Tuesday, June 27, 2006

And then there were bruises

The Edmonton trip has come and gone and now I am back to the grind. The bad part about the trip was the lack of a weekend. Sure I had two days "off" but after getting back Sunday night I really didn't feel like I had any time to relax. Thankfully that paled in comparison to the joy I had from shooting little kids.

The main reason we were in Edmonton was for Nigel's birthday party which consisted of a few hours of paintball and some other less important stuff like presents, friends and BBQ.

Grimes: But.. but this was a contest for children!
Lenny: Yeah, and Homer beat their brains out!


I don't know if I've ever had more fun while paintballing than this last time. Well I guess I shouldn't say more fun but different fun. We didn't have any structured games, we just ran out and shot everyone until the round was over. When I've gone before we played capture the flag and protect the president. There is a certain visceral thrill to just shooting people, especially the ones that won't shoot back. Most of the kids wouldn't advance, they would just stay behind the first piece of cover and take pot shots. This "strategy" did work out for some of them once in a while but usually it just resulted in myself or my dad shooting them in the face or ass. I know I got a few ass shots because I would come up from the side and the only thing showing around the edge of cover would be their butt. One of the kids had a real tough time of paintball because he was not the most adventurous and he actually had something like shell shock on the field. I found him hidding behind some cover too scared to advance but I think he was peer pressured into going. Some people aren't cut out for it I guess.

There were two women playing too. Lindsay came with full intentions to have some fun and Nigel's Aunt came aswell. Lindsay's day came to an end quickly when she was shot in the head twice in the first round. One was freindly fire. I don't know if she was mistaken for the enemy or if she crossed someone's line of fire but she was not a happy camper when she got back to the safe area. Nigel's aunt didn't fare much better but I think that was partly my fault. I think I scared her a bit in the car ride out there with stories of welts and bruises. It was only fair though as her driving scared and annoyed me. I made her surender without firing a shot and she high tailed it off the field relieved that she was not in pain.

At the end of it all I wasn't in much pain. I'm used to getting shot quite a bit but without too much paint flying my way I only got hit 5 times but one of them was a neck shot that wasn't too pleasant. The worst was two close range shots by Nigel into my love handle. One of those bled a bit but I got him back with a shot to the kidney.

The other reason we went to Edmonton was for a TV. Dad gave us his old 27" TV and it is soooo much better than the 13 we had been using. He also gave us a little Sony surround sound system, a slow cooker and will be getting us a deep freeze. I think it was quite generous of him to give us all that stuff and it is very appreciated.

We had lots of fun but it was a long way to go for two days. My car saw more kms in one weekend than it would in a month or more. I was impressed with it though, it cruised along at 120ish Km/h at 3700 RPM without a hiccup and used about $80 worth of gas. We averaged 38mpg, 37 there and 39 back. I would be interested to see how it would do if it had a sixth gear but I guess I'll never get to find out.

Sunday, June 18, 2006

970 KG

I've got a bit of a reputation around work for being good at breaking stuff and I finally got to break something that needed to be broken. Anytime I have an excuse to use a sledge hammer I am a happy camper. This weekend I finally got to smash the brick planter at my grandma's house. She's been talking about wanting it gone for some time now and this weekend was the time. My grandfather and I got to work on it Saturday morning in the rain and it took us about 3 hours to get it done but its done. We used my truck because it doesn't have a cap and it has overload springs. Well it needed them that day. We took it all to the dump in one load and even the dump guy was impressed with the load we had on. We put 970kg or about 2140 lbs in the back of my old Dodge. Amazingly enough it didn't seem to have much trouble with it, the only time I noticed the weight was under braking.

I haven't had much time for blogging lately but I'll try to keep some content up here. We are getting our kitchen table tonight and we're off to Edmonton for the weekend to do some paintballing. I may have some good bruise pictures after that ;)

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Happy early birthday

I got my birthday present from my Mom yesterday and its spectacular. She got me all the supplies I need to wet shave. What is wet shaving you ask. Well its the way shaving was done when it was a skill and not a chore to lazily and sleepily hack your way through. Here is an excellent article explaining wet shaving.

For my birthday I got a Merkur Hefty Classic Double Edged Safety Razor, a badger brush, some soap and a jar. I've always wanted to be able to shave with a straight razor but I don't know where to learn and the razors are expensive. Around $100 or more for the razor plus you need a leather strop and you need to know how to sharpen it. I figured a D/E safety razor was interesting enough and fairly cheap too.

I wanted to give this a try for a couple of reasons. I've heard that you get a much better shave with these and because it is only one blade edge you can make multiple passes without irritation. Cost is also a big factor. 10 good quality Double edged razor blades are around $5 US verses $32 CDN for 8 Gillette fusion blades or $25 for Mach 3 blades. At the end of the day I feel like I'm doing something for the environment aswell. I'm not throwing out plastic blade cartridges, I'm only throwing out metal blades that will eventually decompose. The last reason is it just seems more manly to do it this way than to use a bright orange plastic gillette fusion razor.

Even if I was going to stick with my Mach 3 I think I would have switched over to a brush and soap to shave with. I have been using Prince saving cream from Lush and been happy with it but the badger brush is much nicer for working the lather into my face. Either work well but I'm going to stick with the brush. I've actually found the Prince makes a great aftershave. I put it on my face like a lotion after shaving and it soothed and smoothed my face.

