Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Snipe

Hey, this is my slacker post of the week where instead of actually writing about something I'll just put in some filler with a picture or a link to a better and more interesting website.

Today it's a link to a flash based game where you have to snipe targets. Sounds simple but it is pretty hard and I was playing it on the easy setting, but that's because I just suck at game in general.

Check it out yo!
http://www.freewebarcade.com/game/sniper-year-one/

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Bigger is better.

I know I said I was going to post something about the junk I picked up in the Cranbrook thrift stores, but decided to put that on hold because today I got my BRAND NEW TV!!!!


You are looking at a Toshiba 46" 1080p Regza and as you can see on the screen I also have a Samsung Blu Ray DVD player. When I was in Cranbrook my dad gave me the Blu Ray because he got it through work and since I've been planning on getting a new TV forever I figured if I had the Blu Ray then I might as well get the TV.

I picked up the TV at Visions which is right by our place and good thing too becasue the box wouldn't fit inside my car. Me and Visions dude had to take it out of the box, fold the seat down, and lay it in the back. I drove extra careful and it only took me 45 minutes to drive the one kilometer home, but the TV made it safe and that is all that counts. Cody was at work so I had to carry the TV inside by myself praying the whole time that I didn't drop it. It wasn't that heavy, but big and awkward to hold, plus there was a bit of snow on the ground.

I got it all hooked up with the Blu Ray and XBox 360 hooked up with HDMI and the Wii hooked into the Color Stream. We still got regular old cable which looks like crap. I only have one Blu Ray disc, Bolt, but it looks pretty damn good. I have the Star Wars DVD that has the original theatrical version and the special edition version. I threw each disc in and the special edition version looked pretty nice, but the theatrical version looked pretty crappy. I read somewhere that the theatrical version is a port of the laser disc, so they didn't clean up the image and they didn't even bother to make it anamorphic widescreen. So if you watch it there are black bars on the top and bottom because basically it's still recognized at full frame. Dammit! The Blu Ray is supposed to enhance and upgrade picture quality on regular DVDs. My old DVD players upscaled to 1080p also, but no sense in having mulitple DVD players.

I had to go buy some color stream cables for the Wii. The Wii displays 16X9 but it's not HD, it only has a resolution of 480p. I tried it with the regular cables and then with the color stream cables and noticed a big improvement on the picture quality. The XBox looks nice too and hopefully the HD and bigger screen will make getting head shots a lot easier.

Since I just hooked it all up today I haven't had time to figured out all the settings and different modes. I'll have to read the manual, but I'll try pressing all kinds of buttons first and see what happens. There is supposed to be a Game mode, but I haven't even found that yet.

That's it for now, so I hoped you enjoyed my new TV. Now that I have a new TV I guess Cody can buy the Shaw HDPVR. It's only fair.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

What I've been doin'

It's Thursday night and I'm getting ready to go back to Calgary on Friday. I don't work until Sunday, but I need to get back a day early so I can relax. The trip has been okay so far, I seen the family and the crazy kids, checked out the Cranbrook hotspots (thrift stores), got work done on the car and watched the Kootenay Ice get eliminated from the play offs.

I can't even remember what I did on Tuesday other than go to CD Plus and get the new MSTRKRFT CD which I like, so I'll listen it like a dozen times on the drive back. Went to Wal-Mart where I saw Flemming who called me "Jeff". I'll never talk to him ever again. I'm sure you heard Cam, but I went to your parent's place that night too and dropped off your crap. Remind your dad to fix the clock on the VCR because I swore it said 8pm and I was thinking it was way later than that. Turns out it was like 10pm, so I'm sure they were trying to get rid of me. Mike, your dad is pretty pumped for Surplus Herbies. I am too after watching that horrible commercial with the talking action figure head.

Wednesday I hit the thrift stores and actually managed to find something cool at every one I visited which rarely happens now. I'll be adding pictures and scans of the junk I got, so you can look forward to that! In the meantime here is a short crappy video of a Godzilla figure I bought at the Cellar. Guest starring my hand, I shot it with my digital camera. Sorry I tried to embed the video, but IE can't even copy and paste correctly, so you'll have to click the link.

It's pretty cool and made even cooler by the fact that it only cost me 25 cents. I'm not sure why it has the loop on his head like you are supposed to hang him somewhere. It's way too big for a Christmas ornament, but nothing says Christmas like a roaring Godzilla holding the severed head of MechaGodzilla. Move over Rudolph.

