November 24: Two Good, One Bad

This has been a pretty eventful week. Two good things have happened, and one bad thing. The bad thing is that Peppi got put down. He was fourteen, so he lived a good little poodle life, but he was blind and stunned and crapped all over the place all the time. It's a hard decision to make, especially since he still seemed to have good times every now and then, but it was for the best. I mostly feel bad for Joey, who loved Peppi more than anything (and vice versa). This has been a bad year for pets.

The first bit of good news is that the house has (finally) sold. The closing date is in mid-December, which means it'll be a mad scramble to get everything packed up. It'll be sad to pack the place up, since it means packing up all the memories contained in it, but it will really be a relief to have it be finished. Unfortunately, it means that (a) I'll no longer have a place to do laundry and (b) I'll finally have to update my address in various places and (c) I'll have to find a new home for shinyplasticbag.com.

The second bit of good news is that I've finally purchased a TV. After living with the freebie TV I got from Steve back in August, it's a pretty big step up: a 32" Samsung LCD HDTV, with a metric heap of inputs (3 HDMI, two component, 1 VGA + line in for a PC, two S-video/composite. See? Heaps! I went out and got the component cables for my Wii and a DVI-to-HDMI cable for my laptop, and conveniently found a composite cable for my DVD player, which means I'm all high quality video'd up. It's amazing! Next purchase will definitely be a TV stand, since I'm using two tiny footstools (formerly night stands) duct taped together, followed shortly thereafter by a surround sound system. It's funny, but upgrading to a decent TV really highlights the shortcomings of other components. Before, DVD seemed just fine, but now it seems blurry. Compressed movies streamed off the network seemed great, but now they're all blocky. The graphics of the Wii never seemed lacking, but now they're noticeably high def (although Super Mario Galaxy still looks amazing). Sigh. I guess there's no pleasing me. I really do love this television, though.

I guess the moral of this blog entry is that life and technology march on. Goodbye, Peppi.

November 22: Taser Death in Dartmouth

Tasers are ridiculous, and something really has to be done. A prisoner died in the local prison this morning after getting tased yesterday.

I find it horrifically ironic that this is just a day after the RCMP announced that they were going to officially review taser policy.

Man.

November 21: Mark's Law of the Internet

Mark's Law of the Internet: “Nothing is useful until it can be used for piracy.”

Sean's Corollary: “Or porn.”

November 17: Return

I've noticed a subtle behavioural change in myself over the past few months: I'll go to use a search field on a web site, type in what I want, and...nothing. I'll look at it for a few seconds until I remember that I have to hit return to actually do the search. Spotlight and Quicksilver have really spoiled me.

Related observation: the search field built into my browser is immune to this glitch — I always hit return without thinking about it.
  • Written on 17 November 2007 & posted at 10:43 PM.
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November 17: Parade of Lights

It's that time of year again: the early holiday time period that happens when you're just sort of starting to want it to be Christmas-y and winter-y, before you're totally sick of the constant barrage of commercials and that pre-packaged feeling of rampant consumerism — not that I'm against rampant consumerism or anything. Tonight is the Parade of Lights, the twilight parade in Halifax that really kicks off winter for me. I love parades (when I'm not getting stuck in them, that is). If you're bored, you should go. It starts at six.

The big news of this past week was definitely the arrival of Super Mario Galaxy, which is definitely the most satisfying game for the Wii so far. To be honest, this is the first game since Twilight Princess that has really held my interest, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were built off of a common code base. They really feel similar to play, although Mario is much easier to pick up and play than Zelda. Anyhoo, Super Mario Galaxy is the game I feel like I've been waiting for since I was about 9 years old. Although the game mechanics feel a lot like Super Mario 64, the game is definitely a spiritual ancestor to Super Mario Bros. 3 (which is, of course, the best. video game. ever. I'm a big fan. The levels are huge and beautiful, and everything really pops on the screen. I can't even imagine how amazing it would look on a decent television. If you have a Wii, you really owe it to yourself to get it.

Anyway, I'm out at Mom's house, helping her pack in the event that this place actually sells, so I should get back to that. Sometimes, I really wonder if I have ADD. (I definitely have NADD.)

November 09: Carnivore Carnival

(Please hum the traditional circus music in your head as you read this entry — doo doop doodle doodle doop doop doo dee.)

Through some strange conversation that I can't even remember any more, Janet and Katie et al decided it'd be a great idea to have a meat eating contest — trying to see who could eat the most different types of meat. They set a time limit (100 days, I was appointed to make a web site, and the Carnivore Carnival was born. It officially started on their 25th birthday and will go until early February. I would've written about it sooner (and was, in fact, chastised for not!) but I wanted to wait until there was a bit of content actually up — web sites are pretty boring once they're new.

It's pretty fun to go through and look at the pictures, mainly due to the often unhappy facial expressions of the contestants. David's “clams” shot is probably my favourite so far, but Janet & Katie's chicken photos from the first day are also great, just because they look so much like twins. There are some hilariously awful pictures up so far, and they're only going to get better as the contestants start to eat weirder things.

Everyone's on the look out for weirder meats to eat — if you have any leads or suggestions, comment away! Best of luck to Janet, David, Jamie, Katie, and Regina (if she actually sends in some pictures!).

November 02: This might be fun

Update: they added a second warning! Woo!
Environment Canada weather report


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