Friday, December 9, 2011

Video Game Love; A Happy Story.

I played my first video game at the age of 8. It was Pong and, I'm not going to lie, I remember being pretty good...eventually. At the age of 9, due to some country swapping, there was a video game drought in my life. It was a hard year. Things were rectified when I met some people who owned a Nintendo, and I entered the world of the Mario Brothers and Zelda. Although, thoroughly in love, I did not own my own console, so my gaming was sporadic and therefore I couldn't become thoroughly obsessed. This was rectified when my parents finally bought a PC. Soon my sister and I were fighting over who's turn it was playing Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem, Stunts, and our father's personal obsession, Sky Shark. Time passed and we eventually bought a Nintendo, about a decade after it came out, just to get the Mario Brothers and Zelda out of our system. A copy of that pesky Friday the 13th came along with it (which we never wound up beating, and NOT from a lack of trying! For those who share my pain on this topic, you can watch the ending here). By this time I am in high school, and we upgrade our computer (old games still work. Phew!). Half-Life and many more such wonderful games with, at the time, amazing graphics get added to my small but steadily growing library.

The end of a century comes around, and I start university. No time for games. Adulthood starts. Time to become responsible and focus on my future. I focus on my future, as he walks into the computer lab. His name is Patrick, and he is a gameaholic. We quickly fall in Diablo II love. We spend the next few years battling a life of homework vs games, and finishing school just in time to enter the WoW universe. We take regular short trips into the land of Steam to visit HL2, Portal and many others, until our Steam vacations become a Steam permanent residence. With WoW behind us, we get hitched, pop out a few major consoles, and currently live a happy life of cross platform gaming. L4D2, Portal 2, Dead Island and many more are keeping us warm at night.

To be continued...
...when we make some baby gamers.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Caffine

Makes me want to do crazy things. Typically smash things. Also, I noticed it makes me angry. Yes, those two things are mutually exclusive. I have had urges to smash things without being angry. Perhaps I will start trying to drink decaf to lower the hate, but still enjoy the taste. Surprisingly decaf espresso actually tastes very similar to regular espresso.

That is all. I will now return to controlling my desire to throw some plates around while working.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

In the middle of the bible belt...

...and still feeling like I am right at home. 'How?', you many be thinking. Starbucks. No matter where I am, Starbucks is always the same. The drinks taste the same, the atmosphere is the same, the baristas have a similar look about them. Typically, I find that not to be a good thing. When I visit a new place, I like to experience the local establishments; see what people do differently based on their geography. And Oklahoma City was no exception. At first I went searching for local gems and found a couple very delicious places that I wish I could bring back home with me. But sometimes you get home sick, so I made the long trek over to a local Starbucks (they are pretty scarce downtown OKC). Stepping out of the inferno that is the OKC weather and into the Starbucks store, I felt like I just stepped through a teleporter and wound up back in TO. Sometime that is a good thing because as much as I hate Toronto, I also love Toronto.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Old Age != Crazy...

...With the right combination of meds. It is true. Since my last old age related blog, I have witnessed it. The scary thing is that there is a fine line after which those meds can add to the crazy. But hey, there is hope.

Friday, June 10, 2011

And another thing...

When you replace words like 'fuck' with 'fudge' or 'fucking whore' with 'flippn boar', you are fooling no one. It sounds ridiculous, and gives zero satisfaction. Don't bother!

Thank you. Now I'm done.

Swearing; Yey or Nay?

For me it has been 'yey' for ... ever. I find it a nice little release when I am angry, frustrated, happy, ecstatic, etc. I can even get quite creative with it. But society frowns up on it. No potty mouth ladies allowed. So what exactly is so wrong with it? Why do people get offended? I would understand if I called someone a Fucking Anal Turd Extractor to their face, and they took offense (even if they deserved it). But if I am cursing to myself as a form of exclamation, then what is the problem? I honestly cannot think of one. They are just words that usually don't even make sense (unlike the one above, which  perfectly describes some people). I think some people just jump to the conclusion that because I choose to use a swear word, my vocabulary must be limited. That I cannot get the same meaning across, but with 'proper' words. That, however, is not the case. I can be creative with non swear words as well, but they just do not feel as good.

In my quest to find what other people think, I googled "why is swearing bad" and quickly found myself on the Cuss Control Academy's website. The purpose of this site is to help people curb their swearing. They even provide you with a list of reasons why swearing is bad. I encourage you to take a look, but in the mean time, I will with you share some of my favourites from the list:

It sets a bad example - It is bad because it is bad?
It lacks imagination - Like I mentioned before, I can get quite creative with my swearing purely because I have such an active imagination.
It has lost its effectiveness - If the effectiveness is gone, then what is the problem? And what statistical analysis is this loss of effectiveness conclusion based on?

