Just a blog. About a new blog

So I’m at work the other day, and I’m on my break. It’s generally pretty boring, with nothing but solitaire and the john to keep me occupied. So I decided to start fooling around with the break room PC. And boy, have I reached a new low. I found an old version of FrontPage sitting around, and decided to check it out to see how the old version works. At first I was confused and afraid, but figured out a little bit how to work it. So I was practicing my HTML, and eventually, I had the start of a blog. So I’ve decided that every couple days or so, I’m going to write in this work blog. It’s not much, but it’s a way for me to while away my breaks. Maybe when I feel it’s done, I’ll put it up on the site and disguise it as something that might be interesting.

On the other hand, my PC is on the brink of totally screwed. My brother keeps downloading crap loaded with spyware, and I have to cleanse it at least once a day. We’re almost at the the point where we need to reinstall Windows again, and I’m dreading having to do that. On the upside, it seems that my Internet Explorer is broken, and not just the internet, so Opera’s working out just fine for me.

I’ve got a lot of things right now that I want to review, but I’m not sure if I’m gonna get around to doing them all. Firstly is the review of my CD collection, which I want to do only to rival my brother’s half-assed attempt. That one I’m doing for sure. Eventually. Some others I’m cosidering are reviews for MegaMan Zero 3 and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Both awesome games that deserve reviews. I’ve gotta get back to finishing the Disney World saga, and thankfully there’s only one more entry to go. There aren’t even any pictures in the next one, so I’ll have a tough time remembering everything. Though, I can’t say I did too much on the last two days. Damn. Now that I think about having such a good time there, I feel the need to go back. I wonder how long I’ll have to save with my current salary….?

If you hadn’t checked in a while, I updated the “Who Runs This Thing?” page a couple weeks ago. I’ll be putting up the final episode of Chat Radio on Wednesday or so. I plan to use tomorrow morning to edit it good, and it’ll be up the next morn. Oh, yeah, I guess I forgot to mention that I’ve been moved to the evening shift, so morning posts will be more common in the next while. Unless they decide to put me back on mornings after this week. So, to summarize, I’ve got a lot of little projects to do, and I really want to do less blogging in the next while and more actual content. The blog form is easy to do, but it rather boring for readers. Particularly when I maunder about what’s happening at work and such. So I’ll quit writing this now, and get to work on some more interesting stuffs. Like additions to the gallery.

Band of the Month – October 2004

Computer’s still broken. I cleaned out a clump of spyware, but the scanner’s getting stuck on something and freezes up when it gets so far, so there’s probably something bigger afoot. In any case, we’re halfway through the month, and I haven’t done the Band of the Month yet. I did change the link and picture on the sidebar though, so I clearly haven’t totally forgotten about it. So yeah, I think now’s the time.

This month’s band is good old Saliva. I’m sure most of you have heard of them. As far as I can remember, they’ve only had two big hits, with only one being overplayed on the radio, but as far as I’m concerned, they’re still a band that most people probably know of. Boy, my banter is even more annoying and senseless today, isn’t it? Well, it sounds like it as I read it back, but I’m gonna leave it that way. I’m not going to go through the trouble of trying to salvage this train wreck of a paragraph. I just don’t really have it in me. In any case, Saliva’s put out four CDs so far, and I believe that it’s the time where I briefly summarize them for youse.

First up was Every Six Seconds. An excellent CD, which I never got around to actually buying. I dunno why. I loved it, but I guess I just never saw it anywhere. In any case, the hit off this one is clearly “Click Click Boom”, which probably went unnoticed for a while, until it was used in “The Fast and The Furious”. Or at least that’s what I hear. Not sure if it got much radio time, but I personally haven’t ever heard it there. Just in movies. But that’s not the only good song on the disc. You’ve gotta take “After Me” and “Your Disease” into account too. Now that I think of it, the latter may have been a radio song. I’m not sure. I only listen to the 80’s rock radio stations. That aside, all the other songs on the CD are good too, and worth your bandwidth if you wanna give ’em a shot.

