My new man bag, fanny pack, side satchel-type thing and iPhone case..

I started carrying one of these things around in college, in the early 90's when a classmate had one and I saw how much crap you could cram in them. I endured many unflattering remarks and fashion comparisons but the things were too practical to give a damn! The first one I had was black. Then a few years later I scored a brown leather one and carried that around for years until it fell apart(I've always been more of a brown-leather jacket wearing guy than a black leather jacket guy, and it carried over here) . Well, it's that time of year again, several side satchels later, the old one has fallen apart and I was on the lookout for a new one when I happened to walk into a Roots store.

I saw this thing called a "village pack in tribe leather". This thing was perfect! The belt is a bit short though. It JUST fits. This ain't for the stout of waist.

Since I had just bought an iPhone I also did some research on cases for the 3Gs and decided on a great flip case from BeyzaCASES. They had one in a nice vintage leather. I've already dropped the phone in the snow and left it there for about five minutes with no ill effects in this case, so it's held up fine thus far! It's got holes in all the right spots so you can do whatever you need to do and leave it in the sleeve.

I've had them strapped on for a few weeks now and someone told me if I added a hammer that I'd look like Mike Holmes.

Survivor Samoa - Robbery

"Noooooo!"

New Bigfoot sculpt!

Miss Tiggywinkles had one of these waiting on the shelf for me. It can go outside on the front lawn too! Thanks to Kirok for spotting him and emailing a photo a couple of days ago!

He's 16 inches tall!



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The BB e-cigarette

A coworker has stumbled upon a new way to quit smoking. They're called e-cigs. They use a Vail of 24 mg Tennesee smoke juice to simulate smoke and give the user a tiny bit of nicotine. The smoke is actually steam. With one of these rigs you go through the motions of smoking, with a huge decrease in the toxic intake of a regular cigarette.

The funny thing is when someone lights up one of these things indoors. It's technically not illegal . It makes for some interesting confrontations. An expensive way to quit smoking.





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Hoodat! Let's shoot mah TV when my football team loses!!!

Kirok sent me this. It's scary because these people live in the most powerful country in the world. Luckily they're pretty south of us (Louisiana), and thankfully they lost that war back in the 1800's, so the more North you go, the less, uhh.. I dunno. I won't go there...

Unless he was doing his to force an upgrade, maybe he had his eye on a nice new 65 inch plasma, I don't see the sense in this. Although it's somewhat captivating. Like a car accident. And the collection of guns is interesting. One funny part is when one of their friends shows up wearing an orange jacket just so he doesn't get shot in the excitement. Smart man..


TV Shot To Death After Saints Win - Watch more Funny Videos

Photos of my lava lamp

Took a photo of my lava lamp the other day. The lamp is a secret code in my house. When it's on, it means something.

Sometimes my kids turn it on and get me in trouble

Lava lamps are cool!



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The little Christmas tree contest

We had a little mini Christmas tree decorating contest at work last week. This was my entry.

I didn't win...

I think it's because I've recently moved into a new building, two buildings away from where I used to work and my 70-some co-worker ex-neighbors were too lazy to walk over and see my creation. We couldn't send photos because the whole point of the exercise was to walk over and see the entries in person and get to know the new people in the division.

Oh well.

I think mine rocked!!!

It had Mini me! The Energizer Bunny! A Borg! The Linux penguin, Mr Bigglesworth! Sideshow Bob! The Stanley Cup!

I mean, it didn't have chocolates or creatively bent paper-clips or pipe cleaners or things like that in it like some folks.. But it had class and style..

Wait next year!

It was still the coolest.

My stupid GR-500A Casio G-shock watch.

I bought a watch for myself on Father's day this year. How ever long ago that was, it didn't take too long for me to break the thing. This is a rather expensive watch, the CASIO G-SHOCK GW-200A. It's used by some militaries. You never have to buy a new battery (HAH!) because it features a rechargeable solar battery that can (quoting from the manual) "Charge in sun or artificial light to a full charge and the battery will work for11 months even if the watch is placed in a drawer."

