28.10.06

DS-X

I'm still waiting for my preferred source to receive his stock of the DS-Xtreme flash card for the Nintendo DS, but until that happens here's a funky video of the card in action with one of its more frivolous features:

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27.10.06

Out and about

So today was the grand opening of the newest casino in the Edmonton area, the River Cree Resort at Enoch. I took a spin over there with my friend Rob and we took a look around and marveled at the place. It's actually quite nice, and has a good variety and amount of gaming there. Like every casino I've been to (save one in Vancouver), it was dominated by slot machines. It's no secret that casinos make the most money from slot machines (despite some of them offering guaranteed payouts in the high 90% range), so that's to be expected.

I didn't look closely enough to see what more esoteric games were available, but there were no shortage of Blackjack or Baccarat tables. I saw one Three Card Poker table and two Craps tables as well, along with a handful or Roulette tables, but I didn't notice things like Pai Gow or Caribbean Stud there. I'd like to think those were represented, but I just didn't see them if they were.

The place has 3 or 4 restaurants, a couple bars, and two ice rinks. I didn't bother to sample the fare since we weren't there for an extended period of time, but it's good to know there are choices nearby (especially considering the place is in the middle of nowhere relative to other commercial operations; there are no nearby fast food places for instance). I can't say I cared for the prices, at least the ones I saw on the menu for the poker room, but nothing was really out of line compared to most sit-down establishments.

As far as poker goes, it was nice to see they had the largest poker room in the area (that I've noticed; I've not yet been to the Yellowhead casino to know if it's any larger), and they also had a nice mix of games going. While they had options such as 1/2 No Limit, 4/8 Half & Half and an uber-cool 6/12 Dealer's Choice, I went to my regular haunt, the 3/6 straight hold'em table. I didn't fare overly well, winning about 4 or 5 pots for the time I was there, but after buying in with $100 and playing for well over 4 hours, I finally left the table with $98, down only $2. It of course would have been nicer to leave when I was up (which I was a couple times, but never more than $35 or so), but it's not often you can spend over 4 hours doing any sort of recreational activity and depart with $2 less than when you began.

Still, there were some definite and serious flaws with the poker room. I'll grant that it's early days yet, being the place had been open for less than 6 hours when I sat at the table, but some of the things wrong were frankly inexcusable even for a new establishment.

Firstly, there was a lack of consistency when it came to new players sitting at the table and whether or not they should post. The rule in play, according to the houseman, is that anyone sitting down needs to post the equivalent of the big blind unless (a) they've come from another table, (b) are sitting in the seat that would otherwise be getting the big blind, or (c) they're sitting under the gun for the next deal. Some people who came to the table wound up posting, and others did not when they should have per the rules. Something as basic as that needs to be enforced and done so consistently.

Next, there was an issue regarding the kill button. There was one pot where the player had won, and it was their second pot in a row. The procedure at most places I've played has been the second pot needs to be $30 or greater (including the rake); the dealer announced kill after shipping the pot to the winner, and I questioned whether or not that was the correct course of action given what I'd seen elsewhere. After conferring with the houseman, the rule there is that as long as the second pot won has a flop, then the kill is live.

Thirdly, the dealers at my table were mostly far too inexperienced and in my eyes received insufficient training. The one male dealer was fine and knew what was going on and how to proceed at all times, but the two female dealers had less of a clue. I'm not gender-bashing here, but when a dealer doesn't know that two cards need to be dealt face-down for Texas Hold'em there's a problem. Other issues were at play as far as procedures, realizing which was the winning hand, and so on as well.

The largest complaint I had was that there were no free beverages in the poker room. It's standard fare (and frankly expected) that you can get up and grab some free coffee or soda in the poker room, but no such things were available at River Cree. There was a nearby bar charging $1.50 for a soda (and I'm not sure how much for a coffee), but that's just not good enough.

