Crying People, Security, Teeth, Awesome...

OHMYGOODNESSINEEDTOWRITESOMETHING...

Lots has happened in the three months since I posted, I went on a road trip to Waterloo with a bunch of moderately cool people, I went on another road trip to Toronto with more moderately cool people, and also my Wisdom teeth are being stupid and I hate them forever.

First, Waterloo. A bunch of my buddies and I were going down to Waterloo to see Tuesdays with Morrie. George and I shared a car, thankfully nobody else was there, considering that we started singing spontaneously to Journey and Queen.


George really enjoys speeding, while Google Maps said that the trip would take approximately two and a half hours, we got to Waterloo in, like... an hour... it was awesome.

The play was being put on at Wilfrid Laurier University, which made me particularly happy because that's where a certain awesome person goes to school. Do you know who that is? FREAKING TONY DOOM! Yuss, that's right, we reunited for the first time since high school, it was great!

So after Tony arrived we all went to see the play, it was a low budget performance but it had very talented actors.

When it was over, I looked at my entire group and noticed that they were all crying, except for me. Steve took the liberty to tell me that I had the emotional range of a teaspoon. So after I spent around and hour wondering if I'm a robot or not, we loaded back into our cars and drove home.

So that was Waterloo, now I want to share my trip to Toronto.

Last weekend I went to the Art Gallery of Ontario with a classmate of mine and a couple of her friends, it didn't take me long to get approached by Security.

So, I was in the Renaissance section taking pictures of Jesus and some Security guy comes up behind me, this is the conversation I had with him, near verbatim:

Security: Sir, I'm sorry but photography isn't allowed.
Me: It's ok, there's no flash, it won't ruin it.
Security: No, it's a copyright issue.
Me: ...Sir, it's Jesus. You can't copyright Jesus.
Security: The artwork cannot be photo-
Me: (I place my hand on his shoulder) Jesus is for everyone...
Security: Sir, stop taking pictures, or you will be escorted out of the building.
Me: ...fine.

SO THAT WAS FUN!

After that, I went around and saw a lot of great artworks.

I saw Massacre of the Innocents by Rubens, Adam and The Thinker by Rodin, but the reason I was there was to see the Tutankhamen exhibit.

They didn't have the actual Mummy there, but they had a large amount of treasure from his tomb, including his Death Mask...

So that was fun, I got my Mom a present and I have yet to give it to her. I'll give you, the reader, a hint as to what it is...

It's a Gun.

Wow, I kind of gave that away. Geez...

ANYWAY!

So a few days ago, my Wisdom teeth started giving me trouble, the gum came off the top of one of them and it's just flappin' around in there like a flappy gum. I went to the Dentist and I was told that I have an abscess in the Wisdom Tooth the bottom two are impacted. So I'm probably gonna have to have them removed soon, until then I am gargling with Saltwater and hating every second of it. Saltwater is nasty.

So that's the update, I'll probably update when I get my Wisdom teeth pulled and want to whine about not being able to talk.

New Year, new... stuff...

Eeeeeyup. It's a new year, not just any new year though, it's the tenth year after all the computers in the world borked. Now under the rule of an army of Sentient Mutant Toothbrushes, a few brave souls still send messages from the dark abyss that we were banished to by the Iron-fisted Colgates (the Bolsheviks of hygiene), these brave souls are known as Bloggers. Are our messages heard by others? We do not know, but still we press on, working laptops at the ready, with the drive and ability to blog about important things like... toothbrushes.

But I digress...

So! 2010, Two-thousand ten, how about that. Some of you who are still new to awesomeness still pronounce it that way. However, friends, I must urge you all to join this radical new movement, and not radical in the traditional sense, but radical in the sense that what I'm about to tell is like, totally rad, bro.

We must all pronounce 2010 "Twenty-ten." Why do this? Well, for one it's awesome. It sounds futuristic! It sounds like we all have future cars and eat future food, and give future high-fives. FROM THE FUTURRRRRE!

For further reasoning, I direct your attention to this comic by the great K.C. Green (Mom, Dad, don't read his comics):

Click for a bigger version

I feel futuristic already, like I'm in a dystopian future where I'm a rogue blogger on the run from the Toothbrush Future-Police. I don't know why I'm talking about toothbrushes, and I apologize for that.

