Boxing with Future Shop and Best Buy

Fuck. I mean it's less than 2 hours from Christmas and what are the Wife and I doing? Battling with 403 errors, server timeouts and traffic overflows. Brilliant idea Future Shop/Best Buy, lets put out the biggest sale of the year on the one night when you know absolutely no one is going to be working in your server for anything less than 3 times their regular salary. The Boxing Day sale started at 8 tonight... theoretically. Except at 8 it said it hadn't started yet, then at 8:30 pages stopped responding, at 9:00 it banned our IP addresses and told us to contact the web admin. Now you can't even load the home page. The Wife managed to get a digital camera into her cart, but took so many attempts to check out the server logged her off and all was lost. I attempted to add a big screen TV, only to finally make it to my cart and find 7000 dollars worht of HDTV goodnesses. I'm a materialistic person... but I have no need for 6 32" LCD TVs. Anyway if this keeps up December 26th will find me at the door of Future Shop with Thermos of hot chocolate in hand at 5:00AM in the morning.

I only have an hour and a half to get this freakin' TV. Then I'm heading to Midnight mass at the local Church. Despite my materialism I'm still all about keeping the "Christ" in Christmas. Although I may have taken his name in vain once or twice this evening. Oh and once again. Merry Christmas

Except to you Future Shop, it's Merry-go-your-self to you

Have yourselves a big hair, tight pant rockin' Christmas

My childhood Christmas was seriously Norman Rockwell type shit. The family would bundle up and walk through snow-covered forests to cut down our very own Christmas tree. The house would be decorated completely 2 weeks before. Christmas Day would find us at Grandma's with the whole family enjoying a roasted turkey baked in an old-fashion wood stove. Hot Chocolate with Marshmellows, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and plenty of presents and merriment.

These days I don't get in the spirit quite as easily. With the crushing workload at the office, the shittacular weather and the overall super-fast pace of life I just don't find I get in the Christmas spirit like I used to. However I'm definitely feeling it now :).

I just finished putting up my Christmas tree, with my little Crystal Christmas Tree ornament that I've hung on the tree since I was tall enough to reach the lowest branches which always touches that little kid in me. Plus now I'm rocking out to "A Twisted Christmas" by Twisted Sister, which - while terribly goofy - can't help but put you in the Christmas spirit.

Tomorrow I'm going to hit the church, slap back some Egg-Nog, watch super-sappy Christmas Specials and wait for Santie Claus to show up Monday morning. I hope all of you out there (even though you don't read my blog) have an awesome Christmas and a great New Year, filled with Alley-Oop grinds, high-speed run-thrus, numerous frags, V6 engines and good friends :)

... and though it's been said, many times, many ways, Merry Christmas to you.

Custom Made Wrath Trigger

Well I might not be the handiest of handymen (my leaking faucet in the laundry room would attest to that) but I'm no slouch with a rotary tool. With the Christmas weekend approaching I got today off so I decided to head to the basement, listen to some Christmas tunes and tinker around with power tools! I took a 12" square piece of lexan and cut out a section about 1/4" by 2 1/2 inches and started to work. First I Stenciled my stock trigger onto the lexan, then I adjusted the lines slightly to give a little hook at the bottom. From there I foolishly trimmed down the block with a hacksaw and files. Once I smartened up I put a grinding drum attachment on my rotary tool, fired her up to 3500 RPM and easily made the shape you see. From there I tapped three holes for the pre-travel, activation and over-travel adjustments, modified some screws with a hacksaw to make them set screws then smoothed the whole thing out with the rotary tool. All told it took me about 2.5 hours of work, if I had all my tools within arm's reach I could probably do it again in about 40 minutes. I might do another and put it on EBay and see what kind of reaction it gets.

Now if I only ever played fricken paintball!

Zoom Zoom

I've never had a nice car. By "nice car" I don't mean a Beamer or Benz

(I’m not an asshole enough of a driver to drive one of those.) My current vehicle is a 1998 Hyundai Accent. While a trustworthy low-maintenance vehicle it doesn’t scream "Fun to drive." At ~90HP the Accent often leaves me in the situation of getting cut off by soccer Moms and punk teens in Civics at a regular basis. This is not fun!

