Last night in class, Jen looks at a picture of Nick Nolte and says “Man, that guys looks like he’s homeless!”
If only she knew what she said was so true.
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Month: October 2008
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Ramping Up – Things
Thanksgiving weekend is fast approaching and it will be a whirlwind ride. Vero and I are heading up to Hearst on Friday, heading back to Kapuskasing on Saturday to go to Samantha’s wedding (Samantha is Mike’s sister for all of you paying attention). It shall be a fun time. Heck, it wasn’t until I looked at the itinerary that I realized Carol is in the wedding party and then I realized “Hey, I’m going to see Carol and Danny this weekend!”.
Vero has returned from her trip to Winnipeg which was amazing fun but it’s a shame that she has returned to work where half a million major projects have sprung up at the same time. I think her entire team is burning the candle at both ends but like anything, it will pass and things will get back to normal.
We are both going to be filming Samantha and Marc-Andre’s wedding this Saturday which should be fun. Vero definitely does not have any time to produce/edit the film so that task will fall to me. I’m excited to craft something but at the same time am realizing that it shall be a long process to edit the video. Maybe I should let the couple know that it won’t be ready until at LEAST October 2009!
I also have two midterms coming up next week and one of them is in Flash. That one is a little intimidating as I like to program in Adobe Flash by examples of things I’ve created before but I won’t be able to do that. I personally feel that is lame…if I can’t remember the exact details of how I went about something, I look at how I did it before. Classic example is changing the light bulb in my headlight this week. I couldn’t remember how the clip holds the bulb down so I had to go to the other one that I replaced months ago to determine how I did it. I think the real test should be if I can determine how to solve the problems with all the tools at my disposal, not if my brain can remember tasks.
One of the more enjoyable things that have occurred in the past week is that I am reading Sandworms of Dune which is the final Dune novel. It’s pretty good and I’m excited to see how it will end. I really enjoy the Dune series.
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Nom ore durnk em aleing
Thanks to Carol for pointing out this amazing new feature appearing on Gmail.
I guess everyone’s had their share of drunken emails in the past (especially if you were in college at the time!) so Gmail has implemented a feature that asks you mathematical questions in order to send off an email. If you fail to get them right, no email sent! This feature sounds like an April Fool’s joke to me!
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-in-labs-stop-sending-mail-you-later.html
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Cost of a Car Trip
This site calculates how much it would cost you to take a trip somewhere by looking at the gas mileage you get with your vehicle.
It would be really cool if you could manually input the price of gas yourself. Perhaps you can…I only looked at it for three minutes. It said it would cost me $33 to drive to Toronto.
iplaying: Money Babies – The Dears (Missiles)
I must say that I’m not really on the ‘up’ concerning Star Wars subjects of late. I knew there would be a TV series starting up sometime soon but lo and behold, it started this past Friday so I downloaded the first two episodes.
They are great! The graphics are amazing. This isn’t your 1967 Spider-Man series! The series takes place between Episode II and III and I am loving the fact that Asajj Ventress is back as she didn’t appear in the movies but was tied into everything which was the Clone Wars.
I also like how there will be different facets of the universe shown in each episode. For example, the first one dealt with Yoda and three clone warriors in a battle. The next episode focussed on Anakin and his new apprentice Asoka? Ashoka? Looking for survivors from a fleet which was destroyed. This let us see a little more about the Jedi Master Plo Kloon as well.
All in all, I think I’ll really like how they will add a lot more to the characters that you may only see a bit of during the films. Granted, Yoda and Anakin are major players in the film, but I enjoyed seeing what makes the clone warriors tick (they all had different hairstyles which I thought was neat…just because you’re a clone doesn’ mean you can’t have a different haircut).
Check out the series! It should be excellent.
Saturday was quite entertaining. I woke up and thought about fixing the eavestrough (attempt #78). I even called Dad to pick his brain on the subject.
However as soon as I got off the phone with Dad, Rob calls me up and wants to know if I want to go down to Merivale with him to check out free-to-air satellite receivers with Trevor. Heck, why not.
So we head off to Merivale and meet Trevor at some electronics shop. The world of illegal satellite is something to wrap your brain around if you don’t know much about it already. My mind was spinning but eventually I caught the basics. Trevor ended up getting the whole package; two satellite dishes, an HD receiver with PVR capabilities…the whole sha-bang. Awesome.
Now, if I were to look into getting free-to-air satellite, I would not need an HD receiver as I most definitely do not have an HD TV. So I’m looking at $120 for a receiver, especially if I don’t need to buy a dish as Rob said he had a spare one.
It’s something to think about. We spend $30 on television each month now. So if I managed to get satellite for 4 months, it would pay itself off. Plus, there’s a bonus of the fact that I could directly tape all my shows to an external hard drive which would take stress off of our bandwidth limit issue via Rogers.
I think I’ll think about this over the next few months (read: After Christmas). It may be worthwhile and if anything, it would be cool to get Pay-per-view movies again!
Afterward, we headed to Grace O’Malleys for a pint. Rob and I commented it had been many years since we had been there and nothing really had changed (which is fine by us).
I then headed home and Mike and I went to Eric and Annie’s for some excellent dinner and we had good intentions of playing Settlers of Cataan but ended up just hanging out on the couch and chatting for a few hours and then headed home. At least I got to listen to some excellent Okoumé.
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Memory: The Tale of Illegal Satellite
On Thursday I hung out with Carrie. On my way to the hospital where she works, I spied someone partaking in an age old tradition and I decided we NEEDED to partake as well that evening. As soon as I picked her up, we headed to Wal-Mart where Carrie was wondering what I had planned.
