Random Musings

Going, going, GONE.

Mon, 27 Dec 2004 08:31:00 GMT

http://squifferific.mynuts.org/blog/index.php <- my new home. Change your links, make with the clicking.

Oh...I havn't posted here since Nov 11th...yeah....I'll *probably* be a little better with the new one, seeing as it's new and all. But no promises.

Games games games games games games games

Thu, 11 Nov 2004 10:50:42 GMT

Games.

But first, the un-game stuff. INTD is a pain in the ass. Sometimes I feel like the ring master of a cheap tribal africa circus, where the only attraction is "Watch the ring master struggle to control the lobotomized monkeys." And, despite this, I eventually manage to get my monkies in a row and we finish the tasks on time.

The show at the theatre is just about over, which is a good thing. As fun as it is, I'm going to find ways to cut back my involvement there so when I say "Adios" it's not such a shock to them.

Turns out I need just 6 more courses to graduate. Six. So I have several decisions I need to make before 5:30 tomorrow, that time being my registration time.

1) Do I want to do six courses at once? Possible, yes. Enjoyable, no. Survivable, we'll find out.
2) Which IA class do I want to take? In what could be my final symester at school, I could take a single IA class instead of the three or four that I've taken in past symesters. My choices are some 3D environment thing, an art installation, and something else that Shahryar and Tarek dismissed as crap.
3) 2 of my classes need to be electives, meaning anything I want. This is further broken down into three categories, and the choice between them is my question. They are : Crappity crap crap classes (Basket weaving 101), Crap classes that I'll kick the crap out of (Intro to acting, anything involving a presentation), or classes where I might learn crap (such as phsycology.) There is a strong possibility that I'll be taking these two in the summer, and I don't know if I want to bother learning more (GASP) or just crossing the i's and dotting the t's.

Games.

GTA San Andreas is a very cool game. It builds succesfully off of the previous versions (turf wars, bicycles, customizable avatars, stats) and adds a bunch of other stuff that seems cool but ends up being annoying. (Loading times for clothes, food, the DDR thing, button mashing exercise.) I can't wait for it to come out on PC, where I won't have to bother with the stupid stupid targeting controls. They've used the GTA engine to make the game cross as many genres as possible, from driving and 3rd person shooting to stealth action and dancing. Some of these it pulls off better than others, and sometimes leaves something to be desired.

Dawn of War is a cool game. At first, during the beta, I was somewhat dissapointed because it played like any other Starcraft style RTS. Then I got the full version, and got into the story (voice acting, mainly. Static models on the table top don't speak.) Then something else came along.

Rome Total War is a very cool "Holy shit, it's 2am? Ok, one more battle" game. I'm still in the tutorial, but I'm too busy smashing everything to go on to the full campaign. I attacked a group of 700 with an army of 500, and the enemy had 150 guys coming in as reinforcements coming in fast on my left flank. I lost around 150, and killed all but 2 of the enemy...Weeeeeeeeeeee. It would have been less had I not charged my light cav into their heavy, but I had no choice.

And despite the silly thing Russ is doing in Sims2, such as fucking as many people as possible in the clothing store change room, I still really don't care for that game.

And now, for no reason, I'm going to compare a standard Dawn of War army to a Rome Total War army.

First up, 1 on 1. A Space Marine is 7.5' tall, armoured head to foot, and carries a rifle that fires self propelled exploding shells. He's got 2 hearts, 3 lungs, can spit acid and crush a man's skull in his hand. Born, bred, and mutated to become the perfect killing machine. Spare Marines are known to wear pants.

A Roman legionaire wears sandles, has a frilly hat, a pointed stick and a wooden shield. He follows orders well enough, but doesn't wear pants.

In Dawn of War, a maxed out army is about half a company, which means 50 odd guys. A Roman battalion consists of 800 - 1000 (Being the biggest army I've seen yet in the game.) So the marines are a little out numbered. Simply put, the Marines will run out of ammo, the Romans will eventually summon the nerve to climb the hill of thier own dead and attack the Marines in melee. At this point, it's a toss up, and no clear winner. The Marines still have the advantage 1 on 1. The Romans, well...1000 is a lot more than 50.

RARGH MUST HAVE PROJECTOR ARAHGAHRIJOJS2AH drool

Fri, 22 Oct 2004 07:43:30 GMT

Pfft, democracy.

The current play running at the Langley Playhouse is going quite well. We were set up, the lights and sounds are working our great, the actors are doing a terrific job. So what does the director do?

"When Claire (character) dies, we should have a touching slide show so the audience doesn't have to sit through darkness for a minute and a half while the actors change costume."

Ok, I say. Sure. But you're aware the show opens tomorrow, right?

"YEEAAARRGHHGHG GOOARHLE SNART DROOL PROJECTORS SLIDES!!!!"

...Right.

So we get a data projector from one of the actors, who pilfered it somehow from the school where he teaches. Another actor brought an old laptop as well to run it. Our original plan was to have the lap top on the stage, on a desk. Then during the black, someone opens the laptop to reveal the touching slide show. However, the screen was too small to see from the back of the theatre. So we planned to scrap it.

I get a phone call monday. On my cell. It's the director.

"You know what, we really should try this projector again."

Ok, well, we tried it out and it sucked so we decided it was a bad idea.

"blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahI'mcompletelyunawarethatthisisacellphonesoIjustchatyourfuckingearyoff."

Right, well...I need to go, I'll ttyl."

She called me again, a little while later. And again, when I was buying my Blind Guardian DVD. (Joy in disc form.) And again, when I was at home. Guh.

"What about the projector? WE MUSTS HAVE IT."

We test out the projector. Problem was that it was very loud, and we lacked a screen. Plus, the show that night, and it was a bad time to be messing about with goofy hardware stuff. I told the director, and she seemed disappointed, but calm.

The show opens, everyone loves it. Even with the 1 1/2 minute darkness, (not quiet, we do have lovely music playing. Josh Grobin :P ) which gives the audience time to cry. Seriously, this was an emotionally charged scene right before it, and while having the audience sitting in black for so long is normally a Very Bad Thing, we decided that there's not much else we can do, and it seemed to work anyway so we were happy. We being the actors, myself and the stage manager.

I get a call last tuesday. On my cell. At 7:45 in the morning.

"Hi Bryan, listen, YYYYYYEEEEEEAAAAAAAARRRGGGGGHHHHH PROJECTORSSSSS."

Guh? Wha?

"We should meet sometime because we need to test this with other minions who've I've conned into working with me and supporting me."

(I'm still asleep at this point, but starting to wake up.)

No meeting till...thursday...busy school...stuff.

"We need to meet because blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah." Minute count rising.

Ok, fine. Let's say wednesday at three.

And with that she said bye and hung up, slinking back into a dark dimension of her own design. And, now awake, got ready for school.

Wedneday follows Tuesday, according to the ancient calendar invented by Einstein and Spartacus in the year 200ADE. And within that Wednesday, 3:00 comes up, and I find myself compelled by mystical forces to go to the theatre. When there, I find that the minions have set up a slide projector up near the lights, and a screen hanging above a door way on stage. The screen is motorized, and goes up and down at a rate of 3 feet per day. We test things out, and it seems alright. We play with the timing of the screen, figuring out ingenious methods of ensuring it's at the right position through the use of glow tape markers. (My idea.) Satiated, the director leaves.

Thursday. Today.

