Some Ones and Zeros

This is post number 100 in my blog. A small milestone. It's more amazing I've actually kept this up since March;-)

Some more ones and zeros as well: Our department lottery pool won $1000 on the extra in friday's Super 7 draw. With 17 people that doesn't equal a lot of money each, but it's definitely better than a kick in the pants. My Vision Credit coworker is also in another pool and they got 6 of the 7 numbers and won around $3000 I believe. With only 7 in that pool he's doing pretty good.

I picked up Guitar Hero II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_Hero_II and http://www.guitarherogame.com) for the PS2 on saturday while we were doing some shopping at Walmart. I don't know why I've waited so long to pick up the game as it is a lot of fun. The game comes with a guitar controller that's styled after a Gibson SG (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson_SG), a strap and some stickers. The idea behind the game is fairly simple. Five different colour notes scroll towards you on the screen and you have to hit the corresponding coloured notes on your guitar controller and "strum" the guitar at the appropriate time. Do it right and you'll be rocking out. Do it wrong and you'll here lots of annoying noise and the audience will start to boo.

So far I've played it mostly on easy which only uses three of the five "notes". On easy I've made it up to the "Furious Fretwork" section where I managed to make it through Anthrax's "Madhouse" but not without some mess ups. I did decide to start playing only on medium as of yesterday and that will keep me occupied for a while. My favorite songs to play so far are "Carry On Wayward Son" by Kansas, "Woman" by Wolfmother and "Cherry Pie" by Warrant.

Overall it's a very fun game and I've had trouble wiping the grin off my face when I play. Marla doesn't mind it either since she likes a lot of the songs on the game, which means I can play it with the volume turned up (which of course is needed when you're rocking out). One of the cool little features is using your "Star Power" by putting the guitar vertical and shaking it. Or if you're working through a faster section by just pressing the select button.

For a closing shot, this is the controller. The only difference is mine has a red body instead of the white.

I also purchased another game called Okami in which you play the part of a Japanese god in the body of a white wolf. I'll write about that one in a later post. Below is a screen shot of the character you play (Amaterasu).

First Curling Win!

WooHoo! We won our first curling game on friday 10-3. I figured we were off to a bad start being down 3 in the first end but it just clicked after that. I could attribute it to my early set up as lead, but that would be stretching it a bit. I made some good shots though if I do say so myself. The only time I messed up was when listening to my skip ;-) I saw where he wanted the rock and then when he signalled to do an in turn I was confused on how the rock was supposed to get where he wanted it. It was a mix up of course and he had meant for me to do an out turn. Again, I was doing what my skip told me to do =)

Other than that the weekend was a lazy one. I'm still not 100% but feeling better than I did on friday. Still have some aches and pains which I'm thinking is still that flu hanging on. We finally got around to watching Ice Age 2: the Meltdown on saturday night. It was quite entertaining... but then again Marla and I like watching the CGI animated movies., so it may not be in everyone's tastes.

The Nintendo Wii seems to be selling extremely well still. Toys R Us was getting a shipment in for Saturday and I had thought about seeing if I could pick one up. That changed however when I read on a local forum that there were already people in line up at 11:30 pm the night before. Two guys sold their spots in line for $400 each. Personally I would do that if I was there as well. Just wait a month or so and they will be readily available. The Playstation 3 is available if you know where to look as well. Perhaps when it takes a price cut I'll look at getting one.

I finished up Stephen King's latest paperback offering this weekend as well. Cell is an ok novel but felt a little short and almost incomplete. The idea behind the story is that a "pulse" is sent out over cell phones and any one using a cell phone has their brain "erased". Initially people are raving mad, killing and destroying anything they see. Eventually they evolve into something different. We're never told who initiated the "pulse" and the ending is almost a cliff hanger. It would have made a better short story in a collection than a novel by itself. If I had to compare it to another King story it would be The Long Walk, although that story is much better. Either way, it's a good read to pass a night or two if you're a Stephen King fan.

I'm still sick. I believe I may have a touch of bronchitis, but I'm not sure as I'm not coughing. Just some chest discomfort in my tracheal area and I can feel some mucus... Mmmmm... mucus. I have an appointment with the doctor tomorrow to see if I can get some meds to get over this as it's been over two weeks now.

The basement work has come to a standstill as of late. I'm in the position where I don't really know what to do when it comes to building bulkheads and my father in law has been busy with other work. Our Christmas target isn't going to be met so I'm aiming for the end of January now.

Other than that I'm here at work this work for the late shift (9:30 to 6pm). Nothing really happens after 5 pm anywho so it's basically an hour to do productive work like write in this blog and listen to some music on my ipod.;-) The only thing that I don't like about it is that it's so quiet here in the office from about 4:50 to when I leave. I'm most likely one of two to four people here after 5 this week. It's not so bad since I only have to do it every 10 weeks.

Since I haven't posted up any video game pictures in a while, here's one from GT4 that I recently completed. The car is a Mercedes McLaren SLR. The real world car retails for around $450,000 US and has a top speed of 209 mph. If I ever won a large lottery I would definitely get one=) This picture had a motion blur added and the colour tone changed to a nice blue (well duh, you can see that right).