Merry Rockin' Christmas

Merry X-mas Eve

I drove back to Cranbrook this morning.  I always say how boring the drive is and this time is no exception.  Each time I drive that road, it gets a little more boring and I hate it a little bit more.  Why can't they make a new road?  Anyway, there wasn't as much traffic as I was expecting which was nice and the roads were in good shape.  I drove the whole back without incident and then almost got into an accident soon as I got into Cranbrook because an amber light means just floor it before it turns red,  stupid redneck BC drivers.

I got home and unloaded all the presents from my car.  I had to get my mom to wrap Avery's drum set because it's too big for me.  I can barely wrap little boxes, so forget about one that big.  Later Logan and Avery came up and I went outside with Avery and we went GTing.  I brought a couple things(collectibles) home which I packed into my pile of boxes in the basement.  That will be another blog post later on.

Check back in a day or two to see all my Christmas swag.  My mom and sister kept asking me what I wanted for Christmas so I just told them all the movies, games and gizmos I was interested in.  No socks this year!

Nothing says Christmas like putting together a Gremlins puzzle!

BLAST THAT COMMIE!!

Dec. 21st saw the release of the Bad Company 2: Vietnam DLC which takes the awesome BC2 multi-player experience and drops it in the Vietnam conflict.  You get five new maps as well as era authentic weapons(flamethrower!), vehicles, dialogue and music.  It's like the same, yet different.  I have to admit that Vietnam is harder than the regular BC2 multi-player just because the guns are so much crappier.  Since it's set back in Vietnam they stripped out all the fancy red dot and ACOG gun sights making it that much harder to see your enemies, all you get is iron sights unless you have a sniper rifle.  Weird thing is that snipers don't seem to be as annoying as in the regular BC2.

I usually play as the engineer because he gets a RPG as one of his "gadgets" and I like blowing things up, but your primary weapon is a machine pistol of either the M10, PPsh, or Uzi.  The M10 and Uzi have horrible accuracy and damage rates, but make up for it with high rates of fire.  With either of those two your enemy has to be almost in front of you for you to drop his ass.  If he's at any of kind of range you will be lucky to score any hits.  I've been using the PPsh since is has higher accuracy and damage stats.  It seems most guys who play this class use this gun.

I'm only kind of liking the maps though, they aren't as big as the regular BC2 maps.  The Phu Bai Valley sucks if you are defending and the other team has a good helicopter pilot because he will rain rockets down on you non-stop.  This is made even more annoying that there are no emplaced weapons like heavy machines guns or AA guns.  I'm pretty sure they still had those back in Vietnam.

If you are big Creedence Clearwater Revival then you will LOVE Bad Company 2: Vietnam because you will be hearing lots of Fortunate Son.  If you don't like them, well too bad because you will still be hearing lots of Fortunate Son.  It's pretty unavoidable as it starts playing right at the title screen.  Yeah??

Happy Holidayz

Hey, what's up?  I've been meaning to write something for a few days now, but I was busy and then I was sick.  I was so sick all I did was lie in bed for pretty much all of Wednesday.  I tried sitting up at around 7pm, but then I started sweating and nearly threw up, so I thought I'd better lie back down.  Anyway, I'm almost back to full health now.

Christmas is a week away and I'm officially finished my X-mas shopping.  I've already started wrapping my gifts and by "wrapping" I mean putting them in gifts bags.  I made a trip to Dollarama the other week and stocked up on gift bags.  I have a few presents that are too big for the gift bags, so I'm not sure what to do.  I could wrap them, but I suck at wrapping even small things, so the larger they are the harder they are to wrap.  I should just take the easiest way possible and spray paint the box red and/or green. 

Here are a couple of the "cool" gifts I got, but don't tell anyone or you'll ruin the surprise.  First up I bought Avery a drum set.  Yeah, my sister is going to hate me for it, but it doesn't matter because that's my job.  I'm supposed to buy my nephews crazy gifts that will get them or me into trouble.

My dad says it'll probably just end up at his place anyway.  I don't see what the big deal is because like it says on the box "Music Inspires Learning".  That's good right?  I also got Avery a matching shirt to wear while rocking out.

I know you all remember that Animal played the drums in Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.

I also got my brother a boom box for his iPod which is just a speaker dock in the shape of an 80's style boom box.  I got it a Staples and while I've never heard of the brand I'm hoping it won't be too cheap.  I did find one video online of a guy who has one and he seemed pretty happy with it, he said the LEDs are awesome, but the handle is pretty crappy.  I will admit those LEDs did light up real pretty.

