Charlie don't MMORPG

Looks like the boys at Gamespot have finally stopped playing World of Warcraft long enough to publish a review... and its gotten the highest score I've ever seen them hand out to any game. In case any of you Christmas shoppers hadn't noticed yet, this is what I want from Santa. :)

MONDAY

0650 - Alarm goes off.
0705 - Drag my ass outta bed.
0756 - Get to work, check emails, check voicemail messages.
0805 - Discover that a delayed shipment that finally cleared customs will be delayed
another day due to lack of available truck to bring it up from Kelowna.
0829 - Realize that we're about to run out of certain material contained in shipment.
0830 - Spend the next half hour on the phone with alternate trucking companies.
Give up on worthless trucking companies, arrange for our own transport driver
to pick up materials in Kelowna.
0900 - Decide not to participate in an all-day dry-assed meeting.
0902 - Run through MRP planning screens, setup resin schedules, update pricing contracts.
1100 - Step in on meeting long enough to pick at the lunch buffet.
1115 - Go for a walk. Take a new route behind the industrial park, through the farmland.
Meet a horse at the fence. He seems pretty cool. Decide to bring him an apple tomorrow.
1140 - Get back to work, step into bathroom to fix my toque hair.
1142 - Run into boss in hallway, tell him I feel for him. (He's stuck in dry-assed meeting)
1145 - Get back at it: Launch raw materials POs, organize mass BOM change for planning
department, correct discrepancies in inter-division finished goods transfers. Answer
silly materials-related questions from sales and aftersales personnel.
1350 - Afternoon shift warehouseman arrives, fill him in on what needs to get done, proofread
his wife's resume for him before he takes it up to admin.
1400 - Use connections with cross-border suppliers to set up BC bud smuggling operation.
1430 - Get the jibblies after drinking too much caffeinated tea.
1445 - Take a few minutes to browse the internet for old DOS games.
1500 - Create POs for service invoices, raw materials transport, and expansion CAP-EXs.
1600 - Wonder why the kids don't call anymore.
1610 - Realize its ten after four.
1615 - Water my plant, tell her she's looking kinda sad lately, decide to buy her some fertilizer.
1620 - Make appointment with with bodyshop for warranty work to my car.
1630 - Get the hell outta Dodge. Stop for groceries on the way home.
1730 - Get home, eat dinner, make fun of Christine cuz she's lost her voice.
1800 - Phone rings, 416 area code, think it's the bank, answer it, wind up participating in
half hour beer drinker survey... pass with flying colors.
1830 - Play some video games.
2100 - Decide to update my blog..... this lame shit was all that I could come up with. Shut up.

The ramblings of an intoxicated asshole

She is everything to me, The unrequited dream
A song that no one sings, The unattainable
Shes a myth that I have to believe in, All I need to make it real is one more reason
I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do... when she makes me sad.

*Quote borrowed from the song on your left*

Trains are really frickin cool.

As of Monday I've started taking a short midday escape from my office, I think some people call it a lunch break(?) Regardless, up until now I had just sat at my desk and worked an uninterrupted shift while I nibbled at dry goods from my drawer of nutritionless crap. My ass is starting to look like my chair. So now I'm taking advantage of this lunch break thing... but rather than driving somewhere to blow money I shouldn't spend on fodder that I don't need, I've been taking walks around the neighborhood. There's a railway that runs through the back edge of the industrial park, connecting to the backyards of most of the local plants. I've walked about a kilometer out and back in both directions along the tracks now. It's a nice quiet walk with no traffic and lots of neat stuff to check out. There's some old loading docks, the overhead chip bins at the sawmill, a grain transfer station, and all kinds of switches and track changers along the way. Not to mention the railcars themselves. Hoppers, tankers, boxcars, you name it.
That's the beautiful thing about walking, you see all kinds of stuff that you'd never notice from the window of a car. And you get to stop whenever you want and just look at things. It reminds me of when I was a kid, walking everywhere and finding something interesting about everything I come across.
Railway tracks have so much potential, they're smooth, evenly spaced, free of obstruction, and for the most part level-graded. I'd love to build some kind vehicle that would take advantage of them. Like the special crew trucks that drive onto them at a crossing and lower down some hydraulic guides from under the bumpers, then just hit the cruise control and take off. I tried that once with my truck, but without the guides I only managed to stay balanced on top of the rails for about 100 feet, then slipped off to the side. It was a long, slow, bumpy ride back to the crossing. I need something simpler, like a 4 wheeled bicycle. It'd be really low slung, maybe a foot off the ground at the seat, supported by a horizontal hourglass frame of metal tubing. Hard rubber or even smooth treaded pneumatics for the top of the rails, and small spring-loaded guide wheels for the inner edges. A 10 speed chain and pedal assembly mounted in front of a nice cushy seat with a high backrest, and maybe a cupholder. Once I got the bugs worked out of the basic design, I could add a small electric assist motor. One that doubles as a generator when being driven, so under normal cruising (pedaling) conditions, the motor would charge an onboard battery... then when I hit a hill I just flip over to the reserve and let it help to push me up. And who knows, find me a long stretch with no crossings, and maybe a small rocket engine..?....
Now for the big problem, knowing when and where the real trains are. The railcrews obviously have a radio frequency that they use to keep abreast of local traffic, just like on logging roads. I could get that frequency and listen to it with a police scanner while I pedaled my way to work. But just to be safe, I'd better wear a helmet. And some hockey pads. And maybe install a sideways-firing ejection seat.

