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. @_@