moving day

it's moving day y'all.  wish me luck!

luther, hamdog - y'alls my good buddies eh?

why is it that it's next to impossible to find these products in canada?

1. the hamdog.

2. the luther burger.

there's something about a hamburger that uses donuts as buns instead of regular hamburger buns that is both entirely repulsive and strangely appetizing. kind of like the McGriddle Sandwich combination of hotcakes with maple syrup, eggs, cheese and sausage. i mean seriously - you were going to have all those foods anyways, why not get them all in one convenient hand-held item.

what kind of cereal should be my next purchase for the office collection?

in keeping with recent posts aboot "what ever happened to..." type music and moving i unearthed a few gems today hunting through the "needs to be sorted" pile of stuff.

DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince - He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper. the only reason i originally bought this casette was the fact that my best friend at the time (who was never a reliable source of information related to the music industry) told me that these guys were getting sued by Wes Craven over their track Nightmare on My Street. from what he told me, they had unlawfully used the Freddy character and story line for the song. the album was going to be pulled from the shelves and was going to be worth SO MUCH MONEY. and, of course, when you're 12 you believe all of this nonsense. i remember there being three or four of the 18 tracks that were worth listening to, but i also remember it being too much effort to fast forward to the right songs since good ol' jazzy jeff and will smith (the fresh prince) decided for some reason that it wasn't a good idea to put the good songs at the beginning of the album. the only reason i would recommend this album to anyone is if they had some sort of thing for will smith or scratch-heavy rap music intended for pre-teens.

DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince - And In This Corner... if there's anything worse than owning one DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince album, it's owning two. for the third consecutive album this pair had managed a couple of catchy tracks (Then She Bit Me always cracked me up and was thankfully the first song on the album) but, again, saturated the rest of the album with pop-rap filler that seemed (seems?) to be the popular thing to do at the time (we'll talk about Tone Loc's album another time). this one was actually a gift, and none of my hard-earned sears catalogue delivering dollars were spent here. i knew better... well, at least i thought i did (again, we'll talk about Tone Loc's album another time).

when i was younger i always figured that evenutally these guys would have enough popular tracks to manage to fill a Greatest Hits album, but from what i can tell it never happened. another couple of albums burdened with poor sales and the two went their separate ways. Will Smith went on to make bazillions of dollars, and Jazzy Jeff still tours the world scratching records the way he always loved to. probably not making bazillions of dollars, but probably making more money than me.

i don't think it was until long after the 90s were over that i was in fact a child of the 80s.

stay tuned to find more about the other tapes that i've recently uncovered... AC/DC's Back in Black, Ice-T's Original Gangster and both of my copies of Michael Jackson's Thriller.

oh yeah, and Tone Loc's Loc'ed After Dark.

to catch a predator

i'd have to say that this is very high on my list of favourite shows to watch...

Dateline NBC - To Catch A Predator

the guys at dateline pretend to be underage girls and lure in internet pedophile predators.

and it works EVERY time.

boxes boxes everywhere and not a beer to drink

it's a good thing that the place that we're moving to is more gooder and less expensive than the current place because damn. having a house full of boxes sucks.

and how retarded am i for neglecting to call the phone company and cable company to move our services until this weekend. S-M-R-T.

wish me luck. anyone trustworthy who happens to be in the GTA, feel free to drop by and help me move the couch on tuesday mmkay?

never trust anyone over 30!

partly from a comment Martini made, and partly from a trip to the local Value Village this morning, the all important question of "Where are they now?" will be asked.

of course, everyone remembers Helix right? this morning at the Value Village it seems as though a single person's entire cassette tape collection was on display for those of us willing to pay 79 cents for a piece of their life. rocking out loud in the center of the collection were 4 different Helix cassettes.

unfortunately, my 2007 Toyota Yaris does not come equipped with a cassette player and my apartment is packed for the move or i would be 4 Helix tapes richer.

so where are they now? Wikipedia doesn't go too far into details other than to mention that one of the guitarists was killed in a true Rock n' Roll style accident and the lead singer is selling merchandise and singing classically (not rockingly) at weddings. check out the official site for more details.