I'm gonna lay down now.

Together again...

This smell... it smells familiar. It smells like Internet! Come to me, friend, we shall party 'til we're purple!

Some of you may know that I recently had hardware problems involving my Laptop's AC adapter, 'twas a cold Thursday evening in my Oracle SQL class and my vulcanized adapter was loosing it's vulcanny grip upon the cable that connected to my laptop allowing it to charge. Eventually through the class I realized I was running off of battery power and the cable had shorted out.

So by this time, I was all like...


I was rocked to my very core. It was like I tripped on the sidewalk, and then a Hobo came up and took my pants, and then another Hobo came up and kicked my in my bathing suit area, and then I got a ticket from the Police for indecent exposure, and then my Mom had to bring me a fresh pair of pants but she yelled out "I love you, my little Bubala" in the middle of the jail. My prisoner buddies laughed at me... especially the Jewish ones.

So I have gone for around a week without Lil' Jim to comfort me from the cold harsh unfeeling World around me, but I still had hope! I had... Lil' lil' Jim. My iPod. He had access to the internet for a short while, until he eventually ran out of battery to the point where he couldn't even play music.

I had only one connection to the internet left, and luckily for me it was entirely self sufficient, it had it's own charging cable and everything, it didn't require my laptop for power. I am talking about my trusty Nintendo DS. Unfortunately for me, the DS browser is like the Eragon movie. It's not very good. At all.

So! Eventually my new Adapter came in the mail since Staples doesn't sell it anymore, I plug it in and it works! So now I'm all like...


Ah, my Internets have come back to me.

Excuse me while I cough on your face. SPAGHETTI!!!

I am like.... soooooo sick right now. I will probably regret writing a post while sick considering that I have no idea what I'm writing and I'm pretty sure there's a Yak behind me. Yak. That's a funny word. Yak. Yak. Yak..... Yaaaaaaaaaaak. HA! It's like I'm talking a lot but it's also a fuzzy animal. Perhaps the two are related!

This is my Yak. His name is Donny. He talks a lot.

NEWS! I have that! Would you like to hear about some news perchance? Ok, I'll share with you my many secret newses.

First off, Apple is releasing a new mouse to release their old Mighty Mouse that nobody seemed to like all that much. The main thing about this one is that it is the first mouse in the world to support Multi-touch. It seems really interesting, then again I was hallucinating during the video, so unless the new Magic Mouse is actually edible, then I'm not impressed anymore. Watch the demo video here.

Speaking of Multi-touch, Windows 7 will be landing tomorrow and I am the most excited person. Mostly because Vista is giving me BSOD's whenever I breathe improperly, but also because the Gnome sitting on my shoulder won't shut up about how much better it is than Vista. Apparently he Dual boots 7 and Vista so it's easier to compare.

Travelocity Spokesman, Tech Geek, Friend.

ALSO! I have gotten a package in the mail! I shall upload a video of my opening it as soon as I get it. I warn you all, it is rad.

UPDATE: I have recorded the video and I am now posting it for your viewing pleasure!

Adventures in being Me: Royal Ontario Museum!

SO! Hiatus, eh? Yeah, pretty big one too.

So what have I done since I posted last? Well, for one I saw Zombieland with Stevey C twice! It was a great movie, I won't be reviewing it, just take a look down at Steve's oh so comprehensive and satisfying post on it below this one.

Even more exciting than that though is the fact that I went to see the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Royal Ontario Museum! Here is my quick summary of my trip to see them.

First off, my Father and I were loaded onto a bus that consisted of 98 percent old people, so there were a lot of bathroom breaks. We had to divert off course a number of times to find service stations so that these... weathered folk could relieve themselves. Seriously though, they should have brought some gallon jugs with them or something, or at least rented a bus with a hole in it, I'd be OK with that.

The bus we were on was a shuttle bus, not exactly meant for long trips, these are the seats that my father and I sat in.

Slightly cramped. Yeah, that's the way to describe it.

Here's a picture of my Dad and myself on the bus, having the time of our lives!

Nice hangin' with you, Dad.

Altogether, this trip was great, and I enjoyed myself, even though the swag was insanely overpriced.

GALLERY!

Dead Sea Scrolls ROM

And to top it off, here's a compilation of most of the videos I took while I was there. Yes, I know I'm an idiot.