Still, it was an enjoyable afternoon out, and while it would have been nice to see Rob fare as well as I did, if not better, I was content with my play and had fun. However, since all I'll play at a casino is poker (although I keep meaning to hit the craps table when I go), I think I'd prefer to stick to Palace Casino at West Edmonton Mall. As I write this, the staff at Palace are on strike (and have been for a while), so I won't go there while the strike action is going on (I'm not overly pro-union, but I've mostly worked union jobs in my life and I respect the rights of the workers). However, when things are settled and back to normal I'd certainly consider going there before I'd consider returning to River Cree.

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24.10.06

Other transpirings

My father, his wife, and my sister, are finally moving. It took what seemed like forever, but their new house is nearly ready. I was over there on Sunday helping to shift some boxes and smaller things that the movers wouldn't be taking. My legs and back are not thanking me for it, but it was a fun day.

My sister's iPod is dying, a little more so every time I ask her about it, so I'd mentioned to her that Futureshop was having a sale Sunday night featuring, among other things, 10% off iPods -- which was reasonably remarkable, as it seems iPods never go on sale. Couple that with there no longer being an educational discount for iPods (which would have been a valid option for Janita as she's at the U of Eh), and I thought it'd be a good time for her to pick up a replacement since her unit is unfortunately out of warranty. Alas, she'd spent the early part of the afternoon at IKEA buying various items and she maxed out her credit card, so an iPod was not in the works for her. Ultimately that might be okay, since the 6th generation, so-called "true video" iPods are quite likely to surface either at MacWorld Expo San Francisco or shortly thereafter. If her iPod lasts another few months then she'd probably be better off with the latest and greatest as a replacement.

That being said, I took the plunge and ordered another iPod for myself. My 4th generation 40GB model is going strong, but even as small as iPods are they can sometimes be cumbersome and seem huge. I've been taking my iPod to poker games and such for a long time now, and I figured that with the Futureshop sale and the sheer size (or lack thereof), it was time to grab an iPod Shuffle. The new version comes out in a week or two, so I preordered one from Futureshop. The upside is it was 10% off; the downside is that you can't elect to pick up preordered items in-store, so I had to spend $2 to have it shipped. Throw the GST in there as well and I've saved all of a buck (versus MSRP) on the unit. Still, with it being so tiny, and with the funky Autofill feature of iTunes, the Shuffle should be a great companion for me when I play poker (be it at the casino or home games), craps at Dave's, whatever. I'll post a mini-review of it when it arrives. I hope I can live with the 1GB capacity, which is very tiny given I'm used to far more space (both now and when I had my original first generation 5GB iPod). I'm thinking that since it's going to be for specialized uses it'll be okay; I doubt I'll need even the 240 (or so) song capacity most times.

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CylonOLantern

My friend Sean mentioned this site to me. If I wasn't so lazy, and actually gave a rat's ass about Halloween, I'd love to build one of those.

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Torchwood

Yesterday saw the premiere of Torchwood, the spinoff from Doctor Who conceived by Russell T. Davies. It was a well-publicised premiere, and BBC3 (an all-digital channel with a narrow subscription base) which aried it saw its best ratings ever with the premiere of the show. So? How was it?

It took a day and a bit for me to finally get around to watching it, mostly because I wanted to avoid dealing with crummy xvids one normally finds on torrent sites and the like. Rather, I waited for nice MPEG-2 versions to surface, and while I didn't actually look at any of the xvids available (despite downloading about half a dozen xvid versions of each of the two episodes), I'm sure the wait was worthwhile. At least, it *always* had been with Doctor Who over the past two seasons.

So, onto the show. Since this is a UK-based show, I can't imagine many people in North America will watch it or care about it. Heck, it's unlikely many (aside from Doctor Who nerds such as myself) have even heard of it. As such, I'm not going to worry about hiding spoiler-ridden remarks.