Then comes Back Into Your System. This one held their real claim to fame; “Always”. Holy hell did that song get a lot of radio time. And it’s nowhere near the best song on the CD. Not by a long shot. While this CD is a lot slower than the first, it’s probably my favorite. “Superstar II”, which is somehow a sequel to a song, is a great song to start with. Along with great tracks like “Rise Up” and the somber “Rest in Pieces”, it makes for some great listening, particularly for those who like a rollercoaster style album, with both hard rock and slower songs intertwining the whole way through.

The latest CD is called Survival of the Sickest. It’s, well, very different than the last. This CD is all about rock n’ roll. The first track, “Rock N’ Roll Revolution” sets that up pretty well, and the rest of the album follows up with it pretty well. It’s not as slow as Back Into Your System or as fast as Every Six Seconds, but it does find a perfect little niche right in the middle, and always manages to sound good. At first, I was a little on edge about some of the songs, but after listening through it, I’ve warmed up quite nicely to the different sound of the disc. Particularly “Bait & Switch” and the hidden track “Sex, Drugs and Rock N’ Roll”. It sure takes a turn from the last two albums, but in a good way.

And after a little research, I should mention that Every Six Seconds was only the first major release. Before that, they had one independent, self-titled CD. I’d never heard of this CD before now, to be honest, and I only know three songs from it, being “Beg”, “Greater Than/Less Than” and “800”. The first two because they’re also on Every Six Seconds and the third because I’d downloaded it before. In any case, fans of the band seem to like it pretty well, so I guess I’ll just have to refer you to those opinions for now.

Another notable fact is that they’ve done a few extracurricular projects too. Like the uber-popular collaboration with Chad Kroeger of Nickelback: “Hero”. If you’ve ever played… Well, I’m not sure of the year, but I think it’s “Tiger Woods 2002” or something like that, but the soundtrack is like half Saliva, and a few decent remixes too. Finally, they also recorded a song for the Daredevil soundtrack called “Bleed For Me”, which I love. On a different note, the Daredevil soundtrack seems to be quite a find itself. A little too much Evanescence for me (any is too much for me), but the rest seems pretty good. But I should get back to the topic at hand.

Or not. I’m pretty much done. I guess this band of the month feature just started off as album summaries, and has been like that up until now. There’s not a lot else I know to say about music except for pointing out songs I like. But yes, that’s going to be the end for now. I’ll do my best to get future editions done during the first week or so of the month, rather than halfway through. For now though, it’s back to trying to fix my computer. Maybe this is a sign that I should go back to using Opera instead of Internet Explorer. Well it’s worth a shot, right?

Bugged out

As I get more and more accustomed to spending all of my time sleeping and working, it’s getting harder and harder for me to put aside time for work on the site. And no, this isn’t the “I’m giving up on the site” speech we’ve all been expecting to hear for almost two years now. No, I’m just saying that I’m unhappy that I can’t devote whole days to writing articles anymore. And the fact that my computer is going nuts at the moment is exacerbating things quite a bit.

Time for an explanation, methinks. Well, for one, it’s a struggle to just get the damn thing to boot up. It’s got this problem where Windows breaks while loading and immediately restarts right as the error screen comes up. This produces an endless cycle of restarting, with no way to know the cause. And once that gives up and lets me sign in, it seems that my profile has contacted some sort of bug. Oh, and not just any bug. It’s a real annoying little bastard. You see, it makes it so that if I even so much as think about opening a web browser, the whole damn thing grinds to a halt. I’ve sat through this once, and it seems that it’s just taking a real damn long time to load, but everything else is slowed like hell too, so it’s not like I can even do anything else while I wait. I have no idea what caused this problem, because it was working fine a day ago, and only just in the last 10 hours has this problem arisen. Also curious is the fact that I hadn’t done anything questionable in the last while, unless using BitTorrent to download anime and burning CDs can screw the hell out of a computer.

On the upside, I can still use other profiles to work the internet, so I can still update. But it’s going to be real annoying for me to do anything else I use the computer for, like downloading anime and video game soundtracks. The fact that I can’t access my files and use the internet at the same time is going to really piss me off after about 5 minutes, so I’m going to have to get to the bottom of this one quick.

