Out of The PIT

Ooh, the iOS version of Artemis has just been released. Neato!

Okay, I found this PC Tardis to be something cool to have, except the price tag is a little on the (very) high side. The Death Star Ice Sphere Mold is much more affordable though.

This has got to be one of the best scary elevator pranks pulled off by anyone yet! I first saw this on FAIL Blog .

Okay, I was not sure if I would be able to get past the first week without accidentally shaving off the stubble on my face, but I made it through nearly three weeks so I figured that I should finally get around to posting something about Movember! I also registered a web page , although it is a little late in the game for that. I guess pictures would be important too. Yeah, I should have did the picture a day thing, but the changes would have been agonizingly slow..

MJNL and I went to watch Wreck it Ralph with HKL and PL. It was a good movie, and even though there were less 80's gaming in jokes than I had expected, it was quite funny, and did not require me to explain anything to MJNL. Also while I am here, I'll post Dr Neil DeGrasse Tyson - The Amazing Meeting 6 .

I came across a video on how American English sounds to foreigners . It is quite an interesting video!

So we have just gone back to standard time. Why the heck amd I still up?

I am a little late posting this Guide to Trading Candy , but I heard it originally on CBC Radio One.

I guess we all get our day in court. Mine went fairly well actually. On a side note, I found this video called The Pendulum by TEKKEN with music from MUSE from the CTRL-A facebook group.

On Saturday, MJNL and I headed to Waterloo. I went back for the 20th anniversary celebration of CTRL-A, while MJNL went back to visit a friend. I also met up with Cat as well, but was unable to catch HNT or anyone else that did not show up to the event due to time constraints. I did at least get to see a number of familiar faces at the event, and was quite surprised how few people were actually watching anime! Most of the attendees were either playing games, doing activities, or socializing. I counted about a dozen total people watching anime in both foyers combined! A bunch of Alumni at the 20th anniversary of CTRL-A. Ah well, it was good to catch up with the old boys and girls.

The flight back from London was fairly uneventful. I wanted to get some sleep but I knew my body and the environment probably would not have allowed me to get any rest, so I decided to watch some movies instead: I skimmed through "Rock of Ages", which I had started to skim through on the way to London. The movie was kind of meh. It did not have the same atmosphere as the musical, and really was unable to draw you into the story as much as a live performance (and enthusiastic audience) could. I then watched the new "Total Recall", which was okay. I thought it was better than the Schwarzenegger version though (I was not much of a fan of the original "Total Recall". I then watched "Ted", which had it's funny moments and in general was a decent movie. Next up was "The Descendents" which really brought back memories of Hawaii. It was a pretty good movie to boot! After I had landed and finished unpacking, I went downtown to meet up with

I met up with LL and CJ in London for dinner. We met up at a restaurant called Sake no Hana, which was a fairly posh Japanese restaurant. The food there was not traditional fare, although they did have the usual sushi and sashimi, the other plates were like a western version of some Japanese style dishes. It was pretty good though, it better have been for the price.. Some various Japanese fusion dishes from Sake no Hana. A soft shelled crab roll with mango. We had already started to demolish this when I took the picture. My raspberry and chocolate dessert with hot chocolate. Before I met up with them, I waited in the bar downstairs. They had a drink called Nihon Blue which was made up of blueberries, yuzu marmalade, rose, lemon. It was really good! The Nihon Blue - It was not blue, but it was really good! Anyhoo, we got caught up and had a good night out.

After our presentation had finished and the discussions had completed, we were left sitting in the meeting room waiting for the final meetings decisions on how to proceed. Most of these discussions were not going to include me, so I was very interested in leaving early to go to the Heritage Museum to see if they had any post cards for sale. I had searched for postcards since I had arrived in Maidenhead, but got stymied at each shop and even at the post office as nobody had any post cards to sell! The only exception was a stationary shop, but they only had blank postcards. Who the heck buys blank post cards?!? Each time I asked around, the employees would tell me that the Heritage Centre may have post cards available, but they were not open on Sundays. The Heritage Centre is open from 1000-1600, Tuesday to Saturday. Exactly the worst times for me during this trip. We also had the Monday to explore, but my search that day was also fruitless, as the Heritage Centre was closed on Mondays a

Well, just finished off the first day of our meetings here in Maidenhead and things seemed to have gone fairly well. I spent most of yesterday looking for post cards and getting ready for these meetings, so it is good that things are progressing. Some fish pie. After the day's meetings, we went out to dinner at a place called the Bird in Hand restaurant. The original building that the hotel, pub, and restaurant now reside in apparently was built in the fifteenth century, which would explain why the ceiling next to the pub was so low (and saggy). I slice of chocolate cake and ice cream. The food was pretty good though, and we had a lively discussion during our meal.

