Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Buy my stove!

All of you in Saskatoon that read my blog, well ok there are four of you, but one of you must know someone that needs a stove for cheap.

Check out my ad at www.usedsaskatchewan.com

It works fine and its only $50 OBO. You know you want it.

More Cops Abusing Their Power

I've written before about the police abusing their powers to run red lights and now I've read that it isn't an isolated occurrence. I guess in Tennessee its a normal thing too. It was good that the judge in the case let the kid off with a warning instead of a fine.

"I expect officers to follow the rules like everyone else," judge Bean said


The problem is that they don't.

Monday, February 27, 2006

Acts of Gord

While stumbling around the internet today I remembered a couple of sites that I have not seen in quite some time. If you are interested in a good laugh you should check out Acts of Gord or another classic Bob the Anal Fissure. Have fun.

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Dumb customers

I used to work in a retail computer department and I thought I would share some customer stories of mine. We would get lots of dumb customers, I don't mean the people who didn't know computers but the people with a complete lack of common sense. I posted these at a friends forum but I thought I would share them here.

1.
"My ink cartridge is empty", Customer
"Ok, they do that", Me
"The package says its good until October (six months away)", Customer
"Thats the expiry date", Me
(insert 10 minute explanation of expiry dates)

2.
"My mouse doesn't work" Customer
"Ok, is it wired or wireless" Me
"Its wireless and neither one is working", Customer
"You mean your old one isn't working?" Me
"No, neither one in the box is" Customer

Basically he thought the wireless reciever was a mouse because it had a button on it. He absolutely refused to read the manual. I tried to direct the conversation there a few times and every time I did he would change the subject to some other trouble shooting step he had tried. If he would have read the manual he would have known to push the connect buttons but instead I had him yelling at me for 10 minutes about his new mouse that didn't work. FINALLY I got him to look for the buttons and push them and his mouse was suddenly fixed.

3.
Customers don't read anything. A woman came to the counter with some CD's. So I ring them in and the copy levy shows up on the screen. By now I expected everyone to know about that but she didn't and she's mad. She thinks I'm trying to pull the wool over her eye's and gets quite mad about it. I try to explain to her what its about and she snaps at me that we should have a sign about it. Ok lady I'm tired of your crap.

"Oh you mean like this big sign beside you on the wall? Or the 6 little signs on the shelf? You had to move one of them to get these CD's"

"Um.. oh I... ok." She said really sheepishly and just left.

4. My personal favorite

Guy comes in and is already yelling at me before I get over there. His new scanner doesn't work. It never worked right out of the box. He's spent 5 days trying to figure it out. He's had his IT friend over (never a good sign) and even he can't figure it out. They've been on HP's website and tried all the tests on there. It just makes noise but the scan head doesn't move. He's getting really mad because I want to look at it. What could I possibly know that he and his IT bigshot friend don't know. Blah blah whaa whaa fuck this screw that I'm a moron yadda yadda yadda. I'm getting ready to shove this scanner up his ass so I grab it from him flip it over and flip the lock switch on the bottom. I plug it in and it works first try. I've never seen someone go from red faced mad to suck my balls sorry so fast. I ask him did he not see the giant yellow sticker that actually holds the lid shut that tells him to unlock the scanner. "I uh must have missed that one". He then asks me not to tell anyone because it is so embarrasing. I've been telling everyone.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Ah google video

Yesterday I temped you with the harddrive with a window and today I've got the video. I appologize as it seems my digital camera isn't quite fast enough to get all the movement but you get the idea.


Anyways now that that is out of the way, some sad news... the hard drive has died. Yes I know we shall morn its death but it was expected. It had a terminal illness before I ripped it apart to show everyone its still beating insides. I'm not sure if its dead dead but it only runs for a bit then it starts slapping the heads back and forth and the computer freezes. Last night it ran for a couple hours before that happened but today it only ran for about 30 mins before it started the click of death. I'm not sure what is causing it, dirt, the fact that it was dying already or perhaps static buildup on the lexan. Who knows I'm not a hard drive engineer.

In other news I have a cold that hit me like a truck. I got up this morning with a bit of a sore throat, I thought nothing of it, perhaps I had slept with my mouth open. At work I'm cold, then the chills start, by noon I had body aches and by 3 it actually hurt to sit in my chair. This is odd as I usually get one cold a year and this isn't the usual time. Perhaps my desk job has somehow weakened my immune system. Back at home I eat and then drink 4 big cups of tea and I'm feeling a bit better, well except that I'm peeing every 20 minutes and I can't believe that there was that much fluid in me. What to do... hmmm... too sore to go anywhere and TV sucks so... O wait I have 2 episodes of Top gear on my laptop and an episode of Mythbusters!

