put myself into a sleeper hold...........
Well, it would seem that Maul doesn't really listen to much then comes back 10 seconds later with the same questions and the same comments that were said already. How many times do you need to confirm something? really....does it need 5 times? "Are you sure this is it?" "What are you sure of?" "Is that really true?".........yeeesh.......waste of time.

So I went to watch the The Lake House last night. The movie talks about a Dr. Kate that tries to rent out her house by the lake (really?....I would've never guessed.....The Lake House....house on the lake...wow....) and somehow rents it out, but to a dude Alex W........and here's the twist *****NOT SO SPOILER AHEAD******** Alex is from the past....2 years in the past to be exact. This movie is supposed to have some paralellism to a book called Persuasion by Jane Austen. The two are unable to meet up but love each other so much. Such a tragedy. As the story unfolds, certain "truths" are told and may get you wondering, why? Hmmmmm. Well, that's for me to know and for you all to find out. =P

Masters and the Apprentices

Lately it's been a bit of a rough ride. The Emporer and Darth Maul have been coming in strong and hard on us. The Emporor keeps using mind tricks on us telling us "It will be done......"...."yes......yes........it will be done....." But I have no freakin idea how. Maul is breathing down our necks every other turn. While Maul is watching the worlds podraces, we were all being strangled by Maul's Death Grip.
On the other side of the world, Quai-Gon and Obi-Wan fought desperately to fend off the peons from the Emporer's wrath. For each wall that Obi-Wan brought down, Maul errected another one.
As the peons struggled to get things in shape for Maul, Leia seemed to want to stay political so she remained neutral and swayed to whichever side had the upper hand on the conversational pieces. In order for Leia to keep her neutrality, she ordered for an open information policy, every piece of info must go before her eyes.
In all this......Jar-Jar just snickered in the corner as life crumbled to the ground.

4 8 15 16 23 42 EXECUTE

**BEEP BEEP** **BEEP BEEP** *BEEP BEEP**
Dammit, the alarm is going again. I'm still at work right now...yes...indeed....and the alarm goes off every 108 minutes I think. Either that or I'm getting delierious right about now. So every 108 minutes, either Mark or I (we take turns) run to the panel and swipe our access card on the black sensor and the alarm resets itself. Is this real? Or is someone just running an experiment on us to see if we'd keep at it not know what the real reason behind it is............dun-dun..........

Have I inadvertently said some evil thing?

I had to blog this piece. This was the weirdest pre-exam.......no....make it weirdest conversation piece I've heard before. All names used are fictitious because I don't really remember the names after my stressful exam.
I was sitting in the hallway waiting for the exam room to open (with the other examinees). The lady sitting in front of me looks in my general direction, slightly tilted to me left. She proceeds to say to the person beside me....

Across - "Do I know you?"
Beside - Look of deep thought on face
Across - "Yes.....I think.......you're Randy's wife Emily right?"
Emily - "Yes, yes I am, and you...."
Across - "I'm Randy's ex." *Huge gleeful smile on face*
Emily - "Ooooo, Randy has said much of you, you're Christine right?"
Christine - "Yes, oh how are you doing?"

By this point of the conversation I was really REALLY confused. Since my exam was in 30 minutes, I decided to tune them out and continue to read my textbook as a last minute attempt to cram one more sentence into my puny brain. I did pick up bits and pieces of the conversation but they were all just "What have you been up to?" "REALLY? Noooooooo....REALLY?" and "What course you here for?.......OH....MY......GAWD........we're in the same course..........WOW" Ok, this is when the examiner came out and told us to go inside and sit down. This is absolutely the weirdest conversation piece I've ever heard of.
For a good reading of thrilling podcast poems, head over to Mark Leslie's page and listen to his podcast. And I'm waiting for the next LOST podcast.....even though the season is over, there is going to be a few more podcasts I hear.

Look Down, Look Down, It's Hot as Hell Below....