also among the list of golden almost-purchased (but not really) cassette gems was Timbuk 3. okay, honestly i think i'd have to say that there would never be a point in my life when i would spend money on one of their albums since their one and only hit single "the Future's so bright, i've gotta wear shades" drove me absolutely nuts many years ago. the Wikipedia entry mentions that they split up "with the ex-members going on to record other music independently." i'm gonna bet that the music being recorded was probably used-car commercial jingles.

so, did i save 79 cents or did i miss an opportunity? and what happened after their 10 years of glory (and by glory i mean independent yet terrible records)?

the ruler's back?

for some reason, i've been listening to a lot of Slick Rick tracks lately. Cinderella found a cool mash-up of a song he did with Morcheeba and Paul Simon (conveniently located here) which i guess is what got me started back up on it all again - old school rap.

secretly, i suppose i've always been a Slick Rick fan but it's taken me this long to admit it in public. i've even gone to the extent lately of downloading some hard to find Doug E. Fresh albums to get some of his early tracks

a couple of years ago Def Jam records had a "free slick rick" campaign as a result of him being imprisoned as a result of what seemed to be a minor parole violation (feel free to correct me if i'm wrong on this) and faced the possibility of being deported.

his last album The Art of Storytelling seemed to have pretty decent success, but it appears as though once he was released from prison that Def Jam records disavowed all knowledge of him.

so where did he go? who will release his next album? does anyone but me want to know the answers to these questions?

truck LOVES ballet

busy as a tiger in a horse counting contest

much of today has been spent trying to figure out more ways to add time to what i do at work to fill up the amount of hours that i spend there with something to do other than waste time.

i suppose, technically, i'm wasting time trying to find a way to waste time but have it look as though i'm not wasting time.

things at the good ol' office are at the point where i have something to do every day, but just not something difficult or time consuming. so yesterday i created a report and did a largely unnecessary amount of QA work on it. the upside is that it resolves the "what to do right now" issue, but eliminates the possibility of "when they find bugs in the report" work that would normally have followed.

and i think i'm officially tired of the process of moving from one condo to another. thankfully it's within the building, which at least makes the distance easier to travel, but the fact that 90% of my home is in boxes is a total pain in the ass. and the fact that i've nowhere to put the boxes other than the ever-increasing box stacks is also a pain. navigating the household seems to be becoming more of a labyrinth every day.

moving day is coming soon. anyone want to help?

everyone's addicted to pretzels

if for some bizarre reason you ever wanted to get all of your coworkers to be on your side, put a bag of pretzels on your desk and leave it open. Rold Gold tends to work the best. corporate slaves seem to be helpless against the power of the pretzel. it's almost as if the pretzel releases some sort of endorphin that will allow the giver of the pretzels to get their way when the pretzel consumer is standing there eating pretzels and taking up space in your office cubicle for no other reason.

for example: boss like character comes to your desk to ask you to do something, sees the pretzels and asks, "hey, can i have some?" this will generally lead into some non-work related conversation and the boss-like figure walking away, forgetting to ask you to do whatever it was they originally set out to accomplish.

i imagine the only more effective way of doing this would be to have beer on your desk.

only thing i gotta invest in is getting paid

since i know everyone's been DYING to know i figured i'd answer the question you've been impatiently waiting to ask me:

has PayPerPost actually paid off for me?

the answer is yes it has.

i will definitely not be a rich man from what i have been paid, but i've been quite choosy so far in the opportunities i've selected. hopefully i've been able to seamlessly integrate the PayPerPost posts with the rest of my updates without anyone saying "damn, mmat, you are one complete sell-out douche bag."

so far i've made in the twenties of dollars, and stand to make in the twenties more in a short period of time. but considering all i had to do to make that money was something i probably would have done anyways that ain't too bad. it's certainly paid off more than the other advertisements that eat up valuable space on this site. maybe i'll get rid of them.

originally i think i heard about this from the Golf Widow, but then started to notice other bloggers posting bits and pieces related to PayPerPost

i figure i'm gonna sit on the wealth for a bit, let the pennies of interest accumulate. maybe i'll use it to buy my own domain, or maybe a badass Kangol.

you go to the box for two minutes and you feel shame

i've finally found the reason

despite millions of dollars of research to try to prove otherwise, i've discovered the reason that Giant Pandas are endangered: they're all forced to live in the same tree.

