The Last Haul of 2005?

I've been unusually quiet - mostly due to the fact I've been sitting at my family home for nearly a whole week now. But I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that my junk-buying for 2005 has come to an end.

As I told myself earlier, I did end up opening up that BT-04 Hound import on Christmas Day. It was one of two metal items I got that day. Hound did not disappoint - in fact, I asked myself why I hadn't enjoyed him before... actually it stirred something in me that made me want to continue collecting the hi-end Transformers revival line. Who says they don't make'em like they used to?

The other metal object I unwrapped was a new blender from my parents. Now I'm not too sure what brought that on. I guess it's their way of giving me a subtle-hint that they want me to move into a house of my own instead of flushing money down the rental-hole. In any case, I've been loving it immensely over the last few days and have been making fruit smoothies like nobody's business..... non-stop.

Other junk I've been amassing - I've gone absolutely Star Wars crazy this week. Had time to play games of Star Wars Minis with my brother (and enjoyed a Boxing Day trip to the local hobby-shop to load up on discounted boxes of Minis). Among the more interesting pieces that I found in my blind-boxed sets were a Clone Trooper on a "BARC Speeder", a large Hailfire Droid, a more versions of Chewbacca than I know what to do with (I can now stage games featuring Chewie in 3 different movie settings). Between games, I was able to squeeze in viewings of Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and the two Clone Wars cartoon DVDs... Come to think of it, I might want to drop in Revenge of the Sith tonight.

Lastly, in my junk-buying haze, I also stopped by EB-Games this morning on during a walk around the neighbourhood (my home is only a block or two away from the local mall). Grabbed Need for Speed Underground for PSP only because I thought the price was right second-hand. That is, it was half the price it was when it came out back in May... Plus I was dying to break-even on that Edge membership card I bought a while ago. With today's 10% discount, I've finally started saving money... which is funny because for a while I honestly believed that was the worse promotional buy-in I'd ever made.

Pics later, but for now - check out IGN's review of NFS Underground Rivals.

Regifting Hound

Yeah, so I'm headed home for the week - I mean home home, as in away from the apartment I live in.
I was packing up and giving the apartment the once-over and my eyes landed on a box sitting above one of my shelves. And something in me stirred... I was reminded of a debate I participated in on the Robot-Japan forum. To keep or not to keep, was the topic.
Emotions ran high on both sides when it came to arguments about whether or not people should keep their collectible toys in "mint in-the-box" condition (possibly for resale or auctioning later on) or should they be enjoyed as they were meant to be (i.e.: opened up and played with like we did when we were little). An element that was pointed out by many was that lots of today's collectible grade toys weren't meant to be played with considering their fragile nature (the whole "they don't make'em like they used to" side of things). I for one was on my own high-horse reassuring everyone that I did indeed open every box and handled my toys at least a few times before committing them to my glass cabinets for permanent display.

Little did I realize that at one point - I did forget about one guy... a remake of the old Transformer Jeep, Hound. This guy was released around late 2004 in Japan (and later made it to American toy stores in cheapy plastic form too). Of course, when I had the time and money I had sprung for the imported die-cast metal version. But somewhere along the way, I did forget... it arrived on my door step in the mail and I put it aside for some reason or other. And it did remain "Mint in Box." And for that, I'm a little embarrassed. I had truly become one of those collector geeks.

But no more, I told myself this morning!
I plucked the box off the shelf and packed it into my stuff before leaving. And come Sunday, I promise the world, it will no longer be MIB... I WILL play with him. :)

Scratched DVD - but not so bad

I was just about to have a cow tonight while inspecting the discs in a boxed set of Azumanga Daioh I bought earlier this week.

The fourth disc (of 5) has what appears to be a factory defect: a gash in the plastic (like it didn't come out of the press right). But after giving it a test spin in my player, looks like everything's fine. I suppose the scratch wasn't over part of the actual data - as in the disc was not full.

This is must be karma making up for having me return that Ghost in the Shell documentary DVD a few months ago. Now that one was a bad defect. Ugh!

Speaking of DVDs... looking forward to finally checking out the new edition of Sin City that just came out. Other items on the want-list: certain volumes to complete my collection of Patlabor, the new Serenity disc, The Matrix Trilogy box (can you believe a geek like me doesn't have a copy of the Matrix on DVD?)...

And finally I oughtta watch Ronin tonight. Montreal lent it to me when I last saw him... nearly a month ago. Maybe I'll just make a copy and return it during the holidays.

Social experiment...

Did the last of my X-Mas shopping today... I slept in until 11am all messed up. Sadly it wasn't for social reasons. I was up all night playing that accursed PSP game. Looks like discipline goes out the window.

Went to the MEC today to grab some little things ...like gloves so that I can stop freezing in my thin liner-gloves. ^_^;

I tried something to conclude a little experiment today.
A little while ago UG was saying she couldn't understand why she had men drooling over her when there were plenty of other better-looking women around. Note: that's actually somewhat true after she had her son - her figure never quite recovered its original *ahem* form. But don't tell her I said that.
Anyway, during the course of that particular conversation she had noted a comment from her brother who once told her "you make eye contact with everyone you talk to, it's inviting."

I got to thinking how different everyday chores would be if I gauged how people reacted if I made a lingering look into their eyes. And of course, not to be totally stupid (or gay), I also chose members of the opposite sex to try this on.

Yesterday at The Bay's make-up counter I was picking up a little gift basket for my mother. The sales-person fetched my stuff for me from under the counter, swiped my credit card, and put everything in a bag. I only ever made eye-contact when I quickly wished her happy holidays before leaving... It was quick, efficient, but not particularly warm.

At the MEC, when I paid for my gloves, I made eye-contact on purpose... she smiled. I thought that reaction was interesting. Seemed like selling me a pair of gloves was a high-light of her day. Oddly, however, I also noticed that when I said "Merry Christmas," it was almost like an afterthought... Hmm... Not sure what conclussions I could draw from that.

Reaction: PSP X-Men Legends 2

I must say I haven't been this taken with a new game in quite some time. I guess a plain old action game was just what the doctor ordered. X-Men for PSP (and available on several other platforms) is a Zelda-like action-RPG. That is, it's mostly a walking around and beat things up, but with a mixture of puzzle-solving and character-customization.

I only started playing last night on the Easy mode (where most options are automated; the AI will equip what it thinks are the most powerful add-ons to your characters). It took me a while to get used to - in the sense that I hadn't played the first game, and secondly, there is very little in the way of in-game documenation. I spent a lot of my first hour or two just experimenting with what buttons did what... But other than that, I started to realize that there was some sort of intuitiveness to the experience even if I didn't necessarily know what every single status icon meant. Particularly annoying, however, is the selection of super-powers your team members have... you only have an icon to go by and in the heat of battle is not the time to be guessing what 4 pink dots together is supposed to signify.

But once you do get the gist of everything walking around throwing punches can be a great stress reliever. For my early missions, I selected my old favourites: Wolverine, Rogue, Cyclops, and Storm... it only took a little while to understand that by looking at certain coloured meters, I could tell when Wolvie would soon be able to unleash one of his special attack moves, or when Cyke could blast away with a choice of optic-blast patterns, etc...

In fact, I just spent the better part of 3 hours sitting in bed with my PSP... bringing my total game time to nearly 8 hours (I spent 2 hours this morning with the PSP while waiting for my automotive work to be done). Yessirrie - I think we have a winner.

Bad timing...

So I get this email from my cellular carrier about their Perks program... kind of a freebie they send out to their customers now and then. This time it happens to be right up my alley: a $15 gift certificate at Toys R Us. The catch: it's only good for one week.

So of course, I hop right onto the web and check out their games prices. Ordered X-Men Legends 2 for my PSP on Sunday night - I figure on a week for delivery.