So for the past little while it's been around 28+ degrees celcius. I really like the weather being nice and toasty. The only problem I have is that the building I'm in has this temperature gauge that will adjust to the external temperature (my guess). This is because it's FREEZING HERE!!!!!! It's like an ice box here. I fear that I may catch a cold sooner or later.
So we're in a new age of PodCasting. I've been listening to some podcasts here and there but the only ones that have really perked to me are only by Wil Wheaton and my good friend Mark Leslie (writer/blogger/soon-to-be podcaster). I used to be part of a local radiostation when I was in University. I guess I could say that I did somewhat of a podcast....because it sure felt like a podcast more than live radio. The radio station was in a very very remote area. You had to first trek on unpaved dirt/little rocks road. The surounding are uncut grass, a huge pond, and traintracks on the other side. You walk on the unpaved road for around 1.5km and finally reach an area with high trees surrounding an old warehouse with rusted windows, some wooden boards over some windows and a huge signal tower on top of the building. This.........is the radio station. This place is one of the most fearful places I've been to in my life. For 5 years of my University career, I would trek to this isolated location every Sunday at 1700h, and leave around 2000h. Let me try to paint the picture (because I can't find online a picture of the building). The building is built with huge grey slabs of concrete, it runs 50m long and 25m wide. The forest acts as a barrier of some form (from what 3v1l that lies beyond the line on the ground in front of the forest entrance). Ravens and Crows all perched on the tree branchs, cawing happily in chorus while staring intently on the activites of the building. There are two entrances to the building (actually three), and I would randomly choose one. The western entrance leads you to the office area and the southern entrance leads you strait into the "library". Normally I would enter the southern entrance because it is the faster route to the broadcast studios. As you open the rusted door with the "I-have-no-idea-how-the-knob-still-works", a strong musty smell overwhelms me. Everytime I open that door, I have to hold my breath and let the dust settle. Once inside, there is a door on the right. There is a huge chain on the door with a pad lock that looks like it came from the 40's or something like that. Passing by the door always gives me the shivers. Cobwebs have formed in front of the doorway and no one every cleans it. I have asked maybe people that worked there and no one seems to know what is behind the door. This is the weirdest thing, the building as I said is 50m long, but the entrance is at the 10m mark, and this doorway leads to the back of the building somehow which would be the remaining 80% of the building. But no-one knows how to get in or what is in there? Wouldn't someone want to know? I hope that it's just some storage room for old equipment, but the chain and old padlock really scares me. Anyhow, I might finish up my description of the warehouse, but the bottom line is, sometimes during broadcasting, I hear funny noises from behind the door, maybe mice, maybe something else, I'm not too sure. But I'm happy that I don't really have to trek there in the winter anymore.
Ok, a couple of things.....I'm a Lost fan and have been perked on the mission to decypher the Dharma Inititive password. If anyone knows, please enlighten me. I've also been investigating the Hanso Foundation website. It's very very interesting and lots of easter eggs. Anyhow, I'm also listening to the podcast and I find it's really really funny. I only have 5 more podcasts left from Lost, what will I do after I've read them all?!?!.......

Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.

The phrase of last week (and the week before) was "Low moral, then get more ale"......in a sense that was what it was.
Some time last week when I was heading into work, there was a jerk (yes a really really big jerk) decided to stretch his legs out over three seats in the subway. This was during rush hour when people are juet jamming into the car. I'll call him stupidhead for short (cuz his long name consists of vulger profanity that I will choose not to display). So Mr. Stupidhead just sits there and as people glare are him, he makes this "What are YOU looking at?" glare back at people. Finally a fair sized woman (I'll call her Angrylady) asks him to move his legs and Mr. Stupidhead just glares, acts stupid and disregards the request. Angrylady starts telling Mr. Stupidhead how unright he is and how he should be allowing people to get the seat. Someone yells (I'll call him Loudmouth) "I'll call the operator!!". Mr. Stupidhead just continues to sit there and doesn't move an inch. Loudmouth yells again, "I really will press the yellow emergency thing." Mr. Stupidhead yells in response, "This is NOT an emergency so F*** off." This really get's on Angrylady's nerves and well, she just goes to sit down on Mr. Stupidhead's leg. Finally Mr. Stupidhead retracts his legs and starts yelling, shouting, screaming vulgar words. People clap, mr. Stupidhead get's off at the next stop and I shut my eyes to continue my dreams of how I might've just got up and rip Mr. Stupidhead's legs off. In the end, Loudmouth was just loud and didn't really do much.
Something has been bugging me for the longest time and I just wanted to share with the world. Why in the world to people continually move injured spots saying "It really hurts when I do this....".......you know what.........STOP moving it then. I'm a medical first responder and people tend to get injured, walk up to me and go "It really hurts when I move....." and well, my thought is...."Just stop moving it you doof!!!" but I can't say that aloud. A joke did pass me this weekend pertaining to heart attack or asthma. So if someone walks up to me complaining about heart pain....do I tell them not to move the heart?...hmm...that would be quite an interesting conversation piece with my superintendent. But for other injuries, I really really suggest, don't move that spot instead of moving it around going "It really hurts...."
I just can't wait for this week and next week. Major movies galour. The Da Vinci Code will be out this week followed by X-Men: The Last Stand. Considering everyone in the world must have had contact with The Da Vinci Code in one form or another, I think there will be really high bars posed for the movie. I just hope they do a good job of it. As for X-Men, is it really the final movie installment? The Last Stand...hmmmm.........I guess it's just a title and I'm reading too much into it. I can't wait to see the major battle scenes. I have yet to watch Silent Hill. I guess I might have to wait for the DVD to comeout and rent it to watch.
So how did people spend Mother's Day?
I would like to publicly congratulate my coworker Jack and his wife with their 2nd child. He is very healthy and doing well (as I hear).
As a head's up, I have will be getting my new camera later this week (fingers crossed). The Canon S3 IS, so hopefully I can talk more about this later and post some pics that I took.
So I will end this post with something I find very very foolish and a total waste of time. I.T. costumer support for I.T. people. You DON'T ASK OTHER IT PEOPLE THE GENERIC "did you plug in the computer" QUESTION and WASTE VALUABLE TIME. "Just to be sure" is very over rated.