Tales from the Dork Side

The Wicked Bastard woke up at 4:43am. His alarm clock said it was 5am, but he always sets his alarm clock ahead, so that he's extra miserable during the ensuing day.

He dragged his ragged body, still three-quarters asleep, to the washroom. He looked in the mirror and half-saw his scruffy face, with red, puffy eyes still full of the last night's rotten dreams.

He decided that he would relieve himself in the shower that morning to save himself three minutes.

The Wicked Bastard spent the next ten minutes standing lazily in the shower, letting the tepid water mix with the previous days grit and grime, and let the noxious combination of the two sluice off his haggard frame.

The Wicked Bastard prepared himself the breakfast of champions, cold pizza, by removing it from the refrigerator. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and walked out the door.

Why would he wipe his mouth on his sleeve and not on a napkin, or some sort of cloth, you ask? The Wicked Bastard is a busy man, and has no time to waste on trivial things like basic hygiene.

The Wicked Bastard walked out to his car, a veritable boat which may have been white at point, but was at that point in time, a dull grey, tinged with rust. He opened the door and sat down. If his senses weren't so dull, he would have picked up the scent of stales cigarettes, rotten food and week-old farts. He put his key in the ignition and turned it.



TO BE CONTINUED.

This is coming out of the Toronto Service Centre.

12/14/2008 - I placed the call
12/14/2008 - I received a UPS label via email (new process?)
12/15/2008 - I sent the XBOX off to the service centre via UPS.
12/16/2008 - The XBOX was signed for at the loading dock of the service centre.

01/07/2009 - Almost a month later, they "receieved" my XBOX and moved it into repair status.

Since then, nothing.

I don't know what the fuck is going on here, but I'm not impressed. I've called several times, and got a little more information each time, but I still have no idea when my box will be coming back to my house.

Apparently, when they sign for your delivery, it goes into a warehouse and sits there until they are ready to "receive" it. Every time I call, I reminded that they have 2-3 weeks from when they "receive" it until I get my box back. That's patently fucking ridiculous considering that they can "receive" it whenever the hell they want.

A supervisor told me that they would be shipping me a wireless controller for my inconvenience, but at this point, I'm beyond angry and I want some answers.

After the cut, you will find an email that I intercepted from Senator Nathan Petrelli. It has a spoiler from the end of last night's episode in it, so be forewarned.

( The Letter )

XBOX Number 5 died yesterday.

It was a sudden thing, not at all expected. It hadn't been sick and it wasn't showing any signs of depression. If it was suicide, the poor thing must have been bottling all it's emotions inside.

We had a good time, XBOX Number 5. When I think back over the 8 months we spent together, I can't help but get a little misty. We experienced some great gaming together.

We played Grand Theft Auto 4, Lego Batman and Indiana Jones, Dead Space, Two Worlds, and who can forget Lost Odyssey?

My only regret is that you'll never be able to see the glory of Fallout 3, or unlock the mysteries of Fable 2.

Oh XBOX Number 5, I will miss you, and I cherish all those late nights, gaming with bleary eyes. I hope you live on in the Happy Hunting Ground.


... Seriously though, I should get a special gamer picture for killing 5 of these fuckers. Like a picture of an XBOX with a red crosshairs thru it. Thank Odin it didn't happen on Christmas Day this year, LOL.

Today is election day, and here's my problem.

I have absolutely NO idea who to vote for.

Conservative is out the window. I will never vote conservative again. In fact, I would rather eat my own foot than vote conservative. I disagree with their policy on a fundamental level.

Liberal is out too. I have no confidence in Stephan Dion as a leader on the world stage, and I think his carbon tax is ridiculous. As a politician, I feel he's run a reactive campaign rather than a proactive campaign, and I can only see that continuing if the liberals take the minority.

So what does that leave us with? NDP, Green or Independant. Well you can throw the independant out the window right now. I shouldn't have even brought that up.

I have to admit that I like Jack Layton. That's certainly not a popular sentiment, but I think like a schoolyard bully, and I think he does too. Maybe we communicate subconcsiously on that level. But... I am a left winger, but I'm not necessarily THAT left wing.

The Green Party is a great choice in theory. I mean, the environment is a serious matter that we all need to address, both personally and as a society. That being said, the rest of their policies seem decidedly conservative, which I don't care for.

I was brought up to believe that if you aren't voting for the "Big Two", you're basically wasting your vote. So who should I waste my vote on?

The fellow running for the NDP in my area was a high school friend, and a member of my football team. I'm mature enough at 31 years to realize that, as a patriotic Canadian, who cares what's going on in his country, I can't vote based on blind nepotism.

My mother suggested I vote based on who is best for our riding, not whom I hope becomes the next prime minister. I have been around long enough to realize that what I want for Oakville, isn't the popular opinion. Oakville has a very large financial and cultural cross-section, and one person isn't going to be able to accurately represent the WHOLE community.

So... What should I do?