As it turns out: according to the Purolator tracking link, it was delivered today ...on the very day I happen to not come home (was at the dentist, by the way). And on the very day where I won't be home during the day for the next two days (I've already got plans for tomorrow afternoon and evening).

So I have to make plans for Friday to rush back home since I know the admin office is closed on weekends. Ugh. The hassles of apartment-living... you know, I was almost hoping they wouldn't be able to deliver to the admin so that I could call them to redirect the package to the Purolator outlet near work. *sigh*

One last Valkyrie

What can I say, it's the holiday season... that and Toy-Wave was having a sale! ^_^;

But anyway, this arrived in the mail today!



That's a hundred bucks well-spent. ^o^;;;
No seriously, this is the last 1/48 scale Valkyrie I plan on buying. My plan is to transplant the Strike Armour (currently worn by the limited edition Low-Visibility plane) over to this one to give it the appearance it had during the movie. And the "TV" armour set from my VF-1J will go over to the Low-Viz. When the GPB-1 armour set comes out in Janurary, I'll put that on the VF-1J to give it the appearance from the "Miss Macross" episode in the original series...

*sigh*... see I wasn't kidding - I really did intend for this to be the last one.@_@

Fun stuff: more Star Wars Minis

This oughtta be old news since they've been out for a while, but the last "expansion" set for Star Wars Minis was called "Universe" which to me implied it would contain all those characters features in novel and comics but not seen in the 6 movies themselves. Turns out the gimick isn't its theme, but rather the new "huge" scale characters.

While doing some much needed Christmas shopping yesterday (it was really nice out for a long walk), I decided to splurge on myself with a booster pack for my Star Wars Minis game and here they are:

And yeah, they are from all over. For instance, yes, it's Darth Vader there, but he's known as "Jedi Hunter" and his game stats on the accompanying playing card shows that he's got unusual rules when playing against other Force characters. This would be the Vader we don't get to see between the events of Episode 3 and Episode 4. Also there's the box-like "Gonk" droid we saw among the scrap heaps in episode 4. While that big monster in the back is some kinda super-duper droid I'm not familiar with at all... his inherent coolness is that he's so damned big. ^_^;
(I'm told it's from some old comic published by Dark Horse called Dark Empire.)

Anywho, I also grabbed another Green Lantern book yesterday. Called "Circle of Fire" it collects one of those "event" type thingies publishers were into a while back when they wanted to push a second-stringer. In this case, Green Lantern teams up with a series of third-tier characters, none of which got any sort of follow-up, unfortunately (not for a while anyway). I've read about half now and I have mixed feelings about it so far. It's not great, but it doesn't suck either.

Also stopped for my weekend latte. Just the right sort of thing when the weather sort of hovers at freezing - like it can't decide whether to be cold or warm.

On a final note and completely unrelated to this post, here's a photo I forgot to post yesterday morning. It shows the case stickers I had finally applied. Just wish it could've been a little clearer....

PC: it lives!!

Wow - that was actually fun (except for the part where I sliced open my left index finger with a sharp edge inside a drive-bay while poking the structure panels out from the inside). The surgery appears to be a success - Zero Prime lives again and here are some pics I took while working on it...

Here's the case ready to go:

The power supply goes in (the blue fans are already factory-installed).

The motherboard goes in (I didn't have to remove the CPU or its fan)... just screwed it into place. I started to deviate from the instruction manual at this point because I wanted to get the front panel wired first and out of the way since they're all at the bottom.

Here I punched out the panels for the external drive bays. Yes, I ended up having a couple of white drives (since I haven't bought a new floppy drive in a whole decade). Also, one of my older DVD-ROM drives is still perfectly good so...

Oh yeah... this was also where I took a break to bandage a badly bleeding wound on my finger... after wards I wasn't in such a great mood so photos came fewer and father in between.

Had to remove the back cover (the manual got a little confusing here and talks about the FRONT cover; WTF?) Anyway, just a matter of adding a few more screws for all my drives.

Things got weird again after this: it took me like an hour to realize that everywhere they say "male connector" they actually mean a "female connector." Either that or my sexual education is severely lacking!!! ^_^;
Anyway, got all the cables done by this point:

Finally, the cover goes on... it fits! ^o^;


And finally powered up... (actually took two tries: the first try it didn't read my floppy and locked up on boot. Other than that, pretty damn lucky).

PC: a last look

Well, I'm going off-line in a little while. I really mean it... since I won't be in my office either (not that I should be blogging there to begin with). Here's Zero Prime in its old skin:


As you can see, the only case-sticker on it are the standard Aopen brand for the itself, and an original AthlonXP sticker (I actually have a few of those). You can also see that my plan to acquire a new case has been in the works for quite some time: that black DVD burner was bought nearly 2 years ago! ^_^;;;

Here's the new case....




If all goes well, I'll have this up and running within a few hours. Plus I'm anxious to finally apply the case stickers I've had lying around. I kept from putting them on the old case knowing that sooner or later I'd change cases anyway. Among the stickers: another AthlonXP label, one for the ASUS motherboard I bought a whole year ago, and finally, one for Arctic Cooler from the CPU fan I added in a few months ago. *sigh*...

But first... I'm hungry. ~_~;;

Wish me luck!

PC: new case, [finally]

Nothing to report save that the shop finally called to let me know the case I ordered back when our union reached a settlement finally arrived. See, at the time, I received a huge chunk of cash as retro-active pay I was owed at the rate negociated in my current employment contract... my idea of a good celebration was to go buy something utterly useless: like a fancy case for my PC. I mean the only thing it contributes to my performance is.. well... it'll look cool.

Anyway, I picked it up tonight. It's sitting in the kitchen now under the table. I'm not so sure when I'll get around to actually installing it... Pictures later (forseeing all the headaches I will likely blog about, I decided to already start taking pictures of the box... *sigh*

On a side note: I did open the box and it turns out there are no printed instruction manuals in there save a little sheet for the USB pin connectors. [insert eye-rolling here] ...luckily I'm not a total dolt and printed off the PDF file from the manufacturer's web site.

Hmm I do believe that's the most useful thing I'd done with my colour printer in over a year...

old-school video...

So I'm at Wal-mart last night doing what I call "preliminary shopping" - that is I haven't actually thought of a Christmas list yet... but just getting ideas on what to get my family.

I'll bypass the fact that I did spend over $60 last night on myself (DVDs of Fantastic Four and Clone Wars).... but something I felt the urge to blog about was in there: The He-Man She-Ra Christmas Special.

This was the first meeting between the icon and his female copy (the "Secret of the Sword" 5-part origin of She-Ra apparently doesn't count for some reason; colour me confused - was it released later?). Anyway, it's a 45 minute cartoon (let's not make it out to be anything other than what it really is). Orko the wizard accidentally arrives on Earth, accidentally bring two Earth children back to Eternia, and the only person who has any inkling of what Christmas is would be Queen Marlena (hardcore fans of He-Man may recall that the Queen was actually an Earth woman).

It was campy and ridiculous. Bow (a manly man if there ever was one) even sang a "Christmas song" with the kids. Skeletor betrays Horde Prime and saves the kids after having a change of heart... Ugh. It was stupid enough to make me want to shut my eyes or even turn off my DVD player. But you know what's funny?

As primitive as the show was.
As ludicrous as the plot went.
As painful as it was to hear 80's cartoon songs.

...It brought a smile to my face. I sat up when Prince Adam raised his Sword of Power and magically became ...well, he became a tanned version of himself actually, but still. I sat up when She-Ra rode onto the scene on her winged unicorn. I sat up when Skeletor made a typical snide remark against his underlings and ejected them from his ship (with only 1 parachute). I sat up when Hordak appeared with a group of his robot troopers...