So I arrived back in London today for work. Watched "The Amazing Spiderman" and "Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows" on the plane. Both were, okay I guess. Our flight landed in the morning so we were unable to check into our hotel rooms. I had some time to meet up with MJO for lunch and drinks afterward to catch up. MJO and I after our drinks. When I finally got back to the hotel, I was able to get into my room: one of the smallest hotel rooms I have ever stayed in. It was kinda cute and cozy, but not something I am used to compared to North American standards. One of the smallest hotel rooms I have ever stayed in. I also noticed that the sink faucets were split, one for hot and one for cold. This might make it a little annoying when it comes to controlling the water temperature as I am used to the unified faucet, but I do recall seeing this style in older houses that I have been in in the past. Note the hot and cold faucet and the towel drying rack.

I am just about ready to board onto my flight to London. It was a pretty last minute trip, so I was not fully prepared to travel, but hopefully things turn out good. What should I bring back from the UK?

There was some milk chocolate left out in the lunch room for anyone to have, so I took a piece. The chocolate bar actually had popcorn and some nuts in it too, but after chewing on the square, I realized that my affinity for milk chocolate has dropped even lower than I had thought it already was. I actually started to feel like this chocolate was a little.. gross. Maybe it was this particular brand of chocolate, but I certainly know that my tastes have evolved over time and my once insatiable desire for sweet chocolate has become a bit of an aversion to it now. Dark chocolate on the other hand.. Yum!

We had another Artemis gettogether yesterday. We only had four people playing at one time, but it was still a pretty good session. RY tried out the game for the first time, while MJO and Laz rounded out the bridge group. Growly showed up soon after RY left to continue the session, but MJO had to stop playing so the three of us went out to dinner. Last Saturday we had one of our players come back from a photo gig at a wedding and he took a number of action shots during our hockey game. Unfortunately, that day I had to borrow KK's jersey since I had lent mine out the week before and the guy did not show up the next week! The only photo of me where it was not obvious that I was wearing someone else's jersey. So I've only posted one photo of me where it was not obvious that I was wearing someone else's jersey.

I found a video playlist from VSauce with some neat optical illusions .

I found this video of the The Ohio State University Marching Band doing a game theme at halftime . The link was from FAIL Blog.

MJNL has gone to Jamaica for a wedding so I am left by myself at home to catch up on some chores that I had been planning to do for a while. Unfortunately, it seems as if I will not have the time to complete all the stuff I actually want to do! One of the big things I wanted out of the way was to fix the computer I gave to MJNL's parents. It died one day and my first thought was that the PSU had gone kaput. My initial tests confirmed that hypothesis so I picked up a new PSU and plugged it in. The computer still won't start. The LED power light is on, but nothing happens when I press the power button. I am going to see if I can borrow a more powerful PSU to see if I just got one that did not have enough juice. It would be quite annoying if that was the case as this PSU I can not return.. In other news, HKL sent a link about work being done on an impuse engine using dilithium crystals ..

MJNL and I went over some of our finances with IT last night and decided that we should go and start taking a look at some open houses around the city. We're probably going to concentrate in the North York area because we can not afford Toronto. However, even North York might be too expensive and we'd have to look further north/east. I got a couple of links from RM about some financial issues that I missed in the news. Apparently he thought they were the same event, but it seems as if they were not. One was about the drunk broker from two years ago, and the other was about some market disruption caused by Knight Capital two months ago. The latter reminded me of events in The Dark Knight Rises , and when I first heard about it I thought it could have been a publicity stunt.

I mentioned a while back that I tried out the Can-Am Spyder . Well, I found a link on xkcd for a cool (i.e. overly powerful) laser pointer . I've been taking a break from updating the wedding blog for the past week. I figured that I should finally get back into finishing (or starting in my case) Mass Effect . Yes, the first installment of the series. Yes, I know the trilogy is complete. Yes, I know my system probably won't play the other two games all too well. In any case, now that I got out of the prologue, I find that the game reminds me a lot of Star Control II . Some of the plot points, and certainly a bit of the exploration and harvesting brings me back to those days of traveling from system to system on my souped up Precursor ship. Good times. So I am in the middle of scouring each system in the galaxy for every conceivable resource so I would not have to go back again. It is time consuming, but I also have way more money than I think I would ever need. But just i

This exam video that I found on FAIL Blog reminds me of what happened if my first year at Waterloo.