It seemed like a normal day...

Ladies, Gentlemen, Alaskans, I have momentous news to report to all of you. So momentous in fact, that I must convey the entire story to you in the only way I know how, with words. Lots of 'em.

Yesterday around two o'clock in the afternoon, I had been charged with reading chapter two in my textbook for my ASP.NET class which just so happened to be nearly seventy pages long. I had been reading all day, since I had completely forgotten about it until the day I had that class. Eventually, though my manliness had kept me going for a very long time, I grew hungry. I went to the lobby to the vending machine to purchase a bar of Candy, perhaps one made of chocolate in a bar shape.

You seem to meet the requirements.

This is where the magic happens.

Perhaps the planets aligned, or I simply garnered favor with Talnuhk'thal, King of the Vending Machines and caused this event to take place. Yes friends, the stuff of legend, confirmed! In one clean swoop, two bar shaped chocolate candy thingies fell from that row of bar shaped chocolate candy thingies! I am surely blessed to have experienced such an event, let alone to be the recipient.

It is an honor.

So because all this took place, I was able to finish reading my chapter and get to class worry free. I feel like a superhero!

Proposed costume

Aaaand now I have to read two chapters for my class at 5:30 today. I best get started.

I'll be your tourguide for today...

Well friends, I am now back in my humble abode inside the deep cavernous walls of my College Dormitory. After hours of hard labor, back-breaking last minute pants shopping, and and one pizza later, I am now settled down and ready for my final year here at Lambton College.

I know what you're thinking, you want to see some pictures, right? Well don't go anywhere! Strap in because this parties gonna get started right now! Here is a small gallery showing the entirety of my Dorm Room.

Here is a picture of my bed:

Here's a picture of my new Roommate Sean! He's a pretty cool guy:

This is a picture of my closet, notice how clean and organized it is:

This is our hand-washing station, some would call it a sink, but we here at Lambton college are intellectuals, we only drink carbonated beverages, and only water comes out of it:


This one is a picture of our kitchen area, consisting of our Microwave and mini fridge, you can kind of see it over my shoulder:

Finally, here's a picture of my bathroom, it's quite nice, I was thinking about doing a mirror shot, but that's far too Myspace for me:

Well, that's all for now, I imagine now that I'm back at school, I might have either more or less to write about, we'll see how it goes.

Adventures in being Me: Tazers and Fonts edition!

OK FINE, I'LL POST SOMETHING! Geez...

Last Thursday, if you were paying attention to my Twits, you'd know that I went to the Hospital to have my wrist looked at, I thought I might have had Carpal tunnel, but I have since learned that that is not the case, I'm just a whiny little baby. ANYHOO...

Before I went to the Hospital, my doctor had told me that the Xrays on my wrist came back saying there was no danger of Carpal Tunnel, instead there was a slight deformity in the part where a fracture healed up, here's a diagram:

Normal wrist

My wrist

There's nothing wrong with my wrist, but an appointment was already previously made to go to the Hospital for a Nerve Conduction Test on September 3^rd.

So I went there, got to the waiting room, and not soon after I was called. The nice lady had me take my watch off and she measure and marked all over my hands with a black pen, I felt like I was being vandalized. This is where it gets interesting.

She then dabbed gel on two points on my wrist and pulled out a machine that resembled the thing the guy zapped the tiny dinosaur with in the second Jurassic Park movie before the tiny dinosaur's buddies ate him. I couldn't find a picture of it, but here's something that came up when I googled “Jurrasic Park Taser”

She placed it on my nerve and fired it up, it felt like when a doctor would hit your knee with that little hammer to make it kick, except that it was electric, and I'm a whiny little baby.

Nerve Conduction Test in action

She did that a few more times in a number of places all to find out that my nerves are perfect. Awesome.

So that was my Thursday. Let's end this on a lighter and more interesting note. I found this site while perusing one my my favorite sites Lifehacker. Fontcapture allows you to create a custom font using a sample of your handwriting. I did it, and my coolness dictates that you must now do it too in order to stay cool or become cool.

Ok, So Apparently I'm the Computer Whisperer...

My Ubuntu PC is back up and running. Pretty crazy.

All I had to do was switch the plugs and all of a sudden, it turns on. It's like a Zombie or something. So, with this startling revelation, a question arises: Should I kill it?