We got back from Sarnia on Monday afternoon, and promptly went for turkey dinner number three at my in-laws. Luckily, we were back at home relatively early, so there was no danger of missing Heroes. Today, I shall talk about Heroes again. Last night's episode was fucking killer, so here it goes after the jump...


( Click me! Warning, I contain spoilers! )

First off, let's just pretend that I haven't been MIA from LJ for 6 months.

Today I feel like talking about Heroes. I approached season 3 with trepidation, seeing as how season 2 ended up being quite a let down. I recall waiting and waiting for it to get good with a fanboi's enthusiasm, but it just never got there.

Season three is really working out well so far, four episodes in. Maybe it's too soon to tell, but who really knows.

Anyhow, I am about to list off a bunch of disjointed things that we now know, and some predictions for what's to come. If you haven't been watching up to this point, don't read. If you have been watching up to this point, feel free to engage in discourse.


1.There are 'natural' special people, and there are "manufacted" special people.

I've been suspecting that Nikki and DL were created by Linderman, as an experiment, since Season One. I believe that this is what the "splinter cell" of the previous generation was trying to accomplish, and that's why they needed to be eliminated.

2.There is a major rift between the naturals and the created.

Angela Petrelli illuded to this in last week's episode. I think that there's going to be a conflict of some sort between the naturals (Petrellis, Nakamuras) and the unnaturals (Micah, New Nikki, Micah's silly cousin).

3. Someone was watching "The Fly" when they thought up the Mohinder Suresh plotline

Dude, it's practically the same story, fo realz.

4. Somewhere in Africa, there's a walkman that has powers.

Or at least a guy who can give people his power through a walkman.

5. Peter has THE HUNGER.

And you know he's going to conquer it. It would be really cool if he didn't, but you KNOW he will... And I will bet anyone 100 bucks that very soon, after killing someone for their power, he's going to cry. Hundred bucks.

6.Noah Bennett is still the best written character on television currently.

They could not make him any harder to read if they tried. That guy is either a brilliant actor, or has brilliant writers, or both.

7. Maya has perfected the English language after living outside of Guatemala for exactly one week.

That's her second power, you know.

8. The webisodes meant absolutely nothing.

I don't know if any of you watched the summer webisodes, but I did. I was hoping to see Echo Deville on level 5, like in those episodes. I guess they forgot about him, because they gave his power to that gang member dude that Peter was 'hidden' inside in the first two episodes.



That's all I can think of right now, let me know if you come up with anything else.

• ... I don't spill coffee all over my desk today.
  
• ... XBOX number 4 gets delivered today.
  
• ... the TTC doesn't go on strike on Monday and completely fuxxor my work life.
  
• ... it doesn't rain hard on Sunday when we come to the city to visit my father.
  
• ... Dwight and Angela get back together on the office.
  
• ... I last until 4pm today.
  

Since bulletform lists are all the rage right now...

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is frickin' sweet
  
• My latest XBOX coffin is on the truck and destined for my house today
  
• Work is busy, busy, busy
  
• I'm pretty sure I passed that course I took last week
  
• The new Office last week was hilarious
  
• I'm hungry, but I don't feel like eating
  
• I just realized now that I drank four jumbo coffees yesterday and NO water
  
• This post contains nothing of any importance and this is tantamount to verbal diarreha.
  

Here's some stuff on my mind. I do this every so often.

Getting Older

I certainly can't take credit for this one, as I heard it in a comedy act by some random dude, but it's so true. I realized I was getting older, when I stopped being attracted to the young 19 year old ladies walking around out there, and started being attracted to their mothers.

The Internets

I love the internet, but I hate the internet. Especially troubling to me is the 'wealth' of medical advice and knowledge to be found on the internet. Self-Diagnosis is a dangerous, dangerous thing. Ask a first year psychology student where self-diagnosis gets you, and you'll know what I'm talking about. Dude! I totally got Rank A on a throat nodule removal operation on Trauma Centre for the Wii, that's GOTTA be what you have!!

Print Magazines

I predict that most print magazines will be driven out of business within the next 5 years. With the widespread availability of the internet, and the relative ease of posting information, teamed up with the prevalence of news blog sites (up to the second); any print information you read is long out of date (OFN as it were) by the time it reaches your door. More and more magazines are retreating to the web. I just took my Nostradamus hat off.

Cowbell

I gotta have more cowbell.

Perfect Child's Name

If we can have another child, boy, it will be named "Ares: God of War Dave Metcalfe". If it's a girl, she will be named "Dawn Hard 2, Dawn Harder Abigail Metcalfe". Unfortunately, my wife will likely vetoe these names, since she is the boss.

Here's the latest geek update:

Games being played

XBOX 360
FEAR (goddamn it's hard)
The Godfather: The Game
Shrek the Third (with my little guy)

DS
Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings
Trauma Centre - Under the Knife
Advance Wars

PC
SNES Emulator: Super Metroid

PS2
FF12, I guess. Haven't touched it in months.