Now that MJNL's back, I have been able to take a look at some of the photos that she took during our trip through the Rockies. I've selected a number of photos that highlight what it was like back in 1999, and how it looks today. I'll go by the order that we saw the locations this time, so it will not match with the order from last time. On the Columbia Ice Field: A view of the Columbia Ice Field from the Visitor Centre: The lookout point about 15km south of the Columbia Ice Field on the Icefields Parkway. First was the waterfall:  Next was the lookout into the valley: Lake Louise: On the main street in Banff: Inside the Royal Tyrell Museum: Outside the Royal Tyrell Museum from the lookout: Oh how things have changed, and how things have stayed the same!

I got a call yesterday morning at work from MJNL asking if I had her driver's license in my wallet. I took a look and could not find it. She told me that she could not find it in her purse so though that I may have had it. Well I did not seem to have it. After I got home from work, I got another message from MJNL asking me to check the large purse that I brought back home for her to see if it had the card. I had cleared out the purse of all the big ticket items, but had not checked every pocket for stuff, so I went through and began to rummage through the inner pockets. I found a jewel case with a pair of pearl earings, a measuring tape, and a driver's license. Oh dear. Now to fly on an airplane, you need to provide a government issued document with your picture on it. MJNL only brought her driver's license. Now that I had it, things were a little dicey. She called up the airline to see if a scanned printout or other documentation would work. Unfortunately, she needed

I am back from my trip to the west coast, although I have not really been giving myself much time to catch up on sleep or to get used to the time change. Two hours is not enough to be debilitative, but it is enough to be annoying. I found an interesting physics strip that some of your Feynman Diagram fans might like.

So MJNL and I have gone on our vacation to the west coast. We'll be enjoying BSB's hospitality while we're here. We made it in one piece so that's a good start!

MJNL and I went to meet up with MM and our old dancing buddies at the Sunday Serenade at Mel Lastman's Square. MM was telling us about this last year and we as a group decided to check it out this summer. Well, this was the last Sunday Serenade of the summer and virtually none of us went at all, so MM organized a gettogether for dinner, which was cancelled, and a sitting at the serenade. We had a good time. There were a lot of people dancing on the main floor, with the majority of the people there either part of a dance class or a senior citizen. There were so many old people there! It put us young whippersnappers to shame. Afterward, the lot of us went to have some bubble tea before breaking up for the night. We decided on going for more dance lessons in the fall. We will see how that goes..

Two things that had been bothering me for a while was the fact that the paper shredder was jammed in the "on" position and the lock on my filing cabinet broke. The first problem was my fault: I was putting too much paper through the shredder and it got stuck. forcing the paper through by cycling between the forward/backward directions eventually got the paper unstuck and shredded, but the lever that detected if paper was in the device somehow got stuck somewhere. I tried looking for it with a flashlight and poking for it with tweezers and a paperclip but I had no luck. The opening was too small and there was no way I could see inside. After a week, I decided to put some time in to take the shredder apart. things were a little slow until I discovered that one of the screws was hidden underneath one of the warning stickers. I wonder if the warranty is voided? I guess it does not really matter, the warranty only lasted a year. It took some time for me to find the actual switch

Ah, this music video brings back memories of MODS. Well, eight channels at least.

Okay, I would probably put severe snow storms above this, but we ended up getting a fire alarm in the middle of a thunderstorm. We had a short power outage after which the fire alarms rang. As per procedure, I went out the route that was designated for me, which led outside. I walked around the building on the outside to our assembly point where we discovered that nobody was actually assembled. In fact, people were being ushered back inside, to walk through the corridors back through the building to an adjacent build that was not affected by the alarms. I should have noticed that nobody else was following me and Derelict was the only other person who was actually following procedure. I should have just followed everybody else! Oh yes, and I also got very wet.

I was given a link to ASCII Street View from AI. Pretty neat! Green mode is like Matrix mode except that they need to use Japanese characters..

So my experiment with saline solution to deal with canker sores has been a dismal failure. Now, I'm not sure if my application and approach was incorrect as there could be a number of things that I could have done differently when I use the solution. For one, I think my initial saline solution was too weak. For the first two days I added too much water which did two things: it diluted the salt, and I was only able to use a third of the solution to rinse. After a week, I decided to try something else: instead of rinsing my mouth with water after the saline rinse, I'd leave the salt in my mouth hoping that by keeping the sodium content high in my mouth that the antibacterial effects would last longer. Still no dice. Well, maybe next time I'll go back to Listerine again just to make sure that was not a fluke. Until then, I will be chewing on the left side of the mouth for a little while..

I got a link to The Internet Map from AI. Very neat.

