Catching up: Running

You know what I haven't done in a while? Even less than not keeping up with this blog? I haven't mentioned anything about life. True, I'm all over social media and if you're careful enough, eventually you find your way here from there (i.e.: Twitter, or maybe Facebook, or even the occasional enthusiast forum).

But I've been real quiet about non-enthusiast topics for a while mostly because... I kind of developed a social life. Kind of. Not that a lot changed, but there were times when I started to wonder if it was better to distance my on-line persona from real-life and vice-versa (this feeling started a few years back when one of my friends correctly identified someone else I usually used an alias for). From that point on, I tended to avoid mentioning real-life unless it was something unrelated to my regular readers (if I had any regular readers left).

Then I decided it wasn't so bad as long as I wouldn't write about people I frequently spent time with. So I will instead tell you about everything else that's happened to me this past year or so.

Partially inspired by a long-time reader (and also partially inspired by the desire to spite someone I know in real-life by proving I was as good as or better than them), I took up running. And I mean I took up serious training. I spent a few months last summer "running" but not making much headway. I just couldn't get past maintaining my speed and strength more than a few minutes at a time despite having read about interval training. In my tiny world, I felt like 5km was an admirable distance but damn near impossible. And frequently I wound up going about 2km or so and often taking nearly half an hour to do just that. In reality, I admit I was actually walking most of it.

In fact, let me rewind about 8 years... back to the day of eBloggy: I was a walker. I lived near downtown and spent my weekends walking across the provincial bridge for shopping and whatnot, often covering 5km easily. In fact, I conceivably covered 10km without even realizing it back then.

So when I decided one lazy Sunday to get up off my couch and walk 10km, I knew it could be done, but I also knew I wouldn't be doing it fast.

And after months of frustration, I took a chance and walked into my local Running Room store and signed up for my first clinic. I recounted my story about going 10km to the manager forgetting to mention that I actually walked most of it. Thankfully I chose the smarter option and signed up for the 5K clinic instead of the 10K. And that was one of the best decisions I ever made for a variety of reasons.

1) Because I ran semi-regularly, I was already more or less able to "run" 5 minutes at a time. I would learn that it wasn't so much the intensity of my work-out that was holding me back, but the consistency. Before I knew it, I was hooked on the 10:1 run/walk technique.

2) Timing was perfect because the instructor for that particular round happened to be a seasoned fitness instructor by trade rather than a random volunteer. She had loads organizational skills and ran the class like a drill instructor but also like a friendly kindergarten teacher at the same time.

3) Up to that point, one of my ongoing concerns was that I felt the obligation to "go home" on a regular basis. I didn't feel I had any right to commit to a weekly activity that would interfere with opportunities to be with family. Committing to this has freed my stress-levels incredibly. And on a side note, my parents were okay with this.

4) Up to this point, I was still rather embarrassed about my fitness level. I would talk about attempting my runs, but I refused to talk about how fast I was and avoided running with others, even making up excuses like, "you wouldn't want to smell me when I'm sweaty." This excuse later turned into fact, by the way.

I graduated the clinic and ran my first 5K race in March, clocking in at about 36 minutes. Which, if I took my before-clinic times into consideration meant I had cut almost 15 minutes off my best time. I enjoyed running with a group so much, I volunteered to be a group leader.

This is where things get a little bit weird for me. I loved group-leading. It was very rewarding to nurture other runners through the same experience I had by blowing away their doubts about their capacity for improvement. Telling them they ran so much farther than they thought and watching their smiles was a great feeling. But at the same time, I wasn't getting any faster or stronger. I spent the whole 10-week program running as slow as the slowest runners to make sure no one was left behind.

Come May, I ran the 5K at Ottawa Race Weekend and clocked 36 minutes again. As expected. Then things took a very unusual turn.

I took a few weeks off around this time. I went out of town - even tried to continue working out while away. But then one dreadful afternoon, a phone-call came. And it was possible the worst kind of phone-call one could receive: my grandfather was in a bad way.

Without getting into details, my extended family and I packed up and headed home to say our goodbyes.

When I got back to Ottawa, I threw myself in the training again. It was the only thing holding my nerves together and taking my mind off everything else. I ran so hard I wound up following the 10K clinic unofficially. I got along with them and was continually invited to join them on their clinic nights so I had my full 3-times-a-week schedule, following their hill-training through to the long-slow-distance runs on Sunday mornings. Before I knew it - the clinic was over. But due to weird timing, goal race for the group was actually 3 weeks away. I rallied the regulars and persuaded them to continue meeting me at the store to keep up our base training until the end.