To say the least, I found the CCA's list weak and easily rebutted. In the end, I did not find the answers to my questions, but I did find is this: A swear word to non-swear word translator. So much fun!

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Old Age = Crazy?

I'm afraid so. Is it inevitable? Do we ALL have to mentally go? I really wish this was not the case but I do not believe anyone gets spared. With age, people seem to follow this simple line of thinking that eventually leads them to crazyville:

If you are older, you have lived longer and experienced more, making you wiser. In addition, as you age, the population of the people older/wiser than you gets smaller, and the population of the younger/dumber folk gets larger. Therefore, the older you get, the wiser you become than most people on the planet. This makes you more special as the years go by, and naturally it becomes your responsibility to impose your wisdom on the young and dumb. This usually comes out in the form of ever growing cynicism. Especially when you see the whippersnappers trying something new and hip. That really gets you going, because you already know it will never work.

You remain at this level of crazy until you reach some critical age when you get a brief moment to choose: Do you continue on your waaaay fun crazy path causing havoc in the lives of the young until insanity is complete, or do you quit cold turkey and become one of those rare sprung-out-of-nowhere quiet/cute old people?

Most choose crazy; I know I will.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

I Blame Star Wars

I have found, over the past decade, that I don't know what I am doing with my life. I had a pretty strong plan right up until I graduated university. Although, in those last few months of school, I have to admit, the plan began to diminish. By the time I graduated, I was confused; and seven years later, I am convinced that there was no plan in the first place, that it was all a figment of my imagination. I sat there on that last day of school, holding a diploma for a field I was not interested in. Hmm. I started working at the first place that offered to pay me (not even in my field). Eventually, I found a job in my field, and, like I suspected on graduation day, I did not like it. Oops. I quit, and spent the next year playing around with my hobbies. But, soon found out that hobbies should be left where they belong, on hobby time. I do not like doing my hobbies full time, under pressure. I really don't. I find them amazing only if done intermittently. I want amazing all the time so I continued to try other things out, and finally arrived a the following crazy/sad conclusion:


I want to exist in movies. I don't mean that I want to be an actor, I mean I want to live in the movies. I want to go off chasing aliens throughout the unknown universe, save galaxies, have super powers, and punch bad guys in the face. I doubt, anything short of this, will be good enough. For this, I blame Star Wars, and all following amazing Sci-Fi Action Adventure movies that showed me the awesomeness of an imaginary life.

Now, what? Now, I realize that reality is a big waste of time; boring, stressful, boring again. Fantasy, is where it's at. Even if your fantasy is to be living the life of someone else on Earth, or that you lived in the 1800's.  No boundaries. Whatever your crazy brain wants.

So where does that leave me? Same place, except that I know what I want, and I don't believe there is a way for me to get it. And let me be very clear. I do not want a job at NASA so that I get to crunch numbers to see if some radio signal that the deep space telescope picked up has a pattern that might possibly maybe be a sign of intelligent life. I don't want to re-design the space shuttle to make is more efficient. I don't want to do complicated mathematical problems to see if there is an Earth sized planet orbiting some gigator star two galaxies over. Boring. I want to go directly to the alien chases, galaxy adventures, and super powers.

I guess the best I can hope for is choose-your-own-adventure virtual movies. :'(

In the mean time, I'll stick to designing websites/programming (my current venture) and my hobbies.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

The Gym; Still Disgusting?

Yep. The cleaning people really do try, but it is a little hard when hundreds of people use the machines and do not bother cleaning their filth. I try to show them the way, but a lot of them must be filth addicts because they are really good at ignoring my helpful gestures and dirty looks. The biggest tools are the trainers. They are there everyday, several times a day. They see a select few people clean the machines after themselves, but do nothing to contribute. Seriously people, even if your parents forgot to teach you to clean up after yourselves, you should have picked it up from other people by now.

Also, since we're already on the topic of the gym; how do people destroy the machines so quickly? The building I live it is only a couple of years old, and the treadmills look like someone took a rock to the display controls, the fan is cracked open, and pieces of the body have been ripped off. The ellipticals and bikes are in a similar condition. I try to get to the gym everyday and have not yet run into this gym-equipment-destroying ninja-asshole. Who the fuck are you? And, what the fuck?

Monday, April 11, 2011

What's Not to Hate?

I love elevator trips for many reasons. Drama, horror, comedy, suspense are just some of the daily things I get to experience on those short rides. A moment ago, I lived through one such adventure, and decided this one must be remembered via written word.