On Wednesday I also had to dig out all my old comic boxes so I could find some comics I want to get signed at the upcoming Calgary Comic Expo. I only had a couple to get, but thought I'd better double check who was coming and if I had anything of theirs that was cool. Anyway, that couple of comics turned into a stack of comics. I got it done and packed them all away until next time. Then later that night we went to the hockey game where Kootenay lost to the Brandon Wheatkings and got eliminated from the playoffs. They were down 3-0, so it was inevitable.

Today, Thursday, I really didn't do much of anything. I'll be heading back Friday and I think I'll go the north way through the park. I came down the south way and thought I'd do something different. For some reason it takes that same amount of time to get back, no matter which way you go. When I get back I'll be posted my super cool t-shirt from Giant Tiger and my other thrift store finds! You won't want to miss it!

Monday, March 23, 2009

Back y'all

Despite Calgary getting a foot of snow Saturday night/Sunday morning the roads were fine for the drive back. Just some wet patches except there was snow on the road through the Crowsnest Pass where it was coming down hard. It only lasted for about 5 km and then as I neared the BC border it stopped and the sun started to come out again. Yeah BC!

Mike was right, I'm already bored. The drive is so boring and I've driven it many time before. Maybe if I was organized I could just fly home next time. Well I'm back and even though I hadn't even been in town for an hour I had already went to Giant Tiger and Aabco Pawn.

At Giant Tiger I just want some juice, but since I was already there I looked at the t-shirts and ended up getting one. It's a pretty sweet one, so don't worry pictures will follow. They still had way too many fart shirts, but not as many as when Cam and I went at Christmas. Does Cranbrook really have the market for that many different fart t-shirts? Actually, I don't want to know.

At Aabco I picked up some DVDs at 5 for $20 and one of them was Night of the Lepus. It's a "horror" movie from 1972 about giant man eating rabbits. I watched it a long time ago on my grandpa's satellite and thought it was pretty funny and for $4 I thought I'd give it another try. Aabco also has a raffle for a rifle which isn't a big deal except it's a HUGE rifle. I didn't bother with the name of it, but it's a .50 caliber which it probably it's biggest selling point. The tickets aren't cheap at $100. I wish I had that huge gun, but I don't a license to own gun or to even buy ammo for it, but then again with a .50 caliber rifle you'd be better off if people (aka "The Man") didn't know you owned it.

When I got to my parent's place I was unloading the car and spotted one of my old toys lying in the snow. I have most of my toys all packed up, but some didn't get put away and now kids are digging them up and leaving them laying all over the place including my Real Ghostbusters Slimer figure! Since it's sitting outside the dog figured she might as well chew on it a bit.

Don't be scared Mike! I think that picture turned out pretty good and it was only the third one I took. I was just wanted a good shot where you could see Slimer in Aspen's mouth, but this was extra nice because you could also see her teeth. Slimer is still in one piece despite bite marks all over him. Aspen also has a tendency to destroy anything toys you give her. A regular tennis ball won't even last five minutes with her. I see she was trying to rip the tail off his body, so I took him away from her. Tomorrow I'll go get her a new orange ball.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Ugg.

I said it would snow and it did. I thought it was only going to snow 2cm, but I woke up this morning to a whole lot more snow than that, and it's coming down. I've decided to wait and day and go back to Cranbrook on Monday instead. It's supposed to stop snowing and warm up a little bit, so by tomorrow I'm hoping the roads will be better. Don't worry Cam I'll make it my mission to get those burgers back to you even if it means sliding down the highway into an oncoming semi. Sacrifices have to be made.

Yesterday I broke Cody's XBox. I finally managed to track down a cheap copy of Army of Two and while I was only on the start of the second level the game froze up. I turned off the 360 and went to do some other stuff and later when I tried it again it kept locking up and I got the dreaded red ring of death. Uh oh. Later on it briefly worked, but then locked up again. Since Cody got a new hard drive a while ago, we tried putting in the old hard drive and same problem. That is good because it's the console and not the hard drive. If it was the hard drive then goodbye all save games, downloads, stats, etc. Cody did some looking online and it might be the internal power supply. Good thing he bought the 2 year service plan from Future Shop. Of course they don't actually fix and just send it away, but if it take more than 60 days to fix then he gets a new one. 60 days?! It probably just be easier to buy a brand new 360, like the new Elite red 360 bundled with RE5.