The show opens with a corpse lying on the ground during a rainy Cardiff night. The police are there, and we meet Gwen Cooper, one of the protaganists of the series. Before long, a group of "special ops" people stop by to overtake the crime scene. Our introduction to Torchwood (at least outside of the events in Doctor Who) is this group of people questioning the corpse after they've revived him. He's got two minutes to live (again, sort of) before expiring (again).

This leads Gwen to wonder what Torchwood is and who these people are. She stumbles upon their secret hideout and eventually learns all she needs to know; however, she's been drugged and is at peril of not remembering anything!

I'll just stop there. This series was hyped a fair bit, not the least of which by the Doctor Who community. I'll grant there are some valid reasons behind the hype: The action scenes are good, the music is fairly decent (if a little overused), and there are some neat twists to each of the characters that make you want to learn more about them. The show was billed as an adult (read: non-kiddie) series, unlike Doctor Who, with grown-up themes and such. Well, so far it seems far more like a soap opera with the addition of action scenes and whizzy helicopter shots and what not. The series (already!) is oozing with sexual innuendo and plenty of adult situations. There's a very good reason this is on at 10:00pm. Still, all that might be a little too much. It might be too heavy-handed in a series that really ought to be about Torchwood, an organization spawned by Queen Victoria whose mandate is to deal with whatever alien technology falls to the Earth in order to defend the planet. All that (already!) seems to be secondary to the series.

Russell T. Davies likes his sexual humour and innuendo. I'm not sure if it's due to him growing up gay and feeling the need to repress sexual feelings in his youth, or if it's just a puerile tendency he has in general. He also likes to copy things, and wow are there ever a load of copied things in here. Some of it I'm sure can be chalked up to coincidence or strange timing, but not all of it. A couple examples are one of the main characters going to a bar and copping off with a man and a woman at the same time (with the character of course being bisexual). Well, this has happened on "Rescue Me," Denis Leary's wonderful series on FX, already; a second example is the series of cells in the basement of the top-secret HQ of an off-the-books organization which is remarkably similar to the short-lived CBS series "Threshold" with the yummy Carla Gugino.

I'll keep watching the series, if for no other reason than I dig the Captain Jack character, and have since the very first appearance of him last year on Doctor Who, as well as I'm curious to see what Doctor Who references are thrown about in Torchwood. For starters, the first episode had three distinct references that I noticed: the mention of where the TARDIS landed, the mention of the rift in Cardiff, and the mention of the Cybermen at Canary Wharf. The second episode only had one further reference that I caught, which was a framed picture of the original Torchwood property seen in the Doctor Who episode "Tooth and Claw."

I've been quick to pick on the series, and I think rightly so (especially given how long series tend to last nowadays, with so many of them never getting past 3-4 episodes; in other words, you get in the habit of striking early since there may not be a later). At the very least, we know 13 episodes will air on BBC3, so that leaves a fair amount of time for things to improve, and I'm very hopeful the show can change my mind by the end of the first series. Goodness knows Doctor Who got better by the end of the first series, considering "Rose" was among the three crappiest episodes in my ranking of the new series. (For the curious, the other two of the three crappiest of the crappy were The Christmas Invasion and New Earth... and no, it's really no coincidence that all three of the worst three were penned by Russell T. Davies. And no, I don't completely hate his work as I rank The End of the World and Army of Ghosts among the top episodes of the new series.)

If all else fails, at least we get to watch the scrumptious Eve Myles, who'd give a dog a bone (to borrow a phrase), and has done so since her early appearance in Doctor Who. Shame about the teeth, but pobody's nerfect.

Oh, and as a final note, it's prognostication time: I'm guessing the severed hand so worriedly guarded by Jack in episode 2 is the Doctor's severed hand from The Christmas Invasion.

(The best line so far: Owen Cooper talking about "rat jam" - I laughed my ass off at that one.)

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21.10.06

Battle-frackin'-star Galactica

I just finished watching the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica (season 3, episode 4). The short version of my response to it is WOW. What an episode. The thing had everything: It was an emotional rollercoaster, there were some winks to the past, and we got some serious plot progression out of the way (with some interesting new plot points begun).