Liars! Two weeks ago, when winter kinda started and I started to wear a coat, the watch spent some time under a sleeve and the battery quickly died. I charged it under a light all night but it would only come up to a half charge, and it died again a few days later. What a piece of crap watch! I did some research and this happens in a few cases, and it's the battery that has just gone bad, the CTL1616. So I call up "The Source" and they tell me they have it so I make a trip out to replace it.
Turns out they didn't have it. They had a CR1616, just a regular lithium battery. What the hell, it should work. The girl behind the counter insisted on replacing it and I let her. It seemed to work!

That night I went home, froze my butt off at the Orleans Parade of lights and took a warm bath afterwards - and my nice watch filled up with water. The salesperson at "The Source" didn't put the waterproof seal in right. I saw it sticking out when I inspected the watch closer. It's sitting under the hairdryer now but I don't have high hopes..

I've killed SUUNTRO outdoor watches as well. I am going to re-think my whole outlook on watches. I'm going to buy cheap $20 watches and jut throw them away when I bust them.

I think "The Source" has some of those.....

The office move 2009

Today I moved offices. I moved across two buildings to the same building and floor I started on as a student in 1991, along with two of my friends/co-workers who also started out here as co-op students at the exact same time and place(how weird is that?). Yesterday found me furiously scrubbing my old desk and cabinets so that they'd be nice and clean for the new guy moving into my old digs. It was a good thing I did this because I found gross stuff like one of my old gel guitar fingernails (it cracked off when I went to eject a CD in my PC last year) and some old M&M's on the floor behind my UPS(they were still edible!).

I faithfully stickered all my boxes and stuff with my name and future office number, being a veteran of many office moves, I know how stuff can disappear on you. At 2:20 or so my PC disappeared (to go to the new place) and around 3:00pm, an hour before move time the head moving guy shows up with a floorplan and he's standing outside my cubicle telling me that all the office numbers written on my stuff are wrong. We've been given the old floorplan and those offices no longer exist. He gives me the new numbers. The trouble is, almost everyone has left the office now because we have no PC's and need to get out of the way for the move to take place. So I had to take the guy around to every person who was moving, get the new numbers and write it down 10 or 16 times on all of their stuff boxes, chairs, screens, cabinets, fans, garbage cans etc.. Except for Slava, who has condensed the contents of his office to two boxes which he has moved himself a few hours before. I actually did a preemptive move of some of my odder items with Slava. My huge office tree (the plant people are not going to like that I moved this, they get upset), my hockey stick and the hologram picture of the old 1920's guy who turns into a devil that kept the cleaning staff from coming anywhere near my office 2 years ago.

Today I head over to the new place and find all my boxes, but no PC's or screens. It's gonna be hard to work without these so I take a walk around the new digs looking for them. They are no where in sight. One of my co-workers, DJ, scored an office with a PMPO (Presumably Messy Previous Occupant) who didn't really clean his up for the new guy like I did. The presumably messy guy actually inherited my old office on my old floor. My buddy is unhappy about this and we can all tell. One of the AD's goes by and makes the mistake of asking him how things are going and 20 minutes later a cleaning crew arrives asking me where DJ's office is. I don't know who called them but it's funny. Apparently we aren't expected to clean our offices, this is something they do. Shit, if I'd have known that, I would have left the fingernail in mine. Still, do unto others like you'd like done to you sorta thing..

I come back from my search of the new floor and find the confused LAN guy with Slava scratching his head (the LAN guys is scratching his own head, not Slava's).
"I installed them in here yesterday!" He says. That is not good. Maybe someone has mistaken them for the previous occupant's PC's and has taken them back over to my old floor. I take a walk to my old digs two buildings over and find them after awhile in Slava's old empty office. I call the LAN guy and he says he'll come and get them and install them in the new place. The "Move Gremlins" probably did this to screw with me..

When I get back to my new office to start unpacking my boxes I see that the PMPO is over at his old digs conversing with DJ about the unsatisfactory condition he left his office in. I don't know if he's been called over or if he forgot something, but they have a brief conversation which is moot because the Cleaning crew has been through and DJ already picked all the fingernails off the floor and removed the 3 years of muffin debris between the crack in the two connecting portions of the desk.

"Well I did not clean the crack.." says the previous occupant.. This is funny for some reason. I actually cleaned MY crack.. I took a paperclip, straightened it out and ran it through there to get out the build up of crusty debris. (the fact that we could be talking about body parts is not lost on me).