busy with the move

i hate moving, i hate packing. so look at a picture of the cat and the dog.



hope i haven't already posted this one.

the devil

a sound of awful

as much as i've been in denial of this fact my whole life for being labelled as the geek that i am, i've always been a big fan of science fiction movies. i'm a sucker for the Star Wars films, Demolition Man has always been a favourite. i'm sure my recent obsession with the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy hasn't been TOO overly obvious.

i've also always been a Ray Bradbury fan. I loved Farenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles and many other of his novels and recently discovered that a film adaptation of A Sound of Thunder has been made and somehow slipped through the cracks of me knowing about it.

i think the reason for this is that the movie is bad. much like many other book-to-film adaptaions, this film only really resembles the original story line of a time-travel dinosaur safari gone awry. where it strayed from the original story is the effects of what happened after one of the time-travellers steps on a butterfly, thereby altering the course of history.

first off, i will mention that i have not yet watched the entire movie, only the first hour or so. this, however, is enough for me to give warning to anyone who considered watching this. the acting is borderline terrible, the CG animation looks as though it were done by a highschool student that was failing his animation class (if one should happen to exist) and the story line they attempt to follow just keeps becoming more and more ridiculous.

but because i'm the type of person that MUST watch a movie all the way through, i will reattempt to watch this film, despite its complete lack of quality, just to say that i have watched it. hopefully some filmmaker with a brain and a budget will do the story justice some time in the future. 2055 maybe? it's hard to say if i'd enjoy it at that point anyways. one major problem i'd have with this movie even if it were good is that it is the direct opposite of my opinion of time travel. you'll have to watch 12 monkeys if you want to see what my theory of time travel involves.

god's final message to his creation

officially, and finally, i have finished the 4th book in the trilogy of four - So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. i can say that i was very pleased with all four of these books but would highly recommend to anyone considering reading the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series that you read them all at once rather than take breaks in between books. the plots, characters and story lines scatter themselves all over the place and it seems (at least to me) to be a good idea to keep them fresh in your mind when trying to absorb just under 800 pages of information.

my one question, which is certainly not the ultimate question, is posed to anyone who may have read the trilogy of four only to realize that there is a fifth book in the trilogy of four. is it critical that i read Mostly Harmless with the others? i got quite a sense of... conclusion i s'pose the word could be.. from So Long... and didn't see the need to continue the series. the first three books definitely let you think you needed to read more, but i found that i feel i know the whole story. well, i know what should have been the whole story except i KNOW that there's more because it was on the shelf beside the other four books.

so do i spend $5 on a copy of Mostly Harmless to have a real sense of finality in this series or will it just stir up more of the unknown and make me wish there was one last book to make it a trilogy x 2?

okay, so maybe i was wrong

i think the Friday the 13th statements made yesterday morning came to bite me in the ass. as Martini pointed out, northern new york got hit pretty hard with the awful weather and i managed to get myself into a 2hr drive home from the office. good thing i left early.

oh, and i'm moving soon eh. same building and all, just a better unit (huh-huh. i said unit). and i've managed to score boxes at 2 different liquor stores today. lets keep our fingers crossed that tomorrow's box tally will be as good.

the only downside to moving is that there's very little junk on my desk. the ostrich, monkey and stephan the dinosaur will all be sleeping snugly in a johnny walker red label box for the next two and a half weeks.

friday the 13th

today is the stuff that bad movies are made of.

or should that read "today is the stuff of which bad movies are made."

either way i s'pose.

today i walked into the office to find a form on my desk.  a charity-type form.  i guess my company has some sort of deal with the United Way or something because they have these very professional looking payroll deduction forms for you to look at that are designed such that you would almost think that you were required to turn over a certain doller amount from each pay cheque.

though i believe in many of things the United Way does, i do not support much of what is involved in their corporate ethics.  for example:  i have trouble supporting the idea that the CEO pulls in more than a half million dollars per year (in american dollars).  that's why i support charities like the Terry Fox Foundation where you get to see where your money gets spent.  but i suppose that it's a good thing to see a company support charity in any form.  the last company i worked for had no real intention of supporting anything other than themselves (and they didn't even do that very well).

