Out of The PIT

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 ..