It is rush hour. The building has 50 floors, versus four elevators. I get on at P3, only going up to the 11th floor. I stop at P2. The door opens. No one enters. Seconds pass; it feels like days. I peak my head out. I see some asshole look up from his mail and realize the door is wide open. I stare. He smiles and happily gets in. He fumbles with his FOB, chooses a floor, and we get going. Yey. We stop at P1. The door opens. Again, no one is coming in. WTF? Seconds, feeling like minutes, tick away. The door begins to close. A hand shoots up and stops the door from closing. Another moment passes and an asshole slooowly begins to wobble in, not once looking up from her Blackberry. She takes a rest by the buttons, takes a moment to finish her email, examines the floor options, and finally chooses one. I am bursting with excitement; we're on our way again! We stop at G (Lower Lobby). Door opens, I see Asshole 3 playing with his iPhone. Time passes. My hand starts rising to the 'Door Close' button, and the words 'Hurry the Fuck Up Next Time Asshole!' begin to raise to my lips. Asshole 3 stirs, examines the many dirty looks (mine the most intense), and leisurely walks on to the elevator. Asshole 3 needs a lift to level 2 (Main Lobby). Just one floor. Fourteen steps up.Young, fit, not carrying anything heavy, no obvious reason why he cannot use one of the four sets of staircases provided to him by the builders. It will forever remain a secret, in his asshole brain. We stop at 2. Asshole 3 takes a moment in preparation for his journey off the elevator. We all wave good-bye. Its been a blast. The three assholes and I have had time to bond. He begins moving forward...and gets rushed by fifteen people getting on. Took too long. The door begins closing. He desperately tries to push the 'Door Open' button, but fails to do so in time. Too bad, so sad. No escape now. He gets to take the rest of the trip up. We are finally coming up to the 11th floor. Thirteen people left on the elevator...8...9...I say 'Excuse Me' in advance, so that they know it is I, in the very back corner, who is trying to get off next...10...11...The door opens. No one moves. 'Excuse Me!'. The door begins to close. I do not make the same mistake as Asshole 3; instead of reaching for the 'Door Open' button, I start pushing people forward so that their useless bodies keep the door pried open for me. I see looks of shock and astonishment on their faces, but at this point, I don't give a flying fuck. The elevator starts buzzing and forcibly closing its door (where the fuck where you forcible-door-closer when assholes 1 through 3 were taking their time getting on?). I'm nearly there. I just want to get off this fucking elevator and avoid having to do the 'ride of shame' down with the previous asshole who failed to get off. The door is almost closed. Out of desperation, I pull an Indiana-Jones-style-running-somersault-kick-flip and gently tumble to the safety of my floor. I sit for a moment; catching my breath, reflecting, and swear NEVER to use the elevator during rush hour again. Not worth the twitching eye.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

WTF? Music Videos

I love music. It makes my life better. Recently, I have been introduced to Grooveshark (http://grooveshark.com). It is a website on which you can listen to pretty much any song ever written, whatever you want, streaming, in high quality, for free (ads on the page, paid subscription if you do not want to see them). The site has a cool radio feature you can turn on that creates a music playlist based on what you have listening to. I have come to love a large amount of new songs in the past few weeks due to this spectacular feature.

Now to the point. There are times when I accidentally stumble upon a video of a song that I really enjoy. Having listened to it first, my brain creates a certain atmosphere about it. When I watch the video sometimes that atmosphere is kept, sometimes it is altered, and other times I just think 'WTF?'. Today, I happened to stumble upon one of those 'WTF?' videos and decided to put together a short list of ones that I found particularly fucked up over the past little while.

Enjoy if you have nothing better to do, or even if you do. To get the full 'WTF?' experience, you should watch the full videos. I warn you in advance, some of these are seriously fucked up.


Hot Chip - I Feel Better (Just plain old wft)


VAST - Pretty When You Cry (Creepy)


Basement Jaxx - Where's Your Head At (Creepy)


MTMG - Congratulations (Wtf is that thing, and why is it falling apart?)


Apex Twin - Widowlicker (It doesn't start being messed up until about the 4th minute)


Plaid - Itsu (All of these guys' videos are a little weird, but this one wins the creepy award)

Monday, April 4, 2011

Just Kidding

Some sort of cloud has passed, but was it the dark one? Clearly, I have not written in a while, but things have changed. I have quit. I no longer teach the art of driving in the middle of a ruthless downtown core. I have moved on, just barely missing my braking point. One more Lexus cut-off, one more BMW honk for following the law, one more Honda tailgating me, and someone would have had regrets. Definitely, not me, I would have instant gratification followed by pleasent memories, but someone would have regrets. So, from now on, I will be focusing more on "...And Other Stories" BUT things will definietly still be "Driving Me Insane". That is inevitable.