Happy Easter to all my Peeps

The Saturday Post

I had Friday off because it was a holiday and if I ended up working then I would've been getting paid a lot more money.  Just another example of "the man" keeping me down.  The weather was so nice, so I took advantage of it by staying inside most of the day.  Well, I went out for some groceries in the morning, but then I came home and played Wolverine Origins on the Xbox, then I played Luigi's Manson of the 3DS and then I finished watched Kamen Rider Kabuto for the second time.  Whew.

Today was another nice day like yesterday, so I decided I should go out and by "out" I drove around to a couple stores.  As I said the weather was nice and most of the snow was almost gone, so I dusted off my Johnny Ramone Vans and put them on.

I hopped in the car and drove to Comic-kazi.  I usually go there once a month, so it was about time.

If it's any help Comic-kazi is located on Macleod Trail right beside A&W.

After buying three comic books it was back in the car and drive down to Cash Converters also on Macleod Trail.  I did not drive directly there on Macleod because there are too many traffic lights and it would've taken forever, so I cut over to Blackfoot Trail and went down that way.

You've heard all about it, but there it is, Cash Converters, located right beside Dollarama.  I went in looking for a Wii game for Logan and Avery, but didn't find it.  It was my last resort as I checked online and no EB Games in Calgary had it.  I couldn't find the game, but I did see this!

A Dean McWhinney, er I mean, a Dean Brody CD!  No, I didn't buy it because it's "country".  Also, if it was so great, then who ever owned it previously never would've parted with it.  I mean, if I like something then I don't get rid of it.  Seriously though, I'm sure it's great.

Forget gaming on my 3DS or my phone, I got this rad portable Radioshack Pac-Man game.  Check out that LCD screen!  It still works and luckily still had batteries in it because it takes the little cell watch type batteries.  The small batteries make it very light weight.  It's a little grubby, but it should clean up okay.  I managed to play it for five whole minutes before getting completely bored which is longer than I thought I'd last.

After Cash Converters I went to Toys "R" Us to have look because Avery's birthday is coming up.  That turned out be a big mistake as it was crazy busy inside.  I had been looking at a pogo stick on the website, but couldn't find it in the store.  I looked again at home and it might be online order only which sucks.  My sister said to get him an outside toy, so what do you think about some lawn darts?

I grabbed lunch at Taco Time as there is one right near Toys "R" Us and got the worst chicken burrito combo ever!

I took one bite and the entire thing fell apart.  It's like the shell just disintegrated and the stuff fell out.  I ended up eating it like a salad with a fork.  This never would've happened if I had gone to Mucho Burrito.  After than I went home and played Wolverine on the Xbox and Luigi on the 3DS and even managed to put in some laundry. 

If the weather stays nice I might go down to Chinatown on one of days off next week.  I haven't been there for quite a while and it's time to make a bootleg movie trip and pick up the new Jackie Chan movie.  Look for some random pictures and an unfocused poorly written story about it soon!

Cereal Thrilla

While I was out buying limited edition birthday cake flavour Oreos I was also getting limited edition Peanut Butter Cheerios.

I ate some for dinner tonight and they were okay.  I still haven't gotten around to trying the Chocolate Cheerios or the Banana Nut Cheerios yet.  Those ones aren't limited edition, so they should be around for the foreseeable future.  I got lots of time.  I find regular Cheerios boring, but I've eaten a lot of Honey Nut Cheerios is my time, you can't go wrong.  Before they die some people can say they've climbed Mt. Everest, or visited every continent, but I can say I've eaten Peanut Butter Cheerios.

Why is everything "limited edition" lately?

I saw a pallet of these sitting in the back room at work and told Cody about them, so he bought a box.  I saw him carrying a box around at 7:30 in the morning.  It's been a while since Pebbles have been available in Canada, so grab them while you can.  The bad news is that they are the Rice Krispies looking Pebbles, not the old school round ones.  The good news is that they are gluten free!  That is good news right?

I wonder what limited edition cereal I'll find on the shelves next week?

Happy Birthday!