Throughout the morning two people an office away have been flirting loudly non-stop for about 2 hours. At one point the guy was threatening the girl that he'd come into work wearing a speedo or something and I felt the need to poke my head around the corner and ask that they not scare us like that on our first day because we're new. Everyone giggles.. I'm making friends. I go back to DJ's office. He's mad and proclaims loudly that the previous occupants cleaning habits leave a lot to be desired (he doesn't exactly say it like that though, he uses a cuss word and the name of that animal we get bacon from). I try to shush him and remind him that we may be embedded amongst 20 of the guy's best Friends but DJ does not care at this point. He's a bit pissed and rightly so I guess..

I hook my PC up, unpack a pile of boxes and the next thing I know it's lunch. I crack a book open while I eat and notice that the flirtymates have resumed their mating ritual because it has been reasonably quiet for awhile. They must have gone away or something. I've always been able to tune stuff like that out if I want so it does not bother me in the least. As long as they change it up and don't repeat themselves too much. It goes on all lunch hour.

DJ comes in my office after lunch to discuss an issue with an application we just rolled out. He pauses while the flirty couple laugh loudly. He comments on this just as loudly. A few minutes later I urge him to come into a conference room with me so we can talk about our project as well as the flirty couple's ability to work and chat nonstop whilst not offending them too badly on our first day.

It always takes time to get used to a new place... Still, I think I'm going to like it here. I have a feeling there's a few people on this floor as weird as I am..

If the flirty couple is at it again tomorrow I'm going to go over and break the ice for them so they can go on their first date so I don't have to hear the elaborate mating ritual play out all day. I know it bugs DJ. I have a feeling he's gonna show up with his classical music collection and the biggest set of earphones money can buy tomorrow!

Difference between men and women according to my 5 year old

Women have boobies.

Men have "nibbles"





There you have it....

Akida Dogs Revisited

Someone pointed me to this great picture awhile back. It brings back memories! Where's the dog whisperer when you need him.

Dave Vader costume - Gleno School dance October 2009

I have this old Grim Reaper Costume (see pic) that's over 7 feet tall that you wear like a backpack in order to elevate the head to create the height illusion. I have done that shtick where I left it outside a few days before Halloween as a stationary prop before changing into it in my garage Halloween night and slipping back into place as the kids came up to the door (see 2007 video) . I'm not sure which is more fun, giving the kids a scare, or their parents (wait scratch that! BIG kids. They're my favorite).

This year I modified it a bit and turned it into a Darth Vader Costume. I popped an old Don Post Vader mask I had from the early 90's up on there, with a headlamp inside to cast an erie glow from the eye and mouth filters. Then I got my Replica red LED lightsaber prop that ignites and makes the lightsaber sound when swung and collision sound when struck (awesome!) , and went off to my kid's school dance.

I got dressed in the parking lot and strode inside all Vader-like. I've been there before and whatever costume I'm wearing, they all mistakenly make me out to be one of two teachers there, Mr M or Mr A. I'm not sure why they should get all the credit for my costume, but what the hey. I'll impersonate them if it's funny, short of getting them into trouble.
"No homework tomorrow kids!"...

Whenever I have a tall costume on that features a height illusion, I have found that little kids feel the need to kick and beat on me in some way to in order to prove to themselves that I am somehow not real. Kicks to the shins are to be expected, as are punches to the groin area. I don't think it's malicious as they seem to think I'm on stilts and they don't expect to connect with any vulnerable parts of my body. Luckily most parents step in and save me ( next year I'm definitely incorporating some upgraded groin protection).

This year brought an unexpected side effect. I'm carrying a glowing lightsaber in a dark gym and I'm 7 and a half feet tall. Ninjas are making a comeback this year. Star Wars Jedi and King Arther Knights are also popular costumes. There were a few Viking barbarian guys as well. The one thing these costumes all have in common?

Swords..

The one thing I overlooked was that, holding a glowing red lightsaber in a darkened gym with pulsating Katy Perry music, some of these kids might want to take a poke at the Lord of the Sith and make a name for themselves. Swords were coming at me from everywhere. Most of them could not hit the Vader Mask on top of my costume, which was good, but what they could hit was the center mass of Dave Vader, which happened to be where my face and eyeballs were.

POKE!

"ARGGGGGG!"

Slash

"Argggg! That went in my mouth!"

My wife said.
"It was your idea!"

POKE! "ARGGG! It's ok, I have two eyeballs".

