Expensive and pretentious in London too. I love it.

I'm in an Apple Store in London, and I'm on a Macbook Air. The emo kids will love this because it's so sharp you can cut yourself a million times before you hit the floor. It's a nice laptop, but at £1199 (roughly $2300 CDN) it's not worth it, least of all something that requires you to buy a separate CD drive. This place has 2 floors, and is huge. 

We saw Ian McKellen today, that was neat. He was just getting on a subway in Oxford Circus, plain as anything. There you go.

Still no Pythons though, my quest to kidnap John Cleese is not looking good. Sorry Stephan.

Later for now.

Get that thing I sent ya?

Hello.

We haven't spoken in earnest for some time, it seems. I've been rather busy and I'm finding it hard to reason posting anything here anymore. A lot of stuff has happened since...shit, April was the last time I posted. Here's a quick rundown:

In May...I think I worked a lot in May. I don't really remember. I had my bachelor party at the end of May and got food poisoning from Kelsey's and ruined everyone's night. I was on my third beer, I don't puke from that, let alone all flipping night. So, to all who attended, sorry about that.

In June I got married. Cliches be damned, it was the happiest day of my life. I didn't really see a reason to blog about it, because everyone that would read about it was there anyhow. If anyone has pictures, though, I'd like some copies. Thanks.

We went to Disney World in Florida for our honeymoon, which was a really great break from the day-to-day. After being there - after being anywhere - it's hard to come back to St. Catharines, to a retail job, and to a messy apartment. We're doing OK though.

June also had my birthday. Hooray for me.

July...July...I worked a lot in July. What the shit else did I do in July...? Man, I don't know.

Now it's August. Elaine's birthday's soon and my parents are coming down today. Apple is having a big product announcement and it had better include a new iPod, because mine's a brick.

I'm thinking of changing the link to this blog, or at least coming up with an easier-to-maintain format for it. I don't like the layout, colouring, or anything about it really. I might blog about our prep for going to Europe in the spring, we'll see.

I have to blitz clean the apartment. Wish me luck.

Slow news day

And she stinks, too.

The Coin Roll Cable Holder Thing

So instead of going to bed like a normal human being (indeed one who has class at 8:30am), I decided to dick around on the internet, looking for something that would tame the mess of cable extending from my headphones:

Upon measuring I concluded that the length of the cable was approximately 30km.

I came across a few things, no more than moulded plastic things in the shape of an 8, which you wrap your cables around and weave through. They were neat. I did not think the prices were neat though. One by Belkin costs something like $15, and it looks like they just glued two milk bag openers together. So I said "bollocks to this," and I went about the apartment in search of junk that I could use to make my own. I gave up and looked for a beer instead, but just as I was reaching for one I noticed something on top of the fridge. Elaine, having worked in the restaurant business for half her life, has amassed quite a collection of coin holders. You know, the cardboard roller things...these:

Found: most exciting picture on the internet.

Yeah. You know them. I took the pennies one ($0.50 g-g-g-g-UNIT) Anyways, at work I'm pretty much the man when it comes to wrapping cable up (I think I have OCD about it there, which is weird if you know me and cables), and I figured I could get my cables into this sucker. I looked at the prospect below and wondered, is this even possible? Perhaps!

Rumours whirl about the "is it/isn't it" affair between headphones and coin roll thing

The following are instructions on how to make my really awesome Coin Roll Cable Holder Things:

First, take the plug end of your headphones (using the other end would be both stupid and impossible) and pass it through the coin roll. Now, the rolls have one end already rolled, so pass the plug through that end first, and out the unrolled end. This helps with the cables sliding out:

"HISS! HISS!" said the Cable Snake.

Weave the whole thing through. Now, slide the roll down to somewhere comfortable: your pocket area, your hand area, your whatever area. Just make sure you have enough lead on your headphones up top to allow for movement.

This is Pocket Country.

Now that you've got it at a comfortable distance, take the plug-ended length of cable and wrap that shit up. Fold it so it's just about the same size as the coin roll. Dig it:

Thumbs up for odd gestures!

Make it super compact, then slide the coin roll up around it. It should go in pretty nicely:

They throw these at nerd weddings.

Now, all that's left is to basically cram the rest of it right the hell in. In the end, it should look like this:

Fascinating!

And that's pretty much it. I tried making a case for my iPod shuffle out of it, considering they're pretty much the same size, but Short Round (my shuffle) was having none of it. Too bad, that would've been so money.

Anyhow, that's enough nerding for me.

Good night, children.

From anywhere to anyone

Hello.