I was getting a few groceries at Safeway when I found these new limited edition birthday cake flavored Oreos, so I pretty much had to buy them.  Party time!

I'm not sure who's birthday it is exactly, Nabisco's? The Oreo cookie?  I guess they were brainstorming new things to do with the Oreo and somebody just decided it would be a good idea to do a birthday cake flavour.  Was it a good idea?  Not really.

I tried one and thought it was okay, but later when I had a second one, I thought it was kinda nasty.  Cody also says they're not bad, but again they're not good either.  They do smell like cake though, and the have little sprinkles in the icing.

I'll have to summon the courage to finish the rest of the package, but after that I'm done with birthday cake Oreos.  Unless they start making them in double stuff.

Record breaking

Hey, check it out, I got a new lunch pail!

I'm just kidding, it's not a lunch box, but a 45 record box.  I was at the Inner Sleeve in Marda Loop today looking around because I haven't been there for a while.  I had grabbed a couple used CDs and was looking through the boxes of discounted records when I saw this record holder there.  I checked it out to see how much it would be, but couldn't find a price tag on it.  I asked the guy how much it was and he looked around to see if the tag had fallen off, but he didn't find one.

After not finding a price the guys asks me, "How does $5 sound?"  I told him, "That's sounds okay.", when really inside my head I was like "Haha, you dumb sucker!  It should be more like $25 of $30!"  So I contined browsing playing it all cool, then bought my stuff got the hell out of there before his mistake could be corrected.  Of course, he'll probably get in shit for it some where down the line, so I can't show my face around there for a while.

While I don't know the actual price of the record box, I have guess it more than five dollars.  It's vintage and kitschy, so hipsters eat that shit up right away and since it's vinyl related it's doubly hipster cool.  It's in really good shape apart from being a little dirty, but nothing some soap and water can't fix. 

I like that it's actually plastic, so therefore it's more durable.  A few years ago I bought a brand new one online for $30 which broke pretty damn fast.  The vinyl it was made from cracked right along where the "hinge" is, so eventually it'll just break right off.  Another fine investment on my part.

I'm sure the vinyl is supposed to split open like that, it's the way it was designed...is what I keep telling myself.

After a bit of brief investigation work online I found someone selling a near identical record box (but white) on eBay for $15, but that doesn't include shipping.  It's not near the $30 I was expecting, but still more than $5, so for once I'm coming out on top.  I'll take it where I can get it.  And, it would make a sweet lunch box.

Maggots!

FUBAR

During my last trip back to Cranbrook, Willie and I worked on a secret project that I hinted at saying it needed some more work before it was ready to be unveiled.  I was getting things together to pass off to Cody for some fine tuning when I discovered a small problem, we royally fucked up.  Here's what happened...

Willie and I had shot some video on my phone with the plan to have Cody edit it with his fancy video editing software.  I downloaded this cheesy effects app off the Android Play store called FX Guru.  You shoot a short video scene and the app will overlay a grenade, bombing exploding, or UFOs overtop of the video to make it look like a fancy Hollywood movie.  Basically, we were just going to "blow up" stuff.  Me and Willie headed up to Gyro Park and shot as much footage as we could, but a few shots needed to have both of us in frame, so we headed down to Scarff HQ to look for some help, but no one was home.

Willie says hi.

In the meantime we headed around Cranbrook blowing up different spots around town like Mt. Baker, the Tamrack Mall, the Cranbrook sign into downtown and City Hall.  We went back to Scarff HQ and recruited Rod help to film the final few scenes back at Gyro Park.  The first take was a little shaky if you know what I mean, but he nailed it the second try.  All the Cranbrook footage was in the can.

Once back in Calgary I got various audio clips off the internet to be used in the film and even made a prop as I had a couple more scenes to shoot with Cody before it was entirely finished.  While I was loading everything onto a USB drive I was viewing the stuff I shot with Willie and noticed an epic fail of mammoth proportions.  We were missing most of the footage!

The prop I made, what awesome craftsmanship.

