Rush

I had a freaking awesome birthday.
I went to Edmonton to visit some friends, and go to a Rush concert. It was sooo gooood!

Rush should be considered a super group. It has like some of the best players on their instruments. The concert was just overwhelming. I had an extra ticket too, and was able to sell it with NO effort at all on the street just before the concert started. I had just kind of assumed I'd be eating the price of the one ticket. Worked out awesome. Our seats were great too, 16th row. But there was an aisle in from of us, so we had a ton of space, and no one directly in front blocking our view. Couldn't have asked for much better. Big downside now, is I have to learn a bunch of new songs on Bass, which are pretty difficult songs. Should be fun though. Maybe I'll try to wait until I get my new kit and put it together.

Also did some shopping at Ikea. Picked up some new glasses, which are nice. I also bought a new Sofa Bed, as I needed a new bed, and with my sleeping schedule I don't use a bed too often. I'm pretty excited to get it all setup. I had to clean my room out though, which was long overdue. I ended up getting rid of an overflowing garbage bag of clothes. Downside is now I'm a little low on clothes, but I needed to get rid of a lot of them. Next paycheque I'll end up picking up a couple pairs of pants, and some new shirts. I could use a decent pair of shorts or two as well, now that allergy season is dying down, I can start going outside again.

Started some of the planning for our intended Canada Day(ish) party we'll likely end up throwing. If you know where I live, your invited. Not entirely sure what day(s) we'll be partying, but no one in our house has any plans. Might discuss picking up a keg with the roomies, and set it up Friday or Saturday, and hopefully finishing it off before Tuesday night. Shouldn't be too hard. One roomie is out of town until Sunday, as he has a cousin's wedding or something lame like that. Might delay the festivities a little.

Latest obsession: American Gladiators. A lot of the shows we usually follow have very recently ended their season. American Gladiators is taking over. It's very enjoyable. So far all the new gladiators are pretty cool. Phoenix is a babe, Jet and Rocket have bulked up a bit from last season. Crush still rules. I like most of the new games too, although the new game Vertigo is a little lame. No direct competition with the Gladiator? Plus Phoenix just worked the two contestants in the only time I've seen it so far. I'm pretty excited to see the rest of the new gladiators, and how the rest of the season shakes down.

Also very excited to get my projector back from it's fan repairs. That should make American Gladiators even more awesome!

And I'm trying to embed more links in my posts. Let me know if that's something you like. Takes a little more effort, but then people can actually look up more info when they want to, a little easier anyway.

New Day

Yay!
Pollens are down to Moderate today, almost 1/2 as high count wise as yesterday. Which means I can see again. And I can trim my pill intake to closer to the recommended dosages. YAY!

Saw this today: http://dearjanesample.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/fun-with-brands/
It's someone how made a image of all the brands she used / was exposed to in a day. I thought it was very interesting, but also reveals maybe a little more about the person than you wanted to know. I disagree with some things, like showing a logo more than once in a time period. I'm not interested in how much starbucks you consume for instance, it's just interesting to see when you are exposed to it. Also putting weed in as a brand isn't true, as it's not a brand. I'm thinking about doing something similar. Maybe I will for tomorrow. I'll try to make a record, but after I finish, we'll see if I post it. It is a Friday, and I don't want it to be too incriminating. Hopefully I remember to start it in the morning.

Dying

I am.
I hate allergy season. I am typing this with my rrs pinched shut except for brief moments. I hope spellcheck can fix most of the words. My eyes are killing me. I definitely shouldn't' drive. and as a result, I haven't made it to work. I's only 9am, and I have already hitten the recommended max dosage in a day.
Now I'm torn between do I walk to the drug store to get some anti-hesitamines with a different active ingredient? or do I just wealk to minor emergency and try to get a presciption one that is much stronmger? he catch being, of course, walking means outside, which is where the bad stuff is, which means I will likely have an evenworse reaction.
I think I'll just ice my eyes while I'm trying to decid.

Any suggestions on what to do all day without using my eyes? I can only listen to music for so long beore I want to do something else, but being blind sucks.

FRIDAY!!!

Yay! it's the Friday before the long weekend!
So we had a big code lock yesterday, which made for a somewhat busy week. I've been a little ahead, so it hasn't been too bad. But as a result, and to welcome the 2 new employees, and to usher in summer, we're having a BBQ at work today. We also got Rock Band approved as a "Team Building Exercise." I'm pretty excited. I suspect that this afternoon will be spent playing Rock Band, and somewhat writing off the day. Due to the Xbox returns we had to do, and the fact all the bonus songs are on N's tag, we don't have access to all the songs we have off line, here at work. It is a reasonable amount though. I checked last night. While playing my band. I need more practice singing and playing guitar at the same time. I'm a little rusty.

My sleep schedule has been a little off lately. I haven't been sleeping well, because it's nice out now, and places get hot. Also, it's allergy season. So I have to open windows to cool of the far too hot places, which lets all the pollens in, which makes me cry. Hopefully the main pollen season is ending soon. Some very nice weather this weekend. Hopefully I can get some yard work done. I'd like to hit the water too, and get a bit of kayaking in. A friend is in town from Edmonton too, and an old co-worker is having a BBQ Saturday for a wedding anniversary party. It also should be very fun. I suspect the meat I take will be awe inspiring. There will be lots of beer consumed and likely even more Rock Band played. Shaping up like a great long weekend.