In between last winter and now, I've lost about 18 pounds. I cut almost all junk food from my diet. I've continued to train 3 times a week (unless I was recovering after a race; or something came up). I stopped "midnight-snacking." I ran my first 10K race on August 21 clocking 1 hour and 8 minutes.Now I have plans to join the half-marathon group in September. There's no looking back now.

While I've been waiting

So... just as we settled into Labour Day weekend, I received an email from THQ. It was the shipping confirmation for my long-awaited collector's edition of Space Marine on PS3. Little did I realize at the time, long-awaited was about to become even-longer-awaited.

So besides transferring to a new work-area, here's a list of all the things I've accomplished in my spare time NOT playing Space Marine.

1. Enjoyed a nice reunion with some extended family including a trip back home, and a visit with my brother during the long weekend.
2. Finished Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions on PS3.
   
3. Met friends for a night of pool at Dooly's on Member-Mondays. Twice.
4. Started and finished reading Star Wars "Allegiance" by Timothy Zahn.
5. Hosted an edition of Bad-Video-Game-Movies night at my place for my buddies.
   
6. Completed all challenges in "Dead or Alive Dimensions" on 3DS.
7. Built a Lego Technic mobile crane model. Added the Power Functions kit.
   
8. Played Anomaly Warzone Earth nearly to completion (boy does it get hard towards the end).
9. Watched all 6 Star Wars films on blu-ray including a massive portion of the bonus features.
10. Visited with friends for an impromptu birthday party.
    
11. Watched "The Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi." (Epic!)
12. Attended a Toronto Maple Leafs @ Ottawa Senators pre-season game.
13. Tonight I will begin a new gunpla kit I bought myself at the local specialty shop. It's the over-sized 1/48 scale RX-78 and it'll be awesome.
    

I just wish the Internet would stop talking about how freaking awesome Space Marine is... either that or I wish "Snail-Mail" didn't have to reaffirm how well-deserved its nickname was.

Life: Easter weekend 2009

In case anybody out there cares... I'm back from my hometown.

Like every other visit I arrived with a "crunch." Seems the ditch through-pipe has raised another inch or so (or the surrounding earth sunken a bit more). I'm afraid bottoming out the car has knocked something loose ...again. I didn't notice on the highway but it was when made my way through the city back to my house that I realized just how unusually loud my engine was.

On the bright side a few bits of gaming news from this weekend.

I played M:TG and lost a lot to my brother. He played a variety of custom decks he had built over the years (some dating back to his early youth when Magic was still new). While I played with only the pre-constructed decks from the Jace vs Chandra set. I also threw together a custom Jund deck with my leftovers (my best cards are still locked away for the tournament, unfortunately).

We finally, after many months of bad timing, got to play AT-43 for the first time. Either it was mismatched unit types, or just unable to schedule a rendez-vous together, we never were able to even try a proper game after finishing the contents of the Initiation Set. The first game was... quite a mess, to be honest. We chose the first scenario in the rulebook (a straight up "kill your opponent for points" setup; no capture objectives, no reinforcement units). We randomly set up a game board by placing my collection of tiles, then the terrain elements, then randomly choosing sides of the map to start from.

Almost immediately, we made our first mistakes. There are certain things you don't really think of when you come from a WH40k 4th edition background... Like the fact that all units can run faster if they choose not to shoot. Instead, I misread the Therian optional "Dash" to mean that I could move a full 30cm in addition to whatever previous combat move they made! Other silly mistakes included the thought that "take cover" meant you could get a saving throw even when your unit was out in the open. About half-way through the game we decided that made no sense and went back to "warhammer logic" - if it's partially behind something, then it gets a chance to hide.

I thoroughly enjoyed our first match. I think its one major game mechanic that trumps WH40k is the fact that you take turns activating units. WH40k may be more "real" in that all your units are effectively acting simultaneously, but AT-43 is simply more fast-paced gaming because you don't sit around waiting for your opponent to move 6 to 10 units around the field. Both players are engaged at all times because you're busy thinking of ways to outmanoeuvre the opponent.