The hackers and slashers were easy enough to deflect but this one Nights of the Templar kid would stand directly underneath me and he had this little white plastic broadsword which he'd thrust upwards in a straight line from underneath my arms so that I couldn't bat it away with my lightsaber.

POKE!
"Score kid, I'm going to have a black eye! Darth Vader's going to the ER now.."

I tried to force choke them all with my mind but it didn't work. I think I know how Spartacat feels now..

I'll have to re-think this costume a bit..

GAG 14 geocaching event

Dressed as Jason from Friday the 13th in a cornfield certainly brings back memories of when I was 13 years old. Seems I was always dressing up as him and jumping out of the corn on Kemp Road outside Blackburn Hamlet for as many times as I could talk my friends into taking a walk down there after dark.

The last Gag we did was on a Friday the 13th and Tripper and Kenmore wore their Jason Masks so I made sure not to forget mine this time around for GAG 14! If I'm not mistaken, this is the same one from my Voorhees geocache. They come in handy for pokey branches that want to take your eyes out. Luckily no one called the police on us this time as thy cracked their blinds just in time to see three guys dressed as Jason going into the forest.

There were some neat caches on this trip. At one point we figured out the co-ordinates for the next cache in the nice warm Van as Tripper and Kenmore were tossing a nearby garbage dumpster looking for the cache. I learned an amazing cellphone tactic to deflect spousal suspicion. Gwilliker was talking to his girlfriend on the phone (She was googling and Wikiing for us) and at one point he covered the mouthpiece and mentioned how this was going to cost him big-time. He was going to be forced to go see the movie 'Couple's Retreat' with her sometime this weekend.
We all laughed and she heard us when he uncovered the cellphone. She must have asked:
"What's so funny?" and without skipping a beat Gwilliker said:
"Oh Somebody Farted, Ok, next search.. "

Classic!

Bigfoot scare at Gold Bug

This one's a little late. Back on Tuesday October 6th I got wind that a local geocachers was going for their 1000th find on one of my geocaches because it kinda fit in with her name. It was The Gold Bug geocache which was my homage to an Edgar Allen Poe story I'd always liked..

I was a few weeks away from releasing the next Bigfoot movie so I thought I'd do a little publicity and dress up as the big hairy guy and surprise a bunch of people in the forest. Actually publicity was the last thing on my mind, I just like doing stuff like this!

I packed the suit, bungie-ed it to my trusty old toboggan (this is how I move big things around in the forest like bunny crates and bodies, etc..) threw everything in the truck and headed out with a 15 minute head start.

Being the cache-owner I knew where ground zero was, the path they would follow and the parking lot they would all start at. I parked about 2 kilometers away and hoofed it to the back-end bushwack and arrived pretty early, with about 20 minutes to get dressed and pick a good spot to stand up and be creepy in.

In the end, about 21 geocachers came walking up the hill in a big group, all with their noses stuck to their GPS's. A light raid had started to fall and it was all feeling very surreal.

Congrats to Miss bug of her 1000th find and thanks for doing it on one of my geocaches!

Trailerpark Geocachers meet Bigfoot 2 - Released!

It's OUT! Longer than the gestation period of an elephant that was! The film was released tonight in an ammo can outside my front yard where people came by and snagged copies of the film for the upcoming GAG 14 geocaching event. There's also two downloadable versions, one "bleeped" with no cuss words and the real-life talkin' version(grin). The DVD has two audio tracks that you can switch between. This is just a basic version with the feature. Now I'm going to go over the footage and make a "Making of" and blooper reel as well as a "director's commentary" and all that fun stuff. Maybe even a pop up video version! For now here's the two downloadable versions

1. A downloadable link to a 551MB censored copy TPGMBF2-bleeps.wmv

2. A downloadable link to a 551MB UN-censored copy (bad words you can't say on television, and all that). TPGMBF2-badwords.wmv(coming soon! should be active by 1:00pm Thursday oct 15th)

Check it out! And if you're even in Ottawa, stop by the cache, it's in a really cool location! A big thanks to: Ndg8r......................... as himself Kirok..........................Mike Gariepy Zartimus................David Carriere GRizzlyG..................as himself Tripper......................as himself Captain Hook.......Andrew Basque Mr Lifto.................Paul Wyndands GWilliker.............Bryce Crossman Cliffy.........................Andrew Bush Nate the gopher...............as himself

Trailerpark Geocachers meet Bigfoot 2 - Poster #1

Won't be long now! Beepin' swear words, normalizing audio and finishing Music.