Over the years, I have kept track of all of my expenditures and kept every receipt for every transaction. I have been doing this since 1997. As you may have guessed, I have collected quite a number of receipts over the years. Several months ago I went through a quick purge of my old ATM receipts and shredded them all. That got rid of half of my non-credit card receipts and freed up space in my drawers. I'm now going through my receipts again and throwing away all food, parking, and movie related transactions and so far about half of my remaining non-credit card receipts seem to fall into this category. I have also started aiming my guns at my old credit card statements and the receipts attached to them. Using the same culling criteria, most of the paper is shred-able and my once tight cabinet is becoming much more easy to manage. I still want to keep some of the receipts, especially for goods. You never know when you might need them. I am, however throwing out all of my gas recei

I am still in the middle of my experiment with using saline solution to prevent canker sores from forming, but I think I know the next experiment I want to run on myself: overcome my lactose intolerance. I want to do this mostly because lactose free milk is WAY more expensive than regular milk (especially if more people start drinking my milk), and I just do not like being intolerant in general. I never had a severe intolerance to lactose, but I did notice that my system ran a lot better when I started drinking lactose free milk. However, I usually do not notice any issues when I eat ice cream, cheese, yogurt, or any other dairy products. This makes be believe that my system can tolerate lactose, but because I have been limiting it quite a bit (I used to drink a lot of milk) my system might not be quite ready for a sudden surge of lactose to my diet. I think I had a number of stomach upset episodes where I had a "large" (half a cup) amount of regular milk. It usually is mix

I found the Crash Course: World History videos while watching the Sci Show . They're both entertaining, educational, and very interesting. (Although I know most of the general world history already.) Oh yeah, I came across Sci Show from FAILBlog .

First I found out that FLy somehow knows CY, which is not too crazy. Jeanious knows CY too. But I found out that FLy knows KP, and also, KP knows VL! Six degrees.. (or less)

One recurring issue that I have are these canker sores that keep popping up in my mouth. It always starts when I bite myself on the inside of the cheek or tongue. I notice nothing until the end of the first week when that small cut in my mouth turns into a nice sized sore, bright white, indented, and extremely painful. This carries on for over a week while I try my best to eat foods without touching that part of my mouth. Eventually the area will stop being painful and I can eat (and talk) normally while the sore finally completes healing. I do practice good oral hygiene: I brush my teeth twice a day, floss daily and even scrape my tongue. But these oral habits do not seem to be enough to prevent the sores from forming every time I cut myself in my mouth. The worst one yet occurred last last month. I had bitten the bottom of my tongue somehow, but I completely forgot about it. Just before we left for the Dominican Republic, I started noticing an annoying stinging sensation whenever

I got home today and decided that I should pick up my mail from downstairs. Pretty normal stuff. When I got back to my apartment, I unlocked the door and turned the handle. I heard a strange "clink" sound. I tried the door. It would not budge. I turned the handle again and tried the door. No budge. I tried unlocking the door again. No dice. Oh crap! To make a long story short - I waited a couple of hours for the superindendent to come back to the condo from his house (far to the west) to fix my door. MJNL was actually downtown at this time and did not get back to the condo until after all of this stuff was done and over with. I spent most of the waiting time playing pool in the games room. I did have quite an appetite when I got back in though.

Okay, I came across BBotE on Penny Arcade and I have to admit that it looks interesting! Anyone want to try a sip?

MJNL and I went to watch War Horse tonight. Normally we would have ridden downtown to save on parking, but the rear brake on the motorcycle was pooched so I did not want to risk anything especially with a passenger. So we drove. We found street parking really easily. I was surprised about how many parking spots were available on the street, and the prices were reasonable: $3.50 an hour. They were reasonable until I saw that paid parking was enforced until midnight. Normally on the other city streets, paid parking is only enforced until nine, but an extra three hours of paid parking will more than double the cost of parking on the street! I am glad I did not blindly accept the "max time" as the parking meters do not actually show how much money you pay until you've paid for that ticket. (If you manually increase the payment amount, you can see how much the ticket will cost, but clicking on "max time" just shows "OVERPAYMENT".) In any case, MJNL had

I found this article on a possible successor to the Concorde and noticed a number of interesting articles on the gizmag website . Like the X37B and a possible PPC ?

Remarkably simple systems are made ridiculously complex by the humans interacting with them.

This weekend MJNL and I went out to dim sum with Growly, one of MJNL's co-workers, and her boyfriend. Laz and MJH were supposed to show up but were unable to make it for brunch. We ended up at a table for twelve since we told the waiter that there were seven of us, so I did feel a little self conscious eating at such a large table with so few people when there was a lineup at the door, but nobody yelled at us.. After brunch, we walked over to the theatre to watch Moonrise Kingdom . The movie was okay. It had it's moments, and had this nostalgic/innocent perspective of the events that transpired during the movie. Afterward, MJNL got a massage and acupuncture while I had a meal with Laz and MJH. Afterward, MJNL and I went out to eat dinner with MJNL's co-worker and the two of them chatted for hours (hours!) while I napped on the couch. On Sunday, MJNL went to help with Jeanious with her wedding stuff, while I went to the broomball party. The street was lined with cars, an

 The Scion FR-S might be a good car to have after the RSX.