As a final note, if you missed it my Tweet, I did indeed find a Matcatz Fightpad. I chose the Ryu design. I am consistently amused that the EB-Games in my tiny home-town manage to get inventory for these sorts of hard-to-find items and that they seem to sit on the shelves for quite a while. I actually also saw a non-Tournament-Edition Fightstick as well, but I think I'll take my chances and wait to see if I can get my hands on a TE.

my stupid flipping adventure

Let me tell you a story about what happened with my copy of Rock Band for PS3.

I got it used a few weeks ago for a very reasonable $23. I should have actually been able to buy it for $21 because I later realized I had a coupon for a discount on used games. But just as well, at least I wasn't paying EBGames' extortion of a price for a used copy (somewhere on the order of $50 or so).

What I really wanted it for, of course was simply to export the song library to my PS3 so that I could have an additional 58 songs in Rock Band 2. Which I did later on (in fact, just this past weekend I finally unlocked every on-disc song from RB2 which meant it was time to rotate in some new material). Between the price tag of a used disc and the export key, I invested just under $30.

But what if... it didn't have to be that way? What if I turned around and sold it back to the store for trade-in credit? I got $8.40 for it... which... well... I suppose I could have made twice as much selling it on eBay. But I'm just not that kind of guy. My time is not worth that so for me, being in an electronics store and having eight bucks in my pocket is a better proposal.

...now if only I knew what I wanted to buy. Because as usual... when I do have a gift certificate for anything... I never find anything I want.

Things I've been up to...

Just because I haven't posted anything useless in a while:

The video backlog is fluctuating. Finally finished Gurren Lagann. Loaned the DVDs to Weirdguy. Finished my collection of certain fansubs. In the mood for romantic comedy so it's Kanon and Tonaguri. Right now I'm enjoying Tonaguri much more than Kanon (I had high-expectations for
Kanon since I loved Air and Clannad).

I put a hold on Kenichi Ultimate Disciple while I read the manga. I've been spoiled by Amazon's service (when they have stuff in stock). It took Archambault over 2 weeks to deliver my impulse-buy. Is 2 weeks even considered "impulsive?"

Speaking of Amazon, after that Street Fighter 4 incident (I did wind up finding it the next night), I placed a pre-order at Amazon for Resident Evil 5. It will fall under "nice to have" category. I was hell-bent on the SF4 CE was that I'm a long-time fan of the franchise and wanted to
see the OVA that comes with it. For RE5, not so much, but the fanboy in me thinks it'll be cool to have the announced (a collectible figure, patch, medallion, messenger bag with company logo, etc).

As for SF4, I still not particularly good. Sometimes I blame the game, sometimes I think I'm just sloppy. As a veteran SF player for the last 15 years, I know my strengths and weaknesses. I know I play better with an arcade stick than a D-pad. I know that I play a decent game on Medium difficulty. So why is it that on Easiest (while I'm trying to unlock new characters) I wipe the floor with every opponent, but then Abel, Zangief, and Seth come along make life hell?

Dawn of War 2 was a little bit dissappointing. Because of the dramatic shift in game mechanics from the previous DoW, I decided to play my campaign on a lower difficulty. So far the only certainty is I learned to handle special abilities and the different unit types. But I'm also
peeved that there doesn't appear to be a skirmish tutorial (not that I really looked for it). Campaign mode gives you some dudes, then you get a few more, then upgrades Diablo-style. So now I'm running on auto-pilot to level-up. I have a history of reaching final bosses without having enough XP. Don't want to make that mistake this time.

Finally, I picked up Prinny: Can I really be the hero? for PSP. The PSP battery turned out to be completely dead (I hadn't used it in several months). So I decided to let it charge overnight. Thought I'd give it a try this morning but then it asked to do a firmware update (certainly
didn't have time for that before work). Anyway, The game came with an audio CD with a couple of vocal tracks and in-game instrumentals. The insert CD insert is a single sheet folded twice (a reversible cover, translated lyrics, 1-page comic), Funny how the back of the box made it
sound like you were supposed to get a whole bunch of stuff. I'm just happy that besides some shelf-wear, I was at least able to get the notorious EB Games stickers off the box without damaging it much.

lazy con report: G-Anime 2009

As far as upstart conventions go, G-Anime had some really good ideas. I was there for both days spanning February 7 and 8 2009.