All these things - even all the groans. I truly relived my childhood last night. *sigh* 16 bucks well-spent! ^_^;

Palm: MobiPocket

It's those little discoveries that make my life moderately interesting:
www.mobipocket.com

This is a variation of the eBook. I haven't figured out the nuances of this particular software yet but so far so good. I actually found it because I discovered that Baen is supposedly the leading eBook publisher. Works out just fine for me since they happen to also be a leading publisher of science fiction (which oddly enough I haven't read much of in the last 5 or 6 years anyway).

As it turns out, once a book is older than a couple of years, Baen publishes the same book in a royalty-free elecrtronic format for you to download from their web-site. In fact, the latest Honor Harrington hardback by David Weber came with a CD-ROM featuring a full library of the series to date. Naturally - you know me - I downloaded the disc without buying the book (yes, before you even need to ask - the disc is free to distribute and share; I'm not doing anything illegal... just somewhat ambiguously immoral).

Anywho - so I find out that the disc contained a choice of formats to read in. It's set up like a web-site you look at with a browser but then you can load in each novel in HTML, a Rich Text File, or an eBook format for MobiPocket...

...And there's a free "read-only" version of Mobi-Pocket available for download (not unlike Adobe Acrobat, that is). Anyway, I'm just highly amused that after months of not reading anything with my handheld, I've revitalized its purpose.

On a side note - if you've got an older Palm device like I do, I suggest trying the "archives" at MobiPocket - they have older versions which might work better (for the record, my PalmOS would crash when I tried to run the latest version).

Disappointing haul...

Hmm... ever go out somewhere expecting to blow your budget and instead realize what you had in mind just wasn't there? It's kind of a downer, if you ask me...

Things I was looking for:

1. Trade: "I Can't Believe It's Not the Justice League"
2. Trade: "Teen Titans: The Future is Now"

Instead I came home with "Green Lantern: Rebirth." Which in itself is not such a disappointment since I missed the big hooplah last fall when Hal Jordan came back to the mortal realm to be Green Lantern once again. But still, I really was looking forward to some goofy adventures from the lighter side of the DC Universe.

On a side note, I also picked up this month's "New Avengers" and "Legion of Super-Heroes." Now don't laugh just yet - Legion has been turning out to be a great ride and I'm glad I took a chance when the title relaunched last year. I just wish the plot hasn't dragged on the way it has for the last couple of months. ~_~;

Alternate notes: placed another order at http://www.toy-wave.com last night. Wanted to take advantage of their holiday-season sale (5% off everything). Finally got the VF-1S I wanted in 1:48 scale. Also tried to order a PVC statue of Rin Tokosa from the Fate-Stay-Night series for my brother (he's got the matching Saber statue already) as a Christmas gift, but they were sold-out. Crap... now I have to go Christmas shopping for him. I hate that. @_@

Lost cause: Crusade

This little known gem I dug up as a boxed set some time last winter. Funny, when it was on the air, I couldn't give a rat's ass about Babylon 5. And forget any spin-off material. Fact was I was simply too young to appreciate what B5 and its brethren turned out to be: smart science-fiction entertainment in a world of television where you were either Star Trek, or you just weren't gonna make it. At the time I was busy criticizing how unrealistic the primitive CGI FX were, prefering the art of the physical models and slick camera-trickery of The Next Generation.

It was only a couple of years back I started to catch the daily reruns of B5 on Space channel. Every evening after work, I'd sit down with my dinner in front of the boob tube (something my parents frowned upon; "dinnertime is for eating," they'd say, "not for watching television!"). And I'd digest the intricate mythos unravelling about the politics of a distant future Earth... it was amazingly well done.

Anyway, at one point I decided it was time to get the whole thing proper so I started collecting the DVD sets of the complete series. And when Crusade came out... well, you know me.

Crusade is a puny little 13-episode set; it took me 11 months to watch the damn thing. The weirdness is that while I had forgiven the oddball look of the B5 CGI universe. I found I had trouble making the same concessions for the spin-off show (which in actuality was more like a sequel than a spin-off, since it directly takes place in the time frame after the events of the war depicted in B5). I held the fact that it was a cancelled (read: "failed") TV series against it. I watched a couple of episodes when I first bought the box. Then I let it sit for a while. In fact, I let it sit about 10 months and 3 weeks.

I just figured out what it was missing at the front-end of the set: a tie-in element to B5. Yes yes yes, it's a spin-off. The technology is the same, the cast talks about the same fictional alien races, the characters all have ties to the same military world as the B5 cast of characters... but... I don't know. J.M.Straczynski wanted to differentiate it from B5, in his own words he wanted to avoid making Crusade "just a variation on a theme." Well, he did it a little too well.

But this last weekend, I got started on the second disc and suddenly the show changed. The crew hooks up with a character from Babylon 5. They actually visit the B5 space-station in another episode. Suddenly the show became part of the B5 family to me and I greeted the following episodes with open arms. Right up until the sad final 13th episode (which ironically guest-starred yet another B5 regular character)... *sigh* it was fun while it lasted.

On a somewhat related note: I read today that "Legend of the Rangers" will be out on DVD March of 2006... But the thing is I've read conflicting information: that it'll be a UK-only release, that it'll be a Region 1 (North American) disc, etc...

duh - you just knew I'd take THIS quiz...

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 85% Robin 77% The Flash 70% Superman 60% Green Lantern 55% Batman 45% Hulk 45% Supergirl 35% Catwoman 30% Wonder Woman 25% Iron Man 25%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

PSP: Pelican Starter Kit

After many years of not accessorizing my handheld gadgets, I went with the Pelican Starter Kit for my PSP. I suppose it was during my Thanksgiving trip to Toronto this year with a clumsy baggie full of UMDs that made me decide to get a decent carrying case.

But first a little history: the first time I ever accessorized was the original Nintendo GameBoy carry case. The thing was a velcro-lidded cushioned case. It held 4 games in specially designed pockets, and although they claimed it could also carrying headphones and other cables, this was accomplished by carefully stuffing everything into the main compartment before closing the top. The claim that there were additional compartments for your other bits and piece was entirely false.

That brings me to a review I heard on Electronic Playground a few months ago. The guys on the show gave Pelican's PSP kit a rave review, even briefly mentioning that they used the product in their private lives. Which is all well and good, except for the fact that I can't seem to find the same kit anywhere in Canada. I did however find a kit at Canada, also by Pelican, but does not appear to be the same "Starter Kit" as the ones I've seen on American web-sites... for one thing the case is the smaller "travel" edition.

I can only assume this is the Canadian package or something because after hunting around eBay I haven't been able to find the package with the big case reviewed on Electronic Playground, or seen on the Pelican web site.
The Travel Case is a padded flip-top affair. A panel in the middle holds 2 UMDs in plastic sleeves. The lid has an optional velcro'd panel that also holds two UMDs plus a couple of memory stick pro duos. The case closes with a zipper and has a clip similar to what mountain climbers use for their ropes.

The package is very similar to other starter sets - cames with a USB cable, a car charger, a microfibre cleaning cloth, 4 UMD sleeves to protect that little exposed window, and one of those useless "scratch protector" sheets you stick on top of your PSP's main screen. I can see that most of this stuff can be useful, but my main complain will have to be that yet again, I have a case where there's nowhere to put my headphones.

Well, that's not entirely true either. I've managed to squeeze in the headphones once again. It was trickier than the plain ear-buds that Nintendo threw in with their original handheld because Sony has a proprietary plug with a special remote-control. But I got it in there. The ultimate irony is that in order to fit all that into the case, I had to put in my 4 UMD games without the sleeves the kit came with (thereby saving at least a few of millimeters). Which, I suppose is alright because the case is padded all over; my games shouldn't be getting scratched if they're in there.

Saturday morning web-surfing

A few minor notes from an hour of Saturday morning web-surfing...