In the interest of mitigating damage, I'll be hiding the spoiler-ridden remarks below. Highlight the space to see the words.

-- BEGIN SPOILERS --

This episode almost brought tears to my eyes with some of what went on. The homage to Living Legend (Part 2) from the original series was fantastic and slightly unexpected. I expected the Pegasus to jump in to aid Galactica against the Cylon Base Ships, but Apollo's remark of going between the Base Ships choked me up when it made me flash back to Lloyd Bridges doing the same thing 28 years ago. I was very, very sad to see the Pegasus get destroyed, especially since I thought the events at the end of Living Legend were so poignant, and this episode strayed from that resolution. In Living Legend, the fate of the Pegasus is unknown at the end... and while I always thought (back in the day) it might show up again, Battlestar Galactica was cancelled (for all intents and purposes) and we never knew what happened to Cain and his ship. All that being said, perhaps it's not such a terrible trade-off to have the Pegasus get destroyed since it meant the demise of two Base Ships. Plus, the name of the series does contain the word "Galactica," not the word "Pegasus" after all.

The effects shots of the Galactica jumping intra-atmosphere and launching the Vipers, then jumping away, were phenomenal. It looked so damn cool I watched that 45-second sequence about 6 times before moving past that point in the episode. From a dramatic perspective, it was wonderful to see that sequence. It was also a really cool action sequence with Galactica fighting time and gravity to pull off the risky gambit.

As for the rest of the story, it wasn't much of a leap to learn that Starbuck's child wasn't hers after all. Given the timeline of the series there simply isn't enough time to have a child of that age come from any genetic material that may have been taken from her at the farm we saw in early season 2. One could put forth the argument that perhaps genetic engineering was in play by accelerating the gestation or something similar, but it seems unlikely such technology would be in the hands of the Cylons. Even if it were, and they were constructing a hybrid child, I would think they'd let "nature" take its course and have it develop properly and in its own time given they would both have no idea how to engineer such a creation, as well as it would be blasphemous under their religion to play God.

It was also initially unclear (at least to me, and probably deliberately unclear in general) as to whether or not Tigh killed Ellen. One gets the impression he did considering what was said to him by Anders, but ultimately the point is moot as to whether he killed her or simply drugged her as she was left to die on New Caprica if she was indeed simply drugged. I'm not sad to see the character go as I always found her more annoying than anything (especially in episodes such as "Sacrifice").

It will be interesting to see what happens with Baltar... presumably he and Caprica are staying on New Caprica with whatever Cylon force remains behind with Hera. Or, if the Cylons are going to be leaving (which ultimately seems more likely, if for no other reason than to continue chasing Galactica), presumably he'll go with them just as the Colicos version of the character did in the original series.

PROGNOSTICATION: I predict a Hera storyline will form the basis of either the season 3 mid-season cliffhanger, or the overall season 3 cliffhanger.

Lastly, while I'm sure it will happen sooner than later (either in the opening credits, on the whiteboard as before, or being overtly stated), I thought it would have been nice to see or have announced a population count at the end of the episode. That would have shown just how bad an idea Baltar had by mandating migration from the ships to the planet at the end of series 2, and been the basis of Laura's actions in her next term of office. Nonetheless, that information will be known soon enough. It would have just fit nicely and "felt right" being stated at the end of this episode.

It's just nice to be done with the New Caprica storyline. I wasn't a fan of it before, and the 6 episodes we had of it were more than enough in my books. Still, this was easily the best epsiode of this young season. I can hardly wait for the next 6 episodes before the show goes on hiatus.

-- END SPOILERS --

So, for those reading the spoiler segment, there you go. There are my thoughts. For those skipping over the spoiler segment because you haven't seen the episode (or don't care for the series), well, here we are.

A job well done Ron Moore & co. Keep it up.