Some great ideas included a "command center" where programming was monitored by the crew. So whenever something went wrong, help was sent on the way. The location was great too (the Palais de Congress in Gatineau). There was a lot more parking than I anticipated (the city hall next door happens to offer free underground parking if you can find it... and it's connected so you can leave you coat in the car and walk indoors all the way over). Too bad the food court was mostly closed (those who were open seriously cashed in as the con ran pretty much all day both days).

Other great ideas included the fact that a lot of screening rooms were fully automated - each projector was an HTPC with timers set to show whatever was on the schedule for an hour at a time.

The down-sides... well, it felt a lot like being at an upstart. Many times I thought they were biting off more than they deserved (as well as they could chew). For instance, my friends and I missed pre-registration by about... 5 months. That is, we didn't know about it. I didn't even notice a poster at the local comics shop (who, btw, also turned out to have the single largest booth in the dealer's room). So they really needed to raise awareness.

Because we registered at the door, tickets were $40CAD. That's only $5 shy of a basic pass to FanExpo in Toronto! I mean, that's pretty arrogant considering its their first year. Pre-registration was $30... so a 25% jump is pretty hard to swallow.

Secondly, live events took an aweful long time to get running. Because the tickets line was so well-organized, we got in pretty quickly (compared to other cons I've been to). We had time to stop at the openning ceremonies... which, in the end, we lost patience and didn't see. We sat in the room for nearly 20 minutes (enough time to have watched a full episode in one of the screening rooms).
The same happened later that day. Since we weren't terribly hungry yet, we thought we'd grab a seat at the masquerade contest for half and hour or so... well, that 30 minutes grew into well over 35 minutes (the crowd grew restless and start bouncing a balloon around to each other)... we decided to get some supper over on St.Joseph.

Lastly, technical glitches were non-stop. I spent a lot of time in the screening rooms trying to absorb as much anime as possible. But it seemed that the setups weren't fully tested. Sometimes the anti-virus on those HTPCs would kick in and slow down playback. Other times, the glitch delayed the play-time of the show and the timer on the HTPC either cut off the playback mid-episode. Other times the cut-off did not occur and the next show started up overriding the video (but making a mess of the audio). It also probably did not help that all those HTPCs were running the Windows 7 beta. Sure it's free and you avoid the licensing fees. But goodness... sometimes you draw the line somewhere.

Need to give the staff a big big kudos however. Whenever glitches occured, they were there. Security was provided by folks cosplaying as members of the RCPD and Umbrella corporation and despite their reputations from the source material, were all friendly and always helpful.

can of fat

...After about 3 and a half months, this is the can of the saturated fat collected from my bacon drippings...

List of crap

Yes, yes, I know, I haven't blogged in a while. Life just full of disappointments. First I abandoned both ebloggy and livejournal because I just couldn't maintain my anonymity much since more and more people around the office have been reading this blog and/or following my Twitter. Secondly, I was getting bored of it anyway - plus I really haven't had much to share since moving into my house.

So here are a list of things I probably should have blogged on this site but haven't.

1) picked up a new PVC figure of Misato Katsuragi a few weeks back. I haven't even taken the time to photograph her, let alone blog her.

2) built the Drop-Pod model I mentioned only 2 posts ago in less than a couple of hours.

3) the Land Raider Terminus Ultra project needs an update: I've started painting it.

4) I never went back to finishing up my Mini-Munny paint project. I'm just lazy that way.

5) the AT-43 company is coming along... badly. I really don't know what I'm doing but I'm starting to be convinced I should just ebay a starter set. At least then I'll know what a game plays like with their introductory scenarios.

6) still watching early episodes of SG-1 and Atlantis. I'm in the 3rd season of SG-1 and just wrapping up Atlantis. Also watching Code Geass fansubs, and Gurren Lagann on DVD.

7) did not have time to watch Incredible Hulk yet but tried out the blu-ray interactive features and all I can say is, this is what I always thought DVD should be. More or this later.

when fast is too fast

I'm amused and PO'ed at the ads airing on television lately about how "reliable" and "fast" Rogers Internet is.

Last week, on a Thursday, I got a mail message warning me that I had reached 75% of my monthly bandwidth (that is, 45Gb total upload and download). Okay... that's fine I think. But then last night, the very same night my billing period rolled over I get an email telling me I've reached 100% (60Gb!)