I show up early and play with the screen again. We (the actors, the stage manager and myself) determine that the motor is too loud and slow, and there's a strong chance that the 45 seconds of whirrring needed to extend and retract the screen will break any special moment with the audience gained by 20 seconds of photos. We decide, as a team, that it was a Very Bad Idea. However, this particular director loves to meddle with her show even after it's started running. Some directors watch opening night and then leave, never to be seen again. But this one won't. As a result, she's at the show tonight, fully a week after opening.

We decide the best way to confront her was as a team.

I was in the tech booth, getting stuff ready and working hard too. (Read : Playing advance wars because a retarded ape could run this show.) The director approaches.

"Hi Bryan, how are you doing?I'm really interested in seeing how the projector works." (notice the lack of a pause.)

Oh, well...uhh...We've decided that it's not really worth it.

Hell hath no fury like a fruitcake director on a power trip.

"ANEORBSGHIEHPROJECTORAOSNOIUBIUSBD!!!1"

The actors, stage manager and I have decided that it would be dis...

"AOMINEONOINSDPROJECTOR!!!1eleven. I AM THE DIR-REC-TOR AND MY WORDZ ARE LAW<, BITCHES!!!"

Ok..well...let's get the stage manager up here so we can all talk about this. (Read : Requesting back-up, charlies all around us!)

And poof. The director is gone...somehow.

A little bit later, the director materializes in the green room. (the changing room back stage, which is actually a lovely shade of mud-hut brown.) The stage manager told me of how she seemed really angry, and insisted in a firm but insane voice that her will is law, and that this is a fascist regime, not a democracy.

So we work out the details of running her little slide show. And we do it for the first time in front of a live audience who paid money to see this. And we get it working without a hitch. Because I am the best gosh darn retarded tech simian around. I could hear the motor, plain as day, despite raising the volume of the music. Hell, I doubled the volume of the music.

The end result? I honestly don't know. Did the audience like it? Was it distracting? Did it add to the show or detract? I have no idea. In any event, I dodged the director and escaped without having to go through her perceived victory. Technically, it worked. Artistically, I don't know, but the director would say yes anyway.

I think my time at the playhouse is coming to an end. It's stopped being about playing with expensive toys and is now about dealing with nut house directors and fielding questions from other members about anything that has an electrical current. And many things that don't.

</rant>

Sheep, Sims 2, and sweet, sweet....dvdS

Mon, 18 Oct 2004 07:22:48 GMT

First up, we have the sheep pics I promised.

I <3 my sheep army :D

Secondly, Sims 2 and the travesty within.

Remember Sims 1? Sims 1 was entertaining for a week or so, until I realized that once I had reached the top of a given career, had all the stuff I wanted, a large enough house, the family and all that...there was nothing. There was no end sequence, no "You Win!" message. (Granted, how could you win at life?) There was no real reason to keep playing after that point at all, unless the idea of watching your sim watch TV was wholly satisfying on a spiritual level. The essence of the game was to escape the boring, repetitive, drudgery of your normal everyday life and replace it for a few semi-sweet hours of someone else’s boring, repetitive, drudgery of their normal everyday life.

So what does one do when they reach the top of human achievement? In real life, people start sky diving or going on cruises or start a charity or whatever. In the Sims, the only gameplay option left available is homicide, and even that gets boring after a while.

When Sims 1 was in play circulation in my house, Russ had a perfect little family going. Mom, Dad, baby, ideal viable domestic family unit. Vic starts playing, and Russ's Dad sim went to pay Vic's sim a visit. Dad stays on the front steps for five days and dies in a pool of his own urine. The family is wrecked and now Russ has a single mom situation. For good measure, Vic somehow kills the repairman.

Sims 2 is better than Sims 1. Hands down, it's better. Graphics, AI, gameplay, the "aspirations" that give the sims long and short term goals, it's all better. HOWEVER, it's still the Sims. That means it's still a virtual fish bowl, but this time with a cleaner tank and a little plastic scuba guy. I'm not a fish person.

Other stuff : I've bought Pikmin 2, and I enjoy it. My only complaint is that the "days" are too short, but that's minor stuff. It's like saying this six foot tall golden statue erected in your honor has the watch on the wrong wrist, or is just too gosh darn shiny and hurts your sensitive eyes. Good, good game, and co-op is much fun, as Keith would attest to.

Speaking of which, after techweek I had a pair of parties. First was at Scott's place, which was cool. I had to work at the theatre the next morning, and so did not partake of the fermented grains and had to leave early, which was a bummer. There were jello shooters. I don't know if Mr. Cosby would approve, but that's ok. The second party was at Tracy's; specifically, her awesome-but-pain-in-the-ass club house, and the suburbs of Richmond. I *somehow* ended up drinking a lot. Let me illustrate.

0 = sober. 10 = OMG I CAN"T SEE WRRAAALLPPPHH. I was about a 7 or 8. After Keith and I went back to his place, I couldn't read text on his monitor, despite being a few short feet away from it. And holding a conversation...sort of. Keith claimed that he thought I was fine at that point, and was surprised when I told him that I awoke at 7 in the morning to drink some water and puke in his toilet. Despite the stomach evacuation, that was a very fun night, and we should do it again. Even with the mud shoe incident.

I've also bought the Blind Guardian DVD, and it's awesome. Entirely awesome. BG put on their own festival somewhere in Germany, and there were 50,000 fans there. I don't know how heavily the DVD is edited, but it looks like they went from song to song with hardly a pause. They even performed And Then There Was Silence, which sounds AMAZING live, and is 13:something long. Crazy, crazy.

School related : INTD sucks ass, gaming is still cool, ecultures...I'm neutral. I like the material, I like how it's an online course that's not structured like any other online course. I don't like some of the whining and complaining that's going on. When a dozen people post, in quick succession, to the mailing list that they're getting too much spam, I just shake my head. I'm growing increasingly afraid of my mark for the paper too. Basically, if the requirements didn't keep changing because of the bitching going on, I would feel more confidant. Instead, I've got a paper that is either gold, or crap. We're talking a binary relationship here.

Oh, and two more things. If you havn't seen them, go watch Jon Stewart on Crossfire and Dad's Home. Solid gold lies within.

Sheep!

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 04:18:00 GMT

The clone wars have begun.

Well, not wars exactly. But I am cloning sheep. And growing my army. With plans of global domination. But don't you guys worry about that last bit for now.

Here's how the cloning works. It all began with a little green sheep. I lovingly crafted the little green sheep with my own two hands, and created a thing of...sheep. Anyway, I take a little cook pot, the camping stove and propane tank, and some little plastic trays I bought, and the block of blue stuff. Cutting a piece of blue stuff and putting it in the pot and it melts in short order. I hold my sheep nose down in a compartment of the tray with a bit of wire, and pour the blue melted stuff over him until the little box is full.

Let sit for a few hours.

Cut away the area around the sheep's bottom, until you see the tail. Then pop the sheep out. It's sort of like a birthing thing, it's a little wierd.

Then pour in the epoxy resin, let sit again for a longer time. Like 8 hours. After then, birth a new sheep from the blue rubbery womb. This sheep is yellow, kinda bubbly, and sticky. It'll take more time for the sheep to be non-sticky, but that's ok.

I've got 4 molds done now, and have 3 clones drying, 4 more inside the molds setting. Pictures are forthcoming.

GO SHEEP!

...Oh yeah....

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 08:08:59 GMT

I had sorta kinda forgotten completely about this entire LJ thing, so there is a little bit of a gap between this and the last post. But luckily, the first few weeks of school can be summed up as follows.

-Jim's class rocks hard.
-Emergence class rocks slightly less hard, in a different way.
-Kindergarden is...well...Artsy fartsy class, we get cookies and crayons. Second week, we got to leave early to watch the hockey game at a bar and drink beer. So sort of like kindergarden. Except with beer.