Here's a poster by Paul Wynands based on a photo by Tripper.

The Phantom of the Opera - Reloaded

Way back in 1989 my girlfriend and I worked for Cineplex Odeon, then headed up by now convicted felon Garth Drabinsky (currently doing 7 years for ripping off about half a billion bucks with the same company that put on Phantom, muhahahahaha). We got access to some early ticket sales and booked a trip to Toronto to see it at the newly restored Pantages theatre, with about 12 friends.
Not knowing anything about Toronto, I called up my uncle to ask about hotels. At the time, he was big into real estate and told me cheerfully,
"You can stay at my company condo beside Skydome. "
Gee.. OKAY! Twist my arm. I got back to my buddies and said "I'm gonna make my own way there guys". Last I heard, they were getting a school bus from someone and were all going to head down that way (sounds like fun, too bad we're gonna miss that! Muhahahahaha)

So we arrive at my uncle's place outside Toronto, the one with the indoor movie theatre and all that fun stuff (my girlfriend/wife was suitably impressed), spent the night there and headed over into the city to the condo the next day. It was right on the water this place, Harbourfront-something, near the base of Young street. We nosed my wife's Nissan Pulsar between a Porsche and a Beamer in the underground Hotel parking and were good to go! So THIS is what the rich people are doing!

The first night I sat and watched Skydome open. It took awhile but was very cool. This was a 3 room condo, big roman bath, great view over the water on one side, CN Tower and Skydome on the other. We had scored big on this favour! All we had to do was pay the cleaning lady at the end of our stay. The place had this magic key that gave you access to the building, the tennis courts, the jacuzzi and swimming pools. It even had some indoor walkway to some underground shops across the street. You didn't have to go outside if you didn't want to. Reclusive shut-in paradise it was.

My uncle was a movie-aholic so he had VHS tapes galore (remember those?). I remember watching Friday the 13th that weekend and saw the show COPS for the first time (we didn't get that in Ottawa).

So a few nights later, we hit the Pantages in our monkey suits, and met up with our Friends. They were complaining about the fleabag motel they ended up at, with cockroaches and hookers turning tricks next door and paper-thin walls, etc. The bus-ride down was uncomfortable etc. How was our place?
"Why it's kinda the same thing, pretty crappy, lets go get our seats!" No way was I going to tell them that it was some fricken 5 star hotel and that they paid some top hat-wearing guy who looked like he should be in a circus ring to open the door for us once we flashed him "The Key".

The show was excellent. Along with the Toronto production of "Tommy", Phantom was the best play I'd ever seen. Colm Wilkenson was doing the Phantom. He rocked!

After the show we ditched our friends lest they come back to our place and expose our lie(grin) - Some friends we were! Let's order room service! Muhahahahahaha. At the time, I had the foresight to say:
"Remember this place, because it probably isn't ever gonna happen again."

So tonight my 9 year old brought home a Phantom of the Opera grade 4 chapter book and she's read it all 4 times over. I dug out the DVD we have of a film version starring Gerard Butler of all people (THIS IS SPARTA!!!! not a bad voice on the guy) and we've watched the first half. I dug out our old play program from 20 years ago (my 5 year old is looking at the pictures), every one's humming the theme and now I have to go dig up the CD I have of it and find that Phantom mask I bought my wife for Christmas the same year.

Ahh memories. The next time I run into someone who went on that trip I'll have to tell them about the fabulous place we stayed at. I think I went down the elevator with Mookie Wilson (I wasn't into baseball at the time)!

I hear they're making a Phantom II in March 2010. Look out!

Zombieland Rocks!

Just got back from a sneak peek of Zombieland. This film is an instant cult classic! Loved the Van Halen-like soundtrack and THANK GOD FOR REDNECKS!

