even though i rarely use them

today will be a day revolving around the purchase of phones. i think that i am perhaps a little to keen on having neat-o electronic gadgets or something because i barely even use the phones that i already have, but maybe having new ones will give me the incentive to use them more.

first i will go to BestBuy and get myself a new cordless phone. i know that one of the reasons i don't use my home phone more often is that i have this crap-hole $10 phone from walmart that has a really short cord and horrendous sound quality. it's kind of like trying to speak to someone who's in another room - perhaps a little like shouting to your neighbour in the next apartment over...

"Hey Peter man, check out channel 9"

after that, I will be picking up yet another new cell phone. the Nokia 6030 is still working just fine, i'm just not a fan of the candy-bar style phone. i wanted a flip phone, and i wanted something with easier buttons to press. the Motorola RAZR will now grace my pockets and be occasionally dropped in my clumsiness starting this afternoon. from what i understand, i will be able to download and play Pacman on this phone which will rule thoroughly.

and take pictures of myself picking my nose.

now i'm going to go kick whoever is whistling in the nuts.

two days after christmas and i'm at work, sober

to celebrate passing of the anniversary of the birth of santa claus i shaved off the beard that i had been too lazy to shave for the past 10 days, leaving myself only with the soulpatch attachment.

oh, and the 90210 sideburns too. cuz sometimes you gots to mix and match eh?

if there was a race to eat the most chocolate and cookies, and chocolate cookies i think i may have won. most of the last four days i've either been eating turkey, chocolate or cookies.

and pie. mmmmm... some very good homemade pie. several pieces of apple pie to be specific. i was averaging more than a piece of pie a day for a while there. because any time is a good time for pie.

and then i got to work at 7am this morning and now, a full hour later, continue to be the only person in the office. which is okay, because that means that nobody will hassle me to do new things and i can finish up the old things i was working on.

and read comic books.

well, how often do YOU write aboot donkeys eh?

just in case you were wondering, eHow.com has a very interesting how-to featured today about How to Care for a Donkey.

sometimes i wonder as to the usefulness of these articles. just how many people out there are going to be affected by this article about caring for your donkey? it's not like you can just run down to the local pet shop and say "i think i'm gonna bring {your child's name here} a donkey home for christmas."

and if you could do that - maybe it's not an appropriate time of year to address how seemingly simple it can be to properly care for a donkey. millions of donkeys are given each year as christmas presents, and just think of how many of them end up being put down at shelters across the country because of donkey over-population.

very irresponsible eHow.

twas the week before christmas

it's officially the last full work day before the christmas holidays. i still have to go to work tomorrow, but i get to leave at noon.

well actually, it's more that they're making people leave at noon. you're actually not allowed to stay any later than that. my boss pretty much rules the school.

today i've manged to be ultimately productive. i've probably deployed more stuff today than in the last two days combined.

gonna be out of town for the next few days, so this will likely be the christmas sign-off until after boxing day. be good, and remember - santa is always watching. especially when he's on the toilet.

is Hannibal Lecter ready for a combo-pic?

i think that it's time that Thomas Harris started thinking in terms of Movie Algebra for his next picture. i just realized (perhaps a little later than the rest of the world) that there will be a fourth Hannibal Lecter-based movie called Hannibal Rising coming out in the new year. it seems he's already taken his first Movie Algebra step and removed all of the big-named actors from the picture. sorry, no Anthony Hopkins - this is a teenage Lecter we're talking aboot.

but let's think hard though - if we're going to put a psychopath killer in a combo-pic, we need to team him up with just the right other film:

• Dr. Giggles perhaps? that would lend a bit more gore and humour to the film
• how's aboot The Dentist? well, only if Corben Bernsen would come back to the role, and i know he's not big on sequels. not that i know that's a fact or anything, i'm just making that up

or maybe you could go with a name connection rather than the occupation connection...