My DS is getting almost as good of a workout as my 360, since I got my new toy. I plan on renting Bully for the 360 in the near future, since I enjoyed the PS2 version.

Games completed 100% on XBL

Viva Pinata (1000/1000)
Mass Effect (1050/1050)
Lego Star Wars:TCS (1000/1000)
Assassin's Creed (1000/1000)
Marvel Ultimate Alliance (1250/1250)

General Update

I doubt I will be doing any gaming beyond my DS while commuting, for the next couple of days. I am upgrading my certification from the ITIL course I took last year from version 2.0 to version 3.0. Luckily it's only two nights.

I have a new cunning plan.

Today I'm going to take that beautiful French comedic device known as innuendo and club it over the head like a baby seal. I was looking at the titles of some of the garbage spam emails I've recieved over the past few days, and decided that I am going to start attributing completely innapropriate, but not wholly offensive adjectives, to things in my everyday life.

My Guitar Hero skills are clean shaven and tight.

See what I did there?

The muffin I bought from the restaurant downstairs was 100% rock hard

I could do this all day.

... Is absolutely no fun when you share names with a member of the "blog technocrati elite" and one of the founding members of Greenpeace. Apparently the other living Ben Metcalfe is a bit of a douche.

Why am I posting so much today you might ask? Just feel like it.

Reminder to the new people who are reading this: If you want to read the good stuff, create an account and let me know the account name, so I can add you to my friend list.

I have rolled up three free coffees so far... Anyone winning out there?

Edit - Make that FOUR free coffees. Suck on that!

One thing I noticed when I had my case open a few days ago, was that the power supply was running really hot, so I took a better look and fired the computer up. The inner fan was working, but the hot air outflow fan on the outside of the case was not spinning. I also noticed that it was only fucking 350w and was attempting to run a P4 chip and a nice video card. *sigh*.

So I bought a 700w one yesterday. I installed it last night. Very nice, runs cool and quiet. However, it didn't resolve my problem (that's ok, I didn't suspect it would). I went into the BIOS of my machine, and noticed that the CPU core temperature was 110 farenheit. Holy shit. The case is open, the processor fan is spinning and it's still boiling.

I unplugged everything and decided to take a look at the chip. As soon as I had the intel fan off the chip, I noticed that the thermal compound on it was powder. The heat from the power supply working overdrive must have baked the paste. I am buying some paste to put on the chip at lunch today. Chip looks ok though, so hopefully that will solve all my issues.

I swear to christ that I will never buy a pre-built machine again. The last system I built is like a fucking tank. It's 5 years old, requires next to no maintenance and is going strong.

... but there is nothing more embarrasing than having to meet the gaze of someone who works on the floor of the washroom that you just took a dump in. I almost burst out laughing earlier when some guy from the 12th gave me a dirty "You just shat in our toilet" look.

HULK SMASH!

We bought a cheap upconverting DVD player (to the tune of 70 bucks), and running movies in 1080i is looking really good. To give you an example, watching my DVDs of The Office, you can actually see the camera crew reflected in the glasses of Phyllis and Dwight at certain points in the episodes. You can also read the writing on a lot of the certificates on the walls, which is pretty crazy when you think about the set-building implications of that.

Health is still good. I think I gained a little back (not much), so I need to get my butt in gear and exercise regularly again... Too many things have been popping up lately.

I literally gone from knowing nothing about HDTV and HD in general to knowing quite a bit, in just over a week. We still aren't buying a reciever or a surround sound system just yet. Luckily, neither of us are audiophiles, so it really doesn't matter to us.

Work is good. Not exciting, but not awful.

This is of more interest to Doughboy and Smack, but here are the games I've finished 100% for the 360 now:

Viva Pinata
Mass Effect
Lego Star Wars: TCS

Hopefully I will be adding to this list!

So I've read that the SAG writer's strike could possibly be coming to an end this week.

On TMZ, they announced that the producers and writers union have come to an agreement that should hopefully end the strike by the end of the week.

I'm really hoping a few things. First, is it too late for a second half of the 2007-2008 season? Secondly, when/if these "half-seasons" are released on DVD, are they going to be full-price? I'm pretty sure I already know the an$wer to that one, but I can hope.

I miss The Office. I thought I would miss Heroes more than I actually do, but I think I'm enjoying playing my XBOX most nights more than I miss Peter Petrelli and company.

Most of all, I will be glad to kill this glut of reality shows that are starting to pop-up in the absence of any new episodes of actual television programs.

Here are a few things that have happened since the strike started:

- The Spice Girls reunited.
- The Spice Girls broke up.
- Doug's XBOX died and was replaced.
- Chris's XBOX died and was replaced.
- My XBOX died and was replaced.
- I lost 50 pounds.
- Timbaland songs or collaborations have been played on 99.9 approximately 50 million times.
- Eddie Murphy got married AND divorced.
- Pamela Anderson got divorced twice and married once.
- Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, and Keifer Sutherland did time.
- Britney Spears went completely fucking loco.