When Willie and I were screwing around filming our scenes at Gyro we messed up with the actual recording.  When we were pausing it, we were actually recording and when we were recording, we were actually pausing it.  So we don't have any of the footage we needed, just lots of shots of the ground while we walked around or handed the phone to each other.  I feel like a complete idiot and hang my head in shame.  It happened when I was filming Willie and he kept laughing and couldn't do his scene, so I paused it, un-paused, paused and then screwed up.  It's totally my bad.

It guess that is the problem with touch screens, you tap the screen and it doesn't work or you tap it once, but it registers twice.  Although, we should've screened the footage first to see if the shots turned out the way we wanted them to.  If we had, then we would've caught it.  Well, I learned a valuable lesson anyway.

I was fun filming it, so hopefully we'll get to try it again and hopefully it will work this time.  It will also help that my hands won't be numb either as it was freezing that afternoon.  It wasn't too cold, but it was windy which made it a lot worse.  What footage we had looked okay, but it was overcast too, so if we had some nice sunny weather it would look a lot better.

Here's a clip that would've been in the movie just to give you a taste.

See if you can spot Willie!

Bug out

Tonight I forced Cody to watch a double features of horror flicks where the antagonist isn't a psychotic masked killer, but nature gone awry.  We watched The Nest, that had killer cockroaches and then Ticks which had, you guessed it, killer ticks.  Of the two I enjoyed Ticks the most, it moved along quicker, was funnier although unintentionally and featured Seth Green as the "hero".

It also reminded me of the time when Cody, Cam, Willie and I went hiking around the Moyie Falls area.  While we were hiking somebody had found a tick on them, but it was no big deal and just flicked it off.  Willie was getting all freaked out about the ticks and kept thinking he them on him, but we just bugged him about it.  During the drive back Willie sneezed like three times in a row and then Cam tells him, "That's the first sign of tick disease."  Willie is all panicking now, but then we started laughing at him because he's over reacting.  When Willie got home he found that he did indeed have a tick on him and I think his dad had to remove it for him, so I guess the joke was on us.  I'm kidding, it wasn't!  Besides everyone knows that sneezing FOUR times in a row is the first sign of tick disease, not three.

Another related tick story happened when I went hiking with Jeff and Kristian.  We went up a trail behind Horseshoe Lake that goes up the Steeples and is supposed to one of the ways to get to the glacier up there.  I've tried it twice before and it's a good trail, but crazy steep.  I guess that's why they call it the STEEPles, am I right??  So we went up a ways and stopped for a break and were sitting on the ground relaxing for a minute when I noticed a tick crawling on my pant leg.  I was like, "Oh, a tick." and then flicked it off.  Jeff started freaking out and basically stripping right there on the trail looking for ticks.  In the process his shirt is on the ground and his pants are around his ankles which I pointed out would be an excellent chance for ticks to get on him.  We were all good though until we got back to Big Blue and Kristian found a tick inside his hat, so that was a close one.  I also think Jeff found one on himself when he got home too.  See the ones that panic the most seem to attract the most ticks.

I guess the best way to avoid ticks is to never go outside into the woods...ever. 

Undecided

No, I should probably try it before I fall in love with it.  But maybe...

Oh Chuck, you're so dreamy!  But this one...

It's like totally perfect!!

Merry Valentines Day...again

At work today I went up to the lunch room for my afternoon break and found a couple boxes of crap up there with the word "FREE" written on them.  You had me at free!!

The two boxes had a bunch of leftover Valentine's crap they couldn't get rid of.  Unfortunately, there was no candy with the exception of a bag of Bratz sour suckers, but I can't be seen putting that in my mouth.  I got a rep to protect.

I got a box of Star Wars Valentines that I'll probably just give to my sister as maybe she can use them next year.  If not, they are packaged in a cool Yoda shaped box.  You can't tell, but it's a about three inches deep.  You could probably put something rad inside it and make it even radder by association with Yoda.  There was also some Snoopy ones, but do kids even know who Snoopy is anymore?

As you know, I like magnets, so I got this heart shaped magnetic picture frame.  It's awesome because it is actually two magnets in one, the frame and the heart shaped inside.  Now I just have to find a picture of something I like enough to put inside it.  And no, it won't be a picture of me.