This link was posted on a forum I frequent. Most people were appalled at the kind of movie this promotional teaser trailer hinted at: an action-comedy with all our favourite beloved characters taken way out of context. I smell another Jean-Claude Van Damme-style "Street Fighter" ...I think Hollywood has farted again.

DOA Teaser @ Comingsoon.net

I guess it's the kind of movie non-fans might enjoy... Personally I would've preferred a story about my personal favourite, Kasumi as the shinobi (runaway ninja) evading capture by her former masters, etc... and perhaps encountering all the other fighters along the way. Maybe a final showdown in the end against her estranged sister, Ayane. Plus throw in a cameo of Ninja Gaiden's Ryu Hayabusa, who always seemed to me was a kindred spirit to Kasumi.

But looks like I'll need to settle for this Charlie's Angels drivel.

Speaking of DOA tho, I booted up my old Xbox last night. I couldn't help some gaming after this week's non-stop media coverage of the 360 launch. Anyway, I put in the old DOA3 game (released 2001!) and realized I had never completed the game. Besides the opening video featuring "Nine Lives," I always wondered by Aerosmith got top billing on the game's packaging. So after a couple of hours, I finally unlocked the last of the story cinematics (video-clips showing the plot and character backgrounds). Turns out that Aerosmith's "Home Tonight" is the song played during the closing credit roll. Heh - it only took me 4 years. :P

On the bright side of being such a loser fanboy I get to enjoy this... Remember that pic I posted a while ago of a transforming jet/robot. It was this huge deluxe affair I paid nearly $300 for during a trip to Toronto last month. Well, the final prototype of a new set of add-on parts has finally been revealed (or am I just behind the times?)...


I'm excited for no good reason. And I'm sure my folks will be thrilled to hear I'm still buying this sort of thing.

Ripped: Team America?

Clearly I must be getting frickin' old or something...
A few months ago babou gave me a VCD he created after downloading a rip of Team America: World Police. For anybody who doesn't know, this movie is a puppet-show in the style of the old Thunderbirds "Super-Marionation" technique... as written by the creators of South Park. And if you haven't heard of South Park, you may skip the rest of this blog entry entirely.

Anyway, the key verb above was that babou GAVE me his VCD. He didn't loan it to me or anything. He and mommybabou just said they were so disgusted by this film that they weren't likely to "enjoy" it again.

Now I know why.

After months of letting it sit on my shelf, I finally took it down and watched it last night. And all I can say is, "what a squandered opportunity." First of all, seems to me that puppeteering is a lost art. Besides this movie, the only film I can think of in recent memory that had anything to do with intricately constructed puppets was Being John Malcovic. And even then it served as nothing more than a plot point. There's a certain charm to seeing non-humans in a movie - much like watching a cartoon... it's an art-form.
Secondly, it's clearly a tongue-in-cheek poke at American ethnocentricity. And while I'm all for that, I'm disppointed to find that Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker don't have it in them to find anything more creative than extreme toilette humour... which in itself isn't all that humorous to begin with. Granted I was watching the "Unrated" version last night. I can only hope that the theatrical version was somewhat more streamlined and maybe funnier.

I give the movie 1 thumb down - for its sheer stupidity. It's definitely the second dumbest movie I've ever seen (the first dumbest being South Park The Movie). At least in this film, the cast didn't break out into song...

Rip the System and not

So I watched Stealth last night. You may have not heard about it. I think it was meant to be a summer blockbuster this year and it came and went without much hooplah. In fact, I don't even remember when it hit theatres. Anyway, it came out on DVD a week or so ago.

Did I buy it? No.
Did I rent it? No.

Actually, Starfish rented it last week and made me a copy. Barebones - he stripped it down to reduce the compression of re-encoding it to a 4.7Gb disc. And bless him for choosing the DTS soundtrack over the Dolby Digital option.

And you know what's funny? I still intend to eventually pick up a legit copy of the film.

No, it's not that it was that good. Well, okay, it was quite a fan-boy movie. In a lot of ways it was Macross brought to life (minus the transforming jets and invading aliens). But I mean the CGI ariel combat sequences were dizzyingly spectacular.
No, actually I saw a UMD version available in stores... And for once the studio saw fit to tie-in the film with a cool little bonus. The UMD (a PSP format disc) also contains an exclusive "Stealth" vehicle add-on for the popular Wipe-Out Pure racing game. How cool is that?
Now that's the sort of cross-promotional marketting that'll make the UMD a viable alternative format. For almost a year I've been asking, "why would anybody pay 25 bucks for a UMD movie when they could get a full-blown feature-packed DVD for their home theatre?" Now I know.

no DOA4, no xbox360

Bet'cha thought I'd blog all about how I lined up for my Xbox 360 at midnight, eh? Well, I'm not falling for the media frenzy. Not this time anyway. And much like I did for the first Xbox, I'm probably gonna wait a year before finding a package deal with a price-tag to my taste before buying in. As it stands I'm having way too much fun with my PSP anyway.

Besides which, the one game that has me drooling like an unbathed fanboy isn't even in the line-up of launch-titles. Previews for Dead or Alive 4 promised more detailed combat arenas and even cooler fighting moves than before... and will only be delivered a month from now. Kinda puts a damper on the hype, if you ask me.

Anime: Pretty Cure

I haven't grown up. Or I've grown to a point where I'm aware that sometimes I just wanna kick back and watch mindless escapism entertainment.

This morning, one of my fellow cartoon cohorts brought me a DVD-ROM he made filled with GIJoe cartoons (mostly remake stuff that has been more recent than people our age are familiar with). UG caught me with the colourfully labelled disc under my arm and giggled. At which I could only stone-face: "Look, I'm not embarrassed to show that I do watch cartoons because I know we've reached a point where we will never be together anyway - and so I really don't care what you think of me anymore anyway."

This all reminded me that I hadn't blogged about my latest anime craze, Pretty Cure.

I was at my favourite amateur art web-site when I stumbled across a couple of portraits I was unfamiliar with. After looking it up, I discovered that it was one of those titles that'll never get licensed in America... hence the abundance of fan-sub-titled videos available for download (all legal until somebody licenses it for distribution here).
I loaded my PSP with the videos (about 10 episodes) and watched a bunch of them over the weekend. And you know what? I'll be damned if I'm going to be judged by anyone. It's good clean fun. As time has gone by and I let go of the more children-oriented titles, I realized that I missed something while watching the more adult-oriented titles like Ghost in the Shell. Sometimes I just want to sit back and see some cute kids battle evil overlords... something lighter in fare than questions about mortality and morality; something a little more innocent and naive. That's what escapism is all about.

Superman Returns: teaser is out!!

For the children who believed a man could fly...

Bryan Singer has weaved together an amazing teaser trailer incorporating John William's brilliant awe-inspiring "Planet Krypton" theme and clips of the late Marlon Brando's voice.

Just go to the Superman Returns web-site to get a quick look at the newest 2006 blockbuster now in post production.

It brought a tear to my eye...

No news is good news

I was about ready to do another one of my usual "my computer isn't working" blogs...

I've been a little more active as FusionAce lately - particularly where family is involved but tonight is the first "free" night I've had to myself in a while.

Where was I?

Oh right - the case never arrived; still back-ordered when I last checked. It won't do me any good to call them at this point since I don't really care anymore. The initial rush of rolling around in a bunch of money from my back-pay has long since worn off. I content myself with what I have.

And speaking of my computer - the system clock's been acting all weird. No, it's not that well-known Windows bug with the funny speed-up-slow-down seconds hand. I mean the clock was really fast - at least 50% faster than it should've been. I was exponentially getting further and further ahead with every second. I came home after work today and it was like 2 hours ahead.

My final solution tonight was to reset my BIOS down to its "Optimal" Setting. That is, I'm running my supposed 200MHz RAM at 133MHz. But as babou told me over MSN tonight: "on your Athlon 1700XP, you're not likely to notice the difference anyway." That's not too reassuring.