And INTD is a year long excuse for 3rd year experience design.

I'm taking fewer classes this semester, and I know that's going to bite me later but that thought really doesn't bother me that much. I might as well take these fewer enjoyable classes rather than re-enlist in last year's boot camp of hell. While I did learn and do a lot, it really, really sucks to have to take your birthday cake downstairs to the computer to eat because of a project that needs doing and printing by the next day.

Speaking of which, my birthday is quickly approaching. Again. The march of years rolls on, and despite the fact that my life hasn't really changed since first year, I do feel older. Funny that...being 21 and feeling OLD. I guess this is why my sister's constant 6 year old crap is really, really starting to get dumb because I'm getting older and she's staying 6. Oh, and she still spends 3+ hours a day talking to peru guy. Russ and I are convinced that he's actually a puppet, voice chatting by one of the Ah-nold soundboards. Which makes long conversations...difficult.

So this year my birthday is the saturday before techweek, thus making a strong case for pre-emptive drinking. Or, failing that, an extra bonus post-techweek/birthday party. My very own house party looks like it's dead in the water, seeming as the only real way it would work is the total and complete evacuation of my family. And I don't think that'll happen. So I'm looking for substitutes.

Ok, now I'm going to talk about Jim's class.

Jim's class is the game design class, and is the single most fun I've had in a class room environment since grade 12 drama. Honest to god, this class is the reason I came to this school. It's nearly to the point where I can sit and play Homeworld 2 and can just about nearly get away with calling it "a study in game mechanics and the influence of 3 dimensional game play in a traditionally 2 dimensional genre." Nearly get away. Not quite though. First week assignment was to come up with a pen and paper game. Second week was to have draft rules for a board game. Techweek is finish this board game. I am making little sheep models to use as game pieces. This class ROCKS.

sigh

Wed, 08 Sep 2004 07:10:38 GMT

Skool...

I just want out. That is my sole motivational factor for this year. I want out. I keep hearing wonderful tales of life after school, such as this unique concept of getting paid real money for things that I currently pay others so I could do it. The mind boggles.

Except for Jim's class. Jim's class looks like fun.

I recognize some of the tech 3s. But the second and first year kids are all faceless drones to me. They're people who stand around and take up space. It seems something was wrong with the AC today too, because rooms got very warm. It's all those second and first years, with their breathing and being warm blooded and everything. I, for one, would consider transforming all the second and first years into a race of cold blooded lizard people a step in the right direction.

Except for Cody. As the only first year I know, he can retain his mammal priveledges.

Repaired, and selling the junk...I mean...bonus parts for cheap!

Sat, 28 Aug 2004 01:00:54 GMT

Turns out that the IDE ports blew on my old box, rendering the mobo useless. And seeming as the only thing wrong with the old office computer was the hard drive and network card...SWAP!

So now we've got my dad's new office comp, a dead pile of parts, and a slightly dumber secondary comp for home. The office had a 300 celeron, the house had a 466. So we're talking the difference between 3 pennies and 4 pennies. But if all you've got is pennies, well, it's a noticable change.

Here's where you come in. I list parts, and you message me saying "Gee Bryan, I could really use part X." And we both win.

So I've got...

one floppy drive. (Whoohoo! I actually saw a new one at Future Shop for $50 :P)
one 250w power supply.
one 256mb SDRAM chip
two 64mb SDRAM chips
one ATI 3D rage something or other. 16mb of onboard memory
one 466 celeron CPU
one Soundblaster Awe64 card

and that's about it. Vic's friend has already called dibs on a CD-ROM drive of questionable reliability, and I doubt anyone will want a busted network card or mobo.

Oh, and by working on all this comp stuff over the past few days, my dad has assisted me in the purchase of more RAM for my comp. 1.5GB total now. :D

UPDATE

Tue, 24 Aug 2004 21:41:56 GMT

Gamecube is fixed and happy. :D

blah

Tue, 24 Aug 2004 07:01:02 GMT

From PEI, we to Nova Scotia, drove the Cabot Trail (very pretty scenery) and then ran out of east. So from there, the only way to go is west, being back home again. The mental difference that direction makes is amazing. Just sitting there thinking "I'm going home now." brought a smile to my face.

We cut south through new england to get to Niagra. Five states in eight hours. Those bloody american states are TINY. We stopped at Niagra, went under the falls in some tunnells dressed up in yellow plastic ponchos. We didn't go on the Maid of the Mist, which is the Niagra boat ride. (No, one does not go down the falls in the boat.) The Maid of the Mist ponchos are blue, which led to us calling the boat patrons Smurfs, and led to us singing a merry tune. Our yellow ponchos were dubbed chicken suits in short order.

3 hours or so from there we were in Guelph, which is a town near Toronto and the home of some friends of hours. I got to sleep on a bed and have a decent length hot shower for once, and I was glad. We spent one day just relaxing, bumming around our adoptive home and playing Mario Party. The next day we went into Toronto, went to the CN Tower (WAY bigger than Seattle spance needle.) as well as Holy Ground.

The Hockey Hall of Fame.

Anyway, I'd hate to say that the next few thousand km were boring and skip over them...but the next few thousand km were boring so I'm going to skip over them. In fact, all I'm going to say is that I got to shoot a gun at a pistol range inside the West Edmonton Mall, there's a town called "Qu'appelle" in Saskatchewan. This means, literally, "What's it called." And there are many mosquitoes in this world, many of which reside in Manitoba. And Winnepeg is forever trapped inside the 80s.

Anyway, recent events. On thusday, Mel, Russ and I went to the EMP in Seattle. And it was good. On friday Mel, Keith, Colin and I played Four Swords. And it was good.

It was five minutes after that moment that things started being less good.

The Gamecube broke, meaning tomorrow I have to take it in to Richmond to get it fixed. Hopefully.

Then the printer died. And the old bubble jet is acting just like a 10 year old printer should. It's cranky. Because she had (hypothetically, convenient excuse ahoy), broke the home printers, Vic went to the office to print. Lo and behold, the office computer dies. Let me define, for a moment, the word "Dies." It means "beyond all hope of resuscitation, despite an afternoon's worth of effort by those of valiant caliber."

I did these things to this computer, after repeated scan discs and never getting anywhere near to a start up.

1) Reformat
2) Re-install win98. (This comp was a 300 celeron. Win98 was all it could muster.)
3) Install hardware (burner, wireless mouse, printers)
4) Install Office2000
5) Remove hard drive. (The PCI slots are broken, meaning no network card, meaning no fast update downloads. Try downloading six years of updates on a 56k modem. No, seriously. Try it one day. It's fun.)
6) Install hard drive into other old computer (466 celeron!) so it can use the better (working) network card to download stuff.
7) SWEAR BECAUSE IT"S NOT FUCKING WORKING. Like not booting up again, the same error we had back before step 1.
8) Swap drives again, try to boot up the 466 Celeron.
9) ...sigh...
10) Get both computers ready to take to repair shop in the morning.

That was yesterday. Today we shopped around, dropped off the 466 for repair, and spent $900 on a new 2.4 ghz Celeron Compaq. Exactly one rung above bottom, but if Dad's been living with a 300 celeron for years, this is crazy fast.

So today, from 3 to 10, we were installing stuff and getting the new comp up to snuff. It runs ok, but could benefit from more than 256mb of ram. Oh, and $240 of that price tag was a 4 year warrenty, and a bunch was tax. The ticket price of the system was $560.