Okay, I found this Portal video on Failblog .

I went to a sleep clinic last night to get an idea what was causing my severe snoring at night and to see if there were any other issues with my sleeping. The place was pretty neat and tidy and I was hoping to get a good night's rest. My room for the night. I think we spent over half an hour getting all of the sensors attached to me. I think there were dozens of cables attached, most on my head. I looked like some crazy science experiment afterward: Can the PUT any more wires on me? I was tired too by the time everything was said and done, so I thought I would fall asleep quickly. Actually, I did fall asleep quickly. I just did not stay asleep. A combination of the unfamiliar bed and the cables limiting my movements made it difficult for me to get a restful sleep. I think I woke up half a dozen times during the night and even though the computer noted that I was asleep (and dreaming) for about four hours, I felt like I had only one hour of sleep. The technician did m

MJNL and I went out to Market Village with my mom to pick up some stuff for Jeanious's bridal shower. (I was the driver.) While we were there, I ran into CY! I hadn't seen him in quite some time and he looks pretty much the same. His kid is a lot bigger now though! After we had lunch with my parents, we headed out to Brampton to visit MJNL's aunt, and then had dinner with another of her aunts.

I found Foot 2012 on FAILBlog.

I heard about this Census web application by OpenFile from Metro Morning .

I found an interesting dance video on FAILBlog.

HKL, Laz and I got together this afternoon for a LAN run of Artemis: Spaceship Bridge Simulator . The demo only allows for up to three people to play together, so it was a good number to start with. The full version actually allows up to six per bridge, with what seems to be eight possible bridges for team vs team play and/or cooperative missions. We enjoyed the demo scenario, so there may be more LANs in the future.. MJNL and I went to Zen Japanese Restaurant for dinner. GY had recommended the place a while back and we have been meaning to try it out for quite some time. We were not disappointed: The fish was fresh and very tasty. I did not order anything exotic but went for one of their sushi plates, so I recognized all of the fish. (Although I still don't remember which fish they came from - I just remember that I have had it before.) After dinner, the two of us headed up to the David Dunlop Observatory for one of their observing nights. We had been meaning to check out

I found a Clover Mite skittering around my desktop yesterday and today. I spent a moment looking up what the heck it was first before coming across the line in the wiki: "You are able to contain them for a little while if you draw a pen or sharpie circle around them." Wha..? So I tried it out. You know what? It does work! I even took a video of it.

I got this blast from the past from AI .

It seems as if there is an easy way to import/export blogs from Blogger/Blogspot. I just need to maintain some sort of backup schedule, import our wedding blog (somehow) and then complete the Hawaii blog. Now that Dragon Age: Origins is done, I think I can concentrate on getting all the stuff onto the site. I am currently culling the images so that there are only a few each day, although most of the space will be taken up by the (rather large) videos..

Since I am here, I should mention that I had not told anyone about this new blog. Partially because I was not actually thinking of continuing a blog after the server died and I lost my domain name. I think I did write up about it on The PIT, which is slightly ironic since it was not viewable by anyone at that time - or after for that fact. Maybe I will post some old entries - but more likely I won't. Who knows what secrets will be let out if I accidentally let those comments run amok.. (Besides, some of that HTML I used may not conform well with this new format.) We will see how long this guy stays under the radar. Oh, and I hope there is a way to archive these entries - it would be a shame if I could not save any of this..

Whoops. I guess I have to get accustomed to these WYSIWYG interfaces. I am so used to typing my blog entries in pure HTML that all the comments I normally added  - weren't. The < and > signs are automatically converted to &lt; and &gt;, which is great for people used to it, but I was so scarred by Microsoft FrontPage 2000 that I never wanted to use one again. (Did you see the type of HTML it produced? Garbage!) In any case, I must remind myself not to put in comments through the WYSIWYG editor.. <!-- Remember!!!! -->

RL asked me to bring out an extra stick for a friend he was bringing to hockey. Apparently it was a girl, so I figured that I would give the shorter stick I was using (which I got from WK who liked playing with short sticks) and use my longer backup stick. I got to the rink and was ready to hand the stick over when she stood up. After looking up for a moment, I handed over my backup stick and said "I think you should use this stick.". This afternoon I swapped out my winter tires for my summer ones. I think this is the last season for these tires, they are getting close to the wear bars.