Not much else particularly exciting around here that's not being filed under "everyday life." I'm kinda just chilling tonight and looking forward to a trip home for the weekend. It'll be a quiet affair. Gotta change my tires for winter. Maybe go shopping with my folks. Catch a movie or something. I dunno.

Google'd Pictures

Stole the idea from something else (you know who you are).

Using Google Images, selecting a picture that turns up on the first page of results:

The city and province I'm originally from:

The city I'm living in now:

My full name:

Favourite food:

Favourite drink:

Favourite smell:

Favourite song (no I don't get it either - it just turned up on page 1):

Star Wars Miniatures: initial reaction

It's for dumb people (or for kids, depending on how you look at it).

No seriously, that's what I thought at first. But after actually playing with the "Starter Set" I bought this weekend with my brother, it was pretty fun. You can get this set pretty much anywhere - hobby shops, gaming stores... I think even at Chapters, IIRC.

It's much like what we've seen before: the box that contains a sample game board, dice, assorted counters, and a predetermined set of character pieces for each player. In this case (the "Revenge of the Sith" set), you get Obi-Wan with a couple of clone troopers and Grievous with a couple of battle droids; the Republic versus the Seperatists.
More characters? You'll have to pick up some of those blind-packaged "boosters." Collect them...

The game itself is pretty simple. The quickstart booklet tells you where you should place the playing pieces first. Then goes on to show how you move around the map, attack the other player, etc... In fact, it seems much simpler than other similar collectable "miniatures" games (thus prompting my "wargaming for dummies" comment on Saturday night). Each figure is accompanied by at a stats card that tells you how to modify your dice rolls when you're shooting a blaster (or in the case of Obi-Wan's card, the fact that he doesn't carry a firearm means he doesn't shoot; but he does get to roll the die twice if he's up close to represent abilities with a lightsaber)...

My secondary reaction after killing 30 minutes with my brother?
It's actually quite fun. Simple to learn and there are infinite possibilities with the game mechanics (especially by virtue of the fact that it's backward compatible with the older sets such as "Clone Strike" etc...). Rules are fairly easy to pick up (i.e.: there don't appear to be any rules in choosing who you can shoot at).

Will I buy more booster boxes? Probably... but not many more.
I've fallen for the whole "collect them all" thing before in my younger days. Only to later realize that I was only playing and trading with the same 1 or 2 people and that it wasn't all that often anyway. My first booster was this weekend. It contained another Jedi Master (one those non-speaking background folks from the movie) and other assorted enemies. I'm sure it'll spice up my games to have more characters to choose from, but other than that ...? Well, we'll see.

yah I turned it on

Now hear this: it's not that I don't trust you (I'm talking to the 3 or 4 people who read this blog semi-regularly)...

...mm... actually, no, I probably shouldn't trust you 4 either.

But I'm getting a little tired of the spam. So here comes the word verfication for comments.

Yes there were a few that seemed moderately real. The one with a link to a site selling posters seemed real enough to be human. Except one catch... the spambot posted the same comments on my blog on two consecutive entries!

another pointless list of goodies

I had meant to blog as FusionAce this morning but considering how I slept most of yesterday away, there just isn't that much to say.

I got home Saturday night after a good 30 minutes in the rain without an umbrella (go figure - the one day I left the umbrella out of my day-pack). My pack was full of other stuff though.

I had gone to cash a cheque at an ATM last week when I realized that after having finished my car payments my spending habits hadn't changed all that much. In fact, my biggest purchases were in the form of dental bills (most of which I've ended up getting back from insurance anyway).

So Saturday was a shopping day... for crap that I've previously told myself I didn't need. I decided, "It's not like I can't afford it."

1) Bome's "Blue" Devil-Girl. These sculpts are the cutest things for the cheapest price. Bome models his work after random doujinshi (amateur comics) artist covers and has an eye for picking out some very nice bits. This blue one I had decided at one point wasn't worthy of my collection because it was a strict repaint of volume 1 (which had red hair instead)...

2) Lumines. It's pronounced like "luminous" - don't ask me why it's spelt like that. It's a puzzle game - a bit like the classic Tetris. Available on PSP. I got it used for $45. And I got an Edge membership at EB-Games for 50 cents (since my first 10% discount was applied to my Lumines purchase right away). I'd previously thought it wasn't worth it since I hardly buy any games anymore... Ah well. The card's good for a year so we'll see. I just need to spend 5 bucks to break even at this point.

3) Bryan Adams Anthology. 14 bucks. Came with a bonus concert DVD. Too bad it was in stereo only (wouldn't prefered full 5.1, but it was free so...). Haven't had a chance to listen to the actual 2 CDs yet, but the songs in the concert certainly brought back a flood of high school nostalgia. *sigh*

GitS haul delayed? :p

@_@;
I hate when this sort of thing happens but what can ya do?

I scored the Ghost in the Shell "Official Log Volume 1" last night at a chain store - being that it was a couple of bucks cheaper than elsewhere (like, say, a music store). But as luck would have it, when I got home I discovered that my disc was defective - the DVD surface had a scratch on it as though the plastic was mal-formed at the factory. Ugh. I'll bring it back tonight for another one. Just annoying.

And this is the second of 2 GitS discs that I've had problems with in a row. Last month it was volume 1 of the 2nd season - the disc had come loose from its snap-down peg while still in its box. The surface of the disc was therefore scraping around the peg everytime it shifted... Luckily in that instance, the disc played fine (although the menu system was not particularly reliable). Still it wasn't worth my while to bring it back.

The instance with the log book is irritating because it's such an unusual item. Anybody get the "Matrix Revisited" disc? Kinda like a disc full of documentary features that, if anybody had been forward thinking enough, it would've been disc 2 of of a set with the first Matrix DVD. Well, "Official Log" is just like that... but done right. It's main attraction is not really the DVD (which is full of interview material and recap info) - it's actually a very nice full colour book - a few hundred glossy pages. It goes into detail tracing the history of the franchise and takes a look at the developmental evolution from the original manga comic to the present day anime series (plus all the video games and other minor tie-in material that's been published in the meantime).

On the subject of GitS, I thinking I might want to stop by the Sony Store tonight. Yeah, I know - overpriced stuff. But last week I had come across a copy of the PSP game for Ghost in the Shell "Stand-Alone Complex" and it was at a rediculous price-tag of $40 - at least 10 bucks cheaper than anywhere else. Why I didn't grab it on the spot, I'm not too sure. At the time I wasn't really thinking about impulse purchases. Hmm...

Finally - Ringtones hacked!

Long-time readers will recall the saga of a certain Nokia phone I debated buying for months and then was dismayed to find after the fact that I couldn't put custome ringtones on it as avertised by Nokia thanks to some limitations imposed by my carrier.

Well, the good news is that tonight I finally successfully activated a ringtone. Piracy? Bah - I spit in the face of legit business. ^_^;

...ok - but seriously, while the cost of CDs and whatnot have got down lately (I'm seeing more and more new albums debut on shelves in the $14-$16 range). And outifts like iTunes charging a buck a song. What gonads my carrier has to think they can charge me $2.50 for a midi-format ringtone? Ugh.

PIC: Mace Windu costume!

Happy Halloween everybody!!

Here're some pics of myself in the costume that I've been bragging about. And yes, I made it myself with some help from mom for working out the patterns from photographic reference (couldn't have done it without her).

The first pic is "raw" and undoctored: Starfish took it using my crappy camera-phone.

The second is processed with my trusty PaintShopPro and taken myself at home... No, I don't "draw" with PSP - only colour-tuning contrast adjustments.