Anyway, it's been a pretty shitty weekend if you're a piece of hardware anywhere near Vicky. Just so long as she keeps the cooties away from my box, I'm happy.

Lazy!

Tue, 17 Aug 2004 07:58:34 GMT

Slowly but surely, I'm getting around to writing the rest of my tale.

A few corrections from last time:

At the campground by Little Big Horn, we saw a skunk. The skunk slunk slowly into the trees, never to be seen again. After we had set up camp, the well meaning but slow witted owner of the camp ground asked us where the skunk had gone. We helped him out and off he went, pistol in hand.

Let me rephrase.

He had a large revolver, and intended to shoot the skunk. Now why would a skunk let loose it's stunk? Fear, yes, but probably also high velocity .44 caliber pistol rounds would do the trick.

Anyway, back to where I left off last time.

We crossed back into Canada, spent a lovely day sitting around Sudbury waiting for the RV to be serviced, and found our way to Ottawa. There, it rained. Tazz hurt his ankle, and was a sad puppy for a while. My mom had worked in Ottawa as an intern back in the day, and volunteered to dog-sit while the rest of us somehow found our way downtown via public transit, but we also managed to find our way back again. In between bus rides, we visited the Parliament buildings where some Falun Gong demonstration was going on. We learned that John A. MacDonald was "unorganized" enough to merit some touseled papers on his statue. Russ translated. "He was a drunk. He wasn't disorganized as much as he was smashed on whiskey."

We spent a little bit of time in the National Gallery, and saw many, many old paintings, some newer paintings, and modern paintings. Dad didn't really like "I paid ze red square, I paint ze yellow square, IT IS ART BECAUSE I SAY IT IS!" style. I enjoyed the 1930s industrial stylized paintings, as well as the really, really trippy modern pieces.

It's rather confusing to be confronted by a black gallery attendant with a thick french accent, telling you that you have 10 minutes to leave the building.

Next on the list was Montreal. While there, I had the pleasure to be accosted by a drunken french woman hobo on the subway. At 10 in the morning no less. Hurrah for Canada, land of the free! We got lost, found ourselves, got lost again, and ended up at a supposedly famous sandwhich place where one could order a smoked meat sandwhich consisting of 2 cm of bread and 14 cm of meat. Or something like that. Dad didn't like Montreal so much because of all the silly foriegners around.

It was in Montreal that I confirmed a suspiscion I had with Russ. Canadian girls are hotter than American girls. And, as a bonus feature, many french Canadian chicks enjoy wearing their hair in pig tails.

Over the course of the day, we saw a french person with a baggette, a person with a black and white striped shirt, a beret, and riding bikes. Many, many french people were smoking.

The next day was spent going around Quebec city. I wonder if the french and english soldiers back in the day stopped off at the Plains of Abraham Gift Shop? Much, much walking took place, and by the end of the day my feet were about ready to go on strike and leave. The bus we took to the ferry to the city was entertaining in a "HOLY HELL" kind of way. Big, huge bus was screaming down these little tiny roads with inches to spare.

After Quebec, nothing much happened until we got the the Maritimes. The Confederation Bridge is very, very large. It's what should be between Victoria and Vancouver, instead of stupid, stupid ferries. PEI itself probably has less surface area than this bridge. The roads are red, and everything seems to be devoted to Anne of Green Gables, or lobsters. We skipped Anne, went straight to the lobster.

Russ's birthday is nearly always in the middle of our vacations, and as a result he gets the best birthday dinners. That day was no exception. The all-you-can-eat buffet with a 1 lb lobster each, for six people, came out to $200. As a meal, not worth it. As an event, totally cool. None of my siblings or I have ever had lobster before, we had more fun playing with the poor little buggers than eating them. Russ made his dance, for crying out loud.

And what did I learn from that? I really don't like the taste of lobster. :P

Pah, enough for now. I'll write more later.

A (near) total list of (just about) everything that I (almost, not quite, didn't) do on my vacation.

Fri, 13 Aug 2004 05:54:45 GMT

The Scene:

My parents own a class C motor home. It's basically got a Ford Van chassis and cab with a house put on the back. It's the ones with the beds over the cab. It's got a v10 engine in it, meaning it has lots of power. Not much zip or go, but power. It can go from 0 to 100 kmph in about three tries.

The Cast:

My family, my dog, and about 3 metric ass tons of stuff.

The Trip:

Did you know the americans are still worried about canadian beef products? On top of the regular produce stuff, it seems like they don't like beef going past their border. And to make sure that none gets past, every single guard, trooper, secretary, janitor and fluffer has a gun. We were on our way through Washington state, and was stopped at the border where they took some garlic, a lemon and a bucket of beef-ish dried dog food. We made jokes about bribing the guards to let the garlic through, about how Vicky really does hate freedom, and how we have those nefarious Ay-Rabs hiding in the cupboards and under the beds.

Kids, go find a map. This gets a little tricky from here on out.

We head south, and just before reaching Seattle, we turn east. We stopped off at a hydro electic damn, where they wouldn't let my pocket knife through the security gate. You know, in case I'm hiding an Ay-Rab in the other pocket and he intends to blow up the ocean or something. At the damn we watched a 1970s era propaganda video about the wonders of modern technology and how they really kicked mother nature's insubstantial ass and built a huge fucking damn.

We stop at this little mountain village, that was dressed up as a happy little german town. Not modern germany, with nice cars and cool efficiency, and not east germany, with barb wire, guard dogs and a huge fence. This is happy little germany, the one that didn't start 2 world wars and knows nothing at all about the horrors of war. This imaginary land is filled with Oom-pa music, goofy buildings, funny overalls and quaint accents. In this faux-german town, we found an Australian store, ran by two people who have never been there. In this Australian store, they sold katanas. Go figure.

It was in washington where we first found an american Walmart. Fear the Walmart. Fear the underpriced things, the miles of checkout lines and florescent lights, the oversized people. The walmart shopping population of america is, on average, without any hyperbole or bias, about a gazillion times larger than everyone else. Holy crap.

East, through Idaho (which lasted an hour and a half. Russ slept through Idaho.) and into Montana. South into Wyoming, east into South Dacota. In these states we saw a bunch of stuff, and I can't remember what order they went in. So here they go.

We saw Little Big Horn, also known as Custer's Last Stand. Ra Ra Ra, Go AmeriCa. We got killed by indians, hurrah. Americans don't really care about the entire First Nation or Aboriginal or Native American thing. They're all just indians. Vicky got angry in the "OMG I DON"T LIKE IT I"M GONNA TELL PERU-KID ABOUT IT" way that she has now. A glorified battle field was all it was, with a nice visitor center describing in detail how many people died, how they died, and a little about why. No real apologies about it either. It's not like that site was the last major victory of an entire civilization, that the entire indian wars and everything was one people defending their lands and ways of life from invaders from across the sea. (Vicky is still stuck on the "OMG PEEPLE DIED" bit.) Weep for the nation first.

We saw Devils Tower, which is the great big freaky looking mountain that was featured in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. (http://homepages.wmich.edu/~m3chan/rocky%20466-devils%20tower_small.jpg) <-Not my foto.

If you've seen the movie, then I can tell you that the evidence is inconclusive as to the mashed potato content of Devils Tower. It rained that day.

We saw Crazy Horse Monument. Very big, very rocky, very incomplete. (http://www.axel-jacob.de/crazy_horse_monu.jpg) Pretty snazzy place. The white is a statue that they're basing it off of, and is about 18 ft tall. The mountain is behind, and you can sorta see a handrail on the long horizonal, just to give a sense of scale.

