Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Done Finals!

I am done finals! I wrote my last (and only) final yesterday. It went OK. Not amazing, but I'm pretty certain I will pass. So I'm glad to be done school, for a little while anyway. Yesterday I also got my correspondence package in the mail for the course I'm taking over the summer, via Independent Studies. They sure don't let me have a break. So I'm taking one! No school related stuff for the rest of the week.

Unless there is some sort of school related mission, or side quest, in GTA4. Then I will be doing it. That game is pretty great. The lighting, and the changes during the day, from sunrise to sunset, the weather, the tons of things to do. And I'm not even very far into the game. I just unlocked weapon stores. I can finally buy my own gun. I have also already played like 20 games of darts, 5 games of pool, only gone bowling once, because I suck at it. And I'm in love with the radio stations. It's a little humourous watching me play (I'm sure) as I steal a car then drive maybe 1/2 a block away, just to get far enough from the guy I stole the vehicle from to make sure he's not trying to get it back. Then I usually park for 2 or 3 minutes, picking a radio station, and making some phone calls. Once I have my relaxing Jazz music pumping out the stereo, it's off to cause some chaos. I'm pretty excited to try some of the multiplayer modes.

Planning is well underway for my birthday trip to Edmonton, to see Rush. I'm getting pretty excited, and I am glad I finally have some people who are willing to come. Hopefully I can find enough space for everyone to crash. I might throw a tent in and pitch it in a friends backyard. I'll run that by the people who's house I'll crash at.

Finally, to wrap up this post, I feel I have to link to this comic. I found it quite enjoyable.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Fire and Ice

"Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice." - Robert Frost

I had a crappy morning. It's just after 7am, and I already hate today.
I'll elaborate, with a long back story that I doubt many of you care about. Too bad, it's my blog, I'll ramble about whatever I want. You don't like it? Here's a video of a fat guy, a geek, and a midget dancing. It seems to be like the Mac arena, but not english.

OK so the weather this weekend was stupid. I ran some errands Saturday morning. swept the snow off my car, it wasn't too bad. The Garden Center was empty, which was nice. I picked up a nice window box for my herbs, and some more mint seeds. So I transplanted my current herbs (hopefully they transplanted well) and added a couple others. My living room window is now reasonably crowded with plants. It's nice. I can't wait until some of the herbs are usable.

After that batch of errands, I didn't leave the house again until this morning for work. I walked out to my car at the usual time, and found a good thick coating of ice covering my car. Awesome. So I start my car and start scraping. After 5 minutes, having made no progress, I give up, and figure I'll let the defrost do most the work. I come back 15 minutes later. I am now later than I like to be, but since I start so early, I'm still reasonably sure I'll beat everyone else to work. After 15 minutes, I still have a coating of ice on my car, but there is a crack at the bottom, where the defrost hits, so I can spend 5 more minutes scraping an area clear enough to see out. Awesome. I hop in the car. I can't really see behind me, or to either side, but I can see where I'm going. I just won't change lanes. Was maybe dangerous, but I know there is no traffic Monday mornings at 6 am. I should be OK.

I was. There was next to no traffic. I moved a little slower than I usually do, but I was also unsure of how the roads would be. If my car had ice on it, I'm sure the roads would have some spots too. So I get under the Warman Road bridge and there's a big 5 ton truck with it's hazards on ahead of me. It's still moving. It looks to have a lot of exhaust coming out. But it's cold, so exhaust is more visible, and he had his hazards on, so I just assumed he was way overloaded, and straining to move it's load. Not to worried. So I pass the truck. Now my visibility drops to 0 through it's exhaust cloud. All I can see is my windshield turning black from the oil that was mixed in the exhaust. Cool.

So I get out of the exhaust cloud. I try my wipers to remove some of the oil now coating my ice coated car. They don't do anything, as oil repels water, and they have some ice still on them. Sweet. I pull over, and grab the shammy I always keep in my car, and spend a min or two wiping the oil off my little ice cleared spot. Get to work with even further reduced visibility. Spent another 5 minutes at work wiping as much oil as possible from my windshield. I'm hoping that the rest of my car had enough ice on it still to protect it from the oil. Hopefully the ice melts off, and takes the oil with it. Well see come this afternoon.

End result is I got to work a good 30 minutes later than I like to be there (was still the first one there, by about 30 minutes or so), and I likely will have to wash my car today. I hate Mondays. Definitely was a very bad start to the week. At least I'm taking two days off next week. Unfortunately it's for my final...

Arg.

So on to lighter things. Those who know me, should (maybe?) know that I'm a pretty big tower defense fan. So when my Roomie was playing around the new PSN store on his PS3, and found a demo for a tower defense like game, with local co-op, I was pretty excited. We bought the full version after about 10 minutes with the demo. That was just before supper. We didn't stop playing until midnight. We didn't know it was midnight. The game is pretty fun. Here's some screenshots. It's reasonably cartoon-ish, and pretty basic and straight forward. Makes it easy to get into though. I think I'll have to make my own tower defense game soon though. I'll add it to the list of projects I want to make.

Well Work time. I'll keep you updated on the progress (or lack thereof) of my TD game.