What would be fun is a car with a V6 and 171 HP. After much research and pricing I've more or less decided on the Hyundai Tiburon. Based on the reliable Elantra platform (praised by the Lemonaid Guide to Cars) the Tiburon is one of the rare sports coupes in today's SUV/Hybrid saturated car market. Also since its resale sucks, a low Kilometer 2003 Tiburon can be had for $14,000.00 Canadian or less. So I'm hoping if the Wife and I have holed away enough money come Spring/Summer this will be my next vehicle.

OOoooh or maybe I should just rice-out my Accent. On second thought, nevermind.

Drivers are rude. Such attitudes...

Hiiiii-yah!

Like every white kid growing up in the 80s, I wanted to be a ninja. I mean lets face it in the 80s a ninja was about a freakin’-cool as it got! That was a weird time for martial arts as a whole giving rise to such completely untalented martial artists as Eric Roberts and Michael Dudikoff of American Ninja fame. This was long before North America really saw the martial talents of Jet Li and Donny Yen and a little after the reign of Bruce Lee. Regardless of the quality of the martial arts I saw I knew that I wanted to do that stuff. My local karate club was the only martial arts establishment within miles and they didn’t train little kids. So basically I watched a lot of ninja movies, got 2nd hand training from my teenaged neighbour to get a leg up and once I hit age 9 I joined Karate.

The style in question was actually Shotokan Karate. Shotokan is often classified as a “Simple”, “Linear” or “Brutal” form of Karate. The emphasis is dispatching your foe with often as little as 1 punch. Most 9 year old kids took about 2 months worth of classes and quickly got bored with the constant block, punch, block, punch of training. I, however, had a dedication to my training. Even without a Mr. Miyagi I spent 7 years waxing on kicking butt. Over my years in Shotokan I won 9 medals in sparring and 4 more for kata (forms.) Despite living in a rural town in Newfoundland my training was quite authentically Japanese. Our classes were taught in Japanese and my Sensei would even hit me with a bamboo shinai. However, like all martial arts in North America sometimes the message gets watered down.

Interestingly enough I was chit-chatting with a co-worker of mine who is also a Karate practitioner of the Goju-Ryu school. Lately she’s been dabbling in Shodokan as well and has been very impressed with the brutal efficiency of the style. In the course of our conversation she mentioned a book Shotokan's Secret: The Hidden Truth Behind Karate's Fighting Origins" which outlines a lot of the sources that created the Shotokan style. We chit-chatted about the application of a lot of the techniques from Shotokan and the discussion brought back a lot of that old 8-year old desire to be a ninja. I’d love to take martial arts again… if only there were 36 hours in a day and 10 days in a week. Stupid time!

I was a ninja once

I'm Watching you!

I think I mentioned in another post that I'm, "no metrosexual Louis Vuitton wearing poof." Well that's true, and high fashion interests me about as much as paintball interests my wife. All that being said I likes a nice watch. I don't know what it is about this particular item but if you offered me an Armani suit or a decent Swiss watch, I'd take the watch any day of the week.

Weird thing is I'm incredibly picky about what theoretical watch I'd like to have. It's weird because I could never afford nor justify any of these time pieces, but a guy can day dream.

Recently I saw adds for Wittenauer on TV and decided to check out their website. The thing that caught my eye was the watch above. The Wittenauer Montserrat features swiss movement, 8 diamonds and a modern yet strikingly simple face (damn I sound like my wife.) Weighing in at a cost of about $499 American puts it about $424 dollars out of my price range but if I ever win the lottery, I'm wearing one of these bitches on each wrist. In the meantime my time piece of choice... not quite so fabulous.

monocle and top-hat sold separately

F.E.A.R Me!