Cam, check out this link to a site where some guy built a racing cockpit for Gran Turismo. It's pretty tricked out, but I wonder what he does with it when he's not using it.
http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/gamer-builds-incredible-gran-turismo-5-racing-cockpit
That red urn thing in front of the fireplace is ugly.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

?!



Last Saturday me and Cody went to Bianca Amor's Liquidation Superstore because we went to the dollar store last weekend and we wanted to do something different. Looking through all the goodies I found they had put out some more CD wallets and found more hamburgers, this time the good ones with the funny faces. Seeing as how they were still only $2 I picked up two more for Cam because they're way cooler than the plain burgers wallets without the cartoony face. They you go Cam now you got FOUR hamburger CD wallets. You can always sell the extra ones to Mike.

Bianca Amor's has had DVDs for a while now all at $5 each from regular DVDs to DVD sets. I picked up a big stack of Dragon Dynasty DVDs which is a Weinstein label that release Asian movies. The Dragon Dynasty discs range from classic Shaw Brothers to newer releases like PTU and Born to Fight. Born to Fight is a Thai action movie that has some pretty crazy action like a guy falling off a moving semi trailer and his head almost getting run over by the tires. In all the fight scenes all the moves actually connect. Plus a dude gets blown to bits by a rocket launcher.

They were also some 80's Filmation best of sets like He-Man, She-Ra and BraveStarr. Cody picked up She-Ra and BraveStarr as well as Dirty Work with Norm MacDonald and Artie Lange. I saw this a long time ago in the theater when it first came out, so I didn't really remember a whole lot about it. After watching it is pretty funny and it's definitely got the Norm MacDonald stlye of comedy and delivery. "Note to self: I don't want to live anymore!" When it's got a cameo from Adam Sandler, Chris Farley AND Gary Coleman you know you're watching something special.

I asked for a few days off and I actually got the whole week off starting next week. That said I'll be heading back to Cranbrook on Sunday. It might snow and it probably will because that's just my luck. I'm not sure how long I'll be back because I'll be bored to death in a day, so I can see myself heading back early on Thursday or Friday. I'll be taking your stuff back Cam, so I hope your parents will be around and get your money ready Mike.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Snake Eyes



Check out my newest addition to my Mighty Muggs collection in the form of the coolest Joe ever, Snake Eyes. Hasbro has released a new wave of G.I. Joe Mighty Muggs characters in Snake Eyes, Storm Shadow, Cobra Commander and Destro. I got mine at the comic store where the price is higher than at Wal-Mart or Toys'R'Us, but I didn't want to miss out on not getting him. I was Toys'R'Us today and they did have them, but of course not Snake Eyes. Snake Eyes is the coolest one, but Destro does look pretty neat with his giant shiny head.

I still have my Spider-Man, Soundwave and Boba Fett in their boxes, but I couldn't resist opening up Snake Eyes and as you can see in the picture he comes with a gun and a sword. Let's hope the next batch will include more Joe characters, this wave has only Snake Eyes to three baddies. He could still take them though.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Grifball sucks!!

Hi y'all! It's good to know Cam enjoyed the burger review. Mike is so demanding wanting the review sooner and then I do it and he doesn't even comment on it. I'm crushed. In other "burger" business I was watching TV the other night and saw a commercial for Taco Time and they were hyped the new Taco Cheeseburger. Since when does Taco Time do burgers? From the ad it doesn't look like an actual burger, it's really just a sloppy joe. I then realized the TV station was KXLY from Spokane and the Americans will eat anything in burger form. The Taco Cheeseburger is probably only available in the US, but has anyone seen one of these in Canada? I would try one, but just to say I tried it because nothing beats a Super Chicken Burrito.

I also ran to the nearest Burger King to try the new BK Burger Shots after seeing the commercials like 10,000 times. Congratulations Burger King, they worked. You can only order them in twos because the two burgers are actually conjoined. The burgers and the buns are connected at the edges and you just have to rip the apart. The wrapper even has a dotted line in the middle so you know where to tear it apart. If you need help figuring that out then you'll probably need help chewing the burgers too. The burgers themselves are fairly decent, but still not filling as a Whopper. I ordered the combo with two or four Burger Shots and I probably could've eat another one, uh or two. My biggest disappointed is that I was not swarmed by hot chicks after I unwrapped the burgers. Where my girls at?! Damn, you Burger King you lied to me!! I feel so cheated, I didn't think a corporation would lie so blatantly just to sell a product. What is the world coming to?