In other news, I finally got my PayPal account set up. Hooray for me, I can finally buy things online. Only the goddamned Homestar Runner store doesn’t accept PayPal. Or it does and I missed the option. But I’m pretty sure it doesn’t. I’ll have to check again after I’m done typing this. I really want a Trogdor hoodie.

You’ve got red on you

My reviews of “Dawn of the Dead” and “28 Days Later” were rather sparkling, so you know that I quite enjoy zombie movies. The gore, the paper-thin plot, and watching the characters fail hopelessly at making it through alive are all fundamental parts of any zombie flick. Lately, they’ve been changing the formula around, making for zombies that aren’t really zombies, but star athletes and spies that just happen to have a hunger for human flesh. And not since the Evil Dead trilogy have we seen a funny zombie movie.

But “Shaun of the Dead” has got it all. Being a parody, it was bound to be funny, but I never quite realized the true potential funny that it had. “Shaun of the Dead” is straight-up, stripped-down, kickass Hilarious. In between all the zingers and fart jokes are some genuinely amusing sight gags and other stuff that I’m not sure how to categorize. It’s a movie that other movies should look up to. Not since “Goldmember” have I seen a movie that kept me laughing almost the whole way through.

And for the other standards, how does “Shaun of the Dead” stack up as a zombie parody? Well, there’s gore. Not boatloads of it, but when you do get to see blood and innards flying about, it’s absolutely beautiful. The plot is great and you can really relate to it, but more on that in the next paragraph. All the characters are rather realistic. I mean, most of the time, the heroes are regular joes, but this bunch of loonies, they set the regular joe standards. Our hero, Shaun, works in an electronics store, and his roomie is a fat, unemployed bum who just plays Timesplitters 2 all day long. Oh, and having Timesplitters 2 in the movie was really awesome. Best of all, the zombies in this movie are actually zombies! None of this running around and being smart crap we’ve been getting lately. These are your good old-fashioned, stumble-around-slowly, fooled-by-impersonators, hungry-for-brains, dead-if-decapitated zombies. It’s nice to see they’ve not been forgotten with all the new Hollywood zombies around.

The plot in this movie is just excellent. It all starts with our hero Shaun getting a lecture about needing to change his ways from his girlfriend, Liz. You see, they spend pretty much every night at Shaun and Ed’s favorite pub, the Winchester. She’s sick of it, and wants him to take her somewhere nice. So the next day begins and you really get the impression of how tedious his life is. Short version of this day’s events: he goes to work, blows it with Liz, gets drunk and is left without a hope or a girlfriend. The next day, he does the exact same morning routine, but it’s his day off, so he heads home when he’s done with his errands. Only you’ll notice that while Shaun’s actions don’t change at all, the scenery does. He doesn’t even notice, showing how repetitive his life it, and that he pretty much goes through on autopilot.

So he gets home, and then the rollercoaster of laughs really gets going. Ed discovers a girl in the garden and the two go to find out why she’s there. At first, they think she’s drunk, but then they accidentally impale her on a pipe or something, and when she gets up, they realize they’ve got a problem. Then a fat zombie shows up and they run inside. From the TV, they find out what’s going on, and they learn how to kill the zombies: by destroying the brain or decapitating them. So, they got back outside and huck everything from old records to pottery at them. After exhausting their supply of throwables, they get a paddle and shovel and just beat the zombies into submission. And I’ll tell you now, this scene is positively hilarious. The banter between Shaun and Ed is gold, and the fact that they don’t really seem phased at all considering that they’ve got two zombies in their back yard is great.

After their close encounter, Shaun resolves to go save his mum and Liz, and take them to the safest place he knows: The Winchester. And I’m not going to give away the rest of the story, because you need to see this movie. It only goes uphill from this point on, although the first encounter scene is really hard to top. Again, you need to see this movie. I loved it, and I am definitely going to buy it when it comes out.

If there is anything at all I can complain about, it’s that unlike most movies where they pick of one or two characters every once in a while (depending on the size of the cast), in this movie they pretty much get it all over at once. Really, once the first of the team of six goes, the rest will shortly follow. Sorry for the little spoiler, but I was a little annoyed at how it played out. Seriously, I think they all die within five minutes. It just ain’t right. But on the upside, all the death is followed up by a spectacular ending with more than a single twist. Oh boy, it’s great.