It is compatible with almost every iPod/iPhone out there, but does have other features too.  It has a aux jack, SD card slot and a USB slot on it.  It also has a FM/AM tuner and you can even record the radio, but I'm not sure why you would want to.

That's pretty much it, but thanks to Mike for helping me pick out a GPS for my dad.  The lame part is that after I finally bought it for him after checking several stores I saw a better model unit for a cheaper price.  Dammit!  Once you buy your gifts don't look for online, in stores or in flyers because you will find stuff you already bought for cheaper.  Stupid holidays!!

RIP

I just read a story on Yahoo that Columbia House Canada is officially no more.   Everyone was at one time a member of Columbia House, mostly for their music.  It seemed awesome at first because you got a bunch of CDs for $1, but after that you were obligated to buy a certain number of over priced CDs in a certain time period.  Maybe it was a rip off, but it didn't seem like much of a rip off living in Cranbrook because they only place to get music was Top 40 and they were also totally over priced.  I think I was a member of Columbia House music two different times and when they first started doing DVDs I tried that too, but got out of it quickly.

The article blames the internet for their demise because why would you pay for stuff you can get it for free online.  A couple music stores here in town, Play and Megatunes, have both gone out of business and blamed it on online media.  Pretty much everyone buys music online today except for me because I'll old and stubborn.  If I pay money for something I like be able to see and hold what paid for.  What if you buy music or movies online and then your computer crashes and you lose that stuff, you can't get it back.  If you owned a hard copy  then you just rip back to your computer.  Records seems to be making a comeback, I'm just waiting for cassette tapes to come back.

I'm *not* lovin' it

I'm not a big fan of eating at McDonald's, but when I do it's either for breakfast or to get some McNuggets.  They've been pimping the McNuggets with festive holiday dipping sauces on TV, so I couldn't resist giving them a try.

As you can see there is a red cranberry sauce and a green apple sauce, but I'm not sure what green apples have to do with the holidays.

Yep, they are red and green alright.

Yum?

But how do they taste?

In case you can't tell, NOT VERY GOOD!  The cranberry sauce is tolerable, but the green apple sauce looks and tastes the worst.  Dipping breaded fried chicken(y?) bits into fruit flavored sauce just isn't a good idea.  If they wanted to make a holiday themed dipping sauce why not do gravy?  Gravy is awesome and tastes good on anything.  I'd be eating that morning, noon and night!!  Avoid these gimmicky "festive" sauces and stick with a classic like the barbecue sauce.  You've been warned.

This morning I went downstairs to get some breakfast and when I looked out the window in the door I saw a wild animal right outside!  Okay, it wasn't like a bear or anything, but a scruffy orange cat that hangs around the complex we live in.

I'm not sure if he belongs to anyone, but if he's a stray he's the fattest stray cat I've ever seen.  He usually hangs around the area just relaxing, watching squirrels or getting in scraps with other local cats.  If somebody does own him then they should start taking better care of him.  The fur on his back is matted, dude needs some grooming.

I saw him one day on the walkway that goes around all the units and these kids ran up behind to catch him and just before they got to him he took off.  He got about ten feet in front of them and then started waking again.  The kids ran after him again and just before they caught him he took off again.  It was pretty funny and reminded of the gag where someone goes to get in a car and the car takes off and then stops and they try to get in again and the car takes off again.  The cat was doing this to these kids and it was pretty funny.  I guess he's part evil.

After I ate and got changed then went outside he was still sitting out there.  I think he was sitting there because in the morning the sun shines on the front of our unit, so he was on the window sill soaking it in.  He is friendly and you can pet him, but he still needs to be brushed.

Free shirt acquired!

My free t-shirt from Cheerios arrived today!  Again, the new shirts are to commerate the Men's hockey team winning gold last winter.  There are three different long sleeve shirts to choose from and I got the black one because black matches anything.

You can't see the design very well it's an outline of a hockey dude holding his stick in the in celebration.  The dude is made up signatures of all the players on the team.  The back of the shirt has the date of the game, the score and the Cheerios logo.  The shirt itself is nice and soft and feels nice, not all scratchy and cheap.  Not bad for being free.

It also came with a "map" that tells you which signatures belong to who, if you have trouble reading the scribbles.  There is also a coupon for $1 off some cereal.  I can use that $1 off to buy another box of cereal and get another free t-shirt.

I bet you didn't even notice, but in that picture I wasn't originally holding the hockey stick!  I drew it in with my mad Paint skills!