I headed to the toy section and scoured the shelves while she guessed what was going on. I couldn’t find the item in question (with just reason, it was end of season) but I managed to ask an employee where I could find it and sure enough, we found the last one in the store.
A kite.
That’s right, we were going to fly a kite! When’s the last time you’ve flown a kite? I think I flew a kite back in elementary school. I still have this vivid memory of flying kites one afternoon out on a windy day and if you pull on the cord it dives. I still remember Joshua diving into mine and mine went spiraling out of control.
Anyhow, we headed to the cash and we assembled it while in line. This wasn’t your average kite. This thing was a meter long and was in the form of an airplane. Carrie commented that as soon as it went up in the air, people would think the Gay Pride Parade was in town as it was rainbow colours! I begged to differ as it was multi-coloured, but surely not rainbow coloured. Either way, we picked it up for a smoking five bucks (clearance item) and went into the parking lot.
Unfortunately the wind had died down and the only way I could get it in the air was if I ran along with it. Carrie kept yelling “Run! Run!” but it just wouldn’t get enough air. We then headed out to a giant hill on Riverside where I thought we would be closer to the wind currents but we didn’t manage to get much out of that adventure either (although we ran around in the brush for awhile and got some exercise).
All in all, a giant failure of kite-flying, but a grand success of having a hilarious time.
We then went to the grocery store to pick up some essentials to make tacos; my request for a birthday dinner from Carrie. I don’t know why I’m on a taco kick as of late, but I can’t get enough of them. Every time I think of tacos I think of Eric coming over to my place when he was 16 and staying for dinner and it was the first time he had ever eaten a taco. I had a good chuckle at him trying to assemble this thing.
We also picked up some beverages which included a Pumpkin beer (naturally) which we were intrigued about. In the end, the Pumpkin beer was drinkable but I definitely wouldn’t recommend it. Ugh.
Tacos were great and the beer was great and before you know it, Alex and Holly had arrived home and we started watching a bit of the new Rambo film on Alex’s new free-to-air satellite dish. This reminded me of the days where we used to have illegal satellite dish and every Saturday morning the boys would settle in and watch all the new pay-per-view films until the afternoon. Rambo was quite over the top and I can’t wait to see the entire film as it is ludicrous. We then surfed some other interesting channels and I settled into the guest room for the night. I woke up in the morning with a fright as I had no idea where I was and that comforter was so heavy I thought I was going to suffocate! I did manage to realize where the heck I was and headed to work shortly after that.
Thanks for Carrie for the excellent birthday dinner and to the others for the great company for the night of fun!
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Review: Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Last night after watching the concert DVD, Pascal, Mike and I watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall which is one of those lovely Judd Apatow productions (Knocked Up, Pineapple Express, etc.). It was quite hilarious. It follows Jason Segel (who actually wrote the film) and Kristen Bell (our very own Veronica Mars) as they end a five year relationship. Jason Segel is having a tough time getting over her so he takes a vacation to Hawaii and happens to stumble into Kristen Bell with a new man in tow and pity takes over the film but is interspersed with hilarious parts.
I found the funniest part about this film are all the secondary/cameo roles in the film. My favourite was when Jason Segel is in bed with a woman and it turns out to be Carla Gallo who played his girlfriend in the Apatow ‘Undeclared’ tv series (where a lot of the Apatow alumni appear). There was also Jonah Hill (of Superbad fame…a film I still have yet to see) who plays a hilarious waiter. So there are definitely a lot of cameo roles that keep the laughter up.
The only complaint I had about the film is that they make Kristen Bell out to be a harsh, harsh woman and she just can’t be that. She’s too hot (and Vero agrees) to be an evil person.
Go rent this now. It had us laughing all night. Too bad Pascal realized she had already seen it 30 seconds into the film.
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Review: David Gilmour – Live in Gdansk
Turns out Gdansk is in Poland. I didn’t know that until watching this concert DVD.
Last night after class I head home on a dreary, rainy night and have a welcome surprise at the door waiting for me. My shipment from Amazon! In it is the holy grail of David Gilmour…his new live concert DVD. Instead of paying $60 for this package I opted for ordering it from the States and only paying $30 + Shipping.
This set includes a two CD set of the entire concert, a DVD of ‘most’ of the concert (only missing six songs) and a bonus DVD which includes a bunch of other appearances in promoting his live disc “On an Island” as well as the On An Island album mixed in 5.1 surround sound. This particular concert in Gdansk was the final concert of his tour, the only one to feature an orchestra, the only one to feature the song ‘Good Day for Freedom’ and may very well be the final concert Richard Wright (keyboards for Pink Floyd) played before passing away. Quite the monumental event which was captured on film.
I popped in the DVD, cranked the stereo and enjoyed the sweet, sweet sounds from Gilmour’s guitar coming through the speakers. It was a great concert and I enjoyed the orchestra bits as well. It wasn’t a grand contrast like Metallica’s S&M film considering Pink Floyd is nowhere near heavy metal so the orchestra fit well. They even played Echoes with is 30 minutes of greatness. All in all, this is a great concert DVD for David Gilmour fans and I haven’t even touched the second disc yet which seems to be even more entertaining with it containing Echoes (Acoustic) as well as three jam sessions with the band. That shall be cool. Plus there is a web access portion of the disc to get limited edition audio tracks. Haven’t checked out what they are yet however.
iplaying: Echoes – David Gilmour (Live in Gdansk)