So yeah. There’s my review of “Shaun of the Dead”, currently competing with “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” for the title of best movie I’ve seen this year. It was awesome, and it had everything I need to enjoy a movie and then some. Sadly, there wasn’t any nudity, a strange twist because most zombie movies have at least one breast in them, but that’s neither here nor there.

“Boo!” and such

As you can see, I’ve slightly altered the site to look more in the spirit of the Halloween. I don’t really have any Halloween-type articles or reviews in line, but I’ll see what I can dig up. I’ve got almost a whole month, so it should be enough time to get at least one spooky bit of writing out there. I do have a review for a zombie movie in mind, and that’ll be done on Thursday. Why Thursday? Because I like writing on Thursdays. While you’re waiting for me to pull something out of my ass, make sure to visit I-Mockery and X-Entertainment for all your ghoulish needs.

As for work, it gets a little better every day. I’m becoming more accustomed to actually serving people and understanding those accents that just aren’t made to be understood. I’m also finding myself to be happy while I work (which I never expected), particularly in the last couple hours when the people I’ve made friends with start working. And on a similar note, being the naive and hopeless kind of guy I am, I’m very confused about some recent events. Can anybody tell me if I’m charming at all? Do I have what it takes to make someone particularly enjoy my company? Would it be an accurate statement if someone were to to call me handsome (I’m still pretty sure it was jokingly though)? I once thought I was totally undesirable, but now I’m very, very confused… But you don’t want to hear about this crap. It’s sounding too much like a real blog.

Now, let’s see. What kind of entertaining spiels can I come up with on the spot? Oh yes. Much like I would, I bought a couple of the MegaMan NT Warrior action figures. (You must realize that it’s the collector’s spirit. I don’t actually play with these toys.) They’re of solid construction, and have some neat features. The only problem is that there is one little point of articulation missing in the arm that just skews the glory of being the ultimate toys that they would have if the elbow were there. On the upside, they look awesome posed on my dresser along with my other MegaMan toys. Oh yes, and they all came with battlechips, which makes the little PET game so much easier. If you’re into collecting toys, or you’re a fan of the blue bomber, I totally suggest you pick up a couple of these guys. Sure, they don’t look quite as cool as some of the Spider-Man figures out there, but you just cannot resist the awesomeness that is ProtoMan.

Lastly for today is something very important to me. I don’t remember if I’ve ever linked you to them before, but you should totally go to OC Remix and download The Atomizer and Haunted Hell. Easily two of my favorite remixes ever, and they blend in perfectly with the season. So yes, that’s going to be it for today. I really need some new concluding phrases. These ones I’m using are getting real stale.

Good riddance to bad work

I’ve been thinking it over, and I like my job, but I detest working. Full time, anyhow. It’s just way too much for the guy who’d never worked a day in his life to take in all at once. But I’m not going to give up because it’s a little rough, that wouldn’t be like me. Not anymore. I guess it’s time I started facing reality and stopped running from everything that showed even a slight sign of hard times.

But enough of my whining and revelation crap. I’m gonna start sounding deeper than I actually am. Ugh. So the band of the month isn’t decided yet, and I haven’t made the September archive either, as I’ve been working all morning and napping until like 20 minutes ago. Naps are great. They make me feel happy. You should totally try them out. All the cool kids are doing it.

I’ll have the BotM up either Sunday evening or some other time around then. as for the archive, that’s easy, so I’ll do it up now… or not. But first, there are important things to take care of. Things like links.

SuprNova.org – It’s not the site you need to see, but some things the site provides. Do a search “Mario Big Band” and download the result. It’s a sweet live performance of a bunch of Mario and Zelda tunes. Just the Wind Waker theme alone is worth downloading the entire package.

Halloween X-E – Matt’s favorite time of the year has come around again, and that means another Halloween countdown along with it. That’s one article – albeit a short one – a day. No wonder I idolize the guy.

GameFAQs – Character Battle #3 is nearing it’s end, and it’s looking to end up much like it did last year – with shitty results. Don’t let that weener Cloud win again. Help fight the good fight by voting for anyone else and telling your friends to do so as well.