We saw Mount Rushmore, the shrine of democracy... Very underwheming. Many, many americans came to pray at this shrine, and we sort of felt...left out and wondering what all the crazy people were doing. It's like going to someone elses church or temple or cross burning. You know it's important to other people, you just don't get it. That, and the fact that it's about one tenth the size of Crazy Horse. And you've all seen it before in so many photos.

We some caves, we saw many buffalos, squirrels, rabits, deer, and these fat rodents that Russ dubbed "Brown Guys." We later found out that they're a type of marmot.

Then we drove. South dakota is very flat. We went to Mineapolis, Minnesota, and went to the Mall of America. Smaller than West Edmonton, contains a theme park, and has multiple gift shops devoted to itself. From there, through Wisconson to Michigan and Sault Saint Marie, where we crossed the border back into Canada.

Got all that? Good. I'm done typing for a while. Go watch some freaky ass cartoons now at www.fat-pie.com

Watch Salad Fingers. It's just....odd.

Oh, and today I bought a new 160gb hard drive because I could and it was on sale and I don't want to bother with space shortages anymore.

HOME AGAIN

Tue, 10 Aug 2004 09:37:14 GMT

Even the dog missed home. Full story time updates coming at a non 2:30am timeslot. Stay tuned!

Location:nearly PEI

Mon, 19 Jul 2004 18:56:22 GMT

I'm sitting in a visitor centre by the big ass bridge, so here's a quick recap of the past 2 weeks or so.

Mt rushmore : "Shrine of Democracy" is actually pretty boring. You've all seen it anyway. Flags and yankees abound.

Devil's Tower, as in the big freaky mountain in close encounters. Very large, very scary, may just be made of mashed potatoe.

Crazy Horse Monument. Way bigger than rushmore, not done yet. Much cooler.

Mall of America, minneapolis. Large, roller coaster filled. Americans are a rather heafty group.

Ottawa: Parliament and art gallery very cool. Tazz got a tick, which says something about Ottawa parasites.

Montreal: French. Dad made comments about all the crazy forgeigners. Good sandwhiches.

Quebec city: Hilly, with cannons and everything.

And this confederation bridge is very, very long. We can't see the other side because of the fog.

Anyway, that's it for now. I'll post more when I'm able.

Leaving soon.

Thu, 01 Jul 2004 07:56:18 GMT

So I've headed off tomorrow for my crazy cross country camping trip. I'll be posting when and where I can, so you kids can keep up to date on everything. Hopefully these things won't be TOO far apart. They may even be more frequent than when I'm at home :P

If you need to reach me, use my hotmail addy or leave a comment here.

And as a parting gift, I give you this. Enjoy.

What's this? Another update within a week of the last one? That's umpossible.

Thu, 24 Jun 2004 05:42:55 GMT

A few things that I've witnessed/taken part of, forgotten, and then remembered again.

A few days after Vic got her class 5, she decided to play bumper cars in our driveway. Outside the garage door, the Echo was on one side and the Montana on the other. The Echo was blocking the exit of the Montana. Vic and Russ hop in the montana, as I needed the little white Echo to go to Fort Langley for another theatre gig. So Vic cheerfully says bye to Dad, who was standing in the doorway. And then gets in the van, and proceeds to back up right into the little car.

*BUMP*

"Oh shit."

Luckily, Vicky can't even crash the family car very well and no damage was done. She does get points, however, for crashing the family car into the other family car. Both vehicles have those newfangled plastic bumpers anyway, so the dent that did appear popped back out again with nary a scratch. Needless to say, however, Dad wasn't very impressed.

The best part is that she nearly did it twice while trying to steer around the echo.

The day after that was monday, and I spent the morning driving around town with Russ so he can take his N test. He passed, and so I bought him icecream. And it was good.

Oh, and Russ, Dave and I have been playing a lot of Phantasy Star for gamecube. My character is a large sword wielding robot. Dave is a large ranged fighter, using rifles and such. Russ is a cute little red head magic user that comes up to waist level with the other characters. She can barely see over the store counters. And because Russ started later, and thus had a lower level, Dave and I were pretty much babysitting Russ thought the tough areas, trying to get his(her?) level up as fast as possible. There are moments where I see this little girl run away from a group of baddies, so I wade in there swinging wildly and save the day. Only to see the same thing happen across the room. My character is also the only one who can see traps, so I try to shoot them before the little one runs right into them. On Russ's screen, explosions are blossoming a few short yards ahead of him as the traps are detonating, and any requests for him to slow down so he doesn't get creamed gets "Oh no, you're protecting me."

Fun times. It feels like a bad field trip to the zoo. It's not as bad now though, as Russ's level is high enough to seriously dish out the damage. He just can't take any. My character is a meat tank in comparison.

Awake? Me?

Sun, 20 Jun 2004 07:32:57 GMT

Excuses for the poor...linearity of this post. I'm posting stuff as I remember, and trying to remember stuff, or stuff I've already posted, or stuff vanilla marble stuff or just plain stuff it all to hell Bryan and get some god damn sleep. So kudos who can piece together the individual bits presented here into a coherant timeline.

I'll start most recently, and work backwards. Sort of like that movie, Momento. (Don't trust his lies.)

I just won $300.

Tonight was end of the year party night at the theatre, where there was free drinks (boo driving...I mean, free Hienekins? (Spell check bite me.) Free beer should be grossy taken advantage of. But alas, I had to drive home again. So no beer for me. But there was food, and other drinks, and cheap trophies and certificates for all. And $300 burseries for me. I was immediatly torn...Do I give money to parents for tuition? Or save and buy shiny things? I asked them as much and they figured I should keep for my own purposes. This purpose has a name. It's name is iPod. $300 goes a long way towards a new 15gb iPod.

Last night was Darren's 21st birthday party, which went by the 3 established rules. No drugs, no booze, no watermelons. Jess did mistakenly bring a watermelon, only to have it picked up and dashed against some indoor surface for a presumably wasteful fate by Darren. It was a great time. In true Darren party fashion, it had video games and junk food. I just realized a little while ago that the three games that were brought were Mario Party 5, F-Zero GX, and Phantasty Star. The makers of these games? Nintendo, Nintendo/Sega, and Sega. Oooooooh....Well, I was impressed. In any case, I did not sleep. So I'm workin' on 36 hours up or so right about now, which brings me to my next point.

All these bemoaned 5am workathons during school have honed my body into a sleep deprivation machine. I am at 36 hours, a respectable sum, and have yet to suffer any ill affects. I only really felt tired when I sat down in this chair 10 minutes ago. Which is saying something.

Oh, and Lee, follow the hyperlink using your nifty tab-clicking ability to gain access to the two versions of the Donnie Darko song, appropriatly titled "then.mp3" and "now.mp3". Everyone else can click too, I guess...just use Firefox 0.9 intead of IE...because it's better...trust me.

I bought WarioWare, for GBA. On a whim. A good whim. Last game buying whim was when I got Advance Wars. But I got WarioWare this time. And 1 hour after I got home anc cracked it open, who where to call but A&B Sound about my Ayreon album? I love this album.

A while ago I was dreaming that I was chasing some girl through some underground tunnels and through a open street and stuff. Then some guy stopped me on the side of the road and said "You know what's cool? Lucid dreaming." To which I replied, "Yeah, that is cool...Wait a moment, I'm dreaming right now! Well, fuck this entire walking thing, I'm flying." And off I flew. I then realized that I needed to hold down the fly button instead of just pressing occasionally if I wanted to gain altitude. Button. That's right. Anyway, I'm flying around, and find some people perched up in a tree. Turns out I was now a part of their little flyiers community, and it was pretty cool.