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ding ding, ding ding

I've just been yapping on AIM with my friend Tom who's sent me an mp3 of "Psyche Rock" as remixed by Fatboy Slim. While I think somewhere along the line I'd heard the album from which the track came ("The Norman Cook Collection"), I don't particularly recall that song.

Once I hit play in iTunes it was like a flood of love, hearing what some (according to Google searches) consider the insipration for the Futurama theme tune. I have no idea which came first (what I did find says that Pierre Henry did the original tune in 1964), but as a huge Futurama fan it was a blast to listen to it.

One other thing: Thank goodness for YouTube!

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20.10.06

Smallville

Is it just me, or is Smallville really, really getting good again? It was so lackluster for so long (it was somewhat trying getting through the Season 5 DVDs over the past couple weeks), but the whole Green Arrow/Justice League buildup is getting good. The whole Lana going bad thing is getting good. Lex being even more duplicitous is getting good. The Chloe/Jimmy arc I don't much care for, but only for reasons of jealousy (damn that Aaron Ashmore!).

Mind you, it still baffles me as to why Aaron Ashmore was cast as Jimmy when his twin brother was a villain in an earlier episode. Can casting in the Vancouver area be getting that desperate already? We've already got (at least) two crossover actors between Battlestar Galactica and Smallville (one far more minor than t' other). At least, that's just in season 5! There are no doubt others I've either not noticed or about which I've already forgotten. Not to mention the plethora of other series produced in the area, all dipping in pretty much the same casting pool.

The season 6 opener bothered me a lot, considering the 5th season was spent building and building and building on the Zod story line, and then we get a crappy Russell T. Davies, wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am deus ex machina end in a hurry. It was such a let down. However, some of the things introduced in that same episode (Raya, the phantom zone, etc.) will at least come back into play heavily in this season, and if done correctly can be very interesting plot points. At least, let's hope it's done right.

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RIP Habeus Corpus

As a followup to my earlier post about the Military Commissions Act recently passed in the US, interested parties might want to check out this very well-written rebuttal to the legislation from Keith Olbermann of MSNBC if you haven't already done so. [Quicktime Format]

Now, I'm willing to and freely do admit I'm a right wing voter. Were I an American citizen/resident, I could never see myself among the members of the ACLU. However, this still freaks me out to no end. I've said to various people on various occasions in the past how I am so very glad to not be an American (citizen, resident, sympathizer). Outlandish acts like this reinforce that feeling to an extreme degree.

I particularly like Olbermann's closing, where he pontificates about this legislation being used against Bush in the future. Poetic justice would never be so well-defined as it would be should that happen.

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White 'n Nerdy

Courtesy Warren, there's a nice article on the success and staying power of "Weird Al" Yankovic, who has very much been a favourite of mine since I was a child. I can vividly remember borrowing LP after LP of his stuff from the public library, borrowing cassettes from friends, buying albums, and so on. I used to laugh my ass off at his material when I was younger, especially at a group outing (for Narbo's birthday one year) to UHF when it hit theatres back in 1989. That was one of the first movies I remember nearly memorizing, and I still quote it to death these days.

A number of weeks ago I was listening to the commentaries for season 8 of The Simpsons, amongst which was the Mr. Sparkle episode. Gedde Watanabe played a very minor role in that episode (he was the english-speaking person at the Mr. Sparkle factory who spoke with Homer on the telephone). The writers on the commentary expressed great joy at being able to work with him as he also played The Donger (Long Duk Dong) in John Hughes' Sixteen Candles in the mid-80's. While I clearly remember that role, and love it, I'll always remember him as Kuni no matter what other work of his I see. Even now I can't get the red snapper scene out of my mind.

