Thursday, October 30, 2003

Well I still don't know what my costume is going to be tomorrow night. I really have a horrible time with creative things like that.
Here's an idea though, every year at Halloween we have a few teenagers who stop for candy but don't really bother dressing up. Anne loves to torture these individuals by humiliating them in front of their friends, last year I think she put makeup and stuff on the guys (eye shadow, lipstick, etc). And they do it for the candy which is the funny thing. Maybe this year we can scam some costume stuff off of them for me :)

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

So Monday night I beat Max Payne 2, very fun game but like everyone says it was too short. I think all they need to do is make some of the levels longer and put more guys in them. It seems like there is an awful lot of empty space and running around in some parts where you could be fighting more guys. I guess we will see whenever max payne 3 is out.

So now I have moved on to Tron 2.0, which I am enjoying immensely. I had heard the single player portion of it was pretty good and it has more than lived up to my expectations. It some very innovative ways of building up your various abilities and the level designs are great.

I has been planning on playing Chrome and Halo but Chrome, although it look nice, sucks and Halo is just way to choppy for a high end PC and seems kinda lame especially after MP2 and Tron.
I stayed home from work because I was sick today, something that hasn't happened in a while. I think its the first sick day this year for me, and I maybe had one last year. It actually was pretty good as I do feel better. Unfortunately I also can't play hockey tonight because of I do want to feel better tomorrow and I think hockey would take too much energy away. (Also Anne wouldn't let me go not matter how much I begged :) )

Monday, October 27, 2003

On Friday I got a package in the mail. It contained a new heatsink and a fan to attach to it. The fan is a 92mm clean fan with 4 bright blue LED's embedded in it. So along with my case it looks really good, even Anne approves. With the new heatsink I am able to once again overclock my processor from 1.8 GHz to 2.24 GHz which isn't too bad of an oc really. I should mention its really quiet as well, which is one of my main goals.

Sunday, October 26, 2003

My humble apologies for not posting until today! I have very good reasons, seriously I do. Here's the recap:

Stuart McLean: I really enjoyed the show. It was kind of weird hearing him talk in person, because its almost as if his voice is separated from his body. We did get a new Dave and Morley story, but it wasn't about them, it was about their old man neighbour and his false teeth. Very funny but not as much I think as if it had been about Dave and Morley.
There obviously were a lot of other parts to the show. There was some blues playing by some famous blues guy and also a singer who is a regular for the show. Both were quite good I thought, but Anne is not really fond of that type of music.
There was a story bit with the sounds played out by other guy that was quite funny and a guy doing some amazing tricks on a yo-yo. Stuart read two or three other anecdotal type stories that were very fun as well. There were also some give always of his newest book (!) and older book as well as a CD and some other stuff.
All in all very much worth the ticket price.

Thursday and Friday: Well I don't have much excuse for not posting thrusday except that I was super busy at work (and Friday too) because there was a 12-24 hour (it ended up being more than 24 hours :( ) planned downtime of our major patient care system and I had to get all the departments ready with downtime procedures and processes and such. I was exhausted. All in all I think everyone was pretty prepared but there is a LOT more work for everyone when you have hand write all the patient information and registration stuff. It was supposed to be up last night but it wasn't the last time I talked to them so I think I am going to ignore work until tomorrow :) Keep in mind our patient care stuff is done remotely through a WAN connection to the Owen Sound hospital and I was not really involved in it except to get our hospital prepared.

Wedding: The other reason I have been so busy is the wedding we had on Saturday for Anne's best friend Andrea Curry. She married a John Vanderkooy from Barrie who is a very cool guy and we all think they are a perfect match.
Even though Anne wasn't the Maid-of-honor she ended doing all of the work of one. So she has been in Owen Sound all week helping and helping a lot. With her seven and a half month pregnant now its a miracle she can still walk after all the running around she. I fully expect her to crash today :). I went there right after work on Friday to help out as well. And Saturday morning I got there at 9am and didn't stop moving until about 10pm last night. I got a good nights sleep last night so today I think I am fine although I think I have a headache from caffeine withdrawal.
I was the MC at the reception and received a lot of compliments on my "performance" or whatever you want to call it. I was under strict instructions to just move things along, prevent confusion, and not make stupid jokes. Apparently this went over very well with all the guest who were very happy they didn't have to listen to me ramble on. And everyone help they knew at all time what was going on and where they were to be (for dessert, supper, etc) I sounded like an idiot for the first couple sentences and then I think I was fine. Apparently coherent anyway :)
I am glad its all done and today we will just relax I think and I have hockey tonight. So all in all a good weekend.

Wednesday, October 22, 2003

Tonight we are going to see Stuart McLean in Mount Forest. It should be a good show.

Tuesday, October 21, 2003

My sister-in-law came back from from a bike convention with her family to find their fridge had broke down while they were good and all the food had gone back. Very gross. But they were only gone a couple of days so it wasn't too bad.
It reminded me of an even worse thing that happened when I was college to a couple of classmates. They came back from 2 week Christmas holidays to find that their landlords had unplugged their fridge to save electricity while they were gone. The trouble is that the fridge was full of food and a number of meat items. My classmates returned to the apartment and they smell was soooo bad (rotting meat etc) that they couldn't even stay there and had to move out. I think they got screwed out of a months rent on top of it all.. *shudder*

Monday, October 20, 2003

On Saturday our church team had its first hockey game. We lost...badly. I think the final score was 10-2 or something. It was still fun, but man I hope we improve.
And I think I finally got rid of the cat urine smell. What is left should be covered up by the general hockey bag smell no problem.