I currently wait for my lady to arrive home from work, and since it is now technically her birthday, I wait to bestow gifts. What a goddamn sweetheart I am.

So, I bide my time.

If anyone still reads this, you've either talked to me today or live with me, and you also know that my computer, well, is garbage. I had trouble with it a few months ago, as I had chronicled; after a "repair", it's even worse off. Perhaps putting a brand new 300gb drive on a five year old motherboard may have pissed it off. Maybe it overheard my nefarious scheme to have my music collection ripped at the highest possible rate so I can hook it up to my home theatre and enjoy it. Also we must consider the fact that one cannot polish a turd. In the coming months, I hope to go from brown box to white box, as shown below:

Yes, I realize the unintentional creepy blackface freaks you out. It freaks me out too. We're in this together, don't worry.

Either way, I'm hopefully getting a MacBook. Sure, I don't need one, but I'm bored of the whole PC fiasco. Sick of updates, sick of viruses, sick of crashing hard drives and blue screens of death. On top of that, I actually have valid reasons: I want a laptop for travel, such as to Europe or class; I want to become more familiar with other platforms; I want to have blogging/editing/music programs that all jive together. I'm pumped about the damn thing and it's not because of the neat-o "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercials. They're not pandering to me.

"Wait, hold the phone," you say, "did that hip cat say 'class'?" Yes, I did, and thank you for the compliment. I will (tentatively) be going to school in September...again. This time at a different institution, different program, shit, different city. Continuing my trend of "going to school in cities in which I have never been", I'll be taking the Journalism course at Niagara College. Why I said "tentatively" before is because I'm currently on a waiting list for the program, which makes sense considering I applied less than a week ago. I apparently have a 99.9% chance of getting in, so I'll just say I'm going to school. If I don't get in, I expect one solid week of binge drinking and sandwich eating, and you should too. You know what? Even if I do make it in, I will do it anyhow. That, friend, is my gift to you.

Some quick things to note:

• Dead Rising for the Xbox 360 plays like the longest demo ever. It is fun until you realize you don't care about the people you're supposed to save (and they slow you down anyhow), and you also find out that commanding them into a crowd of zombies is very helpful. I will say this for the title though: the weapons are some of the most satisfying in any game I've ever played (you haven't lived until you've scalded a zombie's face with a hot frying pan, or knocked off a leg with a bowling ball). 6.5/10.
• Read Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss. Quality book, really cheap at Wal-Mart too.
  
• Listen to Sounding a Mosaic by Bedouin Soundclash. I know lots of you may already have, but if not...well, hey.
  
• The cat ate part of my fucking sandwich when I was in the bathroom. I was gone for like a minute, and the fat loaf decides to go to town on my ham. Cat, if you are intelligent enough to know that the worst possible thing you could do is involve yourself with my sandwich, then you're intelligent enough to read and peruse the tubes of the internet. So I say this once with clenched teeth: you're lucky Elaine likes you and that it is her birthday. You are on thin fucking ice with me. Enjoy your kibble. God damned cat.

I should probably go, and, you know, wrap Elaine's present.

Good night, oxygen thieves.

Moment of Zen: Dinosaur parties and the legend of the gay biscotti.

Mr. Peanut's fantastic night out

Just got finished cleaning up the blog. I've been meaning to adjust some crap for a while now, and I finally managed to sit down tonight and get it done. I've fixed a screw-up in the code for my Digg list, it actually updates now. The colours have been tweaked around a bit, I think for the better. Less bright on my eyes, at least. There are a bunch of quotes up top under the title image, and new pictures in the top right, both of which randomize when you refresh the page. Also, the archives have finally been made to work as they should, which pleases me. If any of you catch something here that's broken or missing, or you just don't like junk, leave a comment. Also, if anyone knows of any free iTunes-supporting Now Playing plugins for the blog, let me know. Thanks.

If you use MSN, check this out. I figured it out yesterday (pretty sure I'm not the first, but it's a revelation for me.) It gets rid of the lame-o tabs on the side of MSN without having to resort to any extra programs...Billy just hides this stuff pretty well.

So, some people have been asking what I'm doing with school. If I said I enjoy it, I'd be lying to you. I don't enjoy the tedium of having to make it there every other day, for very little reward. Right now, my focus is on work, and moving up in my store. With that in mind, my plan is to drop my courses at Brock and cut my losses, getting back what money I can from them. I'm planning on still taking classes, just through Athabasca University (recommended to me by my assistant manager and Chris.) My plan is to work my way up to assistant manager over the next year or so, and take classes via mail/internet on my own time.