It had been a fairly quiet day at work. Nobody seemed particularly festive given the fact that management had decided NOT to hold an official Halloween function this year (there are business-related reasons I'm not allowed to talk about). I did however get to join UG and Starfish's team-lunch, etc... they said they wouldn't let remote decisions from higher-ups prevent them from having fun on Halloween.
...I couldn't agree more.

The costume itself turned out to be a big hit, actually and even the Division's director came by to check it out. Even after a full day when I took it off people were still dropping by my office to hoping to see me (to which I asked: "where the hell were you all morning when I was walking around?").

PIC: Kasumi even smaller

After promising myself to stop spending petty cash on little tiny things so that I may budget for bigger ticket doodads like these:


I end up picking up something like this...

Oh well - she was only 5 bucks.

life in the slow lane

Well, really I don't have all that much to report as of late.

FusionAce's contact revoked the parking permit on-site so at the moment I'm taking up a visitor's spot for the afternoon (the sign says 90 minutes; I doubt they'll care if I go over by about 5 minutes).

Because of this we'll be doing the 15-minute thing every morning from now on starting, you guessed it, on Halloween. Which is something I hadn't planned on but have managed to work around. My Jedi gi costume is pretty much done and tho I'll need to lug a pair of spray-painted rubber boots in a backpack on Monday, I've already left my lightsaber prop here.

Go figure, after going to the trouble of cleaning out my cubicle's cabinet in order to make room to hide it for the weekend (not that I'm afraid of theft - I've left other stuff here before), I discover that, silly me, I've left the key to lock it up at home in my other pants. ~_~;

Weekend looks dull, but I hope it's at least sunny (if not warm). It's been a while that I've been able to enjoy myself around town without thinking about "Oh I need to pick up this or that."

no news is sometimes just that

I've changed my mind: no news is not necessarily good news - most times it just sucks.

Called that shop. Made sure that my order was indeed not left in limbo. But still no joy on the shipment... Maybe it'll arrive during the day this after, maybe not.

I'm going on my second week without a cover on my current PC.... Ack. what an ugly thing.

Mayhaps I should pick up one of those little ionizer air-purifiers.

Minor Crisis of Faith?

Sometimes no news is good news.

At other times I ask myself if anybody out there (besides 2 or 3 visitors) cares what my Ben-Ohki persona is up to. There was a time when I deeply believed in the warning: "You fear having nothing to say ...and no way to say it." Well, the second half is a non-issue now with blogs at our disposal. The first half is a constant.

Anyway, I guess the point is I have nothing to report (and even less people to give a sh*t). FusionAce certainly doesn't seem to care one way or the other.

It's a slow week I suppose. The biggest news being that I successfully converted my first AVI2DVD job last night (took about 12 hour and that's including the "freeze" when it was waiting for me to click OK at the end - I supposed it should've finished some time in the middle of the night). The movie, in case anybody's wondering, is a Kamen Rider feature-length film I downloaded last year. I liked it enough to want a version I could enjoy in the comfort of my living room and not on a tiny 17 inch screen.

There was actually a second film I wanted to do in the batch, but turned out that I couldn't find the DVD-R archived I kept it on... so I figured I may as well head over to the usual bit-torrent sites to find it again.

Haven't heard from the local shop since I ordered my new case. I'm told by friends that this store in particular demands a $10 deposit on requests. Which is weird to me because I've placed orders before without having to do that. Huh... I had joked at the time that maybe it's because babou is white and I'm Chinese.... but I sincerely hope the store owner is not playing the race card - that's just low-class on his part.
I called yesterday but they just said the case wasn't in. I didn't however mention that I never received any order number or any contact from them since I clicked "submit" on their web-form. Maybe I should've clued them into the fact that it's as if my order had just slipped through the cracks for a week. ~_~;
I'll call them again today...

I guessed right: new goodie at home

This is the new "Launch Arm" display-stand I found in my super's office today.
The plane is an older die-cast piece my aunt sent me 4 years or so ago. I'm deciding where to put this. As you can tell from previous posts, my display cabinet is getting fairly crowded...
Secondly, although the VF-19A (a fictional transforming jet, if you haven't figured that out yet) looks best as a jet (this toy rendition looks ass as a robot), I'm not too big on the way it appears on the launch arm. This one is in 1/72 scale and actually looks a little ridiculous.

The launch arm is inspired by a key scene at the beginning of Macross "Love; Do you Remember?" - a squadron of fighters are seen taking off from the carrier. But since this is sci-fi, they don't launch from a runway, but are released into space by way of a giant mechinal arm.

A few more pics below of me trying out a different scale fighter... This one's a classic VF-1 in Low-Visibility colours (it's actually a limited edition also sent to me by my aunt). It carries set of additional armaments I added on later.

Above: I'm not too thrilled with the way it looks in its intermediate hover mode... kinda looks like it's being caught by its crotch (ouch!). Below: much better. Those holding clamps look somewhat convincing (in truth, there's actually toy-magic going on; the very same "crotch" adapter is being used to hold it up).

big decisions for minor details

Okay, not really big decisions to make... just annoying choices.

Like if I check my messages, this afternoon, will I hear from the local shop about that case I ordered? And if, so when to pick it up?

If I've timed everything correctly, my latest Toy-Wave order should be arriving today... means I need to head home to catch the admin office before the super closes up for the evening. (I'll blog about what I ordered later; it's kind of a long story behind it).

Mmm... need to stop by Toys R Us on the way home tomorrow night. The big hooplah on the Red Flag Deals message boards is that there's been yet another f*ck up on pricing. The latest edition of Burn-Out was priced at an astounding $15. There're a couple of legit sales I want to check out but I'll also try my luck for that one. If I had any common sense, I should've check this out sooner.

...and on another weird note...
I guess my mother's being a busy-body. I had sent over some reference pictures of Mace Windu for that Halloween costume I was planning. I asked her to take a look to help me work out a pattern. Little did I realize that she's already started working on it. Sent me some photos last night of dad modelling the new Jedi robe (looks almost complete, actually). Told her so: she's finding retirement boring! ^_^;

PC: Aspire X-Plorer in blue!

Taking a break from all that overemotional and physical soreness from the FusionAce side, I just wanted to briefly post that all is well now that I got my retroactive salary hike... 3 years behind schedule. Nice cheque!!

And here's the first major goody I've decided to splurge on:
Aspire USA: Blue X-plorer Case

Placed my order at the usual local place today... I'm guessing they'll get it in by this weekend. Oooh - Aaaah. ^_^;

I can't wait. This'll really mark the first time I bought an upgrade that was wholly unecessary. I know, I said that about the bus cables but the fact is they're useful in that it keeps the interior nice and neat to have the cables bound up in a round shape. But a case? I've never bought one of these before for the hell of it. This'll be fun!

Pics: new on the shelves

A couple of new cuties from Ghost in the Shell.


Yeah, I've shown you these before but direct your attention to the tiny little Mazinger Z in the front. He's a "Trading Figure" in that he's from a set of blind-packaged figures where you don't know which you get until you open the box. Lady luck was with me that day: I got my favourite character after buying only one box. Sweet!


The new 1/48-scale transforming jet toy I paid about $300 for last week. Yeesh...



An up-close shot of one of my newest Ghost in the Shell figures.



Yes I've had Kasumi for a while, but those two tiny trading figures are a novelty in that I actually did get them out of novelty capsule machines. That was fun in itself. ^o^



The man, Sam Jackson, doing his Jedi thing, immortalized in PVC plastics... 1/12 actual size.

Pics: photos from all over

A mix of pics from my recently purchased camera phone and my older digital cam... You'll have to guess which came from where.


Candid shot of my brother caught singing out-loud. I know, it's bad to be distracting the driver but it's not like I surprised him or anything...


Who's that devlishly handsome fellow? babou was fooling and snapped a candid shot of me.


Ah, here it is now. The dangly thingie is from Hong Kong - I'm representin' ^_^; And in this pic you can see what I was talking about regarding the wallpaper matching the printed image on the front...