I had another dream that was less cool. I was on a space station, and some girl (same girl as earlier? I don't know. Dream created girl, in any case. I think.) This girl was showing me around and whatnot. Apparently, they mined stars on this here space station. So all was groovy when suddenly sirens go off and I here news that someone was hurt. So this girl comes in (appears? Same girl as chase-guide girl? Somethimes I hate dreams.) and she's got a star stuck in her foot. Think little black star the size of a penny, stereotypical star shape. But fragmented, and stuck in her foot. So doctor girl (WHY THE FUCK DO ALL THE DREAM GIRLS SEEMS THE SAME?) Puts some blue goo in the small wound to loosen the star pieces, and starts pulling them out. I'm watching. It's a painful, painful process. Just when all the pieces are gone, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief, another splinter appears. So doctor girl goes at it with the tweezers. She pulls. It get's longer. Pulls, it stretches. Seems to go on forever. It snaps, and the last thing I see is this final deadly black star shard dissapear back inside the blue foot goo, as the heart rate monitor goes nuts. And dies. Just as my alarm goes off. So I hear "Beep...beep...beep.beep.beep.beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.ARNKW ARNKW ARNKW ARNKW ARNKEW." ARNKEW being my alarm sound of course.

Anyway, scarey dream. And this happened the night directly after the flying one. My first thought as soon as I woke was "Oh SHIT!....wait....FUCK why couldn't I be flying again." How many dreams have you had where the dream girl dies because of deadly black star splinters? It sucks.

I *think* that's about it. I also think it's nearly time for bed.

Yesterday:

Tue, 15 Jun 2004 19:08:28 GMT

Me : "I wonder when my Ayreon album will arrive."

A&B Sound : "You Ayreon album has arrived."

Me : " :D "

Superior robot feels no pain....not since Robo Ego v2.3

Tue, 08 Jun 2004 07:30:51 GMT

I don't really update this thing often enough. So I'll do my best to remember what's happened.

Dave has built another rubber band gun. He went from a six shooter pistol, to a 8 shot rifle, and now to a 70 something odd shot double cylinder gatling gun. If it works (it misfires and jams quite frequently, due to inferior non-Robot plastic Knex parts.) it fires all 70 odd shots in about five seconds. Imagine a little box with gears all over, turning a handle, and a pile of rubber bands appears a few feet away after hitting what you were aiming at. It can't shoot very far, but with that rate of fire, it doesn't matter. I'm trying to get him to build a big one now. Made of wood. Possibly controlled by a superior Robot.

So Dave's weapons are progressing, from small siege engines to large siege engines to rubber band single shooters, multishots, rifles and now gatling guns. The next logical progression is aircraft, I think. That, or armoured cars. These guns need to get mobile.

Vic went to get her class 5, and failed. Russ went to get rid of his L plate, and failed. Today, I went to get my class 5, and passed gloriously. My marker guy was some guy named Alan, who apparently only passes about 10%, and is the toughest marker in the Langley ICBC branch. His comments? I drive too slow. Supposedly, 40 - 50 kph is slow, even though 50 is often the speed limit. Maybe it was slow, because he was falling asleep during the test. Eyes getting heavy, head bob, awake, and speaking. Repeat. I didn't dare drive faster or anything at these points. I figured I should let him sleep.

And garage sailing on saturday was cool. Basically, Richmond posts in the paper the locations of lots of garage sales, and garage sailing is visiting them all and searching for treasure. I found a old school hockey mask, and a beat up short sword, with scabbard. Colin reasoned that someone had used the sword as a fire poker stick, because of the rather...odd...condition of the blade. Hopefully, I should be able to fix it up, and it will be cool.

Dave had a birthday party, in which he and his friends played games all night. For a change of pace, they played Red Faction 2 (No where near as good as 1) on a 4" black and white tv. Multiplayer split screen. My dad, siblings and I got him a pair of Wavebird controllers and Mario Party 5, which is a fun, fun game. Pushy Penguins rules.

I think that's about it. Everything else is around the same. I bought Fire Emblem for GBA, and it is good. I also got the car and headphone adaptors for our trip. Vic has been running the camcorder/webcam for on average 10 hours a day, and dad isn't very happy with that. He wants Vic to foot the bill for a webcam, so she doesn't put so many hours of use on a expensive camera so she could chat with some peru kid. I don't think she likes that idea. Dad says that she has a hard time understanding the term "No." As in "No, Vickey, do not use my $500 camcorder as a webcam."

Anyway, that's all for now. Matt gave me a batch of episodes of Naruto, which I've been strangely putting off seeing. So back to them I go.

Oh yeah, posting.

Tue, 01 Jun 2004 23:24:08 GMT

My family and I have slowly been making preparations for our 6 week road trip. My mom has taken great joy in calling family meetings now and then, and tries to go through the motions of a proper committee thing. As in calling it to order, giving everyone their own note book, assigning sub committees and so forth. The fact that there is only six of us, and that the sub committess consist of only one person each doesn't really seem odd to her at all. Despite her attepts to keep things proper and everything, Russ and I have noted that these meetings are only really a game anyway. A very odd game, but a game nonetheless. And as such, we try to cheat.

My dad has requested that I find books on tape (cd? In this case, MP3) for him. So I did. I found a BBC radio play of Lord of the Rings, two unabridged Tom Clancy Books, and the entire Wheel of time series. Unabridged. Book Six by itself is 40 hours. When all the torrents are finished, there will be enough material to listen to for six weeks without pause. Instead of burning it to a great many CDs, I've been burning MP3 cds that work on my mp3 diskman, and use a car adaptor to play it inside the motorhome.

I've done two gigs at my old highschool theatre, which was very, very cool. One show was sorta sad. The last one was some church youth group song and dance thing. Apparently Jesus loves him some hip hop. He's all down with that, yo. These shows have netted me a tidy sum, which is most welcome. I had thought that I might have to get a real job (gasp!) because money stopped falling out of the sky for me. Oh, whats this...$300? Why thank you. I even got a $20 tip from the director of Jesus' hiphop extravaganza because I pretty much saved their show from oblivion. They had a video that they wanted to show, and a powerpoint thing that they wanted to use to make a backdrop for each scene. Basically, I knew how to set up and use their stuff better than they did. So bonus for me.

I ordered Human Equation from A&B, and am now waiting eagerly by the phone for a call that says "Bryan? It's Santa. Come get your present. That'll be $25.99."

A party was held at Darren's, and it was good. Matt discovered that drinking and backflips are not a good combination. John discovered that the war on drugs is being lost. Jess branded herself, and Mel discovered that my friends are an odd bunch. I was happily inebriated from liquid and gaseous toxins. A great time was had by all.

Vic has made even more internet friends. I asked in passing how many of her internet friends are female. She said only one. She did not find this odd. She's been chatting with some Peruvian kid for about 5 hours a day for the past two weeks or so. I mistakenly set up the camcorder for use as a webcam, which I regret doing. But it has led to fun games where Russ and I place different objects in view of the camera. Such as a dancing rice krispie square. Or a dancing stapler. Or the photo of creepy eyed Afgan girl from Vic's psychology textbook. Or Anthony Hopkins, from the cover of the book Hannibal. We even framed the incoming webcam feed of Peru-kid with our camera, so that Peru-kid was seeing himself instead of Vic.

Speaking of Peru-kid, we've either been calling him Hairy Pail, or Vanilla Ice. I can't quite recall the reasoning for Vanilla Ice, but there is one.