I had been meaning to bike to and around Centre Island for a number of years now, and finally was able to organize something. I figured that if I just throw the invite out there and go, things will turn out all right. Seems like it actually did. We had ten people (plus two kids) show up! That was quite a number, considering that not everybody had a bike. I would have liked to have biked down to Centre Island, but MJNL would have none of that. It was hard enough to convince her to take the subway downtown (as opposed to driving). However, we did get to land on Centre Island, have brunch, pick up a rental bike for HKL and PL, bike to Billy Bishop Airport, drop the bikes off, played four rounds of disc golf, have a little snack at The Rectory Cafe, and then head back to town from Ward Island. Then we had dinner at Salad King before going home. I would have liked to explore Ward Island a bit more (and play more disc golf) but time was getting tight and everyone was getting tired. Next

After a few years, I finally got around to registering our bikes in the Toronto Police Service Bicycle Database . Of course, if you make a mistake, or move, or need to make any changes there does not seem to be a way to modify the data, or even look it up. At least our bikes are not actually worth much anyway..

If we consider one DNA base pair as a unit of data, and since there are four types of DNA molecules, then each unit of data can have four possible combinations - the equivalent of two bits of digital data. There are approximately 6.4 billion base pairs in the the DNA of a human cell, so the equivalent of 12.8 billion bits or about 1.6 billion bytes of of digital data. The digital equivalent of one person's DNA should fit on three 650 MB CDs. Note that if you are only considering the haploid human genome , then we would only consider half of the total, or 800 million bytes of digital data. Assuming that there is about seven billion people on the planet, it would take 5.6 quintillion bytes of data to hold every person's genome on digital form. That's 5.6 million TB drives. Assuming Moore's law applies to hard drives (doubling of hard drive space every two years), and that hard drive sizes were 4 TB in 2011, and also assuming that the human population will grow a

I got this link from MIBAgentQ. I do not want to see the Phantom Menace anyway, and this is another reason why not to! http://gizmodo.com/5894682/ this-video-on-how-awful-the- light-saber-battles-in-the- phantom-menace-are-will-ruin- star-wars-for-you

On Friday night, MJNL and I went out to dinner and a show with BL and MIBAgentQ at the Comedy Bar. The dinner was actually pretty good (wings and burgers) and the show was a bit of a hit and miss. The acts were improv, and out of the three groups performing, just one was really consistently funny (if funny at all). Some of the funny skits were hilarious though. We had to wake up early on Saturday for my dental cleaning (we had to reschedule it on Friday and I found out that the next available appointment was in mid-July - or the next day). Before meeting up with BL (again) for dim sum with MIBAgentQ's uncle and grandparents. MJNL was tasked with doing some analysis for them so we spent most of the afternoon over at their place. As such, we did not get back home until late afternoon when I realized that not all of my hockey equipment was clean. So we ended up late for JW 's birthday thing (which I had just found out about that morning) but it was all good. We had fun eating, c

We had a little gaming session at our place on Sunday. Originally we were going to have at least eight people show up (and possibly way more) so we booked the party room, only to find out that people cancelled, leaving us with five confirmed to show up. I sent out the invite to bunches of people on Friday, but in the end, only Laz and Werdna arrived, with CH showing up with S for an hour. Well, the four of us had a good time. Five of us played Ticket to Ride (my first time) which was a very simple game, but had good interaction. Then after CH left, the four of us played Dominion for the rest of the night. It was fun, but I lost every single game!

For those of you who actually know Madelaine, they're expecting a baby at the end of July! She told me to pass it along to anyone I keep up with. Well, this is a good enough place to start..

Somebody That I Used To Know - WOTE Parody!

MJNL and I had dinner at the Fishermen Club House Restaurant last night. We had heard about this place from a couple of people and the reviews online rated the place very highly. We tried to go last week but the line up was ridiculous (and it was a week night)! So we made a reservation this time and showed up early. The place was still packed. They are known for their lobster, and the entrance was jam packed with tanks and tanks of lobsters. Most of them were more than two pounds in size, and many were closer to five! I had heard before that larger lobsters are not as tasty as the meat tends to be more tough. I don't recall where I got that news from, but we went with the 2.5 lb lobster dinner special. They pulled out a lobster that was 3 pounds and asked if it was okay to use. The lobster looked okay to me, so we went with it. What came back was some of the best lobster I had ever eaten! The meat was surprisingly soft, and the sauces they used were so tasty! It looked like they

MJNL and I spent all day yesterday cleaning the apartment and rearranging the bedroom. It has been something she has been wanting to do for a while and it was pretty good that we were able to finally get it done and out of the way. We were able to get rid of some stuff, but for the most part we just transferred even more stuff from our place to my parents' basement. I was also able to put up those picture frames I have been meaning to put up for months now, and the place looks much more tidy than normal. We had a wedding to go to on Saturday. The weather worked out perfectly for the happy couple, and MJNL had a really good time. Friday the two of us spent babysitting MJNL's nephew, although for part of the afternoon he was not even there! Kids can be quite a handful at that age when they're extroverted.

