The holiday wedge

Stuck in that little wedge between Christmas and New Years. Nothing wrong with it of course.

Yesterday, Mat asked if I have ever played Scotland Yard. I'd heard of it but never played it. I went to the Salvation Army later for find new courds, and lo and behold, I found Scotland Yard in more or less mint condition. The pieces are still waiting to be punched out of the cardboard. I picked it up for a paltry 2 dollars.

Looks like I've got everything set up in terms of my TV. I've got everything but the VCR on one remote control, and I've even got wires waiting for my PS2 so all I have to do is plug it in and start playing. It's a mighty sweet setup. It'll be a bloody crying shame if I don't come home in the summer. It's gonna be hard going back to the shit TV back in Waterloo.

I've been fantasizing about one of my friends lately. Poor girl.

I've got a lot of people going to the Brew Pub for supper with me this Friday. Oh, that's right, I've got to make the reservation today.

Part of my Xmas gift was $100 to buy a new Deluxe Scrabble board and anything else I want to buy, so I've been spending a lot of time looking for board games that might be fun. I've got a list of a few to try and find at J&J in Waterloo. The list so far includes
Blokus
Chrononauts
Ticket to Ride
Munchkin
Zombies

I'm leaning mostly towards Chrononauts, since I'd like to have a card based game. I'll probably buy Blokus if it's a decent price as well. What I hope to do is get John, Mat, Andrew, and Hugh to J&J with me so I can get some opinions. There's not much point in buying a game if no one will want to play it with me. We'll have a LOT of games to play when we get back, since I'm bringing two from home, and buying another two or three there, and I think some other people might be bringing games from home too. Now if only we didn't have any courses...

Listening to... Liberate - Slipknot
Link of the moment... Only played this once...should play it again

Old and busted: "Merry Christmas". New Hotness: "Happy Holidays"

Back home. Wanted to make a post about my last exams, but didn't get around to it. The last day was full of laundry and chores.

I've got three of my four marks in. I got 75 in CO 330, 73 in CS 246, and somehow pulled off a 98 in CS 245. I'm not entirely sure if that's even possible, but I'm not complaining. Still waiting for PMath 334, but judging by the exam I sincerely doubt I could have gotten less than 80%. I'm expecting close to 90%, actually.

My computer is up and running again. I had an assload of errors, but got them all ironed out. My system boots up much faster now than it did before. I even have a SuSE partition, but I have very little reason to use Linux. It was difficult to navigate around and figure out, although I'm sure that with time I could become accustomed to it.

I've been fiddling around with my home theatre lately. I mounted my surround speakers to the walls, so it actually looks much nicer. Grant even helped me run the wires through the ceiling (well, he did it while I watched). I've upgraded to component cables for the TV and DVD player, but I still have to use the S-Video for the Shaw cable box. It's a pain, because the TV doesn't automatically scan for active connections when the one it's using goes dead, so when I change devices on the A/V receiver, I've got to find the TV remote and change sources. Perhaps I can set some nice macros on the universal remote control.

Nearly Christmas. Got my shopping done, know some of the stuff I'm getting. I don't really care about getting a "big" gift, as my mom coins it. I've got everything I need. I could ask for an iPod, I guess, but I doubt I'd use it that much. Already bought myself a GBA, and I don't have enough time to play video games to ask for new games. My computer is already pimped out, and now my home theatre is complete. I really can't think of anything that I really want to buy.

Listening to... Fear Factory - Securitron
Link of the moment... One thing I already know that's under the tree

Something wicked this way comes

Short update. I’ve done two exams now. CS246 chewed me up and spit me out, and CS245 was pretty easy. Two more, but I’ve got a few days to dick around before I need to study for them.

John’s back home, and a good number of other people are leaving on the 21st. No worries though, cause it won’t be more than two weeks until I see them again (with the exception of dear Emiko…I’m gonna miss that girl).

I fired up FireFox one day and for some reason, it decided to lose all of my settings. On that day, my computer crashed no less than three times. I think it’s a sign to reformat. I haven’t wiped this drive clean yet, it’s been accumulating crap for two years come January. It’ll be a hassle, of course, but it shouldn’t be bad at all with the DVD burner. I typed up a list of all the programs I need to install and browser settings I need to set when I do a reinstall.

Let’s see, what will be different with a reformat? I’ll set Thunderbird as my default e-mail program, hopefully it will work out well (that is, better than using hotmail and MyWaterloo). No more EPSON error when I boot up. My start menu won’t have programs that I haven’t used in ages. I’ll be able to put a Linux partition on, just for fun. I’m leaning towards SuSE for simplicity’s sake, but if any computer nerds have any suggestions, I’m open to them.