Shopping for Danger – The third installment in the best G.I. Joe parody ever – Cheat Commandos! How could you possibly resist? Rock, rock on!

There you go

Yay for me! Yay for a day off! I’m gonna make $564 every two weeks (before deductions)! It may not seem too impressive, but it’s $564 more than I was making before. And that’s if I don’t take any extra shifts. And speaking of that, it turns out that my shifts on both last Saturday and Sunday were extra, so I could have had the weekend off, but I didn’t really have a say in the matter. They just told me to come in on those days.

In other news, I finally did that article I was supposed to do last week. This is just my first day off since Friday, so I’ve had a lot to do lately. You can find it here. Or at least I hope so. I have a history of bad links.

I also bought Donkey Konga. God damn it’s fun. And I’ve become more accepting of certain musics. A lot of the stuff on there is poppy or not what I would normally listen to. The only songs I can’t stand are “Rock Lobster” and the children’s songs. I mean, they have “Bingo” on there, and it’s remixed in this “funky” new way with the kids yelling stuff like “Go Bingo, go Bingo” and “You can do it Bingo!”. You can do it Bingo? Geez, he’s Bingo, not Lil’ Brudder. He lives on a goddamn farm. He doesn’t need encouragement. Stupid Bingo. On the upside, there are some great songs on it like “Rock This Town” and the “Kirby: Right Back At Ya!” theme. And, it took me this long to figure it out, but the Pokémon theme is a kickass song. Sure, it’s a song about Pokémon, but it’s got a sweet guitar solo and, well, just awesome music. But yes, overall awesome fun to be had. Even the one of my brothers who doesn’t do much gaming at all thinks it’s a brilliant idea.

I guess that’s it for today. It’s been a nice little break, but it’s back to the grind tomorrow, and Saturday. Ugh, Saturday. So damn busy.

The kid is beat tonight

Wow. Working sure is different than lazing about all day. Not really in a bad way, but it’s sure a huge change for me. Anyway, work is great. It’s easy shit. Either I’m punching in orders and making change or pouring coffee. And on the odd time I get to lift heavy things that the womens can’t handle. I guess I never mentioned that 90% of all the employees are female. Yep. And I’m the only guy working on storefront. Ever. Only all the women that are posted there as well are far too old for my liking. Except for one, and she just happens to be my current partner. We’ve even started up a friendly rivalry after working together only twice. Funny how everything seems to be coming together at once for me. In any case, I love my work.

The biggest downside is that not being in school, I’m working full time. That’s five eight-hour shifts a week. It could be a lot worse though, so I’m not going to complain about it too much. The other bad part is that I’m on my feet for the entirety of those eight hours and then I walk home. By my own will, of course. But that means that by the time I get home, both my legs and back are totally burnt out, making moving an unacceptable option. At least my parents aren’t bugging me to help out around the house or to get a job anymore. And I’m starting to smell like coffee, which would be rad, but I’m not all too fond of the stuff.

In non-work related stuffs, I’ve bought MegaMan X Command Mission, the first real MegaMan RPG. Boy it’s sweet. It’s not quite as active a battle system as Tales of Symphonia, but at least you actually use all the buttons rather than just choosing “hit” or “potion”. Lots of neat customization options, but not too far from most of the usual types of RPG cust opts. Graphics are superb, flawed only by the common little oopsies that come along with cel-shaded graphics. And there are a lot of nice little bonus options and mini-game-esqe features like treasure hunting using the GBA as a radar, and being able to pick the color of X’s “cape”. And speaking of X, If you’ve seen anything about the game, you know that he’s been totally redesigned. At first I was a little bugged by it, but looking at all the new characters and even Zero and Axl, if they’d left him as he was, he would stick out because he’d look so plain. And lest I mention, the game is fun. The bosses can give you a run for your money if you don’t play perfectly, and the story is usual MegaMan X fare, just without all the plot holes (so far, anyway). So yes, worth buying if you like RPGs or MegaMan, and definitely worth a rent if you’re not truly into either. Not a groundbreaking title by any means, but I like it good.