Sometimes I think that I'm being too hard on Vic. But then I remember that her first relationship was with a 29 year old guy whom she met playing gunbound. And she still calls him her "ex" and has a folder with chatlogs and photos and such in them. That's just not right.

Speaking of the chatlogs that Russ found and has poured through and archived for future....purposes....we discovered that Vic was probably considering going to Washington DC to meet Fuzzy Bucket. This makes sense, because during that week I mentioned that I had very little money. She said she had a lot of money, to the tune of a few thousand dollars. I said to her that this was set up by Mom and Dad, for her education, and that spending it would be very, very bad. Saving away a few thousand each for four kids cannot be an easy task. Vic realized this, and was sad. I was too blinded by her idiocy to wonder why she considered dipping into this fund. Now I know. She wanted to meet Fuzzy Bucket.

This guy, apparently, would send my sister text messages on his cell. "I'm at work, ttyl." and "playing basketball, ttyl." Or "standing in line at a restaurant with friends. See you online." While Vic was sitting at home, savouring every byte. *Sigh* Oh, and we found the "break up" emails. This guy, for all his trying-to-pick-up-chicks-playing-fuckin-gunbound failings, was not an idiot. The letters are clear and well written, and use big words in their proper context. Vic had trouble with the entire "paragraph" and "sentence structure" thing in her emails, pre-Russell edit. This is great because she mentioned to him how she's getting an education. *rolls eyes*

*edit* I found this theory, may be an interesting read. And, before any of you ask, I REFUSE to comment any further about it. I've learned over the years to keep my mouth shut on such matters.

http://www.intellectualwhores.com/masterladder.html

ahhhhh......

Thu, 20 May 2004 08:59:49 GMT

Things I have learnt:

1) The Flood are Halo's version of zombies. Except they run, jump, shoot guns and explode. So zombies on steroids, basically. Communist zombies.

2) Vicky has a nack for making internet buddies. It is rather frightening. Scarecly a week went by after Fuzzybucket than she met a new bunch. Who taught her voice chat. So she bought a headset for $8, and it really is quite a horrible set. Painful, + poor audio quality. One of these new kids said, quite clearly over the voice chat, "Double you tee eff!" Count the syllables. The phrase has two more syllables that it's abbreviation. To make matters worse, she went and visited this guy and then spent the week after that trying to bait conversations about it. She would make opened ended comments about Boston Pizza, or this guy's pet dog, or whatever. And try to get someone to ask a question about it. But I wouldn't fall prey to such pittiful traps.

3) My dad, unsupervised, makes horrible DVD purchasing decisions. Supervised, things are different. The last batch of purchases include

-Timeline
-Last Samuri
-Perfect Storm
-Master and Commander
-Core
-ExxxxXtreeeeme something or other (Think generic action movie + snowboards.)
-Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Vic's choice....ugh)
-Peter Pan (The new one, havn't seen yet)
-Some other old western (read : shit)

So a few hits, a few misses. But not so bad. Samuri and Master+Commander are both excellent films, with less action in it than what one would assume from the trailers and whatnot. Core, where people go down to the middle of the earth and kick start the core with nukes, is also a surprisingly good movie. I expected crap. I got character development and, god forbid, acting. It was cool.

Timeline, on the other hand, is not a good movie. They said in the special fe....pausing this thought right now, because a fucking spider is walking down monitor 2. Will rectify...Spider gone. Anyway, they said that 130 pages from the book about qua...shit, stupid spider decided to hump my space bar....

ANYWAY. 130 pages about quantum flux/foam plus time travel and all sorts of sci-fi goodies was cut down to 5 pages...what....note for tomorrow, clean out spider nest from computer area. This is like the bloody arachnoid indy 500 here...5 pages screen play. Which means 2 mins of film. Shot and edited like a car chase.

The movie suffered from the worst pacing I have seen in a long, long time. It was one huge fantastic action scene after another, like a submachine gun filled with motion blur, horses and swords, and aimed right at my skull. The end battle was cool, but I imagine it would be difficult to mess up a castle attack with trebuchets and 100s of guys. Oh, but the writer/director tried. 2 volleys of arrows, and that's it? Night arrows?

That's all for tonight. 5 spiders crossed infront of me in the last paragraph, and I must retire before they realize that there's only one of me here and 500,000,000 of them.

Lightning round!

Sun, 09 May 2004 00:48:01 GMT

A quick rehash of events over the past while, followed by an exciting (read: pathetic) tale about two young (19 + 29) lovers (msn buddies) and their wonderous (eye bleedingly horrible) adventures (gunbound) crossing new frontiers (INRANET) that have never been recorded in the history of mankind. (Or something. I give up.)

Anyway, LIGHTNING ROUND:

- Colin has moved out of his old place, lives a total of 2 blocks from his parents house. I was there last sunday, played games, and raided his parent's kitchen with him. Plundering is fun.
- I went to harrison with Mel, Randy and John, and we went canoeing. It was most enjoyable, even though some of us needed a helping hand from a power boat. (Not me.)
- On the drive back from harrison, I spent 30 minutes wandering around abbotsford looking for a specific gas station that my dad wanted me to fill up at. It was only after giving up entirely and heading home that I found the silly thing.
- Yesterday Scott drove me around vancouver and fed me sushi. Twas also most enjoyable.
- I've been reading "Hegemony or Survival" by Noam Chomsky. Pretty scary stuff. Biased, but pretty horrible.
- The other day Russ' braces came off. He spent all afternoon biting things.
- And I still can't order Human Equation. :(

Anyway, now for our main event: The Saga of Fuzzybucket.

Mel knows this, as she was getting live updates. Maybe a few others. But the sheer joy I get about posting this Saga online makes it worthwhile.

My sister has been off school for a while now. And all she has been doing is playing gunbound. She went from 1 wood hammer to double steel axe in two weeks or so. And if you're unsure about what that means, just assume that she would spend at least 4 to 5 hours a day playing this game. After a while, she meets someone....DUN DUN DUN.

She starts playing games with this guy constantly. Then they chat on msn ALL THE TIME. It was somewhere during this period that she told my parents about him, and claimed to them that "He understands me." It was also around this point that my brothers and I, at a loss to name this mystery person, and so named him Fuzzybucket.

Fuzzybucket and my sister continue their electronic escapades, chatting and gunbounding away. Carelessly glacing over her shoulder, I spotted the line "u can ks baby". Several other glaces have shown that their chat sessions could be confused with blind monkeys on AOL.

After a while, we learn that Fuzzybucket is Korean. And a creationist. (The world was created in 144 hours, dangnamit.) As well as 29 years old. He sent a picture of himself to my sister, featuring his rather large figure at some one elses wedding. If I were to follow the same style of subtle hinting, let's just say that I would have far fewer friends and far more people wondering about my mental condition. I would also be driven to play games where the average age is 12. Much like Fuzzybucket.

So Vicky decides to call it off. She types up a page and a half of solid text into an email, explaining that "belief differences" and her wonderous university education make it impossible to carry on the relationship. And so forth and so on. (The fact that she had her 16 year old brother proof read the letter for her calls into question the quality of her wonderous university education.) Fuzzybucket responds, blahblahblah, saying how she isn't mature and everything. She responds using every single big word she can. Again, Russ edits. (We're talking slash and burn editing, not subtle word changes or grammer fixing.) Drama ensues. Later that evening, Vic says to the family "I dumped my boyfriend." And she seemed quite proud of herself too.