Okay, in a break from hamburgers I'll switch over to video games. I've managed to beat all the tracks in Excite mode in Excite Truck. Now I have to beat ALL tracks with a S rating to unlock Super Excite mode and I doubt that'll happen. I've beat a few tracks with a S rating, but the others I can't come close and when I actually pull off some sweet moves (by sheer luck) I'm still short a few stars. If I could only learn how to do a truck spin.

Today at Wal-Mart I picked up Mad World! IGN reviewed it and gave it a very respectable 9.0, but sounds like the biggest con is that on Normal it should take 5-6 hours to complete. They do say you'll have more fun in that 5-6 hours than in 2o hours of other games. I haven't played it yet, but I'm saving it for this Tuesday when I can give it my full attention because it's my day off. Another Wii game that I'd pick up if I saw it cheap is the Japanese game Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers. It's a series in Japan that is finally seeing release over here. It's supposed to a pretty cheesy arcade style action brawler with sexy girls killing waves of zombies. It's a brand new title, but it's "buget" priced at $30. Make it $20 and I'm all over it. It even got made into a movie in Japan.

Cody caved into the peer pressure (not from me!) and bought the Halo Wars Collector's Edition. The CE comes with a graphic novel, patch, cards, code for a Honor Guard Wraith (that's a tank) and a code to download three new Halo 3 multiplayer maps. The Halo 3 maps won't be available for another month from the XBox Live Marketplace. They made a new playlist of slayer and objective based games just for the new maps and on Friday we played for a few hours with two other guys from work. The new Mythic play list pits four against four, so we were all on the same team and it was pretty fun and coordinating our attacks was pretty easy. We were kicking ass and taking names until we played a match of Grifball and after that it was the beginning of the end as we got totally schooled in all our other matches. Noobs.

Finally, if you're tired of burgers and video games why not check out some Japanese Spider-Man? Marvel.com has posted a video of the first episode of the 70's live action Spider-Man TV show with subtitles. It's totally different from the US version except for the costume, but it's still pretty fun. Since it's Japanese you know Spider-Man has crazy stuff like a flying car called the Spider-Machine JP-7 which docks with his flying ship Marveller which then transforms into a giant robot called Leopardon. That is so cool, so check it out.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Best damn burger in town!

Those aren't my words, but the words printed on the window of Tommy Burger Bar on MacLeod Trail SW. Tommy Burger Bar is near Southland Drive on the opposite of MacLeod Trail from Cash Converters and Dollarama. Cody spotted the sign last time we were there and when we went back on the weekend we decided to try it out.

Even though it is right off MacLeod Trail you can't actually get to it from MacLeod Trail which is pretty stupid. You have to go around and take a side road and come in the back. When we walked in the place I knew right away we where in for trouble for two reasons; 1: It was nice and 2: There were servers. I knew it was going to be expensive.

The inside was clean and nice and I guess what passes for "hip" nowadays. They had table and booths, plus a bar with seats. We got seated at a tall table and I sat on the bench seat Cody got a chair. Our server, Ashely(?) wearing a low cut top, brought us our menus. You could choose from several house burgers or start with a basic burger and add your own fixins at a price. I went with the basic Tommy burger($6) and added jalapeno bacon ($1.25) and aged cheddar($1.25). Did I mention that there is no such thing as combos? You could add sides of fries, poutine, onion rings or a bunch of other stuff I didn't pay much attention to. I got some fries and a diet Coke. Cody got some house specialty burger, fries and a milkshake ($6).

While we were waiting we watched TV on several LCD screens positioned around the place. I was sitting facing the bar and there were four TVs probably 40" spread out along the length of the bar playing soccer and baseball. Yeah! The food eventually came and then I ate it. The burger had a huge skewer in it which I guess was to hold it together. For some reason it a pickle skewered on the top of the bun, but shouldn't it be inside the bun? Anyway, the burger itself was pretty good. The patty was pretty big and juicy and the japalpeno bacon was awesome. The fries came inside this tall conical metal thing with paper on the inside. It was high to reach inside and when you got near the bottom it was hard to fit your hand inside to grab remaining fries.

We finished our food in good time and then Ashley(?) brought us the bill which was just under $35! I'm just a cheap old bastard, but $35 for two people to eat hamburgers seems pretty expensive. I guess I should've paid more attention because Tommy Burger Bar does gourmet burgers, so they can get away with it. Plus since they had servers you also gotta figure in the tip.