Listening to... Killswitch Engage - Vide Infra
Link of the moment... Thunderbird (no, not the show with marionettes)

"I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by fleeing the scene of the accident"

I've recently come across some information that one of my friends has (or had) feelings for another friend who is already taken. Quite a startling revelation indeed.

Didn't do a heck of a lot this weekend. Played a game of hearts, and actually won. I was able to avoid the queen of spades long enough to keep my score down. Had a game of Catan, no Scrabble, and played the Warriors for PS2 in 2-player co-op. Played Taboo last night as well, that was fun.

Last night was the Survivor finale. Danni won, which means nothing to you. Kinda feels useless, like I wasted upwards of 20 hours of my life watching that show, but then again...what else could I have done in that time. Honestly, I don't even care about watching TV that much, but for me, Thursday night meant spending time with John and Hugh.

I want to shave my hair down today, and then have a shower, but I think my razor isn't charged enough to do my whole head, so I've gotta charge it first. I hope it doesn't take too long to charge. I think today I’m going to have to make pancakes, since I’ve got the ingredients.

I haven't started studying for exams yet. I'm not looking forward to the results. You'd think that for 50% of my final mark, I'd be a little more motivated to learn the course material. Once you stop doing any school work, though, it's hard to get motivated.

I've been thinking about what to do in the summer again. It may be the case that I have to pay for a 12-month lease on whatever house we'll be getting next year, it may have air conditioning, and Adam might be working outside the city this summer again. In that case, I'm pretty much indifferent about where I live in the summer. I don't plan to work at the same job as last year (then again, I never do), and the job market down here is probably better than Thunder Bay. The way I figure, I could do one or two courses and get a part time job on campus, or maybe do some math marking and tutoring.

I picked up that TV, and the picture is pretty bad. If the scene is dark at all, it’s really hard to see anything on the screen, even with the brightness all the way up. Still, it’s a bit better than having the crackly sound. I hope my roommates think it’s an improvement as well.

I’ve been looking at another board game…well, not a board game per se, but a game nonetheless. It’s called Munchkin, and it’s played with cards. Sorta like Magic: The Gathering, but for more than two people, and not as nerdy. It’s actually a Dungeons and Dragons satire, with items like Kneepads of Allure, and the Sneaky Bastard Sword. Still, it doesn’t seem like a game that John or Nicole would want to play, but it still seems like fun. It’s quicker to play than Catan, and probably more mindless than Scrabble. I’ve got a really good collection of board games so far, if you include John’s Cranium and Andrew’s Taboo. Board games are fun.

Listening to... Nine - Euthanasia
Link of the moment... Munchkin homepage

Fading out of existence

Lately I feel quite non-existent. Whenever I say something, either no one listens to me, or someone gets offended by what I say. I've taken up the habit of not saying anything whenever I have the urge to say it. Honestly, I feel like I'm going to explode. I'm just bottling up everything. One day, my head will just pop.

I went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire the other day. It was ok, but even without reading the book, I can agree with those that say they left out too much. In the first film, they did a good job of explaining where all the magical artifacts come from. In this one, they just have a goblet...of fire. And it, I dunno, burns paper. Seems kind of contrived.

I should hopefully be buying a 27" TV for $30. I was looking around at newsgroups and found uw.forsale, where people list a bunch of stuff they're selling. Some guy must be trying to unload everything by the end of the term, cause he's got a cheap TV, bed, dresser, and couch. I think I'm next in line for the TV, but I'm still waiting to hear back from him about when and where I can pick it up. The way I figure, I can probably sell it for $30 at the end of next term, and have a 27" TV for no cost next term.

Listening to... Intransit - Goodbye Missouri
Link of the moment... Someone's CLV site, I'm in unit 4.

Sound Life

Last night we had a massive game of Catan. Actually, I played two games...I played Catan for over six hours yesterday. The first game I won, against Hugh and Emiko, and the second game was with the expansion, causing it to last four and a half hours. Some people take the longest damn time on their turns.

I made a massive amount of chili last night. I'll have to gues that it's about...10 portions. I guess I should freeze about half of it, since I won't want to eat chili day in, day out for the next week. Yesterday I had chili with toast, and I think tonight I'll have some with white rice...there's not much else I can think of that will go well with plain white rice.

I went to the mall the other day with Mat, Nicole, and John. I was looking at a few DVDs in Sunrise, and a few board games at the games store there, but didn't buy anything. I only wound up buying my chili ingredients, and a Nalgene bottle. Yes, that's right. I've given in to a fad. I figure it will serve me well next term though. I'm usually thirsty when I get to class, from drudging around campus, up and down stairs, plus I've heard that drinking good amounts of water helps keep you awake. I'd rather be drinking my own filtered water than stuff from fountains.