This whole idea of major change doesn't bother me in the least. If anything, it's refreshing. I've realized that I'm happier now than I've ever been, living on my own, working, being with Elaine...all of it reminds me of a scene from Garden State.

You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit that idea of home is gone. You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. You'll never have the feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all a family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place.

I'm in a place right now where I just put my shit, but even where my parents are doesn't seem like home. I'm not really sure why I've been thinking about that, but I think I'm on my way to creating a new idea for myself.

Moment of Zen: This one, potentially, could create a tiny spark.

Happy End

Rock and roll, I've returned.

I got sick of my Rogers cell plan, the bastards spent nearly 3 years lying to my face. My $35-per-month plan was consistently my $150-per-month plan. The reason for this is they neglected to tell me that calls from outside my area were costing me, something that they had flat out told me that would not be any charge to me. Twice. So I've gone and broken it off, and gotten on with Bell. Old Bell had this deal, buy a plan, get a free fridge. Same plan gets you a camera phone. I figured, why the hell not? I am pleased. I have my unnecessary mini fridge, my unnecessary camera phone, and my unnecessary free unlimited use of many options like web, uploading, and text messaging. Necessity, I cast you to the wind.

Ah, the camera phone (Thanks, Drew.) The picture quality on my phone is much better than I expected (I coughed as I took that pic, blurry, yes). Picture posts may become a regular thing for six months, after which my photo service costs me, curiously, also the time when I cease to enjoy picture-taking.

Halloween! What a fantastically stupid holiday. Dress up to look like a bigger idiot than usual? Sure, I'm up for that. I have no pictures of my costume, but we shall say that the force was indeed with me that evening. Everyone else, however, managed to look halfway decent.

Chris was the sheriff that evening, keeping order in the room as the Leafs fucked up royally.

Eric, first of the two scumbags, is seen below with Gypsy Erica. There was groping all around, but then, there always is with Eric.

And then there was Cory. Scumbag number two. All that I can really remember from the evening with any real clarity is his song, dedicated to his moustache. Dig this:

Moustache ride, moustache ride,
you can't hide from the moustache ride.
Moustache ride, moustache ride,
slip and slide on the moustache ride.

I can't believe I wrote that, but if I had to suffer it, so do you.

Indeed.

Elaine and I had our six-month a little while back and finally her present arrived. I had followed the FedEx tracking, and wow, did it ever travel a distance. 14,000 km or something ridiculous. Starting in Shanghai, China, it hopped on a plane to Anchorage, Alaska. It then made its way down to Tennessee, then headed north to Mississauga. Then, as though in shipping purgatory, took longer time to travel from there to St. Catharines than it did from any other two points. After some hassle, Elaine finally has Christian (Ewan McGregor's character in Moulin Rouge):

Shit, am I ever jealous. Eric's suggestion was that I keep this one and give her my old one, but meh, this way I will be persuaded to get one of my own soon enough. The video, it is beautiful.

Speaking of beautiful video, check out what we got at work:

The Xbox 360 arrives at EB Games. The masses rejoice, then realise how much this whole gig will cost, then the masses say they'll "wait for the PS3". The 360 is nice, but actually, I'm more pleased with the screen they gave us than the console itself. The whole unit is about half the size of our original Xbox demo kiosk, but is still too big for our shoebox of a store. The controller, on the other hand, is a nice size, though the plastic it's made from feels cheap and too light to stand any sort of repeated use. Plus, they're starting to get gummy and gross.

My favourite on the system right now is the Call of Duty 2 demo, which plays just like the PC demo but looks a lot better than you'll get on an average computer. Watching customers play this and completely suck at it is probably the best part of my day. They get so mad, claim that they never saw the grenade, and storm out. Repeat for 8 hours, and you have my shift.

The Kameo demo just made me angry, since I hate Rare for not making an original game since Banjo-Kazooie. This game seems more intuitive than their usual fare, and more refined - as well it should be, since it's been in development since the N64. I'll wait for Perfect Dark Zero.

The King Kong trial looks beautiful, but the controls are absolutely terrible and incoherent. Controlling Jack in the T-Rex chase is like pushing a dead guy through a crowd while blindfolded, and making Kong himself fight with any sense of control is laughable. Mash X and B until you kill the T-Rex, but don't worry about trying to fight coherently, as you can't see when your hits connect or miss.

On the topic of work, I wish to draw your attention to this man. He gathers maybe 5 or 6 games, lays down as such, reads the backs and manuals of each game, gets up, leaves. I've only seen him twice, but every time is more magical.

Good night, children.

Moment of Zen: Divided, but I can't decide which side I'm on.