Tuesday, October 14, 2003

I bought Matrix Reloaded today. Its good. I especially like the mansion fight.
But after playing all that Soul Calibur yesterday, the fights seem soooo slow...
I am the reigning family champion of Soul Calibur II. Yesterday during the thanksgiving festivities at my parents house, myself, my siblings, my cousins and my parents foster kid played SCII for a while.
Keep in mind that I have only played the game on an Xbox I rented for a weekend. Andrew (the foster kid) owns the GameCube version we were playing on and has unlocked almost everything. My cousins also own the cube version and have unlocked everything.

The final tally was at least 20 wins for me and 3 losses.

I don't really have a favorite character but there are a few I refuse to use. So I switched characters with every win until I lost (we were playing until you lost a fight). The losses were really close too.

Oh ya and the meal was good too :). Lots of turkey and pumpkin pie!

A Leaf win would have made the evening complete but I will settle for the tie.
So Sunday I decide to play hockey in Paisley which was at 8:30. I go down to the basement to get my hockey bag, the contents of which I washed last spring. As I stand over the bag to pick it I can smell it, cat urine. That's right, one or both of our cats decided to pee in my hockey bag at various points during the summer. Not all the time mind you, but enough that my bag and it contents absolutely reeks.
So I take it upstairs to my porch and dump everything out. Fortunately didn't get everything, but what they did get stinks. So i make a trip to Walmart and buy Febreeze and some other anti-odour stuff. I spayed everything down and scrubed some stuff with Mr. Clean. It helped enough that I could play but I still stunk quite a bit. So I am going to have to wash everything thoroughly and scrub out the bag before my next game this coming Saturday.
And to top it all off I forgot my sticks for the game as well...

Oh well, it was fun and I scored a few goals as well.

Monday, October 13, 2003

So Happy Thanksgiving everyone! What are you thankful for? We are very fortunate in this country and have so much we take for granted, so try not to today!
This long weekend Anne is working days all three days so I have just been hangin' out at home mostly. The main family "do" is tomorrow at my parents, but its iffy as my aunt who is doing the turkey may not make it. So we will see I guess.
Not much else happening. I downloaded Tron 2.0 as well, the first player part of the game is supposed to be terrific. I think I am going to go through Jedi Academy first though.

Saturday, October 11, 2003

I finished Eleite Force 2 last night. It was pretty good, but need a bit more to it to be completely satisfying. I also downloaded Chrome and Halo. So I will be working on those as well as Jedi Acadamy. I still need to beat Tony Hawk 4 and Midnight Club 2. TH4 I have been playing here and there as its the type of game you can do that with, MC2 on the other hand I think I am going to have to put some effort into or cheat. Its a great game, but quite hard.
I spent the first half of the afternoon paintballing again, and although I had a ton of fun I think it may be one of those sports I am not particularly good at. Its not that I mind much either because as I said, its a TON of fun. But I always feel like I am letting my teammates down. It may be because there were only four of us again, and more players are needed to really act as a team. I expect I will play at least once more before winter and today there was talk of a couple of winter matches, you need difference paintballs for it but it would interesting.

Friday, October 10, 2003

Its sooooo hot here in the hospital right now. Because it was so cold last week they heat has been on, and now its hot and of course "they can't change it now just for a week" so we are all just boiling. I feel really sorry for the people up stairs. On top of it all I understand the nursing units are really busy so everyone is really grumpy too. Ugh...

Thursday, October 09, 2003

Today I had training for a program we use at the hospital. There were 5 people in the 3.5 hour class including me and I was the only "technical" person. I seriously could have learned what they taught in 20 minutes! Its very frustrating, especially since I a very hard time sitting still at all. Fortunately the lady beside really didn't want to be there either so we chatted quietly a bit.
But its like an afternoon off so it wasn't so bad.

Tuesday, October 07, 2003

So I deleted the wedding post. Judging from the responses and such, i guess I just need to rethink my reactions to it. Oh well, live and learn.

Congratulations to Teresa and Dean!
I never noticed or knew before Anne was pregnant that you could see the baby move around in a woman's belly around so much. Its cool and really freaky at the same time, especially when you feel it and its so clearly a hand or foot. It really does remind me of those horror film clips where you seem some thing pressing up against some latex film and you can make out what it is... Of course its not quite like that but its still weird, doubly so when you created it.

Monday, October 06, 2003

Sunday I went paintballing with four friends. Which, suprising, was a lot of fun with just that many people. We were out for about 4 hours and I went through 500 rounds. A number of game types were played including capture the flag, assault, team deathmatch and a couple of others. I think I have found out where online first-person-shooter games get their ideas, because everything we played I have played an online version of before.
Its a ton of fun and I think next summer I may have to get my own paintball equipment, it ends up being cheaper for sure in the long run.
Oh and I think I am almost finished Elite Force 2 and Tony Hawk 4. I really want to get into Jedi Academy but I think I may have my computer time cut back soon. :)