One would make the case that I managed to use up 15Gb in the span of only 4 days! Fast indeed. Then again, this month has been highly unusual. My co-op student cousin moved in, my brother was also here with his own machine for Labour Day weekend. I've been downloading demos and videos like crazy for my new laptop and goodies for the new PS3. In fact, a glance at my bandwidth history shows that most months prior, I barely scratched 20Gb at all.

about nothing

Some upkeep...
For those missing my blog entries, my PC at home has finally driven me
to abandon it. You may have noticed my Twitter feed mentioning a recent
BSoD. Indeed since that incident on Monday evening, I haven't really
been up and running (except for a breif stint on Tuesday morning).
Either way, enough is enough and the effort to reinstall Windows on
potentially faulty 10-year-old hardware is not very appealing.

Today I placed an order at NCIX for a new laptop. This'll be my first
one (I've always thought of myself as a PC enthusiast; but over the
years have concluded that I don't upgrade often enough to make it worth
my time). Yet another lesson I picked up from EvilTwin (hellos go out to
wherever he is today): usability should prioritize over maintainability.

In the end I settled on an ASUS M50VM-A1. Not terribly fast and furious,
but it is still classed in the "gaming" category. Nvidia would have you
believe it's a multimedia device according to its description of the
9600M GS GPU. But on the bright side of everything, I spent about a
fraction of what I would have if I went with a pure-gaming rig like a
Dell XPS 1730. So for all intents and purposes, I'm happy.

Other crap...
Finished reading the rest of Marvel's "Annihilation: Conquest" event and
now looking forward to the collected editions to come for the relaunch
of the "Guardians of the Galaxy" franchise. And more than that, the next
volume of Nova because his adventure is abruptly cut short in the middle
of the Conquest story-line... And I'm dying to read exactly what
happened while he wasn't in the main plot.

Went to the comics shop today and grabbed the first volume of Gurren
Lagann (I know, the second volume is out, I'm just late to the game). I
loved this series in fansub form (nothing beats free). I did get a CD
single of the theme song out of buying legit. Also followed Weirdguy to
Value Village again. This time I scored a replacement motor for my mini
RC car for only a few bucks. It's a complete set of upgrades, but really
all I was interested in was the motor... Maybe I'll sell off the rest to
Weirdguy as he also has a few Bit Char-G vehicles.

The "right now" wishlist

1) I want to take a nap. Despite getting home at a decent hour I still
managed to crawl into bed after 11pm.

2) I wish my credit card statement would finally arrive to indicate that
my previous billing period is over. There's another FREEing bunny at the
local shop waiting for me to buy!

3) I wish Sony would announce whatever plans they have for future bundle
deals on the PS3. The current ones on shelves are either the old Sixaxis
bundles or the newer one with Dualshock 3 and MGS4 (which is kind of
expensive for my taste).

4) While I'm at it, I think Dell needs to get some more stock so that
they can redo that deal with the extra controller and HDMI cable on the
PS3!

5) Speaking of Dell, shouldn't they roll-out a new XPS laptop model
soon? They're base model for the 1730 line-up still features only 8m
series GeForce video cards. 9m series DirectX-10 mobile solutions have
been available for months now.

6) I'm kind of hungry... I'd like some desert...

7) I wish my web-filter at the office made some sense. Most sites make
sense to filter... Others, not so much sense. I need my movie and tv
news (these are not "streaming media sites!").

the workspace

Because somebody asked... here is what my work area currently looks like.
What you don't see is that on the left is a series of piles of sheets which would look like a mess if you didn't know what my filing system was (but yes, I go through each pile every day, so it's quicker to leave everything out than to clean it up ALL the FREAKING time). And no, that's not some fancy screen-saver, that's me obscurring what I realized was sensitive information on my screen AFTER I took the picture (damn, even cheap cameras these days are hi-res!).
A recent addition is this avatar-like Mighty Muggs Lando Calrissian. He's always happy. Even when I'm stuck filling out SYNCSORT statistics reports. The resemblance to his movie-sake is uncanny:

Weirdguy makes me eat

So there was this one time I received a very vague delivery notice at my door. The notice said, "for pick-up today after." None of the usual time boxes were checked off (my local mail person must be exceedingly lazy). I was debating this with Weirdguy via IM that evening and he convinced me to give it a try if the postal outlet wasn't too far.