Scribblenauts for the Nintendo DS

A few months ago, I was watching "Reviews on the Run", a great Canadian tech show dedicated to video games on all platforms. I tune in every once in awhile to check out what's coming up for the any of the game consoles I own and to admire the hardware girls, the models that hold the computer peripherals while the two guys talk about them (Evangeline Lilly from Lost got her start on that show!). My kid has a Nintendo DS. On this day they talked about this new title called Scribblenauts and it caught my attention. The catch phrase is "Write Anything, Solve Everything". You are this little pixelated dude named maxwell and you have to collect these Starites, little rewards in the game, by solving puzzles. In some cases the Starites are sitting there onscreen and you just have to go over and pick them up. They could be, stuck in a tree, guarded by a rabid dog, hidden under a boulder, buried in the ground. To help you get them, Maxwell has the ability to summon any object he can think of (from a database of 28,000 words) by writing its name on the touchscreen.

Basically you write it's name, and it appears onscreen for you to interact with. For example. You see a Starite in a tree. You can summon an AXE to chop down the tree and get the starite, or you can summon a FLAME THROWER to burn down the tree and get the Starite (the Flame thrower is great for a lot of things, I keep going back to it). You can summon GLUE and an ANVIL and you can put the glue on the Anvil, chuck it in the tree at the Starite which gets stuck to the Anvil and falls to the ground. Or you can summon GOD and he can sit there and do nothing while you think of another way to get the Starite.

After a few minutes you forget about the game and just start typing in random words just to see if the developers were crazy enough to put them in the game. MANBEARPIG is a fun one! They even have BIGFOOT! The LOCH NESS MONSTER. ZOMBIES (if you have other characters on screen the zombies touch them and turn them into zombies - except god. He seems to dispel the zombies. At least he's good for something!). CLOWN and MIDGET are there, as well as HANDCUFFS, so you can handcuff the clown to the midget just for fun, it doesn't really help you solve the puzzle. You can summon an AIRCRAFT CARRIER! I tried TIME MACHINE as a joke and by this time I was not surprised to see some type of floating buggy show up and teleport me off to the stone age where I was able to jump on the back of a BRONTOSAURUS and take him back with me to the present where he stepped on the MIDGET and made him disappear.

True to life, the game has a JERK. He is an angry looking dude who shows up and starts punching you, unless he bumps into a zombie, in which case he becomes one of them and tries to eat your brains. BAZOOKA's are useful for dealing with JERKS, as is a TANK or an ATOMIC BOMB.

This may be the best game ever invented up until this point in time. Some hacker opened up the ROM file and found some 22,000 words and exported a list of them online. Then someone else claimed to have found 28,000 words. The developers said there are much more than that!

This is a great game. My kid is learning to spell, as am I. For instance, I thought Pterodactyl started with a T!

Cake wrecks!

My gawd but these are funny. Ever ordered a cake and have it go horribly wrong? Send this blog your photos! (Thanks to Don Ross for that funny site!)

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com

Lady in the van on the 401 wearing the the floppy hat, sunglasses rubber gloves and trenchcoat.

While on vacation last week we passed a van on highway 401 with Missouri plates. The driver was a woman and she was wearing these enormous sunglasses, a big floppy hat, a trench coat and yellow rubber toilet gloves. It was a very hot day, so it was weird.

My wife jokingly said "Check her out, she probably just came from committing a murder or something."

Say!!! That makes perfect sense! (she was probably wearing NASA astronaut diapers as well!) I asked her to take a picture of the weird lady for my blog. She didn't want to.
"C'mon!" I said.
"I'll drive up right next to her and honk the horn so she'll look at the camera!" (which was a joke).
"Don't do that! she'll probably kill us next!".

At this point we were beside her and she was looking at us and she weirded me out enough that I dropped back behind her. A few minutes later she was following us for the next couple of hours, all the way to Richmond Hill.

Let's hope she was just an extreme germ-a phobe and not a good candidate for a luminol test.

I finally went Wii Wii

So, I joined the rest of the planet and bought a Wii for the family. What a cute little device. It was very confusing at first, almost like it had been built in another country or something, but after figuring out that the ghostly hand on the tv was actually being controlled by the Wii remote it was off to the races! The kids think it's a hoot!

My only problem as I see it is to keep the Wii remotes from becoming embedded in any expensive things I have in the same room as the Wii itself. You need room to use this thing if you're not asking for trouble!

When doing research on this thing, there were tons of time series pictures of fat guys out there getting skinnier working out on the Wii fit device. Man. If I were a fat kid, that would be a sure-fire way to get my parents to buy me one! Try it kids!