There were also some cards, hollow plastic hearts, temporary tattoos and that stuffed frog.  When I went back later, the frog was gone.  They also had these little boxes and I opened one and thought it was empty, but there was a little sticker sheet inside it.  It's kinda cool, but kinda a waste of packaging.  I took one little Scooby one for myself.  I'm now having regrets as I wish I had gotten the temporary tattoos.

Upgrades

Cody has been talking about it for a while, but he finally put his money where his mouth is and bought a new computer.  He's been talking about and then putting it off.  He told Dennis he was going to get on last Saturday, but then he didn't.  Then he told Dennis he was going to get Tuesday.  Dennis told him if he didn't go get it, then was getting a kick in the nuts.

I went with Cody to see if he would get it...and he did!  I guess a potential kick in the nuts was enough motivation.  Although, as AFHV has proved, nothing is funnier than a dude getting hit in the nuts.

That is all the boxes and whatnot piled on the kitchen floor.  I'm not a computer guy, I just use a crummy Acer laptop, so I don't the specs on it.  It's mostly for gaming and will run pretty much anything at max settings.  That being said, Cam you will have to dust off your copy of Battlefield 3 and get back out there, Eve Online is for losers anyway. 

While Cody got a new computer, I got my third blu-ray player.  I replaced my old Sony BDP-S760 with the new Sony, BDP-S5100.  It does a lot more than my old player, but for some reason is like half the size/weight of the old one.

One of the reasons my old player is so big is because all of the components outputs on the back!  Look at 'em all!  My new player only has four jacks in the back, HDMI, coaxial, USB, and ethernet.  The old one had wi-fi, but there wasn't really any content to go along with it unless you had a BD-Live enabled disc.  My new player has all Netflix and a crap load of other online apps/channels, so many that it makes browsing them all them kind of a pain the Sony interface.  At least I can watch trailers on Flixster, surfing on the Billabong channel, game shows on the Russian TV channel.  My old blu-ray also had a USB slot, but would only play music and photos, but the new player has rear and front USB slots that also play video files.

Even the remote is smaller!

While my old blu-ray works just fine for the most part, it for some reason has trouble playing blu-ray discs from Shout Factory which totally sucks because Shout Factory rules.  I'm not sure why this is as it has the latest system update.  That being said, if anyone wants a cheap blu-ray player let me know because I won't rip you off too much.

Respek Cool Bikes

I've had the above picture sitting on my hard drive for the past few years, just waiting for the right time to use it.  Unfortunately, I realized I will probably never get to use it, so I'm just throwing it out there because I like it.

That screen cap is from an episode of Sealab 2021 from Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block.  The Adult Swim block started in 2001 and it's programming can be very bizarre(ATHF!), they're not cartoons for kids.  Sealab 2021 is based off an old Hanna-Barbera cartoon, Sealab 2020, and in the early seasons, they pretty much just recycled a ton of animated from the original.   I had watched the first couple seasons, but then didn't bother with the last two because I found the episodes to be very hit or miss.  Then one day I was the Blockbuster in Cranbrook and bought the final season of Sealab 2021 on DVD previously viewed for like $5.  It was cheap and it was a lot funnier than I remember.  Sealab 2021 was created by Adam Reed, who went on to do Archer.

I just think this picture from Regular Show is funny, in fact the entire episode, Cool Bikes, is one of my favorites.  Regular Show is a newer show on Cartoon Network, it's not Adult Swim though.  It can get crazy, but it's usually pretty funny.  I bet Cam never even watched his DVD.

BACON!

Apparently Cody bought this for me because if there are two things I love, it's bacon and mayonnaise.

It's both intriguing and frightening, so I'm a little torn.  I used to have some Miracle Whip or Hellman's in the fridge for sandwiches, but then I just got tired of using it.  Now I just slap some meat and cheese between two plain pieces of bread and I'm ready to rock.  Applying mayonnaise and other condiments is too much work and dirties a knife, so I just don't do that too much anymore.  I will try the baconnaise, but I'll let Cody try it first and see what happens to him.  I bet he'll get diarrhea.