Sure it's fully functioning, just like it was before the lightning storm except now it goes by the name Ubuntu PC McZombieface, or some variation of that. I've read the Zombie Survival Guide, as well as World War Z and the Ninja Handbook for good measure, so I think that whether I decide to keep using it, or destroy it, I'll be prepared to go either way, so... yeah.

Now I'm kind of upset, I can't replace it anymore.

No more Chromes…

Friends, a lightning storm just claimed the artificial life of my Ubuntu PC. It just sits there now, like a paperweight. The post below this contains a screenshot taken around an hour before the incident.

Being an eMachine, it becomes obvious that this computer came from humble roots. Most likely, it’s origin was somehow related to Wal-Mart, and it is uglier than sin, but inside was a proverbial heart of gold (read: Silicon).

Lil’ Jim II (as we shall call it), came into my household with the attitude that it wasn’t gonna let those other computers push it around just because it’s system specifications weren’t exactly up to date. At all. It was from around, oh say, 2003 probably.

Barely being able to run Windows XP, new life was breathed into it with the installation of Ubuntu 8.04, which ran without a hitch (until today). Sure, it was noisy, made click sounds that I only heard from my old Windows 3.1 desktop, but hey, it worked.

While it may have been old and crippled from the beginning, not a single thing could ever replace it. So rest in peace, Lil’ Jim II.

 

Stop looking at me like that…

In Memoriam...

Before I head off to Camp until next Sunday, I thought I should post that the nice man caring for Lil' Jim has just told me that the internal Wireless card is officially fried. The only way for Lil' Jim to communicate with the outside world is to strap him to life support... or wireless support, or something.

Well, like a good Mother (don't read into that), I shall still care for it no matter how many appendages are broken by it's own Mother (once again, don't read into that), serviced and declared dead.

I'll be grabbin' up a wireless card and continuing on like there's nothing wrong. Though, in the spirit of denial, I shall try one last thing to see if there's life in the card. I'm gonna try and stick in a Linux Live CD and see if it detects it. IT'LL WORK DON'T JUDGE ME AUUUUGH!!!

Yep, I'm an idiot...

I accidentally deleted two of my blog posts last night; "The Speakers! They do Nothing!" and "To Go Where No Man Has Gone Before (Or Wants To Go)..."

Oh, my iPod and I are a crazy pair. If not for Google caching my site, I wouldn't have been able to salvage it.

Also, a minor update on the status of my Laptop, it is now in the hands of professionals. May their hands be guided with laser precision.

UPDATE: The nice man taking care of my beloved Lil' Jim says that he'll have to back up my data and restore the OS, I should have my laptop back by Tuesday.

UPDATE 2: I got my Laptop back today! Now, since he reloaded the OS, I've lost all my programs, configuration settings aaaaand my Wireless still doesn't work. Makes me wonder what would happen if I installed Windows 7 RC1...

A Shovel to the face would’ve been preferred…

Once again, I have been subjected to a rather violent bout of computer trouble, this time it was my WLAN driver.

I can almost guarantee that this will turn into some kind of rant about Windows Update, or HP being dumb and awesome at the same time considering that the source of my problem started with Windows update.

Last night around Eleven O’clock I had just updated my iPod touch to version 3.0, but that’s another post. After installing the update, I decided for the heck of it to check out my Windows Update to see if there was anything of interest, sure enough, there were two optional updates available.

One of the updates was for my Nvidia Chipset, I already knew that there was something wrong with this update considering I tried to install it before and it was corrupt, so I stayed away from that. The second one was for my internal Modem, I decided to install it, just on a whim. Why not, right? The shovel I mentioned above would've come in handy right about this point in the story.

Needless to say, no Rutila Ex Machina stopped me from having a terrible night and morning trying to get my WLAN to function again.

When I restarted my computer after installing the update, I realized that my HP Wireless Assistant only recognized my Bluetooth and my little network icon in the system tray had a friendly red X superimposed onto it. Dang it, you got me again Windows Update, you and your zany Devil updates.

I go into the device manager and I notice that not only is the WLAN driver not functioning, the hardware isn’t even listed, it’s gone.

So I used the trusty Eee pc sitting beside me to go to my computer’s software and drivers page on HP’s site and downloaded the previous version of the Modem driver that had been updated, installed it and it did nothing.