I got some kiddie games for the tykes, Mario and the like. They seem to really like the re-make of the old "Punch Out" Game I played for a month straight on the Nintendo when I was floored with mono back in 1988. I was glad to see they also make adult fare. I'm looking forward to hacking up zombies on it after they go to bed.

Just what I needed! More entertainment!

I actually scored it secondhand with a pile of controllers off of Kijijji and within 20 minutes of getting it I went to see this guy, and bought this handy little device that you install between the DVD drive and the motherboard. You have to take your unit apart, which is not the easiest thing to do (triwing screws anyone?). This opens things up a bit and you can get into the homebrew market and also play backups of your discs (if your kids eat/scratch them like mine do/did).

I saw my first Digital 3D film.

I saw my first digital 3D film in a movie theater the other day. The whole 3D experience impressed the hell out of me. I took the kids to see G-Force, a kid flick featuring mission impossible commando hamsters (they'd kick Tom Cruise's Scientology ass!). NOW I can understand all the hype and buzz. Some high up at Disney stated flat out a few years ago that from now on, all of their computer animated features were going to be in 3D. I can see why. James Cameron has finally surfaced from the bottom of the Atlantic (where he's been since 1997's The Titanic) and will unveil his Avatar 3D movie project soon (Ooooohh).

I have to add at this point that I went to see this film about Guini pigs a day after making fun of my Friend Mike for being dragged by his wife to see it the day before. He is, and I quote, "Doomed by marriage to see each and every movie featuring a cute animal, till the end of time."

If you're like me, you remember the early days of anaglyph 3D films with the red/cyan insta-headache glasses from hell. When I was in the 6th grade Global TV did a big 3D comeback advertising blitz with old 3D movies from the 50's and 60's. The local newspaper's TV guide suddenly came with 2 pairs of 3D glasses each week and every Friday they'd run one of these horrible movies. I was at a sleep-over at my Friend Sufiyan's house the first time I saw a 3D film. He was from Pakistan, so picture his extended family and I, cloistered around a TV in the living room in the dark, all wearing these 3D glasses, with the extended commentary taking place in Punjabi (grin). Very surreal!

needless to say, it wasn't very good. I didn't see what all the fuss was about.

Now this new stuff! The cinema needs to have a Real 3D projector. It shoots out the film at 144 frames per second, 6 times the normal speed of 24 frames per second. It does 72 left eye and 72 right eye images with some other keyframe images every 1/24th of a second and a 2nd projector called a Z-screen sends out a feed that matches the polarity of the cool 3D glasses you're wearing in the theatre. This Z screen makes it so that your right eye is seeing a frame made for the right eye while your left eye is seeing almost nothing, then it repeats the process for the left eye, with the right eye getting no action. Your brain does the rest, using traditional persistence of vision to fit together the alternating left-right perspectives into something that makes stuff jump right out of the screen at you. Another nice thing is that you can actually move your head around to look at other parts of the screen and you don't lose the effect.

Very cool. Pay the extra $3. It's worth it. I wish I could have seen "The 300" in 3D.

Screw with your neighbors using these garage prints!

These are great! They're big weather-resistant prints that fit over your garage door to make it look like you have everything from a Hawker harrier jump-jet to a huge alligator in your garage! There's even a clean garage print, which might be the scariest of all.

http://www.style-your-garage.com/


Via Gizmodo

Break topics 2009-07-20 - dead horse to fake dog testicles.

At work I sometimes go to break with a rag-tag group of current and ex co-workers and colleagues.

We appear to be an eclectic bunch and I've noticed that the topic of conversations are ridiculously varied and change faster than Michael Jackson's face (oops, sorry. There I go makin' fun of a dead guy). The thing that I find interesting is how one key word will swing the conversation in a direction it has no place going in. It's very odd. So I jotted some of the topics down on my IPOD and I'll mention some of the more interesting ones here.

- Someone's horse died on the weekend. It was a gelding. I asked what a gelding was (confusing it with a gelfling, an elf-like creature in the movie The Dark Crystal). I was told it was a horse with no balls.
"Why would you cut a horse's balls off?" I asked.
"To make it calmer.." I was told.
"Would that work with me?"
"Probably. let's try it.. " no thanks..

Someone chimed in.
"My dog is fixed, and he doesn't seem to care.." I thought about this.
"I wonder if having no testosterone producing balls would affect whether or not you'd look at good-looking ladies?" (like the ones just leaving the cafeteria at that moment).

