This Had Better Be The Best Internet Ever, Part 3

I'm on a boat.

Went swimming yesterday on Christmas Eve in Half Moon Cay. It's been a little cooler this time... only about 23 degrees. At sea today, heading to Jamaica tomorrow. I really, really hope it's cold back home right now.

I'm (almost) On A Boat

We're leaving tomorrow to fly down to Fort Lauderdale. On Thursday we board the ms Noordam for 56 3-hour tours. Stops include The Bahamas, Jamaica, Cayman Islands and Mexico. Back on the 30th. I'll see if I can get some of that really expensive Internet while I'm there.

Why Are You Still Using Facebook?

If you have a Facebook account and are active and use it to post comments, status updates, photos, videos, links, etc... this isn't about you.

If you have a Facebook account but aren't active with comments or photos, but keep your page active as a way for people to find you and contact you... this isn't about you.

However, if you have a Facebook account and have, for all intents and purposes, abandoned it... if you don't check it regularly, don't post content, have email notifications turned off, and ignore friend requests and messages sent... what's the point? Why don't you delete the page? Because if someone is actually trying to get in contact with you, there is a reasonable expectation of some sort of response. To not respond, because you have long since stopped being active on the site is, for lack of a better word, rude. How is someone coming onto your page to know that you'll never see any message sent?

Please do everyone a favour and clean up your online presence.

You And Everyone Else

I went to Gamestop to buy a TV mount for the Kinect. Here's how the transaction went:

Salesgirl: "These things are pretty complicated. I hope you have an engineering degree."
Me: "As a matter of fact..."
Salesgirl: "Oh right, this is Waterloo."

So not only is my degree nothing special around here, the mount was ridiculously difficult to put together.

I Wish I Knew A Word That Sounded Like "Kinect" So I Could Make A Funny Title

Yeah, I picked up a Kinect for my Xbox 360 on the weekend. It looks like it has potential. So far I only have the one game that comes with it, but hopefully they can get some other applications built for it soon. Browsing the menu is pretty easy, and it can be done from sitting down, although there's not much to browse through, as the main menu are still controller only. It recognizes gestures really well and picks up voice commands no problem. I have to give watching a movie a shot still, so that can be good.

Best Movie of 2010

I finally got to see the movie Scott Pilgrim vs The World last week. There wasn't much hype surrounding it when it was out in theatres, so I didn't know too much about it. But I knew enough that those who had seen it spoke highly of it. I didn't even know that the director was also the director of Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, two of my favourites (I saw that on the box just before putting in the movie). After watching it, I immediately knew it was my favourite movie of the year, and an instant personal top 5 of all time.

I don't really want to give a review of synopsis, but I think that it is very important that you all see this movie, especially if you're close to my age (give or take 10 years). Movies like this aren't made very often. It's not a normal movie and it's something really fantastic.

That's all I'll say on that.

What A Deal!

I'm approaching the end of my cell phone contract and I was informed by my provider that I have an upgrade credit available to me to upgrade my phone. So I go into the store to see what that credit involves as applied to a Blackberry Torch, and the answer I got was that I get the privilege of purchasing the phone for exactly the advertised price for anyone else. The guy at the store even still called it a "credit".

Tell me, service provider... where is the credit in that?

Vote 2010

It was municipal election night in Ontario tonight. About half of the people/answers I put a mark beside turned out to be winners. I was really surprised by the outcome of the fluoride vote... a narrow victory for the "no" side. I don't personally mind that our water won't be fluoridated, but I just found the "no" campaign was mostly based on fear and ignorance. I hear it called a "poison" and the phrase "evidence suggests there might be adverse health effects" when any major (reputable) medical association I could find said that there's nothing wrong with it. Then there was the "we're not sure, so better safe than sorry", which is one of the worst arguements that anyone can use for anything... being not sure (uninformed) is pretty sorry.

I have this nagging suspicion that there's a swelling of an underground "Tea Party"-like movement happening in Canada. It seemed that every candidate had in their platform that taxes should never be raised more than inflation. Not that that is a bad idea, but the way it was always thrown around made it seems very disingenuous. Is there any jurisdiction in Canada that ties taxes directly to inflation? I'm not sure... at least I've never heard of one.

And the point of tax increases brings me to the subject of LRT (light rail). It seems after approving the project, asking the other levels of government to pitch in financially and getting the funding, almost all the regional councillors are now calling for a reconsideration of the project because they think the Region's financial portion is too much. What I ask is did they think that we wouldn't be on the hook for some of this project locally? Did they think that the other governments would reject the funding, allowing the locals to be able to say that they tried... but then the Feds and Queens Park called their bluff? Do they think there's no cost to not having this project built and running in say, 30 years time? How many widened roads will we need that we don't have space and money for? Do we want to shape our cities to be an all-driving-all-the-time adventure?

All that and I think it's humorous that Toronto elected Rob Ford. That'll be fun to watch (but it also fits with my underground Tea Party theory).

What's the Trade-In Value on a Law Degree?

So I just started up a new video game I purchased: FIFA 11. I went through about 3 "Terms of Service" type documents that I had to agree to to be able to just start the game. Since when was it necessary to be a lawyer to just play a video game? The documents are so long (like so many others that come with software) that it would take an hour to read. So obviously, I didn't read it and just said "agree". Maybe I just gave all my earthly possessions to EA Sports, I don't know.

Seriously EA, it's just a video game, not a real estate transaction.

Is It Still A Band If It's Only One Person?

I downloaded a few new songs for Rock Band this week (Bob Marley, The Tragically Hip and The Doobie Brothers, FYI). It got me thinking, though, that I might be the last person I know that still plays Rock Band anymore. No matter... I'm still really looking forward to Rock Band 3.