Ok, that’s cool, that’s fine, this ain’t my first time to the rodeo. I then decided to download the driver for my WLAN, I had all confidence that this would fix the problem considering that it’s for the component that was missing. Ok yeah, that didn’t do anything. This just got real.

I then decided to go for my old fallback, System Restore. You remember how I used that back in my previous post right? Yeah, man, that should do the trick. I do that, pick the date and start it up. My laptop boots back up aaand nothing, the problem still exists.

What? You’re kidding. I did it again, to a later date, nothing. I uninstalled the modem and refreshed the device manager, the modem reinstalled itself but the WLAN was as elusive as it ever was.

I’m not entirely sure what went on last night after that considering that I was blind with rage, all I know is that I woke up today in my bed and I smelled like something I shouldn’t smell like (I’ll let your minds do the walking).

When I went to work today I took a different approach. Just kidding, I did another system restore, it did nothing. I then tried something different, I used my HP Recovery Manager to restore the original driver for my WLAN. I was fairly confident that that would work. Once again I was met with nothing in the form of Wi-Fi. Needless to say, I was very frustrated and defeated, there was never a computer problem I couldn’t fix.

I decided to take another approach, I uninstalled the Modem and installed the WLAN driver, something interesting then happened. The modem was all of a sudden recognized and installed. What? Why is the Modem installing when I’m installing the WLAN driver? That’s when I had an idea.

I uninstalled the Modem again, as well as the Broadcom WLAN driver and then I installed the WLAN driver through the Recovery Manager, once again, while the Recovery Manager installed the driver, the Modem was recognized and installed, I couldn’t do anything about it since it was automatically going to restart a few seconds afterwards.

Ugh, I was pretty defeated, the Modem was installed again, and the WLAN was still not recognized. I was even considering sending it to a “Professional,” but then I saw the device manager in my system tray, it was installing the Wireless network!

So needless to say, I am relieved and happy to have my laptop working again at full throttle. One good thing did come out of all of this though, I had enough material to write a new blog post.

UPDATE: Just turned it on after shutting it down last night before going to sleep, I guess that wasn't a permanent fix. So, in short: brb depression.

Oh man...

This is my first blog post, this could either be totally awesome or totally... not.

I need to start this out on the right foot, I should write the way I feel. My ears feel like they're losing their circulation thanks to these fancy new Skullcandy Headphones, I hope they relax their vice-like grip soon enough, I like my ears.

Let's see here... Edit Html, eh? Let's try setting the text to Heading 1...

butt. HA!

That was pretty crazy right thurr.

I suppose my blog should have a purpose, but what would one write about in a blog? I suppose I could write about anything and everything. The hardest part of writing this will probably be writing it under the knowledge that nobody might ever see it, like my own private corner of the internets.

This is going to be interesting, though I suppose it could get even more interesting once the inclusion of Google Wave is made. I'm really excited about that personally, has anyone reading this actually sat through the entire demo video? If you haven't it's one hour and twenty minutes of interesting stuff that I barely understand, but I was still able to come away from it with the impression that Google Wave will make stuff super-special-awesome.

There are a few concerns I have towards taking full advantage of what Wave has to offer though. For starters, I have a grand total of two contacts who use Gmail; one of my Instructors, and one of my friends, this isn't including my Dad who uses it to view his POP mail account from his iPod. So essentially, unless Hotmail and the lot decide to make a Wave protocol, then Google might not get the kind of attention they wanted, but that's not to say that they won't get hoards of ravenous fans banging on their door, myself being one of them.

I'd have to say one of the more impressive things I saw while watching that video was the dragging and dropping of photos directly from Windows Explorer into the browser window. I certainly hope that that becomes a standard for Html even though I already have Gears installed.

Another thing I remember from the presentation was the realtime typing on both browsers. While it may be interesting to actually see what the other person is typing instead of just seeing the old fashioned "herpaderp is typing something...", it could also turn out to be some sort of curse. Think about it, you might start typing some kind of reply to a wave and then erase it, if the other person was online, they still saw it. I hope they implement that private typing thing they talked about early on.

I hope that Google Wave is released soon, it's interesting to see how Google continuously manages to draw people to the power of the browser in comparison to actual downloaded and installed programs.