So apparently the Canadian Government will be getting rid of the penny this coming fall. This has been in the cards for a long time methinks. I have been keeping all of my old pennies for a while now, at least all the non-steel ones. In other news, I tend to fling my hands after washing them to get rid of any excess water before I try them with a towel/blow dryer. Yesterday, I was washing my hands in the washroom and just as I flung my hands, my ring flew off, bounced in the sink, and started bouncing around the room like some crazy SuperBall. It went on for ten seconds before coming to a rest on the floor, I was pretty darned lucky it did not go down the drain or into any of the urinals. (That ring can bounce!)

I went with Laz and a bunch of his friends to watch The Raid: Redemption . It was a mindless entertaining hyper violent action flick, and that pretty much sums it up. Quite a number of good action sequences in there, but not much of a plot to talk about, nor much dialogue.

MJNL and I went out to the recently renovated Bloor Cinema to watch Being Elmo . We both enjoyed the movie, and I would highly recommend others to watch it. The modernized Bloor Cinema seemed very clean and fresh compared to how it was before, but still maintained some of it's old charm. We wanted to have dinner at Pizza Libretto after the movie, but the place was packed, and the waiting time was 30-40 minutes for just the two of us! We went instead to Foxley Bistro And Bar, which is an tapas restaurant that serves an Asian fusion style of food. We had five dishes, and I really liked the two fish ceviches, and the blue crab appetizer. Tasty food.

MJNL and I decided to go out and have a dinner and movie at Empress Theatres. (We had some tickets that were expiring soon.) After a quick meal at Ichiban Sushi, we watched 21 Jump Street . It was surprisingly funny, and we both enjoyed the film. It's quite entertaining, and although I had not seen the original series, I've been told that it is quite different.

So I have been told that my car should be ready today. I was also told that it would be ready yesterday, last week, last Monday, last-last Friday, last-last Thursday, last-last Wednesday.. I would normally be laughing about it, but I did opt in for the rental insurance. Gah! In other news, MJNL and I have gone back to do some hot stone yin yoga. It is pretty exhausting! Then again, it might be also related to the DST change, and the lack of sleep over the weekend. Still, I do not foresee us getting too many long nights to sleep..

Well, I found out yesterday that my car was in fact not ready for pickup. They had found another issue and ordered a part which will not arrive until Monday. Fortunately, I was able to contact the car rental agency and my insurance company to make sure they knew of the change, otherwise, I could have been stuck with a bit of a bill when I brought the car back. I also need to set up an appointment for my TdP shot. No time like the present I guess.. If I only remembered what the number was.

AI sent me links about the Windows 8 Customer Preview and the release of the Raspberry Pi which went on sale today, and promptly sold out .

I got quite a number of calls today about my car and the accident. It seems like my car is nearly fixed, so I should be able to pick it up either today or tomorrow, although I still have not gotten any confirmation call from the auto shop so I have no idea what the ETA is.. (I still have to return the rental car by tomorrow though.)

I was in a car accident yesterday. So sad. Everyone is okay though.

MJNL had been complaining for years about my mattress. She was saying how uncomfortable it was, and that she was getting a sore back every time she slept on it. I personally never had a problem with my mattress. In fact, it was quite a step up from the quarter century old twin mattress that I had when I first moved into the condo! But she did have a point, the mattress was getting old (I bought it used and I already had it for over five years) and you are supposed to replace your mattress every decade or so. We wanted to get a king sized mattress, but it would have taken some time to make the space necessary to make it fit in our bedroom. (It would fit though.) Well, HakkaKa and AL had bought a new bed when they moved into their new house, but kept their old queen sized mattress in one of the spare rooms. A week ago MJNL asked if we could exchange mattresses, since their old bed was not being used very often. They had agreed to the switch to which MJNL was ecstatic about. In addit

I planned MJNL's birthday weekend over a couple of weeks. I was talking with GY about high/afternoon tea, and he mentioned how the Windsor Arms Hotel was having a deal on afternoon tea, and that his mom thought that it was best afternoon tea in town . I figured that it would be good to setup for MJNL and I, as well as for my parental units. It was my mom's birthday as well, and since they had never had afternoon tea before, I figured that it would be a good experience for them. To top it off, I found out that there was a spa at the Windsor Arms Hotel and I was able to find some vouchers at SpaAndTravel.Com . In addition, a few weeks ago we watched Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol with EG and Growly, and we got to talking about out dog sledding. MJNL was interested in trying it, so we had talked about doing it together at some point in time. MJNL and I also had talks about trying out snowmobiling quite some time ago, so I did some research and discovered that there was a p

