Author: admin

Vero and I are quite happy that we finally got the invitations for the wedding sent out, as well as the entire website created. It took awhile and there’s a few extras that we’re planning…all in all, it was fun times creating some alter-egos for ourselves and to live out the dream of becoming rock stars.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably found this blog through a wedding invitation or the redirect from the old Palmer’s World at http://palmer.grumpster.com

Blogging definitely hasn’t been on my radar for some time…I’m trying to come up with other ideas of how to get me interested in documenting my life…perhaps video diaries or something like that would be more fun!

After many years at this URL, I’m moving towards a new site address:

https://www.veroryan.ca

This site will not be updated past this point.

Any Joss Whedon fans out there? Raise your hand.

Go see Cabin in the Woods if you are a fan. What a great film! In fact, I guess I can’t really talk about the film without spoiling it so from this point on, consider yourself forewarned.

***there be spoilers beyond this point, yarrr****

Cabin in the Woods starts off with a government complex with two guys joking around. What kind of horror film is this?! Then it goes to the classic “group of kids going on a camping trip” scenario and you realize that these government agents are somehow influencing/controlling the environment that they enter into. Meaning, once they get to the cabin in the woods, they can control how they act, what monsters will appear, etc.

I thought the film was super original and that’s what I enjoyed about it. Joss Whedon is a master of dialogue so it was fast paced and witty throughout. For those who entered into the film hoping for a straight up horror film…we were all disappointed. But I enjoy what it became because it was so original.

On Wikipedia, they had a great line about how the writers felt that horror films had swung the pendulum a little too far with the torture porn films out there like Hostel. I completely agree…at one point, I was more disturbed with the horror films coming out than entertained. I’m glad that the pendulum is swinging back.

We all know what happened the first time I tried to sell something on Ebay (see Zeppelin Tickets for Sale), but I have decided to test the waters again.

A few weeks ago I was over at Mike G’s house and he was talking about how he had a crate of old video games that he wanted to try and sell.  I have always wondered how selling on Ebay would work, so I took the games off his hands and went about selling them.

First step: Try and get them working!  This was more of a pain than I thought.  A lot of the games simply didn’t work anymore within the Nintendo console so I had to tear apart the NES console (which was a teenage boy’s dream come true) and cleaned it up.  I then used a lot of rubbing alcohol on the contact points of the game…over 20 years of oxidation has happened so we had to get rid of it somehow.  In some cases I even used some fine grit sandpaper to get rid of the oxidation!

In the end, some of the games are working, so I decided to take one of the rarest and see what I could get for it.

Second step: Do some research.  Dragon Warrior 3 was an excellent RPG back in the day and it still holds its value over time.  The cartridge itself has averaged between $40-$60 on Ebay, and that’s what it sold for, not what people were offering as a price to sell.  I was lucky in that I also had the box, the user manual (albeit in bad shape!) and the dust jacket.

Third step: Take some photos and post online.  I took my handy dandy iPad and snapped a few photos and created a listing.  The listing took me awhile to figure out…especially the shipping portion.  In the end I decided to ship it worldwide…who am I to deny the German who wants my old Nintendo game?  But the shipping was a little difficult to understand and I didn’t want to get screwed on the shipping charges so I added a little note in my entry indicating that I may have messed up and I’ll figure out the true shipping cost at the end of the bids.

Fourth step: Wait.  I waited a week and slowly saw the listing creep up.  During that time I managed to unpack a box for my office and lo and behold, I found a monster map for the game as well that I had thought had gone missing!  I decided to spend the 15 cents to add another picture to the listing (so far the listing cost me nothing) and updated the information.  The map alone had sold for $15 in a previous listing so I was sure to make some cash!

Fifth step: The end.  On the last day, the game had leaped from a hovering point of around $20 to $61!  Success!  I was happy with that amount.  But by the end of the listing, I cried victory when I saw that I made $88USD on the thing!  Incredible!  I believe I may have actually spent $90CAD on it when it came out twenty years ago!

Sixth step: Shipping.  Ebay offers the ability to print your own shipping label.  I had already weighed the package and measured it, so I figured what would be the harm?  In the end, the winning bidder sent me my money along with $6USD for shipping before I had sent him the quote.  I told him to wait for my quote of how much it would cost to ship, but in the end, it was only $2 extra so I said I would absorb the cost.  Ebay karma is with me!  (hopefully!).

So I would have to say that my first real adventure in selling things on Ebay was a success.  Granted, I had a rare item up for grabs which doesn’t hurt.  I doubt I will get more than $5-$10 for each of the other video games…but I have a box of my own and a box of Mike’s to sell (hopefully he can put the money to good use towards some camera gear!).  But it was really fun to see something that I treasured go for $88.  It’s a shame that I never held onto the boxes of all my old video games.  They were at home but I’m sure I just told Mom and Dad they could throw it out.

Vero and I had the pleasure of having Mom, Dad and Nanny Ruth over to the house over the Winterlude weekend.  Fun times were had and it’s always great to have Dad and Mom around to help out with little things that we can handle with some difficulty, but is nice to have a guiding hand.