I'll admit that the burger was pretty good as were the fries and Ashley's(?) cleavage, but the price was too much. The whole thing was way different from all the other burger places we've eaten in, mostly it was nice and clean. It just didn't seem right. It's gotta be old and rundown and filthy. That's called character! Also, it helps if you don't get your hand stuck in the fry cup trying to reach the last fry at the bottom. Visit the Tommy Burger Bar website and e-mail them and complain about the fry containers. They do have a Tommy Boy burger which is a double burger, so don't bother suggesting it. Chris Farley's estate should sue them.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Get Excited

A new burger review! Today me and Cody hit the dollar stores and this burger place we saw because it happens to be on the opposite side of MacLeod Trail from Dollarama and Cash Converters. Since we were there, we went and checked it out. Too bad you'll have to wait to hear about it because I'm too tired to write it up right now.

We hit three dollar stores today, Dollarama and two locations of Dollar Giant because the first one didn't have what I was looking for. I picked up the usual, food, candy, Spongebob iron-ons, disc shooter gun, AA batteries (damn Wii-mote), CD jewel cases, Pepsi Wild Cherry lip balm (it even looks like a bottle of Pepsi) and of course more Creme Eggs! It's not like I needed any of it, but it's too cheap to resist.

We also went to Cash Converters and I ended up buying Excite Truck for the Wii. Excite Truck is a sequel to the NES game Excitebike and was one of the launch games for the Wii. It's a total arcade racer with jumps and speed total over the top and the physics right out the door. Half the time I'm totally out of control, but like they said in The Fast and the Furious, "You're not in control, unless you're out of control." Tokyo Drift!

You control your trucks by holding the Wii-mote sideways and tilting it like an actual steering wheel to turn. At first I was swerving and sliding around all over the place, but once I got used to it, it actually became easier. The 1 button is the brake/reverse (so far I haven't even touched it) and the 2 button is the gas. The D pad in any direction will activate your turbo boost which you use pretty much non stop if you want to win. Some of the jumps are enormous and you can catch huge air by hitting the turbo right after take off and tilting the remote backward will lean your vehicle backward allowing your to fly further through the air.

You have to collect stars during races and just winning the race doesn't automatically means you will collect enough stars to beat the race, but the better you finish the more stars you get. You can collect stars for airs, jump combos, landings, drifts and smashing other vehicles off the course which can get you anywhere from 1 to 5 stars. Also collecting stars will unlock new vehicles and each vehicle has different stats like speed, grip, air, etc. All I want is speed and air, grip doesn't matter because I'm usually out of control anyway. You can gain stars by driving through stands of trees without hitting anything. I've racked up a few Super Tree Runs (5 stars yo!) but I think that was just pure luck.


The music is pretty generic, but the game lets you select your own race music from mp3s. Just put your mp3s on a SD card and put the in the ol' Wii and before you start your race you'll be able to select the music from the SD card which the game will play in a random order. I haven't tried this yet, but I need to grab a cheap SD card first because I gave my spare card away. I'll get right on it because the cheesy guitar rock has got to go.

As with a lot of Nintendo games I'd still say it's a "casual" game. It's easy to pick up and play, but lacks any real depth. I played for just over an hour and half way through the Excite mode. It's no Gran Turismo, but you do get a real sense of speed flying through the tracks and the airborne insanity is too fun.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Turkey

Did anybody pick up the new Prodigy album today? Well I did and it turns out there is only version available and it comes with the DVD. If you don't want the DVD, too bad because you're getting it. I've only listened to the first few songs and so far I like it. It's supposed to a nu-rave record whatever that is. I watched the DVD that has two videos and two live tracks on it, all of which are songs on the new album. The DVD also contains DVD-ROM content of HD videos for Invaders Must Die. I watched the Windows Media version and it sure didn't look very HD to me. In the live videos it shows them playing with a guitar player and a drummer. On the album Dave Grohl plays live drums on two songs.

Today I was leaving Safeway after getting some groceries and these guys roll up in a SUV and ask me if I want to buy a home theater. I could see the back of their vehicle was full of boxes. I told them "no thanks" and they left. A couple guys did the same thing to me a few years ago outside work at the Superstore. I'm sure it is real quality merchandise too.

This post needed something extra so I'll just post a stupid picture I took of the TV. I can't remember if it was Thanksgiving or Christmas, but it's the local Shaw TV station.



Did the classy bed sheets hanging from the window. We put them as a temporary measure until they came back to fix the drywall around the new window. It's been like 6 months since the windows went in and the drywall hasn't been fixed. I don't think they're coming back. I'd rather they didn't because any job they do will just be half assed and probably look even worse.