Rabbits suck

Last night we got a little more snow here in Calgary.  I went outside this morning and did some shoveling and went over to my car to load in the recycling and the rabbit was back in his little spot again.

I actually had to go out, so I brushed some snow off the top of my car at him and he ran away like a little baby.  He's more chicken, than rabbit!

After I parked, he decided to move two feet over.

I come home almost three hours later and he is back sitting in that same spot again!  I don't want to run him over, so I parked a few feet over from where I usually do.  Since no one parks to the left of our parking spot it was all full of snow and not shoveled, so when I got out of my car I was stepping in eight inches of snow.  I took my groceries inside and ate lunch then got ready to go out because I had to go get a haircut.  And the rabbit was back again!

He moved to front of my car this time.  Now he's just playing games with me.

I went to get in my car and he ran behind my car a few feet and sat directly behind it.  Okay, by now this dude is getting on my nerves, so I didn't care much anymore if I did run him over.  I slowly backed up and then he finally took off.  I was wondering if he had the balls to sit himself back there while I was gone, but lucky for him he was nowhere in sight when I returned.   This dude's on thin ice, so he'd better watch it...OR ELSE!

NSFW II

That is not a mole, but a fancy pants blood glucose monitor.  The pharmacists by me is a diabetes educator and she just got this glucose monitor that you wear around for five to six days.  There is an electrode sensor inside you and then the monitor takes readings.  She just got the thing and I'm the first person (guinea pig) that she's "installed" it on.

First of the sensor is injected into fat in the body, in my case my stomach because that's where most of it is, with a big needle.  The sensor is taped down and then then actual meter is attached to the sensor.  More tape is applied to keep everything in place.  The first couple days it was weird walking around with a lump on the side of my stomach and at work every time I lifted something heavy I thought it was going to pop off.  It didn't and after a few days I didn't even know it was there.  It was still nice to get it off though.

After I peeled off the first layer of tape I took off the monitor.  The system from Medtronic is called the iPro and costs $2000.  I didn't break it to my knowledge.  Once it starts recording, it will take a blood sugar reading every five minutes.

That is just the sensor bit with the monitor removed. 

Now the fun part of removing the sensor from my stomach fat!  The tape peeling off my stomach hurt more and took some body hair with it.

The sensor after I ripped it from my belly.  It's flexible and whatnot, so you don't feel it.  Now it goes straight in the garbage.  Unless someone wants it?

I dropped it off at the pharmacy and then they hook it up to it's dock and download the data which will generate a bunch of fancy graphs and pie charts.   I probably don't want to know the results.

White out

On Sunday we got hit by a minor snow storm as did most of Southern Alberta.  I had the day off, so I just got to relax at home.  Going outside is for chumps!  It would've been nice to actually be at work as there would've been no customers.  Cody heard they even shutdown Glenmore Trail.

That is what it looked like outside Sunday morning.  We got more snow throughout the day and it was windy too.  In the afternoon Cody went outside and shoveled the front, but it snowed a little more since then.  Since it did eventually stop snowing Sunday night, I went out this morning and re-shoveled the front as well as the back.  When I went over to shovel around my car in the parking space I found someone waiting for me.

Looks like the neighbour had already shoveled out between our cars earlier and this dude is just chillin' in the snow behind my car.  Not the smartest place to relax, but he was probably taking a break from slashing my tires or chewing my brake lines.

I'll admit he is kinda cute/funny looking.

I didn't want to bother him, but I wanted to shovel my car.  I shoveled the driver's side all the way to the back of the car.  I was going back and forth scraping my shovel on the ground and making a racket.  When I was done I checked and the rabbit was still sitting there.  I thought I might scare him off, but I guess not.  I went back inside to hide until he leaves.

Never too much of a good thing

The other week when Cody and I were at Bianca Amor's and got some DVDs and the fabulous meat loaf pan set there was one DVD I saw and had my eye, but ended up not getting it.  After some time of thinking it over I decided I needed to get it, so while out to day I stopped by Bianca Amor's and picked up Hard Boiled on DVD.