If you are tired of paying through the nose for razor blades then check out a D/E safety razor. Here are some good links:

www.classicshaving.com - They sell everything you need plus there is a great howto section
http://groups.msn.com/thewetshaversgroup - a good group about wet shaving. They can answer any questions you have
http://www.shavemyface.com/
http://www.qedusa.com/

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

I think its broken

So on a whim I made a purchase today. I went over to staples and bought this:



It really hasn't made my job any easier. It has made it funnier but the button is very loud. When pressed it says "That was easy" just like the commercial but it would be too loud for most offices. I was considering modding it to have it say something else. One of the electrical engineers has a micro that can hold 2 seconds of audio so we were going to put that on the board and record something else to it. The micro in the button has that black potting compound over it so you can't tell what it is or change it. We would have to make a whole new circuit board for the button. I kinda doubt that is going to happen but the button is fun. It would be more useful it if went "Oh crap!" or something like that. Oh well, it was only $6 and the money goes to support the special olympics.

Monday, June 12, 2006

Blogging and bachelors

Those two titles aren't related but I've been noticing a strange trend in blogging lately, people are worried about their blog being interesting to the readers. I'll level with you, I don't give a crap if you enjoy this blog or not. I'm just here to keep all my friends up to date on what's going on and maybe vent about some crap that bothers me. If you find it boring go somewhere else.

Now that I have that off my chest I'll tell you about Scott's stag. I was invited out with some of Scotts friends to Redberry Lake for some good old soggy drinking fun. Its been raining for the last week straight so everything was a little soggy out there but we were too drunk to notice. We got there Friday evening and set up our tents. Straight after that we got drunk around the fire and eventually found our way to bed. Not before Scot puked though. He was drinking Baja Rosa so his puke was peptobismal pink. Not a pretty sight. I'm glad I decided to bring my propane lantern because all they had were a couple flashlights and a weak ass battery lantern. You know I like lanterns so don't get me started on the battery ones. I think that most people are afraid of fuel powered lanterns. Its too bad really because you can't beat them for light.

Saturday was a bunch of fun. We started out by playing a game of Texas hold'em and I won! I've never had the patience to win before but $20 was on the line so I ended up winning $80. How about that eh? I still have to collect from Scott, I guess I'll have to go break his legs later if he doesn't pay up. After the poker game we ate some breakfast sausages but we didn't have any cutlery or plates so we all stood around the fire with sharpened sticks and ate sausages. It was really quite funny. We had some hot dogs after cuz we were all still hungry then we set up a big tarp over one of the picnic tables. That worked really well and we were able to play some cards outside. Terry and I beat Brian and Shaun(sp?) at a game of Kaiser... well I'd say that Terry carried me but we still won. We played some more cards and then tossed the foot ball around for a bit. They came up with a drinking game called Long Bombed. Someone runs out for a long pass and if they make it everyone else drinks but if they don't make it the QB and receiver drink. It gets you pretty drunk because of all the running. By the end there were people running into trees and diving into bushes. I'm actually quite surprised that no one died because right after that we started to see who could throw the axe and get it stuck in the tree. Four drunk guys and two axes, that's a recipe for lost limbs if I ever seen one. While most of this was going on Scott was cooking our steaks. I ate an amazing amount of beef. I had a big T bone plus half a big chuck steak and then later ate another one. It was so good. Scott did a good job considering the steaks were still frozen and he was cooking on a fire. After supper we sat around the fire drinking again and the lantern was again a hit. It started to rain again that night around midnight or 1 am but overall the weather really wasn't that bad. It was drizzling for a large part of the time but there were enough trees to keep us sheltered and out of the wind but it did rain a bit. Saturday during the day it rained for about an hour but we were under the tarp playing cards and it rained Saturday night but we were all blitzed and kept warm by the fire so we didn't really notice. I have to say that I wasn't nearly as wet inside the tent as I thought I would be. I have to commend my cheap walmart tent as it did a good job of keeping me dry. I did spray the crap out of it with a silicone waterproofing spray last summer so that may have helped. The other guys didn't fare so well with the rain. Brian's tent got pretty wet inside and his wool blanket ended up weighing about 20 pounds but Terry took the cake when he left his shoe outside for the night. That must have sucked to wake up to.

Sunday was uneventful as all we did was pack up and go. We stopped for breaks at McDonalds and played some Settlers of Catan at Scotts house. The whole weekend was a bunch of fun inspite of the rain. Just a bunch of drinking, stupidity and gay jokes. Good time for all.

Friday, June 02, 2006

Created by Beelzebub himself

I know I said the next post would come from the apartment, but I forgot to bring my laptop. We got Sasktel Max installed yesterday and we get to watch it in all its glory on my 13" tv. Nothing beats it.

Anyways 2 days ago I purchase these metal shelving units from Walmart for our store room. I thought they were a fantastic deal at $16 per unit and they hold 60lbs per shelf. Great that'll do just fine and they are half the price of the plastic ones. It took me 2 hours and most of my sanity to assemble them. I realize why they are so cheap now. They were assebled in a Russian Tractor factory under forced labour conditions. Nothing lined up and everything was a little bent and of course they had HAD to use flat head screws for assembly. What sick peverted bastard would decide to design it with flat head screws? I would like to know so I can shove a screwdriver up his ass. Philips would have been so much easier to use or for the love of god get on the robertson bandwagon. Hex bolts would have been a god send, even torx or alan key bolts would have been fantasic. But no I'm stuck with flat head screws. By the end I was starting to lose dexterity in my fingers. Now that they are together they are good shelves and they fit perfectly in the store room but I don't think the ends justify the means in this case. Spend more money people!