I stand by my previous statement that Top Gear is the best show on tv. Why can't I get BBC two?! Anyways Jeremy had a Bugatti Veyron on there. It has 1001 horsepower from a 4 litre W-16 and has an electronically limited top speed of 252mph! That's 387ft/sec. Insane. It will use up its tank of fuel in 12 mins at that speed. 0-60 goes by in 2.5 seconds. If you raced a McLaren F1 you could give it a head start to 120 mph and still beat it to 200 mph. All I can say is I want one of those cars and I will probably never be able to see one in real life. He was racing Captain slow and Hampster and they were in a Cessna 182. The race was from just south of Turino Italy to London to deliver a truffle to a restaurant. The car won but it was rediculously close. The other episode was the Top gear winter Olympics and that was insane. They launched a Mini, the old kind, off of the ski jump. Thats pretty impressive in itself but they put rockets on the back and gave it more thrust that a F-16 fighter. The best part was the car stayed upright and landed perfectly. Those are 07x05 and 07x07 and you should go download them. I also watched the newest version of Mythbusters, it wasn't as exciting. They were trying to see if a helium filled football would go farter and if you can really catch a bullet in your teeth. I did find out that my laptop will run for 3 hours straight playing divx and xvid movies. I found that amazing considering it has to do quite a bit of decoding to play those. Long live the iBook!

So you've made it through that long post about nothing really but this is how I really feel today.

Good night everyone.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

New Monitor!!

It finally came! On Friday I ordered a LG 1950SQ 19" LCD monitor. I was expecting it to take a couple of more days but the Purolator gods smiled upon me and I had it today. It is glorious. Here's the nerd specs:

19", 1280x1024 resolution, 8ms, 700:1 contrast, 0.264mm

Its so sharp and amazing. I watched the car chase scene from iRobot and I couldn't see any ghosting and it looked... amazing. Ok, ok, I need a thesarus.

I've also got a cool hardware mod for you. I put a lexan window in the top of a hard drive. Here is a picture but you'll have to wait for google to verify the video before I put that up.




It looks like there is dirt on the inside but thats just what is on the lexan on the outside. There is some silicone smeared on the inside but I don't care. I did this to see if I could do it not as a beauty contest. I am a little concerned as to how long it will last as it was having SMART errors before I modded it. O well.

Here is your link of the day. I totally agree with the authors #1 pick.

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Time of death: 1:30 am

I had a simple dream, a movie made about the Doom video game franchise. That dream died last night when I almost couldn't bring myself to finish the movie "DOOM". I can't believe how disappointing that movie was. When I first heard about it I knew they were going to screw it up, I just knew it. I started reading reviews and hearing from others how bad it was so I waited and dragged my heels, not really wanting to see it but at the same time I knew I had to. Doom was a ground breaking video game, a great classic in electronic entertainment and now it has been dishonored.

Why do I care so much? I care becuase I love Doom. I've played hours upon hours of the first 2 games. (The third one was total crap. Way too over hyped for what it delivered.) We used to rush home after school to fire up the old 486 just to play the shareware version of the first game. I have so many great memories of playing it with friends and having competitions. I had a great time mopping the floor with the people at Heinze durring network play and I've even got it on my iBook. Yeah, its been ported to Mac and its still fun. The movie could have been so much better.

There are so many things wrong with this movie. First the story is totally wrong. Way off. Doom is based on the idea that demons have escaped hell and you alone are the only one that can stop them. How hard is that to get right? They could have had the Rock standing there shooting demons with the chaingun for 2 hours and I would have been happy, but no they couldn't even do that. Instead we get a movie that is based on the idea that people are being mutated by chromosomes found on mars and a squad of people are sent to stop it. A squad? Uh if I remember correctly the games weren't squad based. There were none of the right monsters, because the enemy was mutated humans and not demons like it should have been. I wanted to see an imp throw a fireball but nope I get flying tounge parasites. Yeah that's really f*#king close. Where were all the weapons?? Well there was 2 chaingun scenes and the Rock fired the BFG 2 or 3 times but it was disappointing. The original games were really trigger happy, you basically shot your way through and you had a whole aresenal at your disposal to do it. I loved splattering people with the rocket launcher or letting a stream of plasma fly but the movie couldn't even get the BFG right. Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the BFG fired a green energy ball in the games. In the movie its a blue ball of goo. WTF is going on here? Was this movie put together in China? Its close but so many details are off.