I'm sure most of you guys know I like a good Hong Kong action movie, so it seems weird that I'm just now picking up a copy of Hard Boiled on DVD.  Well, what's weird is that this is my fourth copy of the movie on DVD.

This is the DVD I bought today, the Fox Lorber version released in 2000.  It has some animated 3D menus and such, but not much in the line of extras just a commentary with John Woo, film notes and trailers.  The video quality isn't great, dark and such and the audio is just mono.

The Criterion version of Hard Boiled released in 1998 has long since been out of print.  This version was one of my first real DVDs I got and my dad bought it for me back in the day from Music World.  Remember that place?  As far as special features go it's got the commenarty track with Woo,  John Woo's student film, 11 trailers for Woo's films, film notes and Hong Kong crime movie notes.  Again the video isn't all that great with this one.

The second time I bought this movie was on the DTS remastered version from the HK label, Mei Ah.  Hong Kong discs usually don't have much in terms of extra features and this one is no different.  The video and audio are much better than the Criterion or Fox Lorber discs.  The subtitles aren't bad, although there are some spelling and grammar mistakes.

Dragon Dynasty released a 2 disc ultimate edition back in 2007 which I bought.  Then just about a month ago while at HMV I bought the Dragon Dynasty Blu-ray of the movie for $10.   As soon as I got home I put it in the Blu-ray player and watched the movie.  While it's not Woo's best movie, it's Woo's best action movie and it never gets old.  After I watched the movie I went to check out the special features and noticed the Blu-ray is missing a couple extras that are listed on the box such as the interview with Terence Chang, trailer gallery, and Strangehold mini making-of.  My plan was to just replace my DVD copy with the Blu-ray, but how can I when the Blu-ray is missing stuff?  To remedy that I just slapped the Blu-ray into a double disc case and put the extra features disc from the 2 disc DVD set in with it.  The DVD has the special features missing from the Blu-ray, so now I have everything.

While the audio and video are the best of all the versions I own, it sucks that the movie has dubtitles and not subtitles.  When movie are dubbed into English sometimes they change the dialogue in order fit with the timing of the actor's mouth.  In this case they just used the script for the dub for the subtitles instead of translating the film's original dialogue, so the meanings are off a bit.

Name all the Blu-rays in the background to win an awesome prize!

I didn't need to buy another copy of Hard Boiled on DVD, but my OCD made me do it.  In the end Hard Boiled is movie you can't own enough copies of.  I also own three versions of The Killer too.

NSFW

On my drive back to Calgary on Wednesday I took the north route and stopped at the Husky station in Radium.  I needed stock up on road trip essentials like beef jerky and Red Bull as well go to the bathroom.  I walked into the bathroom and went to the urinal and on the wall above it is one of those adult novelty dispensers.  It sold an aphrodisiac, a condom *coughmikecough*, massage oil, and erotic photos with prices ranging from $1 to $2.  The fact that I'm writing about this means I obviously bought something from it.

 Totally erotic photos dude!

Since all the other items require a partner I went with the Sneak-A-Peek erotic photos that I can enjoy on my own.  I spent $2 on it even though I knew it was going to be a waste of money.

Made in India?  Isn't pornography like a sin against all five of India's main religions?  I like how it's sealed so people can't like you know, sneak a peek.

Instructions?  I don't need instructions, I already know how all this works.  It's time to sneak-a-peek.

That is it!  I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting, but this was not it.  I thought inside would be some crappy fold out picture or a miniature flip book you'd flip through and then the women strips off her clothes.  That would worth the $2.  I guess I should read the instructions then as I don't know how this all works.

After some long and hard furious rubbing [insert your own joke here] the end result was a big nothing.  I even covered my finger with fabric to help speed it up, and I almost got to see a nipple, but my finger got sore and when I stopped the bikini instantly reappeared.

Sexay

 

They are doing this all wrong.  The part that should be covered up is her face and we should be to see the "goods".  Am I right?!  I didn't pay $2 to look at her face!  Next time I buy something from a vending machine in a men's gas station bathroom I'll be more wary.  I guess I'll have to look at naked women the old fashioned way on a deck of erotic playing cards.