I recall writing about an Indian Head penny that I found a couple of years ago. I had given it to Mortis to clean, and he promptly lost it. Well, this morning he handed over a cleaned penny. He had found my penny! This time I took some pictures before I forget. I found out later that cleaning pennies (and other collectable coins) can reduce the value of the coin quite sharply. Well, the value of this particular penny that had gone through circulation was $2.90, so it is probably not worth very much at this point. But it is still the oldest coin that I have ever found, so I am still keeping it!

I went to hockey last night after a two month sabbatical, and I lasted about fifteen minutes before I started to feel like getting off the bench was going to be too difficult. Gosh am I so out of shape!

MJNL and I have been spending all day cleaning up the apartment. We have been planning on doing this since we came back from our honeymoon. In fact, we have been planning on cleaning our place up since all of this wedding stuff started piling up in our apartment. Now that we are done with all of the wedding events, we have been able to move everything out, and to finish writing our thank you cards (I hope we did not miss anybody) and we can go back to living our normal lives! But yes, back to cleaning. One of the many things I had on my to do list was to go through a pile of floppy disks I had lying around, but the task was difficult because I did not have a computer with a floppy drive. Well, I lied. I did have one, but it was running Ubuntu, and it was a pain in the butt to go through the disks. I wanted a windows machine so I can scan them quickly and move things off if I wanted a copy. Unfortunately, my server died eight months ago, and left me with no machine with a floppy drive

MJNL and I had our family wedding dinner last night. We spent some time trying to organize the meal and getting things ready like a slideshow, getting a projector and projector screen, and writing out thank you cards, etc. But we got there so late that we were not able to organize everybody (over half the people had sat down by the time we got there and it was nigh impossible to rearrange because nobody else knew enough people to reorganize them according to our seating chart) nor did we have all of the necessary organizing tools (like table numbers), but people in general were very good about it. There was not enough space for the projector either, which irked me quite a bit. But the food was good, and most people seemed to enjoy themselves. It was good to see everyone again.

So I've started playing badminton and broomball again. It feels good to be getting some sort of exercise after a month of lazing around. Hopefully this will also keep my belly down. *pats stomach* Been trying to catch up with all the things we need to get done with this upcoming dinner, trip stuff that needs to be concluded, and events for next month. We have not had any time to clean up! Our place is quite a mess, although it is not as cluttered as when we first got back. We basically moved all of the clutter to my parents' basement, so I guess you can say that it is just a deferred project. We do really need a day or two off to clear up this backlog..

I just heard on the news that the Lobster Trap was robbed last night! Which explains why we saw five police cars around that area when we were driving home from my parents' place last night..

So it seems as if the bomb threat was just a hoax. The police went through the building and did not find anything suspicious. Apparently someone made a bomb threat to one of the companies on the first floor, so I am guess that if anything did happen, we would have been okay?

We just had a bomb threat in the office today. I find it odd that the building is not getting evacuated.. Maybe it is not from a credible source? (Although there are a lot of police cars in front of the building right now..)

We celebrated New Year's Eve with both of our families today. We had dim sum with MJNL's family for lunch, visited her grandma in the afternoon, and then had dinner with my family afterward. We wanted to do some cleaning of the apartment, and we did do some in the short amount of time that were were home, but it does seem like an impossible mission when we're always away from home. Oh, so yes, we were away from home all weekend. We spent Friday night with Growly and co. First we watched Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, which turned out to be a very entertaining movie, even if it became difficult to suspend disbelief in the end. One major detraction (for me) is the obvious use of CGI during many of the effects shots, but it was still fun to watch. The four of us met up with one of Growly's friends to have dessert at Spin Dessert Cafe across the street, and we ended up showing many of our wedding photos and videos and did not return home until early the next da

I got this from AI: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2012/01/microsoft-pimps-it-old-school-with-a-pricey-text-adventure-game.ars .

Well, as you may have noticed, The PIT (begghilos2.ath.cx) has been down for many moons, and most likely will never rise again. There are a number of reasons for this: I don't have the time to maintain a blog. My original domain name is now forever gone (more on that another time). My server is now in a state of flux and may not come back. I am married now! (Which is more for the reason behind The PIT, since my wife will now be able to remember things for me.) What does this mean? I am not sure. I liked having a blog close by so I can control every aspect, but that does take time to maintain. We will see how things go. Next up: Our wedding/honeymoon blog!