Like I said my dream was ruined. The movie should have been the Rock fighting his way out of hell against wave after wave of demons with many cool and crazy guns. Where was the rocket lancher in the movie? Where?! It should have been ultra gory which it wasn't. Most of all there should have been no story. The games were like porn, a little foreground and then you grab your gun and go at it. Who the hell cares if one of the soldiers' sister is on Mars and their parents were killed in an accident many years ago. I know I didn't, I was just waiting for the shooting to start. Instead I got some pervert grossly hitting on ever piece of ass on Mars. This was supposed to be Doom not Duke Nukem 3D.

By far the worst moment in this movie was when it went to a first person view. That is where I almost turned it off. Why would you do that? I realize that the game was a First Person Shooter. I played the whole game like that, this is a movie, maybe we could get some more production value here. Nope instead we got some dumbass running around looking at every reflective surface he can find. I guess they thought the audience needed reminding that the camera wasn't just floating around but that we were actually pretending to be one of the "actors". It started to feel like one of those 3D movies like "Spy Kids 3D", you know when they start finding every excuse to have something jump out at the audience. Yeah it was that cheesy.

I know this is a little late, most people have moved on but I had to get this off my chest. If you haven't seen the movie yet don't. If you've played Doom 3 then you've seen the movie as it was an exact copy of that game. Don't expect it to live up to the first 2 Doom games, it will let you down. Even if you haven't played any of the games and just want to see the Rock kick some ass... don't bother. Nothing good can come from this piece of shit. It feels like they played Doom 3 and thought hey this could make us even more money if we make a movie about it. Too bad they failed to notice that it isn't anything like the real Doom games. Maybe a sequal can save this but with the Rock dead and with no real action movie stars left I wouldn't count on it. Maybe if they pull Schwarzenegger out of the formaldihyde they could get something close to the caliber of "Alien" or "Predator". They weren't Academy award winners but alteast they got it right.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Holy Cold Batman!

How do you know it's cold out? It physically hurts being outside. I've had to run between the buildings a couple of times today and it actually hurts to be out there. It doesn't help that I'm in a t-shirt but I'm not going to put on my jacket to go 30 feet. So how cold is it? It is -32C(-25.6F) with a windchill of -47C(-52.6F) according to environment Canada. The car really didn't want to go this morning and I kinda hoped it wouldn't. I could have stayed home in the warmth if it didn't run but like a good car it did. Getting it to move was another story. I don't think the transmission loosened up on the whole trip here. It must have been damn cold or someone put cement in there instead of oil.

An interesting news day today. The guy that played the angry Scotsman in the Alexander Keiths commercials has been arrested for having child porn on his computer. Too bad we won't have any more of those commercials. Speaking of commercials here is the link of the day.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Happy Birthday ENIAC!

On this day in 1946 the electronic computer was born. Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer was created at University of Pennsylvania for the U.S. Army for their Ballistics Research Laboratory. It is really quite amazing that the modern computer started out with 17,468 vacuum tubes, weighed 27t, took up 1800 square feet, used 150kw of power (today that would be $13.50/hour to run) and needed a crew of 30 people to run it. Now some people may tell you that it wasn't the first modern computer because it didn't use binary. It used the regular decimal system and there were others using binary before ENIAC but they were not completely electronic. The German Z3 was older, 1941, than ENIAC and it was Turing-Complete (this wasn't figured out until 1998) but it wasn't completely electronic. It used mechanical switches.

In comparison with a computer available today, ENIAC would probably bore you to death. Here are some comparisons. As of 2004, a chip of silicon measuring 0.02 inches (0.5 mm) square holds the same capacity as the ENIAC, which occupied a large room. Cnet compares ENIAC to a new Intel Duo chip in this picture.



Here are some good articles on it from cnet and wikipedia as well as the history of computing

Oh I almost forgot its Valentines day today so happy Valentines day! Well I guess it wouldn't be so happy if you are single but you'll just have to suck it up like we all used to.