That evening led to the following post:
Mikuru in Red

A couple of things made that day very cool. Besides finally owning my first FREEing figure, I also learned that sometimes the time marked (or lack thereof) on the card wasn't necessarily accurate. And I also received a very cryptic message from Napoleon following that post saying, "is it wrong that I want to do stuff to that figure?" Surely a quote for history. Thankfully he's spoken for and can therefore "make sexy time" as he pleases (I think).

So anyway, today was an OK day which had potential to be a Freaking Sweet day. I got another notice at my door today. And being that I've learned sometimes I can take a chance, I went over to the postal outlet. The guy at the counter says my box wasn't there yet. Oh well. Sadly, the worse news is, I can't go back tomorrow because I'm busy all evening. So I'm kind of pissed off to know that I won't get my goodies until Wednesday.

I blame Weirdguy for learning me an unreliable lesson. To make myself feel better, I stopped at the grocery store for my supply of fruit... and a McCain frozen cake. Which in turn I also blame Weirdguy for. Because I saw one at his house the other day and suddenly I have the temptation for. Yeah, he's a bad influence to be sure.

O_o;;;

weekend checklist

List of things I've done since Friday:

- Showed Napoleon where I normally park (and drove him home). I also
learned that day that Napoleon, like his namesake, is a freaking dance
machine. He has, as we say, DDR skillz. I didn't stick around long
enough to learn whether he also had nunchucku skillz.

- I watched Iron Eagle II... it hasn't aged well. But then, that movie
sucked to begin with.

- Played Metal Gear 3 and started straying from the FAQ. But when I went
back to check again, I realized I had been doing everything right after
all. I think I'm making decent progress. The story unfortunately has
devolved into the typical "go here to get this to get there" plot
twists. Oh well.

- Stopped at the comics shop (turned out it was the summer sale event).
Coincidentally, this was also the weekend I decided to place my order at
Amazon for a bunch of books I haven't been able to find. Already on my
credit card this month: my trip to Toronto and Mikuru bunny-girl. Walked
out of the store with the first "Death of Captain America" trade. I
spent a whole bunch of time chatting with the fellow at the counter
about Kamen Rider; a fun diversion.

- Made a stupid huge grocery run... but mostly stocked up on
non-perishables. Just to get that out of the way. I can always get fresh
fruits on a need-to-eat basis.

- Watched Wipe-Out (or as I call it: "American MXC"). I like that they
actually follow the contestants as they play through the game (whereas
MXC essentially cuts together as much wacky footage as possible to fill
time).

- Got to the final chapter of 'War for Honor' ...finally. This is a big
step because, not only was it the longest instalment yet of the
"Honorverse" series, this means it's time for me to switch gears. I have
my Harry Potter movie marathon to refresh my memory, then get started on
'Half-Blood Prince.' Also on the backlog is jPod which Weirdguy loaned
me months ago...

Toronto Haul list

Traveled extra light this year because I wasn't driving. Plus I was staying with my cousin downtown so whatever happened, I had to lug this stuff around in the subway. Photos later whenever I feel like posting them.

1. Marvel Subcasts Spider-Man statue by Upper Deck. Not because I like this one in particular, but because I was at the famous Silver Snail and that's the one they happened to have in stock. Plus I was feeling sufficiently "metro" to buy urban-art.
2. Iron Man torso T-shirt... because I was feeling like being "funny." I think I rather came off geeky than funny, however.
3. Several booster boxes of UFS cards. Cheaper to buy in complete boxes than individual packs. Plus you get the "box topper" promo card you can't get otherwise.
4. A volume of Yotsuba&! manga.
5. A random assortment of gashapon including a full set of Sakura Taisen (I can't remember which release off-hand), a DS stylus (with Bullet Bill on top), a Nu Gundam, a Meer figure from Gundam Seed, a micro-figure of Gundam Victory, and a sushi meal.

Also conveniently timed... my last order from Maelstrom arrived in the mail the one day I stopped over at my house before heading for Sherbrooke so now I have the Codex Space Marines to browse. Nice to have a colour hardcopy to look through rather than that PDF file I downloaded somewhere up the line.

Who's the bigger jerk now?

I'm going to invoke Gabe's Greater Internet Dickwad Theory today. For the record, this is a true story about my family and I.

I was in Oregeno's Pasta Market in Ottawa's Byward Market area. The hostess accidentally asked me if I was there for the "brunch buffet or regular menu" even though it was already 1pm. In turn, I mis-heard her and thought she asked about a "lunch buffet."