today the IT dudes are shutting down the database server mid afternoon, meaning that after that point i physically will not be able to do any more work.  i'm not sure if that's a friday the 13th curse on my company, or a sign that there really isn't any bad luck on this day...

blog pimp makes money, everybody cringes

apparently PayPerPost doesn't seem to have any problems making the big money with their blog advertising scheme. Techcrunch.com posted an article t'other day about how they've made over 3 million dollars from their venture capitalists.

maybe my problem is that i haven't pitched my blog to venture capitalists, only venture communists. when i first read about the PayPerPost idea of getting paid to write about the topics you choose, i didn't think there was too much wrong with the idea. i mean, it's not like i'd be throwing "free diet pills, balding cure and viagra" every 2nd or 3rd entry, but the more i think of it the more i realize that any time i may do a PPP post that i'm forcing anyone who reads here (those who intentionally read and those who just search for emproyment - i'm second on the list by the way) to look at and potentially click through on someone's advertising without telling them it's an advertisement. is that wrong? does it irk anyone that you might be reading an ad and the possible click you may be making is a (hopefully) cleverly disguised commercial?

and if it did piss you off, you'd tell me right? down there on the comments section eh?

i don't know if there's anything in the terms of service that would allow you to alert your readers that you're making a paid advertisement, but then again i honestly wouldn't post about anything i didn't think was worth posting about - you know, like the month old cup of coffee on my desk.

sick to death of iTunes

about the only thing that impresses me about iTunes right now is that it rips good quality music from my CDs.

what's my beef you ask? well, i have a reasonably large music library. not massive, but a good size: 99.89 GB (22 thousand-ish songs). iTunes doesn't seem to like to have a library of this size very much, more specifically the latest version (version 7 i believe). searches for music are very slow, scrolling through the list of songs chops up and gets slow. hell, opening and closing iTunes has even really begun to suck - it will take in the area of 10 seconds just to open and about 20-30 to completely close out of the computer's memory.

i like the way it would work if i didn't have so much music. i like the idea of sharing music between computers, the playlists, the auto playlists, the Pary Shuffle. but outside of spending a ton of money on a new iMac, is there any way to listen to music without being horribly inconvenienced?

is there another music player that will rip AND burn CDs quickly, manage a library that will soon reach 150 GB and still be fast to search through, open and close?

and the kicker is that it must use a minimal amount of memory while playing. can't have the music eating up the CPU time from other applications.

who uses what? and how well does it work for you?

more movie math

some more movie math... what happens when you take a bunch of actors who are caught in the realm between "washed up" and "never really did anything worth watching", throw in a never-gets-tired zombie premise, and you get Land of the Dead.

from what i've heard, both Dennis Hopper and John Leguizamo have been itching to work together again since they did Super Mario Brothers.

Land of the Dead comes from near-legendary horror-film roots but it seems to me that the film's somewhat decent story line is just saturated with mediocre acting (including a less than stellar role from a former Vin Diesel co-star) and sub-standard writers.

i guess it's a difficult situation to be in when you don't have enough budget to find up-and-coming no name actors and have to fill your film with small-c celebrities to try to catch people's attentions.

but, if you were thinking that you wanted to watch a zombie-movie and didn't want to be too scared by it, it would be worth watching in that particular scenario. i don't know that there would be any other scenario you'd want to watch it in. it's not a terrible movie, just really not that worthwhile.

blogger beta

is there anyone using blogger/blogspot out there who has switched over to the beta yet? i'm wondering if there's some way i can add labels to all of my entries (400-ish) a little more easily than editing and publishing each one over again.

also, keep in mind if you switch to the blogger beta and are signed up for something like PayPerPost, you MUST remove the "NOFOLLOW" bits out of your template or your posts will get rejected. see, i didn't notice that by switching over in the first place, it automatically sticks some in there, but then some of the features (like making your blog "friends only") have the word NOFOLLOW in the template, but are commented out. this will also result in your PPP posts being rejected.

fuckers.

so if you were thinking of switching to the beta, be cautious aboot it, back up your template and all that jazz. it kept some of my customizations when i switched over, but ditched anything that couldn't easily be classified as directly blog related - like the search box and notify list (by the way, you can sign up for the notify list and get emailed most every day when i post).