Lookin at a thing in a bag…

Winter’s coming.
My garden’s dead, my flowers are dead, the trees are bare, and the lawn’s stopped growing… I’ve found myself passing the time by searching the house for pinhole leaks and drafts to seal up. Most of the windows have plastic on them now, the clothes dryer exhaust is rerouted back into the bathroom, and the front door has three layers of foam weatherstripping around it. The house is so airtight that I can feel the sudden change in ambient air pressure when the cat farts. The only thing left is to patch the roof around the vent flashing, but the damn communal ladder is locked up in the damned communal pool house shed.
Now I need something to do. Something to pass the time when I get home from work at 17:00 and it’s already dark. I want to build something. I want to make something. There’s no room in the house to start any kind of real project, and even if my shed wasn’t way too small to do anything in, it’s already overflowing with crap that’s in a state of semi-permanent storage. Perhaps I need a hobby, something besides drinking beer, something that can be done at the kitchen table, or in an unused corner or the house. Something like model trains, or drawing, or macramé, or growing hydroponic marijuana in the closet.

Christmas comes early this year.

The special extended edition DVD of The Return of the King will be released on December 14th. The details of this massive tribute to couch potatoism were just announced.... A whopping 50 minutes of extra footage has been added to the movie, bringing it's total running time to 4 hours and 10 minutes. Scenes that fans of the books will remember as missing from the theatrical cut have been included; such as the conversation with The Mouth of Sauron at the black gate, Aragorn's using the palantir to send a message to the dark lord, Saruman calling down from the tower of Isengard, and more from the Witch King of Angmar.
If you're a geek like me you can check it out here: http://www.lordoftherings.net/

Toques and stubby bottles.

The other day I was thinking about how cool it would be to see another movie staring the McKenzie brothers. Then I realized that it could never happen. Sequels to cult classics never live up to the expectations of their fans.
Not only that, but Canada was just plain funnier in the 80s.

The wrath of Ra.

The earth rotates until the South slope is below the line-of-site of the sun. The snow and ice that accumulated on the trees in my yard during the night is instantly liquefied. In less than five minutes the sun has liberated the leaves and sent their suppressor cascading in a noisy shower onto the fallen below .

Nothing good ever comes in the mail.

Once upon a time, long, long ago... I was a good boy and filed my income tax return every year. Until one year, when I was about 18 or 19, I had a nice return of about $600 and life was good. That kinda "extra" cash goes a long way when you're still a teenager. I spent it over the next few months; overdue repairs to the old truck, a few new CDs, lots of coffee and cigarettes, you get the picture.
But life was not good, heartbreak was pending.
I had made a mistake. I can't remember what it was exactly. I forgot an entry, or misplaced a receipt, or didn't use a #2 pencil. Regardless, a few months after the money was gone I received a nice, thick, official looking letter, it looked a lot like the one that my return cheque had come in. It wasn't a cheque though, it was the government letting me know that a mistake had been found on my return, and I needed to send back almost $400. You can imagine my disappointment.
This put me off of the whole income tax return scene for a long time. I didn't file the next year, opting to throw all my relevant forms into a box and just put it off. With every year that went by after that, the box got fuller, and the project that would be filing it all in one go got larger and more daunting. Finally, just last year, I decided to bring the whole pile in to work, and give it to the accountant. He actually enjoys that crap. I paid him a small fee, and he assembled many years worth old T4s and RRSP slips into a whole pile of legible returns. I mailed them off and a few months later the cheques arrived, totaling almost 3K. I stuck it in the bank and sat on it for several months, not really knowing what to do with it, until it came time to buy the new car... and it made a really nice down payment.
Fast forward to yesterday. I stop and check the mail on the way home. There's a nice, thick, official looking letter. Apparently something was missed in my return, income from a job I had 4 years ago in Victoria was reported incorrectly, and the government wants $721 of my car's down payment back.
Income tax returns can kiss my ass.