I’m still trying to summon up the will to do that article, as I’ve got a new game to play and such, and writing articles is kind of long and uneventful. I’m gonna do it, just not today. Probably Sunday. There’s another one in the works too, and I’m thinking about adding more to that there new art gallery. Updates will now probably be a lot more spread out, as I’m probably only going to post on my days off. I like the idea of sleeping workday evenings away. So yes, I’ve covered everything I wanted to. Stay tuned to find out what happens next on this wild rollercoaster that is my new/working life!

Everybody Konga!!

Sorry it’s late, but the new gallery is finally online. And it looks pretty slick. Or so I think. It’s not full yet, because there have been many distractions in my way, but I did get it up and running. And that’s all I really intended to do.

In other news, having a job has totally overwhelmed me. I didn’t even do anything today and my head is running in circles. Oh well. They did let me go an hour early, which segues nicely into the bigger events of the day.

First, and very most importantly, I went to Toys R Us. Why did I go there? Well, you see, there’s this thing I’ve been obsessing about lately. It’s what they like to call “Donkey Konga”. It’s not out until the 29th, but TRU conveniently has a demo station. So I went and I played the crap out of it. Well, maybe not that much, as I only played one song. But I do intend to go back tomorrey and have at it again. Anyway, the game is a blast. Even though I was only playing on “chimp” level, it was fast-paced and exciting. Through the whole jam session I was smiling and trying to restrain myself from really giving ‘er and acting like a lunatic in the store. I even used subdued claps when they came about so as not to attract too much attention. But Hell, that game brought me more joy than most things have lately. The only thing that upset me was that the demo didn’t provide any of the songs I wanted to play (read: the Legend of Zelda theme and We Will Rock You). Totally buying it.

But it got better. I found two really awesome things in the store, and I’m going to review them by the end of the week. Maybe you won’t see the awesomeness they bear, but I love both of ’em, and I’m glad I picked them both up without hesitation. But that’s all I’m telling you for today. Just go and enjoy the pretty pictures.

And God said “A small coffee and a chocolate dip, please”

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted, and there is much to tell. But I’ll get to all the other stuff later. Firstly and most importantly, I’ve finally got a job. The call came in this morning and now I’m the newest donut wench at Tim Horton’s. Yay for me. Now I’ll be able to afford my precious when it arrives later this year. That is assuming that I don’t screw up too badly at giving food and such to people. If I’m lucky, they said they might even place me on dish washing duty, a task at which I excel. So yes, I’m a little nervous about giving up most of my time to actually do something, but overall I’m overcome with much joy. And if absolutely nothing else, I’ve finally got something to go on the ol’ resume.

Second of all, I broke down and bought one of the new Pokémon games. It was mostly for the wireless adapter that came with, but you all know I enjoy my Pokémon, so I won’t bother making up any other excuses. The game itself is great, being a port of the first game (which was my favorite) with a whole bunch of new stuff crammed in. The bulk of new areas and quests come after the credits roll for the first time, but there are tons of new gizmos and such for you to toy around with before then. Most outstanding though, are the graphics and music. While they look a lot like the Ruby and Sapphire versions, these new games have a few little extra touches that make it just that much sweeter, like coloured text! And a pretty new font to go with it. The music remixes are great, and hopefully they’ll attract a little attention from the OverClocked Remix community. I’ve always wanted to hear the battle theme in metal, but there isn’t a single Pokémon remix on there…

Thirdly, SKY CAPTAIN! Flippin’ awesome movie. The kind a man like m’self, who doesn’t buy many movies, would buy. And not even because of all the special bonus crap they’re bound to pile on the DVD. Yes, it’s that good. Well, I thought so anyway. The plot goes a little here and there about halfway through, but I’ve never been too picky about a bad story, so it didn’t bother me at all. The only thing I didn’t like is that there weren’t enough of them big robots that steal the spotlight in the trailer. Nope. To be honest (tiny spoilers here), they really don’t play as much a part in the movie as the trailers might have you think. But again, great action flick, go see it.

And last but probably not least, I’ve opened a Geocities account which I plan to use as space to house all of my recent scanned stuff. It’s a little different that what I’m used to, so it might take me a while, but I intend to have the “second” gallery up tomorrow after work. If it’ll happen, I’m not sure, but keep your fingers crossed. Or not. Just do what you like. So I guess I’ll be seein’ yahs then.