So I asked about it when the waitress arrived. She explained that brunch was indeed over and that they were back on the regular menu. But then something really strange happened... she asked if we needed a few more minutes with the menu (I said yes) then without taking drink orders, she left! She never even came back with water either.

Another table was seated next to us - they ordered beverages first. Admittedly, while she was taking those orders, my mother (who can be naïve, sometimes) opened her menu again. Alright fine: that was a mixed signal. I understand that often a closed menu will signal a server to take your order. But the next time she came by to take the other tables' orders (you know, the one that arrived AFTER us), the waitress left again without taking our orders!

We discussed the situation briefly and then very promptly got up and left. I don't know about anybody else but I did make eye contact with the waitress on my way out the door. If there was any proof-in-the-pudding it was that nobody tried to ask us to stay or apologize.

I can be "understanding." I know that it looked weird - a group of people ask about a menu that was unavailable, possibly cheap (because my mother asked how much the buffet would have cost during the confusion). I don't blame anybody but ourselves for getting profiled. But understanding the situation doesn't make our treatment any less fucking racist. Racial profiling is harmless only up to the moment you make a decision to act based on such assumptions. It's like the staff did everything possible to make me feel unwelcome.

Needless to say, I've posted my thoughts on Yahoo's Restaurant index for the world to see.

wow... I got caught

Wow, I'm now part of a statistic.

This morning when I checked my mail, my ISP had sent me an email saying my IP address had been identified in a complaint filed to them overnight. Oops. I don't really want to go into it.

It's just a weird set of circumstances. I haven't pirated a piece of software in years. And the one day I thought of something to add to my torrent client on a whim, and I got flagged for it. What were the chances? Sheesh.

Oh well, I've deleted the files in question and removed it from my torrent client. And all I can say is, "I promise I won't pirate anything again." But really, there's not much else I can do about it right now so... anyway, whatever.

Life... and a little bit of D.O.M.

For anybody wondering what I've been up to, I tried my hand at making a casserole again this weekend. I went to a potluck with the people from the movie meetup group last night. Considering the ad-hoc nature of organizing a potluck, I'm amazed everything turned out as well as it did. The party room we booked was actually free because one of the members lives in that apartment building and it was arguably the nicest party room I've ever seen. In the heart of downtown, it was fully equipped with a kitchenette area, had a pool table and foosball table, and even opened up to a nice terrace (not that we used that feature much - it's still cold out these days.

Anyway, nobody died from my tuna casserole and that's all that matters. Somebody had a camera but since it wasn't me, I have nothing to share with you...

...so here is a shot of Kamei Eri (6th Gen member of Morning Musume).She like Yaguchi was known as "that other one" and they even poked fun at that in the beginning when the group released the auto-bio track "A Noisy Girls' Tale." But that was years ago and now she's made her mark as the comedian of the group.

2007 Roll-Foreward

I don't have much to say as things have been real quiet and busy at the same time. So here's what loyal readers get to look forward to in the next couple of weeks.

A few photo-essays of my last Warhammer games of 2007 - mixing and matching Cities of Death and Apocalypse.

Thoughts on the Logitech G15 (yes, I found one open-box at the local Futurecrap store here, so it was even cheaper than I anticipated).

My order from RightStuf should arrive any day so I'll need to post a bit about the anime classic Irresponsible Captain Tylor.

My order from Toy-Wave should also arrive any moment with my newest additions to my Revoltech collection. Expect more photos.

I grabbed some more WH40k models for my army so I'll be blogging the build as usual.

I found a nice super-fine-tipped marker in a local artist store so I'll be putting the finishing touches that Zaku from before.

And just maybe I will start on that Imperial Baneblade model because holy crap, thats been gathering dust for months.

email in-joke

Recently I was lamenting the fact that I have a bunch of paper in the house with my full name and address that I feel uncomfortable with just dropping in the recycling. While I'm unlikely to suffer a dumpster-diver in my neighbourhood, I'd rather not take any risk if I can avoid it. Weirdguy offered to loan me an old shredder he found for cheap...

The following is an actual email exchange that occurred this morning:

WG: BTW, I got the shredder in the car.
BO: Wow... how many members of the Foot Clan did you have to fight to get him into the car?
WG: None, they said it was ok if I had him back by 5:00 PM.