Friday, April 18, 2008

Last Week

So the pending post about why the break in blogging. I was doing really well, and bam, week off.

Well, The first bit was just me being lazy. It is quite challenging to find something to write about every day. Sometimes it takes a couple days for something to come up worth writing about. That held me up for the first couple days.

I was hit pretty hard with the flu on Wednesday. Missed work Wednesday through Friday (inclusive). I'm a little confused though. My boss seems to insist I went to work Wednesday morning, then went home sick around nap time. I don't think I did. If I did, I was sicker than I thought, because I totally don't remember it. Come Friday I was feeling better, not 100%, but I could have maybe gone into work. However, I had 2 gigs booked on Saturday, and a wedding party that evening. I decided to stay home and get closer to 100% than to push it, and potentially be sick at the gigs. I think I made the right choice.

The gig's went well. The first, a wedding ceremony, was smooth, and I have heard nothing but good things. The second, an Art Auction, was a little more frustrating. I wanted to get out of there as early as possible, which I was told would be 8-8:30ish. I didn't get out of there until after 10. They were a bit behind schedule. That meant I missed a lot of the wedding party, but still had a good time.

Spent all of Sunday trying to get my sleep schedule back on track. It wasn't very successful, but by Monday, things seemed to be normal. We had beautiful weather that weekend, and I had intended to get some yard work stuff done, and just ended up not having time for it. So I was going to postpone it to this weekend, but our forecast says snow. And lots of it. I'll likely end up just lounging around the house. I do want to repot my plants inside. They are doing great, but I need to move them to a bigger container. I'm thinking about picking up a nice window box, about 10" wide, and 3 feet long, I figure. I'll probably pick up some new seeds while I'm at it, and start some more things in my current pots. Try to get a mint plant going again (stupid dud seeds) and get some things sprouting to transplant outside in my garden.

Maybe I'll get ambitious and take some pictures of my growing garden. I'll add it to the list after projector pictures, which are also a wee bit overdue. Someday.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Weird dreams are creepy

April 16th morning nap.
Weirdest nap ever.

I was at my parents house, except my grandparents lived there. No idea if it was their house now, or they lived there with my parents or what, that wasn't the important thing, it was just odd.
Then I went to the new basement, as there was one below the current basement. It was just like a unfinished concrete basement, but still had linoleum on the floor.
I curled up and had a nap, conveniently there was a sleeping bag there. (If you nap in your nap, does that count as two naps?)
When I woke up, there was a box beside me, and I knocked the box getting out of my sleeping bag, and a ton of mice ran out.
Then I noticed the small field of bamboo starting to grow in the basement. I kicked a couple and the cut cleanly with my foot, but then I noticed a little pile of dirt, so I proceeded to kick it.
It was an anthill, full of the hugest, fastest ants I've ever seen. Bigger than the mice. They were pissed off, and started coming after me, so I panicked and ran. They chased me upstairs, but gave up once I was around the front door.
So I was going to tell my parents about it, who conveniently enough had just pulled up and were loading some car I had never seen before onto a trailer.
Then as I was about to tell them, I woke up.

Weird dream.

Then, to make it even more ominous, there was a huge Raven sitting on the hanger right behind my car, caw-ing at me. Which of course, has bad symbolism.

It was a great nap... I physically feel very refreshed. Mentally taxing though, as I'm a little shaken up.
I am just having a warm glass of tea to calm my nerves. No alcohol to help unfortunately.



A Post about the previous week, how busy I was, and being ill to follow. Feel free to analyze my mental state from this dream. Post about it in the comments, We'll see how crazy I really am.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

I hate April Fool's Day

It is the dumbest day ever. Seriously. What good is doing a prank when everyone is expecting a prank? Why do we have a day specifically to do that? So essentially we make it so no one can get any reliable news for 1 day, just so people can be tense and especially attentive for a day? And why April 1st? I might have to start an elaborate day of Hoaxes in 6 months. I'll call it October Fool's Day. Give me 5 years, and I'll make it as big a holiday as Meatfest!

Played some Rock Band yesterday. Tried out the new GladOS song from Portal. It was most enjoyable. I was only on Hard, playing bass and singing, like I usually do in our band. I feel I did OK, like 90%+ on both. We actually set it up as the middle of a pretty fun 5 song custom set. It was most enjoyable. Then after that, the roomies headed to bed, and I tried to work on my solo guitar career again. 2 songs away from finishing it on Expert. So frustrating. I failed out at about 0% on Green Grass and High Tides. That song just goes on far too long.

Looking like no Road Trip for me to Edmonton this weekend. I'm thinking of rescheduling it to mid month. Hopefully that works for others. I suppose I should remember that I will have finals eventually too. Stupid late finals.

PureDoxyk is getting close to finishing her book on Polyphasic sleeping. I'm pretty excited to get a copy. That's currently a weak area of the field, and I think it will be a well written resource for all people interested in Polyphasic sleep, even those of us whom have been doing it for awhile. I'll update you all again when it's released. Let me know now if you are interested in a copy and live near me, maybe we can make a combined order and save some on shipping.