Movie Theater

I went to Iron Man this weekend. It was an awesome movie. But the entire movie experience was ruined by the Theater. I don't intend to go back. Ever. Through the entire movie, the bottom half of the screen was out of focus, and shaking. Text on the bottom of the screen was painful to read. There were times when it was making me nauseous. Oh top of that, I paid $10 each (with 3 other friends, that's $40) to get in, and can't get food because it's too expensive. So, for that amount of money, I can BUY the Blu-ray, watch it in my basement, where I know the projector is focused, and not shaking, Make whatever I want to eat, and drink whatever I want, while relaxing on extremely comfortable Bean Bag chairs.
To me, it's a no-brainer. The only improvement is I can see a movie in the Theater usually before it comes out on Blu-Ray. That said, the quality of Iron Man on the weekend I'd say was about as good as my projector looks upscaling a DVD. So I can download a DVD rip usually a couple weeks after it comes out in the theater. Save tons of money, enjoy it more, What's the selling feature?

My Corsica finally sold! So I'm getting a cheque that I wasn't budgeting for. Means more spending money at the end of the month when I'm going to Edmonton for Rush. I'm also intending to buy a new electric Bass guitar, but that was in the budget. Now I might get a couple more options I was somewhat sitting on the fence with. We'll see. I'm intending to get a kit, so I can assemble it myself, and customize it a little. Should be fun.

Other, and final, thing I want to discuss. I just recently finished a great book. It's called "Little Brother" by Cory Doctorow. It's a book somewhat inspired by 1984 (the book not the year... I had to make that clarification with a roomie). It's about a terrorist attack and a teenager who gets wrongly accused and mistreated because he is assumed to be a terrorist. This leads him to essentially start up a rebellion. It's quite entertaining, I've been trying to promote it as much as I can. It's released on the Creative Commons license, so you can get a copy online, for free. (http://craphound.com/littlebrother/) One of my favourite features is the technology used in the book. It's all real technology. The website gives some explanations, and how-to's to use, or make, a lot of it. Highly recommended.

But back to work, Setting up a lot of tests today.

Day 360

So I checked the math to see what day I was on for my sleep schedule, and I was a little surprised to see it's been 360 days. I'm getting very close to a full year. I have lasted a lot longer than I suspected I would, and I think longer than most people thought I would too. I see no reason to quit this sleep schedule. Until work decides I have to, or a girl appears with good reasoning to stop, I don't see myself stopping any time soon. I still like it.

My projector has a fan dying, so it's been out of commission for the last couple of days. I need to take it in to get the warranty work done to check it out. Makes me sad though. I've already conceded that it's going to cost me about $500 a year to keep it running, due to replacing the bulb... Just one of the sacrifices I'm willing to make for a sweet home theater setup. Hopefully this fan issue isn't something that occurs regularly.

Not much else new with me. Getting pretty excited for my trip to Edmonton at the end of the month. Rush will be fun. I got a "new" computer at work today. It's really Krystian's old one, but it's a significant improvement for me. Now I'm just working on getting everything on it working as well as my old piece of crap. It's pretty amazing how much crap I had built up on the old one. Lots of folders that aren't moving machines. I look forward to having sound, and a machine over twice as good as my old one.

That's about all I can think of on short notice for this update. Hopefully something really exciting will happen in the next couple days I can post about. I somewhat doubt it though.

GTA4

Sorry to bore you with more of these posts. I'm just in love with that game. I wanted to relate a conversation we had at home last night. Both myself, and one of my roomies are playing through it at the same time. If you aren't as into Video Games you may want to move on now. We were discussing missions to see how far the other was.

We quickly determined that we both had fully finished Vlad's missions, as he's the first main mission guy. So I started talking about the cool part of one of his missions where you are jumping between buildings chasing him across the rooftop. Nathan looked at me like I was on crack. He never did that. At all. So I was dumbfounded. How do you finish Vlad's missions without doing that? That's part of one of Vlad's missions.

SO we went through the whole mission. So you chase a guy in your car, yeah, we both did that, then he gets to a construction site and takes off on foot. Yup, both did that. He runs up the site using some ladders to get to the top. Yeah, we both did that. Then he climbed up a crane. Nope. Not for Nathan. Apparently Nathan is a sharpshooter. Once Nathan got to the roof, he took him out with his pistol. I however, can't hit the wide side of a barn with my shooting, and my spraying the area with my sub machine gun did not take him out. Thus after following him up the crane, we jumped roof to roof, until he slipped, and I got to stomp on his hands to make him fall to his death (AWESOME!!!).

I was very surprised that this game allowed for that flexibility. We both had the same mission, at the same location, but very different means of getting to the end result. Both worked. Mine also had a choice to save him, and let him go free, but I'm an ass, so that never was really an option. Nathan never got that option. Makes me wonder about a lot more of my hits. How many of them am I just killing before I get to the point where they surrender? What sort of impact will that have on the future parts of the game?

The whole Nathan being a better shot than me wasn't news though. That's how it pans out in all video games. Nathan is the slow guy, takes him forever to get anywhere, extremely extremely cautious, takes a day to set up his shot, then snipes them. I slap on some armour, grab some sort of automatic, and charge all over town guns a blazing. Makes us a pretty good team, as I attract attention and gunfire, as he cleans things up. It'll make some interesting online team game dynamics. I'm excited to see where some other friends fit in the mix.