Well being a huge nerd and long time gamer it’s no surprise that I occasionally like to “Git ma game on” in the first person shooter genre. Unfortunately my lackluster PC limits what I can and cannot play. Also, if you don’t have the hardware to run it, purchasing PC games seems a little silly. Fortunately there’s F.E.A.R Combat! F.E.A.R Combat is simultaneously graphically beautiful yet with modest minimal requirements. Also at the price tag of absofreakinglootly free dollars it’s a heck of a steal. You read that right, while the F.E.A.R Single Player game is a regular off-the-shelf box, the multiplayer option can be downloaded directly from their website.

Every Tuesday night at 8 I meet up with our IT department online for a romp through the offices and factories of F.E.A.R’s varied maps, with my penetrator in hand. This is probably the part of the game I love the most, a large machine gun that fires 9” metal spikes. This thing makes your regular nail gun in other shooters look like a straw full of spitballs. The really enjoyable part of this weapon is that the rag-doll physics in the game are well highlighted when using this particular weapon. Hit an enemy in the right shoulder and his body will spin away from you, catch him in mid-jump and he’ll be tug backwards as if pulled by a string. The best is if you hit someone out of mid air while they are near a wall. You’ll actually pin them to the wall like some kind of sick effigy to taunt your opponents.

All-in-all an awesome game, I just can’t wait to see it on my new system… whenever I finish building it :-/

I penetrate the IT Manager weekly

Killer show!

I've never been one for crime shows. Generally when people start talking about "Law and Order" or "CSI: Salt Lake City" a pre-emptive globule of drool starts to form in the corner of my mouth and my eyes roll back in my head. Needless to say courtroom and cop shows don't really do it for me. However, I am a complete hypocrit because Dexter is officially my favourite show. Heroes is also an awesome show as well but lets face it, superhero shows aren't that uncommon. They're usually done poorly but there's been a few of them. Dexter on the other hand I've never seen another show I could compare it to. How often do you run into a main character who is simultaneously a crime scene blood-spatter expert and a serial killer? The show examines everything from Dexter's perspective, which is unique as he deams himself to be devoid of emotions. Still based on his strong moral code given to him by his foster father he continues to the "Right thing." Although at times the "Right thing" might involve chopping up a couple of human trafficers and dropping their dismembered corpses to the bottom of the ocean. The show is clever, fast-paced, witty and darkly comedic.

Cuz that's how I roll!

Well it has been a long damn time but I am desparately feeling the need to roll again. For those of you not familiar with the sport, it's rollerblading and it's basically "My thing." Obviously from my blog you can tell I have way too many hobbies, but rollerblading is the one I love the most. Strangely I haven't done it for months. The snow on the ground isn't helping anything in that respect either. Regardless I'm in the process of fixing the rail I have in my basement and am looking forward to busting out some serious grinds as soon as possible. Methinks myself and some of my compadres will have to hit an indoor skatepark post-haste. I'm rambling... hey look over there!

Woosh!

that was a close one

Nothing says fun like Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

So in the midst of the insanity that is the mall at Christmas time I actually managed to have some hands on time with the Nintendo Wii. Whilst the wife was looking in an accessories store for various items of cuteness for my little niece I handed in my license at the desk at EB Games to get my Wii-Mote.

The current game up for testing was the arcade racer, “Excite Truck”. I must have looked like an absolute retard attempting to turn the Wii-mote in a way to get it to make sense as a controller for the game. At first I pointed it like a magic wand and I kept driving in circles. Then I tilted it right and left to no avail. Once I figured out you had to place it perpendicular to the screen I was getting somewhere. I then found the "Gas" key and away I went, at first it seemed a little awkward as I determined I had to lean the stick away from the turn to complete it. I guess the EB Games guy had just about enough of my stupidity and informed me, "Sir, you’re holding the controller backward."


Thoroughly mortified I flipped the controller around and now I was really away to the races. I was flying over hills, whipping around hair pin turns and all around getting my race on. If I said that this wasn’t as fun as all hell I’d be lying. I could so see someone like my Dad being able to play this game, and my dad is still intimidated by our VCR from the 80s. I gotta say the horsepower of the Nintendo Wii is underwhelming at best as my old clunker of a computer could still kick the ever-living crap out if it graphics-wise. I don’t think I’ll be running out any time soon to grab one of these but I think Nintendo did something very smart with this system.

I played with my wii in public