So today I went to crib with the retired members of my uncle's union and in no time flat got my butt kicked by geriatric after geriatric. I'm not a fan of losing in the least, and even though the tournament is meant to be fun, I still get irked if I don't finish in the money. I can accept it (albeit reluctantly) if I at least break even for wins (4 wins out of the 8 games), but today my partner and I could only muster 3 wins. After coming in first overall last time (to the tune of over $50 profit, yay), one gets accustomed to doing well. Still, realistically, one should not expect to get paid given there are 26 teams playing and only 4 places paid. I got very few decent hands (about as many as I got nothing, which I suppose is good as that meant I got nothing very little) and that certainly doesn't help, but although I said nothing at the time, I was a little bothered by my partner playing rather poorly in a lot of spots (not paying attention to the count and playing cards that were inappropriate, leading into far too many runs and other silly situations such as playing a 3 after a 9 was led, etc.). We're none of us perfect, and frankly I made a big blunder by missing 4 points for a run in the first game (which at least we won so that wasn't a huge deal), but still, one should really focus on what you're doing. After all, if it was all for fun, why would we keep score?

After that, I came home with a headache and had to lay down for a while before I went over to Rob's place to help him move some furniture around. A few days ago I'd promised his girlfriend I'd lend a hand as she's not able to move things being 8 months pregnant, so I was over there for a few hours moving things around. It was mostly unpleasant as I'm far too out of shape to be doing much heavy lifting and shifting of couches and desks and dressers and such, but the sucky part was the bickering and fighting going on between Rob and Gail. Oh well, things happen I suppose. Still, we got things as complete as possible given there are pending events yet to happen (the buying of new couches, for instance). So, no more of that sort of thing needs to be done for now.

At least the day is over now and I can relax and hopefully watch Smallville from earlier tonight. It would have been a nicer day if Ottawa had won their game against the Avs, but at least the Cards beat the Mets in the NLCS (I find it hard to root for New York-based teams for any sport). The NHL season is still very young, but it's highly disappointing to see the Sens sitting in next-to-last in the Northeast Division. I hope they pull their socks up on Saturday against the Devils. Hell, the Oilers are running a close second to Minnesota in their division, and they'd probably be faring better if the Wild weren't one of only two teams with a (still) perfect record.

Oh well. There's still lots of time for the Sens to pick up the slack and do some damage. I just hope the loss of Chara and Havlat isn't too large for them to be a contender. That being said, I still think it was a dumb move for the Sens to let Chara go to a division rival as that could damage them more than if he had gone to say a Western Conference team (like Havlat did), but it is what it is.

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18.10.06

I'm scared

This is an article I just read which freaks the hell out of me. The end result isn't what scares me so much as the fact such legislation can go through the various levels of government and reach Bush to sign into law. Rumsfeld as (essentially) the spot where the buck stops when it comes to (quite probable) overzealous interrogation and investigation? That guy would smile from ear to ear while pulling the wings off a fly. Something is very, very rotten with this new legislation.

If nothing else, it would be fantastically easy to whisk away a presumed "terrorist" to somewhere off US soil so that these "limitations" outlined in the legislation don't even apply (which seems to make this legislation at least partially moot!). The military could literally get away with murder (no comment as to the likely fact they already do). I can't even really bear to think about the ramifications this could have while the US remains at war, yet complacency is not the answer.

Anyway, in happier news, today Apple announced a $546M profit for the most recent fiscal quarter, with (yet to be adjusted) profits of $0.62/share. It's always wonderful to see the company succeed despite recent woes (the FoxConn iPod factory findings, the options scandal, iPod virii, etc.). I don't think I've been a happier computing type guy since I finally divested myself of my Windows PC and went back to an all-Mac setup. Now if only there was a way to score a free 24" iMac. Mmmm.... better-than-true-HD-resolution...

I, like a lot of Apple fans, was worried last year when the Intel switch was announced. However, I'm glad to say it was quite possibly the best thing Apple has ever done in its efforts to shill the Mac. That's a hard thing to say given I went through the birth of System 7, the demise of Copland (though I still have some way-cool developer materials on Copland from an old MacWorld), the PowerPC transition, the Mac OS X transition, and the death of Classic as a Mac user. More to the point, i lub my MacBook Pro. So sexy, oh so sexy, and oh so fast. Go Apple!