Between Kingston and Toronto is a tourist trap near Colbourne that does nothing but sell you a freshly made apple pie. But damn it's good pie. Weather was ugly and we didn't feel like stopping this year. I've always wanted a photo of their giant "Big Apple" prop...


Pocky is a popular candy-coated cookie snack from Japan. This is a newer "reverse pocky" brand by the same company with the cookie around the creamy centre. Vanilla. Mmmm. ^_^;


The new 200Gb Western Digital I installed last night.


The new blue mouse and keyboard by Aspire from TigerDirect.ca - sweet. Too bad I blew my mod case budget on replacing that damned hard-drive. Oh well, I'll live. ~_~;


A-ha! The infamous MP3 deck that wouldn't fit. Well I made it fit. Awefully proud of my handy work.

PC: 200Gb minus 40Gb

So I have a new item to list under my personal "Greatest Hits." Put in the new harddrive last night (still fuming over how short the lifespan of my previous drive was - only 3 or 4 years). But the net gain of 160Gb is a nice trade off for my troubles.
Anyway, went into the BIOS and set myself up to boot from my Windows system CD. About an hour later after the setup routine formatted the huge new drive, it prompted me for a CD key. Never one to play by the rules, I obtained this OS from a friend of a friend so no - I don't have a key. Mm... scratch that, I do have a key... in a txt file... on the CD. Oops.
Called babou and had him read his key to me (yeah, we have the same friend of a friend).Was able to recover most of my archives from the old drive. Still can't format it though. I'm pretty sure it's scrap. Maybe in the far flung future...?
Luckily, all my setup files were intact so I was up and running by the end of the evening. I even had time to give the new Nokia USB cable a quick test (was able to extract a photo off my phone).

PS: look for a photo post later tonight when I have time to organize and do some colour touch-ups.

PC: 11-month expiration-date

Seems like my reprieve is over. Fusionace went home last night ready to do a bit more blogging about the Legion's family reunion in Toronto and ZeroPrime wouldn't boot up. *sigh* Luckily (depending on one's view of things) I had on hand a bootable Windows CD left for me from last year when I spent an entire week holed up in babou's basement fixing the damn thing (bless mommybabou for putting up with my constant overbearingness).

As it turned out, the WinXP CD detected my previous install and started a CHKDSK routine but froze up about half-way through. Said the drive was corrupt and couldn't repair the installation. Looks like babou and I will go shopping again this week. And I was just shy of a year since that last time I rebuilt the master boot record on the drive. ^_^;

On a side note, I thought I should point out the user comment in my last post. It's spam (there's like 3 ads for stuff in the comment itself) but it certainly look pretty good for spam. Grammer and vocabulary is spotless compared to most. Story is kind of a tear-jerker... I give it 4 stars out of a possible 5. Maybe I'll even actually read the "family web site" some time.

Oh and, while off line last night, went around the apartment taking pics of the goodies I had amassed during my Toronto trip. Then realized I wouldn't have a PC to upload the photos to. Oops. Colour me stupid. ~_~;;;
Just wait for it, I'm sure I'll be up and running in the next couple of days...

List: Things hanging over me

1) my impending oil change. Some time in the next couple of weeks. In theory I'm due for a tune-up too but last year I delayed my manufacturer-recommended tune-up by about 8000km so as far as I know, I can delay this year's too until spring time. Maybe I'll take this opportunity to get my oil done at the nearby Oil-Changers instead of paying through the nose at the dealer's...

2) Still waiting for that Nokia USB cable I won on ebay the week before last. This is getting irritating.

3) Now waiting for a minor accessory for my 1/48 scale VF-1 model plane. It's a launch catapult... that doubles as a display stand. Neat! Hmm... let's home Ken's up to his usual speed. If I'm lucky it'll arrive by next week.

4) Still thinking about my root canal and dental plan. One of my co-worker buddies just told me to expect the bill to be about $900CAD... I'm pretty sure my dental plan will cover that plus the consultations and other cleaning stuff I need taken care of. But if I need a second root canal treatment for the other serious cavity the dentist identified the previous week, I'll need to work with the scheduling so that I can claim the cost off my 2006 coverage...

5) The next Running Room clinic for "Learn to Run" is starting up next week. Need a new pair of running shoes. I know - I mentioned shoes only a few months ago but as luck would have it, at the time I decided to "grow" and wear casual shoes day to day instead of runners like I have all my life. Problem now is that I never did get fitted for a decent pair of exercise footwear. That'll cost a pretty penny, I think. The clinic itself is only about $70CAD. Not too bad.

6) October is quickly approaching mid-month. And I still haven't even bought material for my Mace Windu jacket/vest. Hopefully during the week I'll be able to find something suitable. (You'd be surprised how difficult it can be to find plain unpatterned cloth in a monochrome colour like beige). I've already sent reference photos to my mom so maybe she can draw up some preliminary patterns for me to work with over the weekend... Maybe. And wear will I find regular brown boots? No buckles. Just plain ones... like motorcycle boots. Hmm...

clearly it's trying to communicate!

Here's a wacky incident you don't get every day.

So I arrive back in town yesterday afternoon from a trip to Toronto for the long weekend. We'd taken my brother's car so coming home to my own car was a little weird to be behind my own wheel again. Okay, the engine's a little cold and if you've been reading my blogs for a while, you know that my coolant light has been acting a little wonky for the last year or so (yes, the coolant is just fine, I check the reservoir again last night to be sure). Anyway, it was lit up last night.

I pull up to a red light behind this scooter-bike with two people on it. The passenger stumbles a little like he was about fall off. The driver has his head turned and appears to be talking to him when I catch his eye. Now here's the weird thing: I haven't a clue why I caught his eye.

He was desperately trying to communicate with me though. He'd point at himself, then to me, then thumb left or point right. I made a "shrug my shoulders, I don't understand what you're saying" gesture through my windshield for him. I thought that'd be the end of it but he kept right on pointing left and right like he really needed to know something. I thought he wanted to know which direction I was headed in (although, I kinda figured that was a weird question to want to know about a complete stranger) so I lit up my turn signals for the hell of it. And he kept on pointing left and right.... right up until the lit turned green and we were forced by traffic behind us to get moving.

I didn't pass him because at the time my coolant light started blinking, indicating malfunction and I pulled over onto a side street. He seemed to want to follow me by making an unecessary lane change but then seemed to change his mind and continued straight.

I pulled over and thought about all the things that perhaps someone outside may have observed about my car... Well my headlights were on okay. I popped the hood and although I thought I smelled the skunk from last week there wasn't any smoke or anything. And my wipers were okay. I even tested my turn signals. Nope. And yes again, the coolant level was okay. I really couldn't tell if anything was wrong. By the time I got back into my dash board had settled back to normal...

So what the hell did that biker want anyway?

flashback: designer underwear

Just an odd thought that popped into my head...

So I was folding up some laundry last night when I had a sudden flashback to last year's X'mas party. One of the door prizes was a gift-certificate to Sears (I think) for some $50 or so - I don't recall exactly.

Anyway, I had remarked to nobody in particular, "Hmm... should be enough for a couple of pairs of underwear." Actually, at the time I was being funny more than serious because I'm well aware that fifteen bucks can get me like 6 pairs of Hanes. But UG gave me a funny look, surprised that I actually own designer boxers.

"What of it," I replied? "Down there happens to be a very tender part of my body, I like to treat it with some respect," I said with all the righteous indignation I could muster. That sure showed her. ^_^;;;

MP3 player finally "in like Jim"

Well, like I had been looking forward to all month, I finally had the time to be parked in my parents car port within easy reach of a handy tool bench. Oh the things I took for granted living at home. And life in an apartment sucks more than ever before. ^_^;

Anyway, I finally got around to yanking out my deck and harness like so much spaghetti (or rather linguinni as the case may be) and redid all the wiring removing up to 3 or 4 inches of extra wire in some places. Saved me just enough place and even then took some plain old muscle to get my deck to sit right the dash board.