A few things :

- Use of the word "boyfriend" implies that there WAS a relationship in the first place, not a two week MSN/Gunbound thing.
- Getting younger siblings to edit a message where you proclaim your intellectual superiority is like a home made apple pie contructed out of McDicks mini pies.
- She spent a long, long time writing that first letter. I've seen break up letters 1/4 the length where there WAS a relationship, complete with all the nitty gritty stuff like DATES and FLUID TRANSFER. I pitty the guy who recieves the 2000 page letter for a month long actual relationship. He'll probably reply "Too long, didn't read. So what's up, hunny?"
- This was Vic's first actual relationship. Sad, but true. Which puts me into an interesting position as the assigned big brother. In fact, Dave is bigger than Vic now, so she has effectivly three big brothers. Plus my Dad. I feel sorry for the poor guy already.
- It is the opinion of myself and my brothers that she needs to go outside and meet real people. I hear that such behaivior can be quite rewarding.

Thus ends the tale of Fuzzybucket. Pathetic? Funny? Or some combination thereof. Like pathunny. Or Futhetic.

An addition

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 18:17:32 GMT

Forgot something again :P

My dad bought some more movies the other day. Not any normal movies, mind you. DVD packs for cheap at Walmart. They are:

16 Beverly Hillbillies eps, 6 hours, $7
8 western movie pack on 2 DVDs, 12 hours, $7
The Alamo (original), 2.5 hours, $8.50
The Journeymen (another western), 1.5 hours, $7
TV Classics: Westerns. 15 eps, 7 hours, $7
Edward Scissorhands, not a western, maybe 2 hours and $10.

So 31 hours of movies for $46. We've watched poor Johnny Depp with bladehands twice already, and no one has touched the mess of westerns or hillbillies or western hillbillies. Needless to say, my dad made an unsupervised shopping trip and returned with nothing to show for it but a $46 less than what he had earlier, plus Edward, plus 68 hours of crap.

I guess the concept of paying $25 for a good movie instead of $46 for 100 hours of crap is just beyond some people.

Fun!

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 05:52:35 GMT

"Tomorrow all will be known
And You're not alone
So don't be afraid
In the dark and cold
'Cause the bards' songs will remain
They all will remain" Blind Guardian - The Bard's Song

Today I talked to Arjen! Well, chatted. Indirectly. With 60 something other fans. On IRC. But I talked to Arjen!

Arjen Lucassen is the writer/director/genius behind the Ayreon albums, who writes the music and assembles the best musicians from around Europe (nay, the world!) to sing and play his music. And it is gold. His latest album, titled "The Human Equation" isn't even out yet, but the interent being what it is, I have it. And if anything, listening to it non-stop has only driven me harder to ordering it in. My chances of finding it on the shelf of A&B are practically nil, seeming as Arjen is Dutch meaning zero coverage on this side of the Atlantic.

This album is fantastic. Being a rock opera, it's driven by a story line that carries the entire album through both discs, weaving all the different songs together. And these songs ARE different from each other. Some are calm, ambient pieces, with soothing melodies and happy subjects. Others are powerhouses of guitar, keyboard and vocal strength. Not that it's limited to normal metal instruments. One song starts with a didgereedo, moves on to something like angry Celtic, and ends in thrash metal. And the vocals...oh my.

Anyway, today was live chat day, so we had Arjen himself, as well as Ed (drummer), Yvette (manager?), Jolanda (Arjen's wife), James Labrie (Dream Theater vocalist, did some work for Human Equation), Marcela (fantastic vocalist) and Mattias (artist). And some busy admins and a pile of fans. It was great fun. Turns out that Arjen isn't quite used to IRC chat, and got bogged down with questions quickly. Marcela and Ed were a blast to talk to. There was a prerelease party a week ago, and Ed the drummer decided to join the singing. Of course, someone recorded this, and we all enjoyed the less than stellar performance. Turns out that Marcela is a web programmer by day and a vocalist by night. This entire chat thing went on for a few hours, and was great.

...just about everything else that happened this past while wasn't as much fun, except of course for the 4 player Crystal Chronicles at Colin's on sunday. We (Myself, Mel, Colin and Nadine) played for nearly six hours, and quickly decided that this should be a weekly thing. The best moment was where Mel and Nadine died, and Colin and myself had no means of bringing them back. So we went through the entire level with a pair of ghosty tag-alongs until we find the Life spell. The end boss of that level lasted less than 2 minutes, with Nadine and I doing combos at the same time. The boss' health was dropped fast.

The day before at Shahryar's I had a steak as big as my face. And Tracy poured mystery shots for whomever was stupid enough to drink them. Shahryar had one that was 1/5th hot sauce.

And the big van is gone, replaced with a little white snowball. Which resembles a Toyota Echo. Fun little car, but gutless. Teeny little engine, not much power at all.

Ahh, videogames...

Thu, 22 Apr 2004 07:07:59 GMT

"just wondering how
in the darkness
they found their way
to the right place
children of the sun
second kindred
we call their race
treat them kindly" - Blind Guardian : Dark Passage

Here's a quick run down of the games I've been playing since school let out. This is between working on the occasional outside project and whatnot as well, just so you know I'm not playing these things 24/7. But if school has taught me anything, it's that a lot can be accomplished within a 24 hour period.

Splinter Cell : Pandora Tomorrow. This is a fun, fun game. I've yet to get into the multiplayer, but there's something satisfying about tricking a guy around a corner into a darkened alley way to put the choke hold on a thump him over the head. Then having his buddy hear the noise and come to investigate the sound only to get the same treatment. It's sorta annoying how the pistol has the stopping power of a thrown pop can though. I'm not kidding. A shot to the head will kill sure enough, but one to the chest will annoy. A well placed thrown pop can will knock a guy flat out, which has the same effect as rearranging his grey matter. Oh, and an expensive state of the art ring air grenade is just as effective as an elbow to the face. Go figure.

Final Fantasy 7. This game is, well, Final Fantasy 7. And can do no wrong.

Tumiki Fighters is an awesome little distraction for a hard day's sneaking or level building. For everyone who doesn't know what it is, go find it here.

Gun Bound is entertaining for a few rounds a day, but don't expect awesome plot development or a deep, rich online community.

I also made it to level 23 in Clay Shooting, being the 3rd game mode in 8 bit Duck Hunt. It get's pretty freaking hard at that point. At level 20, you have to get perfect to get to the next round. I did it 3 times in a row. :D

And then my latest purchase. I have been wanting to buy Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicals since it came out, and now I have it. I played it last night at Colin's house, and multiplayer is a blast. Single player is less fun, but still cool. This game is built for multiplayer even more than Splinter Cell 2 is. Between the magic bucket (you sorta have to see it) and the spell combos (think dual techs in Chronotrigger, but each character is controlled by a separate person, and it's in real time) it forces team work on you. And it is good. If two players is pretty awesome, and I only imagine what three or four players would be like. A mound of Fun, with a capital F.

So if anyone else has a GBA, let me know and games can be had. You need a GBA to play multiplayer, which is a drag but also very cool. I wonder how many more GBAs they've sold because of this game...

Oh, other stuff besides playing games...Today my dad and I dropped off the trailer. Officially sold. Kinda sad, because we've had the thing for 11 years and did very many miles in it. We're also selling the big beast van, because it's very expensive to feed, plus it's starting to die. When using one fuel tank, every now and then it'll start sputtering and dying, and you've got five seconds to flip a switch to change tanks before it stalls out on you. So that big beasty is being sold this weekend. We've had that thing for...ok, five minute discussion with Russ later, we've come to the conclusion that we've had the big van for 12 years...maybe. A long time. My parents plan on replacing it with a little car. Probably not a Mini (Noooooooo!) but a little car nonetheless.