Now I know there were lots of links in today's post, but I can't leave well enough alone. After you've learned so many new things today make sure you take the extreme sex test. In case you are wondering here's how I scored:

Rated PG-13
Easy there! Any more notches on your bed post and it'll be the size of a toothpick. We're happy no one has walked in on your during the act (that you know of), but tone it down a bit, or you'll find you have more in common with Julia Roberts circa "Pretty Woman" than Julia Roberts circa "Stepmom."
You are 43% extreme
You are more extreme than 91% of other users

Friday, February 10, 2006

So much shopping

So Lindsay and I have begun buying up the whole world in preparation to moving out together. We traveled all over town to buy some dishes. It all started with a Homehardware commercial saying that their corell dishes were on sale. So it turns out that our Homehardware isn't much more than a small town hardware store. Its on Central in Sutherland and it feels like it is stuck in time. They had one set so we kept looking. In a whirlwind shopping trip we went to Homehardware then to Superstore, London Drugs and finally Walmart. Now I'm not a big fan of Walmart, infact I kind of hate the place but they had dishes on sale. I always thought that Walmart didn't have sales but I guess they do when it is a clearance sale. So we got some dishes on a good price but I was ready to die from the shopping.

We were also looking for pots and pans and there is some real crap out there. Superstore had a 4 or 6 piece set for $5. I'm pretty sure if the stainless was any thinner it would have been clear. I dented it with my head by accident. Well I hit my head on purpose but I didn't expect it to dent. I found this one at wal-mart for $150. I'm probably going to buy that one. But there is also another one in the Canadian tire flier for $109.99.

I figured out how I'm going to shop for this stuff. My digital camera. Instead of trying to remember where stuff was or trying to keep it all on a big messy list that will get lost I can just take pictures. I am a little concerned that stores will freak out and boot me out but I figured I would use it for apartment shopping at least. So if anyone hears about a good deal on rent in the north end, sutherland or west side for apartments or basement suites let me know.

Ok. So you made it through another one of my boring posts about life in general and now you want something interesting. Well it may not be interesting but I'm sure you'll be curious about the most disturbing link I've ever put up here. Protect your keyboard from the vomit and click

Thursday, February 09, 2006

New job duties

So I've begun the newest chapter in my job. I now sell stuff on the internet. The little mini company my boss has set up is called Flogster. I don't really mind doing it as it keeps me busy an it keeps more money in my bank account.

I'm working on a order to The Gambia. According to wikipedia it is number 158 on the country size list. Canada is #2 and the US is #3. The Gambia is 10,380 square kilometres. That may seem like a lot but my province, Saskatchewan, is over 650,000. It is hard to imagine a country that is so small. It is surrounded on 3 sides by one country and has the ocean on the other. I wonder what these people would think if they visited here. It takes 5 hours to drive across Sask at 100km/h. In that time you could probably do 10 laps of their country. OTOH what would I think in a country like that? My friend spends a lot of time in Japan and has a picture taken from the 70th floor of a building and all you can see is buildings all the way to the horizon. His girlfriend was in Saskatchewan and took a picture of the prairie because she couldn't believe that there were no buildings anywhere. Do you know what all this means? It means I have to travel more.


LOTD

Another article about giving head. I'm sorry thats just the place I'm in.

Monday, February 06, 2006

The little USB key that could

I just discovered how tough these little usb thumb drives really are. My mom tried to kill this one from Dell


It went through the washer and the dryer and it kept my Johnny Cash safe. I'm glad I got it for free. That turned the whole event into a moment of discovery instead of fear and dread. After reading an article in Maximum PC I wasn't too surprised that it survived but I was excited to know that my stolen/free thumbdrive had survived. Floppies are dead!

Link:
Everyone knows what circle they belong to

Friday, February 03, 2006

Friday at last!

Its been a hellish week. I just got a raise but it means a lot more work so I've been trying to figure out how to do all of that. I'm taking over some stuff from someone who is quitting so I'm frantically trying to figure out how it all works before she is gone on Wed. Then I had a bit of a virus scare with Kama Sutra... which turned out to be a dud. Everyone was getting paranoid so I had to run interference and try to keep everyone from bashing each others heads in and feasting on the goo inside.

Its probably going to be a slow weekend. I'm trying to save money so I can move out. I figure its about time, I'm 23 and still living at home. Lindsay and I are going to find a place together so we're trying to figure out what we need and what we have already. Atleast the raise should help with rent and such.



Its a sad and disturbing link of the day today