To my dismay when all that was done, I realized that the aftermarket bracket that covered it all up didn't fit the new player (it would snag the motorized flip-face). And once again I say, "Dremel makes the coolest tools in the world." No I'm not getting paid to say that - just that it's been the single most useful powertool I've bought in the last 2 or 3 years.

Well now it's done. My fingers are sore from all that poking and prodding. And my camera phone is somewhere I'm too tired to look for at the moment. But I promise, pictures later.

For the moment I'm just looking forward to a relaxing game of Warhammer 40'000 with my brother tonight (it's a family-affair!). ^.^

Telus Nokia 3205i: CRACKED! :)

So while waiting for the tech centre to respond, I spent the time chatting with the guys working the Telus boutique. And they noticed the custom images I had printed off to be the front and back of my phone. I proudly showed off the Batman on the back, and then proceeded to loudly complain about how Telus gave Superman the shaft not allowing me the option of emailing his upper body to myself as a wallpaper (thereby creating one continuous Super-image across the front of the handset).
They frowned and said, “that’s odd… you mean there’s no other options in the software?”
“Well, there’s the infrared ‘send’ button,” I explained, “but I don’t have an IR port on my PC at home! That’s hardly fair.”

And here’s where the tables turn…
“If you could get your hands on a laptop,” the clerks suggested uselessly, “most of them have IR ports now…”

I set aside some time for myself today to ponder the concept: I needed an IR port. Didn’t have to be laptop, just something that could transmit a file of choice through infrared… And I do have a Palm device with just enough room on a spare memory stick for a tiny little JPG picture. And tho my warez-hunting skillz are rusty, I managed to find a cracked app that would allow me to beam any file of choice from my Palm.

…guess what… all the king men and horses… Superman is whole now. ^_^;;

Rant: 3rd-party solutions

So I was reading on-line about my new phone and others found something I learned a couple of days ago: the Nokia software package that came with it has been crippled by my service carrier.

One of the gimmicks is that you can customize its appearance. The software allows you to print your own faceplate and it generates a matching JPG wallpaper image so that the image remains "unbroken" even on the actual display screen when not in use.
But being a typical money-grubbing corporate entity, my carrier does not allow downloads to my phone unless the wallpapers and ringtones are directly from them (at $2 a pop). So the software package will not send my custom wallpaper to my phone.

...I have a picture of Superman from the waist down on the front of my partially custom phone. And the JPG that should've been his upper-body and face? It sits on my PC at home... a veritable digital orphan.

So it's GAME ON to hack my own damn phone.

So far, I won a Nokia USB cable off eBay for a crazy-ass $10USD (that includes shipping). And I found a software that'll let me browse my phone's memory like a folder in Windows... and copy my ringtones and wallpapers. Of course, at this point I'm so out of patience, this third-party will suffer the consequences of my carrier's greed. See, somebody's gonna regret their business philosophy - maybe not them but someone else.

I regularly use 3 handheld devices. All purchased within the last few years. All of them promising a big advancement in technology. They were all screwed by their own company.

First was my Palm-device. This doohickey promised to be a multimedia extravaganza with it's brilliantly clear display screen. Behold "Gmovie" - a defunct video converter/player that was not even supported by the hardware it came with!!
After crawling the back-alleys of the web, I finally found a product that did the same thing but that actually worked on my particular model. Naturally I refused to pay money for it. After all, I already paid for the ability to record and play videos on my device - it was part of the package price of purchasing my device to begin with.
It was like if I sold you a hamburger, but instead of giving you a burger patty, I give you a hotdog wiener. You've got a both a bun and a questionable-meat-product, but they just don't fit right. Now let's say you were to find a burger patty elsewhere, would you really want to pay for yet another questionable-meat-product?

Granted that's not a very good analogy because you could conceivably eat a burger bun and a wiener separately. But still, the point is that you thought you were buying a hamburger, but you didn't get one.

The other device is my PSP. Which, granted, after mucking around with it, did do what it promised (and all within legal means). But Sony certainly didn't make it very easy to show my videos. It plays only a certain video type formatted, named, and stored a certain way. Thank goodness for amateur efforts like PSPVideo9, a tiny little program that converts and saves the videos for you (even lets you choose widescreen or regular sizes, detects the USB for you!).

End rant here - I'm too tired for this.

Quealuun-Rau and Miria by Yamato

Sharing more of my hobby stuff... this package arrived today all the way from Hong Kong. (Try to ignore that ridiculously huge Power Rangers vintage toy behind her)... it's the villainous "Quealuun-Rau" ace pilot, Miria from the classic Macross (or Robotech to the rest of the world)...

While the red monster 'bot came with a tiny pilot figure, I went ahead and ordered the option set... came with three "bodies" and two "heads." The bodies were "sitting in cockpit" position, a standing pose in her sexy pilot's uniform, and her "wedding dress" when she married our hero, Max. The two heads are with a helmet and the other with her hair down. The option kit features a way nicer sculpt on the faces and stuff... Too bad my camera sucks so badly that I can't share that part of it.

The only thing that could really ruin my week at this point is if that traffic ticket I thought I had coming actually arrives. ^o^

Well, on the bright side...

After screwing around on my new phone for two days straight, I've come to an unescapable conclussion: I'm pretty sure now that Telusmobility expects Pay'n'Talk clients to pay extra to activate text messaging...
...which is rather lame because I can send pictures and videos I take with the camera to email addresses stored in my contacts list. But I just can't send plain text. Phooey!

Anyway - this one's for babou's wife who just commented my post about my white-trash percentage rating below. It's a quote from the late Mitch Hedberg:

When it comes to racism, some people say, "I don't care if they are black, white, purple or green." Ah, hold on now...purple or green? You gotta draw the line somewhere. To hell with purple people! Unless they're suffocatin'... then, help 'em!

n00b texter

Aside first: I just came back from the Fedex depot and dropped off my defective lightsaber for shipping back to Master Replicas. (thanks go out to mrbabou for helping find the damn place!)... so that's case closed *whew*

Anyway, so I finally got that Nokia 3205i I wanted (mostly just for the hell of it). Turns out I picked just the right time to buy since it was on special for only $100. Sweetness. Spent the weekend tweaking the settings to my taste - you know the drill, keying all my old contacts from my old phone. :P

I do a have a question for my readers out there...
My MSN Messenger is set to forward messages to my phone if I'm off-line. My brother sent me a test message on Sunday. I got it, but there's no indication who its from except for his email address. I also don't seem to have a "reply" option to write back.
I reciprocated the test by logging into MSN at home and sent a message to his phone and he tells me the message came through with some kind of numeric identifier which he assumed was my MSN network address or something... why don't I get such a number when he sends me a message?

I'm with Telus if that helps - does anybody out there know if Telus Mobility Pay'n'Talk clients need to subscribe to an additional service or something to send a text message to an MSN user??

Well, first of all, I'm not white.... :)

I am 12% White Trash.

I, my friend, have class. I am so not white trash. . I am more than likely Democrat, and my place is neat, and there is a good chance I may never drink wine from a box.

Take the
White Trash Test
@ FualiDotCom

Actually... I have had wine from a box ...around a camp fire.

Force FX: take 2!

Well, just a day short of it having been two full months, I finally have put this whole Force FX lightsaber behind me. The replacement arrived direct from Master Replicas today and everything checked out just fine (thank goodness!). Now I just gotta ship the old one back next Monday.

Of course I had to play with my new one in the dark just a little... ^_^;;

Psst: yes, there's some photoshopping in this - the original photo is much fuzzier!
However, the colours are very real.