I think some of us might be going to see Harry Potter tonight. I'm all for it, if I can use my movie pass. I've still got a huge colleciton of movies to watch, but I guess I don't really have a good tv to watch them on.

Well, off to play scrabble and do laundry!

Listening to... Three Days Grace - Take Me Under
Link of the moment... Gotta remember to bring my dicitonary back

You can DO this, Kevin

At one point, I was thinking if I could get through the whole month making only one post, but then I realized it was a sort of stupid reason to do it. Just as I was about to make a post, however, I was whisked away and, lo and behold, I went through the whole month making only one post.

And now I'm going to regret it.

To start off, one thing I’ve noticed is that all my friends have a distinct first initial. For my own sake and entertainment, I’ll refer to a group of people as the collection of our initials, not unlike the read-write-execute properties of a file.

eg. HJKNCMAE refers to: Hugh, John, Kevin, Nicole, Carissa, Mat, Andrew, and Emiko.

Warning: ~2000 words follow.

Silver Spur
A group of us (HJKNCA) went to a bar called the Silver Spur on one Saturday some time ago, the main attraction being Karaoke. For some reason, people feel that the only way to be entertained is through public embarrassment and/or harassment. I wound up putting my name in for White Wedding by Billy Idol, as I usually do when forced to sing karaoke. We never wound up hearing my name, so I sorta dodged a bullet there.

Overall, I didn’t have that good a time. It was mostly watching people get drunk, and putting up with it, not to mention stuffing six people in my car. Before we went, though, I was playing PS2 with MA, while HNJC were pre-drinking. Resident Evil 4 with the lights off is fun, but that’s another bolded topic for later.

Scrabble
The vast majority of us have been playing scrabble like maniacs lately. I enjoy it, because the vast majority of the time, I win. Once I lost terribly, but I blame that on bad tiles, and everyone else setting up easy triple word scores for one another. Another time I lost by only a few points, but that was a matter of collusion between JN. I plan to bring my deluxe Scrabble board from home after the holidays, but I think I’m missing two or three tiles, which likely has some sort of impact on the game. I’d like to get new tiles, but for the price of a set of tiles with shipping, I could just buy a new board.

Resident Evil 4, et al
I rented Resident Evil 4 and Hulk: Ultimate Destruction from Blockbuster when I felt the need to play some video games. I was very shocked to see that game rentals at Blockbuster are now up to $8.99. It really isn’t much longer at all until they go out of business, and I’m certain that there are a lot of people who are too wary to switch over to a online rental service with monthly fees. For a casual once-a-month movie watcher or game player like me, something like Netflix isn’t a cost-worthy solution.

Resident Evil 4 is a great game, but I always have such a hard time with conserving ammunition. I rarely have shotgun ammo; I usually have to stockpile it until bosses and difficult parts of the game, and then blow it all in one wad. I can already tell that this game would be really fun on the second playthrough, when all the guns you have are upgraded and it takes fewer bullets to take enemies down, not to mention having an extended health bar.

Hulk was really good too, with a free-roaming GTA-style mission system, but I haven’t played much of it yet, since RE4 is so consuming. Destroying things is fun.

Hitchhiker's Guide et al
We spent a fair amount of money renting a few movies, among them was Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I found it to be a little meh. I was very, very dozey the whole time, but I didn’t fall asleep at all. We also got Cube, which was a nice independent movie, but pretty painful to watch if you’re a math major. I guess overall, I’ll give it a recommendation.

Laura's Visit
My dear friend Laura came to visit Waterloo a few weekends ago. I had the honour of hanging out with her the majority of Sunday. We hit up Boston Pizza for lunch, and after that, we really just hung out in my room. Afterwards I drove her to the bus station and waited with her for the bus to Toronto.

I really enjoyed seeing her again. It’s good to know that I’ve got friends that, after not seeing me for so long, still want to spend time with me when given the opportunity. I hope I can get out to Toronto to see her sometime next term.

In spite of fear for saying something embarrassing, I’d like to say that I started thinking of the conditions under which we ‘broke up’, and I’m not entirely sure if I’d be opposed to the idea of having some sort of casual relationship with her in the future. I won’t say anything more than that.

Balderdash
One night, KHNCJEA played Balderdash at Nicole’s house. Hugh was by and far the winner. I came in dead last, but I think there was a point where I gave up all hope and didn’t really try to accumulate points. Now, we’ve played a bevy of board games. I think it’s mostly due to everyone being within walking distance of each other. I know that back home, no one would bother driving over just for a game of Trivial Pursuit or Scrabble. Oh, that’s another thing to bring back after the break: Pictionary.