• i think the A-Team could work - remember how awesome Hannibal was in the show - and it's been announced that there'll be an A-Team movie in 2008

all these decisions to make. how do the hollywood people do it? i'm sure that however it may work out, that the 5th Hannibal Lecter movie will end up being an Alan Smithee production.

whose side are you on?

okay, i'm finally caught up completely on my Civil War reading and am anxiously anticipating the next installment. i've even read all the tie-in issues too (marion, let me know if you're missing any - i can email them to you). i'm surprised at just how addicted to it i have become - addicted to the point where i've hunted down downloads of comics that i read when i was a kid just so i have more comic books to read (remember how awesome the Secret Wars were?).

you know what else is awesome? is the fact that a good percentage of gas stations in Ontario (probably all of Canada for that matter) have a Tim Horton's inside waiting for you. that makes donut-eating so incredibly convenient. and you know how i love convenience. and donuts. so convenience + donuts = good math skilld.

and hey, if'n you were going to be in the Kitchener/Waterloo area on Saturday you need to go to the Stitch N' Kitsch show to do your christmas shopping. Cindy of Studioloo is going to be there with her awesome display of fun stuff as well as over 30 local artists and craftpeople so you can do all of your christmas work in one spot. more gooder, all the time.

a peculiar odour

create your own here..

how many have YOU seen

every year the Academy Awards try to determine the best movies of the year, and various magazines and websites publish what they seem to think are the "best" movies of all time. one thing that i kinda like that dips into those realms is the IMDB Top 250. essentially, it's a list of the movies that are ranked with the best ratings out of their entire pile as voted by the viewers. this is much better than trying to figure out which movies you would want to watch based on the academy awards because it's left to the people to decide what's best rather than a committee designed to drive up ticket/dvd sales. i've seen 7 of the top 10 of that list compared to the 12 out of 78 for the academy awards "outstanding" list.

you'll notice that despite winning 11 academy awards, somehow Titanic did not even make the list of the top 250. hmmmm...

i think i'm going to start using that as my point of reference for what's more gooder.

setting new records for dork-ness

at one of my jobs we're not supposed to install any messenger-type applications on our computers like MSN, Yahoo, GoogleTalk, etc. at the other job they pretty much encourage it because it means less useless traffic on the email server.

so in the recommendation of one workplace, i came across a neat-o little multi-protocol messenger client called Miranda. essentially, it lets you log into anything and everything - MSN, Yahoo, ICQ (does anyone actually use that any more?), AIM, GoogleTalk and other Jabber networks, IRC... the list goes on. the really cool thing about it is that it doesn't actually require you to install it. you can download the zip file, unzip it to a folder somewhere on your desktop, USB drive or even a floppy disk for that matter and start using it right away. it's all free too, (though they will ask for a donation to help fund the project) and open source so you can download the source code and bugger it all you want.

there are literally hundreds of plugins to choose from which makes the product extremely dynamic and customizable though personally i like the streamlined, smiley-free default version. and for people who's computers run super slow - it uses barely any system resources at all. just a small fraction of running any one of those individual programs use gets occupied by Miranda IM making it perfect for people like me who have a billion things open (MS Visual Studio, MS Query Analyzer, MS Excel, Outlook... damn, does Microsoft make every memory-hog application) and can't waste the resources on crappy ad-laced IM software.

download it and play around with it. it won't even screw up your current IM applications.

time to bring out your retards!

is it still PC to say retards?



we're getting the first "real" snowfall of the season right now in the GTA. that officially means that if this snow carries on until tomorrow morning that my morning commute will be littered with the wrecked and battered skeletons of the cars whose drivers forgot that snow makes the road slippery.

"black ice" will be a phrase thrown around muchly on the radio tomorrow morning, though if you ask my opinion black ice is just a term people invented to hide the fact that they were driving too fast to account for the weather conditions. is the road wet or shiny looking? slow down. is there snow anywhere within 10 feet of you? slow down. is it -5 and raining out? slow down. all very simple.

but then again, if people slowed down and drove normally then the insurance industry wouldn't be able to make any money right?

it's not just the Marvel Universe, it's my universe too

i've been far too obsessed with reading comic books lately. Marvel Comics has this series going on right now about a super-hero Civil War, putting good guys against good guys. there's a few main-focus type comic books, but plenty of cross-over stuff that's well worth the read. certainly a must-read for anyone who may consider themselves a comic-book geek.

it's coming upon christmas time again. my family generally does a hand-made christmas rather than spending countless hours in the mall hunting down the "perfect" gift. we all sort of figured a couple of years ago that nobody could ever think of what to buy anyone, and since the idea is about the thought behind the gift, how could you get more thought in a gift than to make something with your own two hands? it's lots of fun to do, but this year a non-stop work schedule has run me pretty low on ideas. last year i made t-shirts for everyone, but was trying to think of something more gooder.

any idears?