"Maybe the dog doesn't care because it's realized it has no reason to live!" someone said. Chuckles all around..

"Chemical castration in sexual predators is said to work, as long as they keep taking it".
someone else added. Suddenly I remembered something..

"In Beverly Hills there is a vet who will fix your dog and sew fake balls into his scrotum afterward so he doesn't feel bad about himself!" I added.

"I wouldn't buy fake balls for my dog!"

"Why not!" I asked. "What kind of person doesn't want the best for his pet?"

Fake boobs were mentioned. I wouldn't buy those either. I told the story about how fake boobs sink and real ones float and how I found out by accident at work one day.

So we went from a dead horse to fake balls in your dog's nutsack. Typical..

Someone told a bad joke that made us all get up and leave..

"How do you know when your girlfriend is getting fat?"
"When she fits in your wife's clothes!"

Groan!!!

I wasn't kidding about the fake dog nuts. Take a peek here: http://www.neuticles.com/.) A set for your 140-190 pound dog will run you $449 US!

Canine
Neuticles®ULTRAPLUS® Featuring ScarRetard

NU-XXLarge

140-190 lbs+

2.75"

$329

$449

The backyard neighbors 2009

One thing I'm liking about the new house is our backyard neighbors. There are none (at least not the two legged mammalian variety). I make it a habit now to look out the back every time I'm near a window and I always manage to spot some new beast. Lately it's been a pile of deer that used to only show up in the morning and then at dusk, but lately they wander by at all hours. The picture at the left is an 11x zoom from my kitchen balcony. At the lower right is a regular view with Mr deer exploded out (so it's still pretty far when they stick to the middle of the field).

I can't get very close to them because the birds rat me out the second I try to leave my backyard (must be some memorandum of understanding between the bird and deer union). This past winter we had a family of beavers right in back of us which were fun to watch. During any kind of thaw they'd come out and chop down a pile of trees and go back inside. One of my neighbors trashed their dam because he was afraid they'd drop a tree on his house and they just kinda left. I was a bit disappointed. I thought they'd be more tenacious than that and just cut down more trees to build the dam back up again (and maybe drop a tree on his house after all) but they left for greener pastures. I think they just relocated up the creek a few hundred meters. Now we have two muskrats living in the beaver dam. They are pretty shy and I haven't managed to take a picture of them yet.

One weird backyard neighbor we have is a gopher that lives under our porch. Just to put the next photo in perspective, we have a ravine lot with walk in entrance to our basement. One day we found a gopher on our balcony with his nose up against the glass sliding door looking into the kitchen. He had climbed up to the 2nd story balcony for some reason. he hung around for awhile and then climbed back down. He's done it other times because we can see nose prints at the bottom of the glass. I think he's casing the joint.

He's got a cousin that lives under this hunk of farmer junk out back. There's some sort of metal cylinder out there and this gopher hops up and sits there all day sunning. I guess he can see better from on top of this thing and likes it because no one can sneak up on him (like me).

Then there's the wild turkeys. Up until a few years ago, I didn't believe these things existing in Ottawa. I'd been out in the bush a lot and had never seen any until a co-worker told me about them and I managed to spot some by the side of the road a few weeks later. The males appear to be quite huge. Still, I'm amazed the coyotes I hear at night haven't rounded them up and eaten them(they must be too fattened up on rabbits and bunnies to care).

I was in the back shutting off my pool the other night and I almost stepped on a raccoon that was nosing about my deck. He treed himself and gave me dirty looks until I left.

He's one of those new neighbors I still have to get pictures of!

Trailerpark Geocachers meet Bigfoot 2 featured on Monster Island News

I was contacted last week by a writer for a bunch of sci-fi/horror/monster movie news websites who wanted to do a feature on the Bigfoot movies we're doing up here featuring the "geocaching" hobby. I dropped him some info and pointed him to the web portal I have with all of the material and status and he took my email and made it into a web feature.

It's kinda cool that there are people out there who troll the net for this type of thing and write about it. Even funnier is that I have had this site bookmarked for several years as it keeps track of all things Bigfoot (when it comes to movies that is!)

You can read the Monster island News article here!

For those of you who are interested, here the web portal for the two Bigfoot movies, the second one still in production, nearing completion!