the nifty thing though is that even if you sign up for the beta, switch your shit over and decide you don't like it - you can switch back.

hot trivia action

i came across something for the trivia lover in all of us. i'm a total sucker for those fact-type sites that lists all of the stuff that everyone needs to know about everything. i'm a long time trivial pursuit addict - not so much for the game, but for the trivia cards.

and now, the internet has brought this trivia to my computer monitor.

need to know little known facts about Killer Bees? got it. need to know who invented the elevator? it's there.

did you ever think about what colour the first easy-bake oven was? i know now, because i read it there. they even posted a rather large history of coffee on my birthday (where was i?).

pretty badass. go check it out.

he just doesn't stop moving

i'm pretty sure that the thing that goes through truck's (cat) mind most often is "why doesn't he stop moving? can't he sleep for a while? not very good at being a cat is he now?"

 

yes, in fact i HAVE had enough with the traffic

there's something about near 2 hr drives to work that make me want to start shooting people.  and that something is that these 2 hour commutes lick clown-hole.  oh yeah, it's the fact that if i had gotten out of bed on time this morning i would have been able to bike the distance.  actually, now that i think about it, i wouldn't have needed to get up any earlier - two hours is two hours.

i watched Doom last night.  what this movie lacks in acting talent and script it more than makes up with violence and sillyness.  there definitely is no chance of any of the actors involved with this movie winning an academy award (come on The Rock, prove me wrong), but if you have ever played the video game you will definitely appreciate the climax point of the movie which remains very true to it.  go ahead and watch it, but put all ideas and thought away and just enjoy some good violence.  come on, it's a video-game based movie.

didn't your mom ever tell you to wash up?

even the hubble telescope can see the dark spot on your anus.  or was that Uranus?

today's effort in combatting traffic involved me sleeping until 8 in the morning.  i woke up initially around six to the sound of my neighbour sticking his head out the window and shouting down to his idiot construction co-workers waiting in the van 7 floors below and noticed that his shouting was accompanied by very heavy rain, thunder and lightning.

that particular combination (rain, thunder, lightning, idiots shouting at each other) means terrible traffic in the GTA.  i consulted the dog and the cat that live in my apartment and they agreed - two more hours of sleep should solve all of my problems.

so i leisurely woke up at 4 minutes to eight, showered, ate breakfast and drank some chocolate milk (an essential part to any healthy breakfast) and started on my way to work.

traffic still licked dirty giraffe balls, but at least it moved at a steady pace - averaging 28 km/h today.

some time in between 5pm last night and 10am this morning, somebody left 7 cents on my desk in the form of a nickel and two pennies.  pope B XVI told me once way back before he became pope, that someone had done this to him at the vatican.  seven cents in canadian coins waiting patiently for him as he arrived one morning. 

he never really got into too much detail as to what he was doing in the vatican before he became pope, but needless to say it wasn't long afterwards that ol' JP2 started getting pretty sick and a new emperor... er... pope was elected.

screw the rain and the people who love crashing their cars in it

here's a bizarre little addition to this morning's statistics: this morning in my car it took me an hour and 45 minutes to get to work, making my average speed roughly 23 km/h. this means that if i was was in better shape that i probably could have rode my bike to work faster today than i could have driven.

and since work is dreadfully slow today (just like the drive to work), here are some fun things to do on the inanet:

• have a look at Area 51 on Google Maps
• find out the answer to life, the universe and everything
• look at pictures of hamsters

** edit - i just noticed that the second link didn't work properly, so it's been fixed

quick facts

here's some of the quick facts aboot yesterday's experimental ride to work as told by the little neat-o schwinn cycling computer on my bike:

• motal round-trip distance of 76 km
• max speed of 41.3 km/h (the best i've managed ever was 49.8 km/h)
• avg speed 17 km/h (i was certain i could average 20)
• total calories burned 2197.6 (should have gone around the block one more time to push it up to 2200)
• grams of fat burned 189.3
• min speed of about 8 km/h (this is not logged in the computer thingy, but was observed by myself as i trekked up a few nasty hills)
  

my brother (the cycling fanatic) assured me that i did quite well speed and time-wise for that distance carrying a load of stuff on my back. i figured as long as i survived, that's all that counts. it cost me an extra 1.5 to 2 hrs of commuting time, but saved me from burning nearly 7 litres (nearly 2 gallons) of gas.