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15.10.06

Way past bedtime

It's after 4am as I begin to write this, but I would like to get something going with this thing, and the only way to do that is to actually sit down and write something. So, with nothing better to talk about, I'll run down my day. It was actually one of those few days where I did something other than laze around and watch movies or the like.

After I got up and ate, I watched last night's Battlestar Galactica. I was highly disappointed at how the second season ended, moreso after watching it again on DVD, but I'm starting to like the New Caprica thread that was introduced (now that it's getting fleshed out a little bit). I'm on the edge of my seat to see what happens next, although there's a good chance I can guess what's going to happen (at least in part), if for no other reason than there are only so many ways this plot line can play out.

After that, I grabbed the iPod and the MacBook Pro (after spending 3-4 hours reinstalling Windows XP, updates, Office, etc. last night) and trundled off to Dave's place. I didn't want to bring the laptop, but I was meeting Paul there and we had sort of talked about maybe playing some Rise of Legends over there. I guess Dave recently got a new video card (GeForce 6600), which was a good thing as his machine ran RoL like crap the last time I was over there with Paul and our respective MacBooks. Alas, although I didn't see RoL in action, Dave said the new video card wasn't much better than what he had before (whatever that was... I don't remember what the old card was, and I didn't ask). As it turned out, I should have listened to myself and left the MacBook at home as we never did get around to playing any RoL. We did, however, play craps for a while. Rob H. was also there, and with Dave playing croupier the three of us proceeded to battle it out for play dough at Dave's craps table. Initially all of us had a good early run, myself more than doubling the initial stake (which is something that rarely happens for me... I tend to play conservatively and never fare overly well), Paul making a bit, and Rob cleaning up on Paul's 6 successive 7's coming out, laying big money on Big Red and getting paid big time. Starting with a $100 (play money) stake apiece, Rob quickly ran his stack up to over $2500 before giving most of that back on some unfortunate rolls (made by all of us). By the time we stopped playing, I had broken even, Paul was up about $500, and Rob was up a little over $700. I took over the dealer role for a bit so Dave could play, but he blew his wad in a short amount of time, making him the loser overall I guess.

So, after that, we settled in to some GameCube action. Since buying a 360 half a year ago, I've barely touched my Cube, so it was nice to revisit some games. We started with Super Smash Bros. Melee, a game I never really cared for, but after some embarassing deaths I eventually won a few matches in a row to salvage something out of the experience. The biggest thing to know about that is to not play Dr. Mario, as he royally sucks. So, after the Melee action, a few matches of Mario Power Tennis came about, with Paul and I versus Dave and Rob. Save a few games, Paul and I cleaned up, ultimately not losing a single set. After that, Rob left for a date, and Paul and his girlfriend Soonil (who came by later) headed out, so Dave and I broke out the Donkey Konga and bongoed it up for a good couple of hours. Thanks to me, he's now finished off the gold status for Duet Chimp mode. We tried to make some similar headway for Gorilla, but failed miserably. I don't think we got a single Gorilla song done on gold. Oh well. It'd been a while since I'd played the game, and I still have my touch.

After all that, I headed home (catching some good luck with timing and buses), grabbed some supper, and settled in to some more TV. I had a back episode of the Professional Poker Tour to watch, so I watched it; as well, Warren (a friend from way back when) and his buddy released their latest Doctor Who podcast, a commentary for the series 2 finale, so I gave that a listen (mainly as an excuse to rewatch the episode). I still don't overly care for the episode, but their commentary was enjoyable. I wound up going on a bit of a tirade on Warren's blog about some things they brought up, but it was all meant well.

So, after that, and after finishing off some downloads (the latest week of Corrie, yay!), I've arrived here, and now that that's happened, it's time to crash.

hasta la vista

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14.10.06

Friday the 13th

Just setting this thing up.

I had a blog, briefly, about 3 1/2 years ago and never really followed through with it. I figured I shall try it again just for fun and see what happens.

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