Thursday, November 22, 2007

My Cult Membership Package Has Arrived

Hey Matt, you may ask... what's been going on with you for the last couple weeks? Well, let me tell you... Brand new iMac! I believe it's in the End User Licence Agreement that I now must act all smug and superior to you lowly PC users now. Allow me to show you all the light...
There it is, in all it's glory... just ignore the mess on the table.  I still need to get it a desk of it's own... all in due time.  So, why would I buy such a fancy-pants computer?  Well, this should be considered a purchase directly related to my video camera that I got this past summer.  I needed a place to put together the videos I took, and the Mac was the obvious option.  Check out the first video I put together:  The shaving of Dan and Faith's cat, Jooje.
Another project I've undertaken is to convert our old home movies to DVD.  There's years of stuff to go through... it'll give me something to do.

Happy now, Patrick?

Monday, November 05, 2007

Books Are Bad

A thought occurred to me yesterday as I decided to head out and browse at my local Chapters. Is there any good reason to shop at a bookstore in Canada these days? With the dollar now being worth more than the US dollar for a little while, and with it being worth over $0.90 for over a year now, we pretty much get screwed when it comes to pricing. Take a look at any book and there are two prices: one for the US and one for Canada. The Canadian one is usually about 20% higher. This was understandable when the dollar was low a few years ago, but now now. And the book stores won't give you a discount... they strictly follow that printed price. Even a newly released book, Stephen Colbert's "I Am America, And So Can You" has a Canadian price of about $4 more than the American. Contrast that to online book retailers, and the prices are quite more in line with what we should be paying. My guess is that they don't have to strictly follow that printed price and can list whatever they want (and of course, less overhead... but still).

Sometimes I just like to buy a new book for no apparent reason... but I just can't justify it anymore.

Always Good Advice

A friendly reminder to hold your applause until the end of the symphony, not at the end of each movement. Nothing horrible will happen if you clap at the inappropriate time, and usually the conductor will be nice and acknowledge the applause, but generally, it's best to enjoy the piece as a whole. Don't feel you must clap because there is silence.

Friday, November 02, 2007

I Hate Best Buy

Excuse me, Best Buy, but what part of "Pre-Order" didn't you understand? I'm thinking it was the "pre" part. Because when I pre-ordered Guitar Hero 3 on your website, I expected it to be shipped to me when it was released, and in a day or two, have it arrive at my door for some long awaited gaming goodness. What I didn't expect is to see the status of my item being listed as "in stock" but not being shipped to me. What I further didn't expect is for that listed to change to "out of stock" a few days later. I didn't believe you when I called on Tuesday evening that you had released the item to Canada Post and they just hadn't scanned it in their system yet, so it was impossible for you to cancel my order. For 3 more days, the game wasn't shipped, and as much as we all like to rag on Canada Post, even they aren't capable of the kind of incompetence that would be required to let an item sit for 3 (possibly 5) days without "putting it in their system". Bottom line is, you didn't order enough games to fulfill your pre-orders and you wouldn't admit to it.

Yes, I know that today it finally shipped... But you know what? Today is Friday, and therefore I won't be seeing any package until at least Monday, so I won't be rocking out to "Knights of Cydonia" and "Cherub Rock" among others this weekend. I went around to other stores yesterday to try and find a copy (with intentions of returning the one you would eventually mail me), but the stores I went to were either sold out or only sold the game with the old, wired controller (stupid Walmart). I hate running around to store to find items which are selling well... I probably should have pre-ordered or something.