Cobwebs in computer
I was fiddling around with my PS2, trying to hook it up to my computer since RE4 didn’t look or sound pretty on the terrible TV downstairs. I glanced to the inside of the computer, and it is really starting to get filthy. There are actually cobwebs inside of it, and some of the coloured wires are completely caked in dust. My computer has also been crashing uncontrollably, hence my typing this HUGE post in auto-saving Microsoft Word. I don’t know if I should clean and reformat it for the new year, or wait until I get home when I have loads of free time and space. It will be a little easier to convince myself to reformat, since none of my data will be lost, thanks to a second hard drive and DVD burner, but the real hassle is installing all the necessary programs over again. Plus, there’s the whole question of whether I’ll install a Linux partition or not.

Xmas List
I don’t know what to get the family for Xmas, or what exactly I want. I think I might have to go crazy the week after Xmas, and buy myself some stuff. As usual, I will convince my friends to go out for dinner while I’m home instead of doing an awkward gift exchange. I really want to get a huge CD wallet though, upwards of 200 DVD capacitance. My 96 CD wallet is already completely full of DVDs (bought and burned), and I’m sure I’ll keep filling it up as life goes on.

Clone High
I scammed Clone High off of someone’s hard drive the other day. Good show. Lots of great music. Sorta surprised to see the array of voice actors for the show, including SNL cast members, MadTV cast members, and a fair number of people from Scrubs.

New TV back home
We got a big screen TV in my basement! I’m excited to see what it looks like, but so far both of my parents can vouch for the fact that it’s a really big improvement thus far. No more squinting to see the program guide on the screen. I won’t really get to get acquainted with it until summer, but it’ll be a fun toy to play with during the Christmas break. I might buy a fancy DVD player to hook up to it for some good 5.1 audio and sharper image, maybe as a gift for my parents collectively.

Free TVs in SLC
I was walking through the SLC one day, killing time until my next class, and I saw a cue card on the Sale Items board, with “FREE TVS” written on it, including three model descriptions, and a phone number. I figured it was worth a shot, so I phoned, but it turns out some guy was on his way to pick up the third one. I asked why exactly they were giving them away for free, and it turned out to be some nice people who just didn’t want to go through the trouble of trying to sell them, and wanted to make some university students happy. Maybe sooner or later I’ll look into a pawn shop to replace the crap TV that is in our room now, but I’m not entirely sure where to store it during the summer. I’m sure it will get used next year, but if I don’t have a definite storage place, there’s no point in buying it.

Intransit @ the bomber
There was an AIDS fundraiser in the bomber a few weeks ago, which equates to four bands for two dollars. The first band, Beaumont, was pretty generic. The second band was Intransit, and I really enjoyed their music, but Hugh and John found both the bands to be painful enough to leave early. I stuck around for the third band, Glory Fades, but I’d already heard The Way, and they didn’t keep my attention very well the first time, so I left after Glory Fades. Intransit had really good vocals, and I wound up buying their CD. Glory Fades was another pretty generic pop-punk band, but they put on a really good show. They played a Killers cover, and did a rock cover of Don’t Phunk with my Heart.

Poker Online
I’ve played a few poker tournaments online lately out of pure boredom. The first 9 player tournament I played in, I wound up winning and it put me over the $100,000 mark. The next 45 player tournament, I placed 8th, just outside the money spot. If I knew I was so close to the final table, I would have played much more conservatively, but I wanted to go big or go home.

That damn party
The other night, we had a “birthday party” for everyone who has a birthday in December (HENA). I bought some gifts from the dollar store, including Ball-and-Cup, Grabber-Arm, a shitty Gyroscope, and some other crap. It’s amazing how little it takes to amuse some people.

Hugh hooked up his Gamecube by my request, and we played some Mario Kart Double Dash on John’s tiny TV. We also played some Simpson’s Clue (well, NJCAMH played, Emiko and I played GC), and Simpson’s Jeopardy. I won the Jeopardy, and I think Andrew just scraped past Nicole for the win in Clue.

John made death by chocolate and taco dip, both of which were nearly orgasmic. I’ve got to get the taco dip recipe off of him since it’s so damn tasty. I think those two things made up my supper for the night.

Man Thong
For some reason, NC really wanted me to wear a man thong that they had. After pestering me for hours, I went for it. I only had to show the strap for proof. It started as a full on junk-in-pouch view for twenty bucks at the party, but I worked them down. I’ll tell you, it wasn’t a pretty sight. I have no idea why girls willingly wear thongs. I don’t find them attractive at all, and now I can say that they’re not comfortable either. The things some people do for fashion.

Afterwards, we burned the thong with newspaper and bug spray in a can. The flame was green.

Cities and Knights of Catan
We went ahead and bought the Catan expansion. We’ve played it once, and I lost horribly. It certainly adds a lot more strategies. The original Catan is still loads of fun, though. The random board setup really does add a lot of variety to the game.

Listening to... Johnny Cash
Links interleaved in post.