Saturday we headed down to the Market to meet up with Lynn, Sue, Johnny and Aggie.  Unfortunately for all of us, everything Winterlude-wise was shut down.  The Canal, the ice sculptures, the snow sculptures…what a drag!  Especially for Nanny who desparately wanted to skate on the Rideau Canal!

We all wanted a bite to eat so we headed to the Clocktower Pub where he had to wait awhile for our food, but it was decent in the end.  The new IPA is a killer beer however.

However, by this time, it was 4PM and we all decided to head back to our house to hang out.  That was the extent of our Winterlude!  A trip for lunch downtown!  I did drive Nanny out to Kanata so that she could visit her cousin for the night.

We hung out at the homestead for the rest of the night and mowed down on some great chili which was made into a supreme chili after we added some homemade hot sauce/marinade that my friend Nat had acquired for me.  It was quite tasty which prompted Lynn to finish off about 18 bowls of chili to my dismay!

It was great to have Lynn, Sue, Johnny, Aggie and Mike and Joanne drop by to see the house!

Mike also showed up later and we hung out for a bit and I went to bed while he finished watching the Abyss on TV.

The next day was spent fixing the hot tub with Dad.  It turned out to be a larger project than foreseen.  Instead of being able to unscrew the air regulator for the jets, it was glued into the PVC pipe so we ended up having to cut out the entire t-section of PVC to get it out.  Bummer!  Then of course the regulator couldn’t be acquired that weekend so we had to put a temporary solution in so that the hot tub could still work, but the air regulator would be capped off.  We managed to get it done but then found out that the hot tub pump wasn’t working anymore!  Luckily, Dad gave a few twists to the shaft and it started working.  I was worried that we left it in the cold too long.  That’s the pain of having a hot tub in the winter!

We also started filming Mom and Dad’s old 8mm films with our new video camera.  That was an interesting experiment.  It took awhile to get everything in focus and looking as good as it could.  I even realized that hi-def was looking weird because it was picking up details from the actual projector screen!  It’s nice to have those film digitized though and it didn’t cost $200.

A great visit from the family that Vero and I appreciate every time!

…and Benoit and I were blown away!

After a long day at work, Benoit came along with me to see David Chilton speak…otherwise known as the Wealthy Barber (or the Healthy Barber as Vero likes to call him!).  We grabbed a seat right before it started and it was two hours of non-stop hilarity for me.  Mr. Chilton is quite hilarious.  I was cracking up all the time.

I was also impressed by how he spoke, and how he spoke non-stop for two hours without breaking a sweat.  Incredible.

His talk involved three separate parts:
1) Looneyspoons – The story of how Greta and Janet Podleski contacted him for help in self-publishing their own book.  (think abouit that for a minute!).  They ended up being the creators of the Looneyspoons cookbook!
2) Financial information involving annuities, reverse mortgages, TFSAs, RRSPs and index funds.  I really enjoyed how he presented index funds by splitting up the room and making us realize that if one group chose an index fund of 8%, that the rest of the room can collectively get 8%…but that means one group may get 5% and the other group gets 3%.  Interesting.
3) A motivational story about Canada’s favourite past time…complaining!  I am a fairly positive person generally…so much so that a few of my friends get annoyed at that when they want to complain about something.  In the end, we have it pretty darn good compared to a lot of the rest of the world, so why bother complaining?  Case in point…Mr. Chilton was at a charity golf tournament and at the 15th hole the event got rained out.  Then as everyone was sitting there eating steak and enjoying some wine, all they could do was complain about it.  Think about THAT for a second.

He also talked about a boy who had muscular distrophy (I could be wrong on that front) who was there with his mother and was having the time of his life.  He got up on stage and raved about how lucky he was to be invited to this charity golf tourney and how he has met many of his heroes today.  Imagine how the people complaining about missing three holes of golf felt after that!  Later on in the night, Mr. Chilton ended up winning the door prize of a trip for two anywhere in the world and he gave it to this boy and his mother.  Incredible!

Months later Mr. Chilton read an article about how a mother who was dying of cancer wanted to bring her child to DisneyWorld and applied for the Make a Wish foundation but was denied because their mandate only helps kids who are sick.  This boy with the ‘trip anywhere in the world’ tickets decided to give them to this mother!  Incredible again…quite inspiring.  What’s even better is we find out later that American Airlines contacted the boy and got him another set of tickets so he could go on that trip with his mother as originally planned.

As I walked out I received a copy of The Wealthy Barber Returns and it’s next on my reading list.  I read a few chapters already and I remember the original book being a little more geared towards the finances whereas this one (so far) deals more with outlooks on life.  I shall give a full review when it’s done!

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2012/02/15/pol-gun-registry.html?cmp=rss

Here’s an interesting news item in relation to the long-gun registry.  Two NDP MP’s break party rank and vote (presumably) in favour of what their constituents wish for and not what their party wished for.

I say “Good on ’em!”.  Must be a hard balancing act to manage your constituents expectations as well as your own party’s.  The only thing I hate about all of this is that they publicly get called out on this fact and its said that there will be repercusions.  One would think that would happen regardless, why does it have to be said?