i'll probably do this again, but not likely again this fall. it was very cold yesterday morning (aboot 8 degrees) and starting to get dark on the ride home.

for any bike geek out there who may be considering purchasing a Trek 7.3 FX - i'd recommend it for trips like that with a few minor adjustments:

• get some bar-end attachments so you can put your hands in different positions
• different grips would be nice (but not necessary if you're buying gloves)
• you may want to upgrade the front derailleur. should cost aboot 50 dollars extra or so if they give you credit on the take-off parts, but i've got to take my bike in to have the front derailleur serviced (again) cuz it's clicking. everything else is golden

it's a fast, solid and rugged bike. not overly heavy as it may appear at first, but certainly no superlight. definitely something that works just fine right out of the store. it's the perfect bike for someone who wants to start getting into cycling, but isn't sure that shelling out more than a grand is the right thing for them to do.

better than young spice?

so today, being toward the end of the sunny and "warm" part of the year, i decided that it would be perfect to ride my bike into the office.  my estimates on Google Maps showed that my predicted route would end up being a shade over 30 km (about 18 miles).

my previous experiences in estimating distances should have indicated that a "trial run" on an off day would have been a good idea.  thirty kilometers very easily turned into almost 40 - which may not seem like much, but it turns a 90 minute bike ride into 2 full hours.  good thing i left early.

the good news is that i was prepared.  i had lots of water, a good healthy lunch with lots of snacks, a change of clothes for when i got to work and deodorant.

now i smell like old spice.

how many movies can YOU cram into 48 hours?

since it's been a while, i decided that i would cram watching as many movies as possible into this weekend...

• The Incredibles - a super-hero cg-animated picture from Disney/Pixar. tons of fun for the whole family, tons of silly bits. a bunch of the film is reasonably predictable, but still lots of fun to watch. one of many good points to look for - when mr. incredible can't close the car door properly. golden, go rent it.
• Shark Tale - a somewhat disappointing cg-animated picture from Dreamworks that seems as though it was written specifically to capitalize on the popularity of Will Smith. it wasn't entirely bad by any stretch, but certainly not the 90 minutes of awesome i come to expect from big-budget animated films. it probably would have been better if DJ Jazzy Jeff was in it too (though there are brief appearances by both Ziggy Marley and Doug E. Doug). get it from the library if you really need to watch it, or wait for it to come on TV.
  
• I, Robot - an excellent adaptation of an Isaac Asimov sci-fi novel. sure, it's another Will Smith pic, but it seems to me that they spent less time focusing specifically on him as the actor behind the character and more on plot and character development (and a side-note - the person who does the voice for the main robot character also happens to be Steve the Pirate in Dodgeball). worth renting, i recorded it off the Movie Network.
  
• Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story - a film that takes a ridiculous story line (entering a dodgeball tournament to raise money to save a failing gym), ridiculous characters (see the aforementioned Steve the Pirate and Ben Stiller's character), some wonderful jokes in terribly poor taste ("you guys had me at blood and semen") and tons of ridiculous cameos (which i won't spoil for you) and you get a painfully funny film that you can watch more than once and not get tired of it. definitely rent it, or buy it if it's cheap.
• Office Space - probably the single most important movie for anyone to watch if they work in an office. i swear if you combine the Peter Gibbons and Michael Bolton characters, you come up with my corporate careers almost instantly. i'd have to say that there probably isn't any particular point in the movie that's instantly more brilliant than anything else, but the movie just works on a whole. constantly good from beginning to end. it's probably the only picture out there that speaks so well to the average corporate drone who feels like nobody knows what their life is about. highlight - "Seems like you've been missing a lot of work lately Peter." ... "i wouldn't say that i've been *missing* it." go and buy a copy of this on DVD and/or video and watch it as often as possible. more gooder, all the time.

being that there are actually MORE movies that i've watched this weekend, maybe i'll save the rest for later to *brag* about. being that i've managed to list about 8 of the last 40 hours of my life above, i wouldn't want people to immediately say "wow, he literally spent more than half of the available weekend watching movies."

that would just be silly.