June 13th, 2009
I went shopping today. I needed to get a new mouse, because I dropped one and broke the left mouse button. I was using an old mouse to temporarily replace it, but it wore out and I couldn’t left click anymore with that one either 
So, I got a Logitech LX 8 cordless mouse, which as luck has it, works perfectly with my current receiver from the keyboard / mouse combo that the mouse I dropped was from. I also looked at the laptops, but I didn’t see any that I liked. There were almost no laptops with good graphics chips in them. Sure, the Intel chipset has okay graphics for most tasks, but I want something better. My old 16” Toshiba still works, but I need to get a new one, it’s too slow.
I also bought three DVDs:
- Bram Stoker’s Dracula
- The Matrix Revolutions
- Righteous Kill
Posted in Loot, Movies, Technology
June 4th, 2009
Today, I received a package from Amazon.ca. It arrived a bit earlier than was predicted, but that’s never a bad thing. 
The main reason for this shipment was to get the Chickenfoot album, which turned out to be very good. I had actually only heard about Chickenfoot about a month ago on the Gibson website. The band consists of Sammy Hagar (vocals), Michael Anthony (bass), Joe Satriani (guitar), and Chad Smith (drums).
As usual, I got four CDs. Here are the CDs I received:
- Chickenfoot – Chickenfoot
- Off the Leash – The Real McKenzies
- Out of Exile – Audioslave
- A-Sides – Soundgarden
The album cover is interesting, it’s heat sensitive. It normally looks like it’s just the logo on a black background. But when it heats up, it shows the band members, as in this picture.
Posted in Loot, Music
June 1st, 2009
I got End of Days and Training Day on Friday. I would have watched them both by now had I not been so tired because of the cold. I actually slept normal hours on Sunday.
I watched End of Days this morning.
This movie gets some bad reviews, but it’s actually not bad at all. The main problem is the director and his vision for certain scenes. The camera locations and composition just didn’t look right in some scenes. Just like when playing a musical instrument, you can play a wrong note and just be off by one note, it’s close, but it just won’t sound right. Some scenes felt like this. Other than that, it’s a good movie. The story is good, the acting is good, it just could have been great if they had taken advantage of its true potential with better direction.
Posted in Loot, Movies
May 29th, 2009
The weather has cooled down this week, and it’s colder than normal for this time of the year. It’s also very cloudy and raining more than usual. I actually caught yet another cold as well…
This has been a nasty virus. It made me feel quite strange, with some mild fever, yet not very much of a runny nose and so on, some nausea, and total loss of appetite. I slept at all kinds of different hours, day and night, but never enough to satisfy the extreme fatigue that goes along with it. I haven’t touched a guitar in several days now.
This is not the way the end of May should be like at all.
Posted in Health, Life
May 23rd, 2009
I opened the pool today. Everything went smoothly this year. It was actually quite an interesting day…
It started off at about 9:30AM with a ring of the doorbell. The neighbour’s cable went out and he asked my father if it was okay for the cable guy to put the cable up over our driveway and through our trees. This is actually the second “improvised” cable installation in our cable box, the other one being around the other neighbour’s (which shares the lawn where the cable box is with us) house to serve his neighbour.
The cable company needs to do something about this, but the first cable has been there since the winter, and nothing has been done about it so far. They should really rewire all the cables to all homes on the street all at once, since it will involve quite a bit of digging to install just one cable anyway. The cable was originally installed almost 30 years ago and it’s in need of replacement. But as always, corporate greed stands in the way of common sense and preventing inconvenience to everyone other than themselves.
So, I was woken up by all of this going on, so I figured I might as well stay up to work on the pool today. So, that’s what I did…
As usual, this all has to be removed for winter, and reinstalled in the spring.
Posted in Lair, Life
May 13th, 2009
The new central air conditioner was installed today. This process woke me up a few times, but it wasn’t too bad.
On Monday, we had new bathroom fans installed. That went well, but I had to get up early for it. The attic access hatch is conveniently located in my room, and the man had to go up there to change the exhaust piping for the fan that leads outside.
I’ve been having some problems with depression this past week. I have difficulty eating, but not after midnight. I can’t sleep at all after midnight, but I can sleep during the day and even nap for an hour or two at a time in the evening… but after midnight, that’s it. The month of May has been a bit troublesome for the previous two years, and the memories might not be helping me feel better. I don’t know how to get myself out of this, no matter how much progress I make, it always comes back at some point. Although it’s not terribly bad this time, it still isn’t fun. I’m not even seeing the creativity “bonuses” of Bipolar Disorder lately, either. I can’t write… no poems, nothing.
There are so many things that I’d like to do, but I can’t. I feel helpless.
Posted in Health, Lair, Life
May 8th, 2009
I installed Windows 7 RC on Terminator this morning, using the Plasma TV as a monitor. It went quite well, and in the end I got to enjoy recycling the old Vista files. 
The only complaint I have is that the control panel still doesn’t offer a way to resize or position the screen. They expect the video card manufacturers to include that function in their drivers, I suppose, but not all of them have it. I’m using the onboard Intel graphics chipset, and they don’t have those options in the drivers, so I’m losing a part of the screen on the sides. The X to close the windows is just off the screen, for example. That was the same with Vista, so I got used to it by now, but I still wish I could do something about it.
Posted in Lair, Technology
May 5th, 2009
The Windows 7 Release Candidate is available now. I downloaded it this morning while I slept, and I had no trouble at all doing so. The download speed was fine. The downloader even worked with Firefox this time. 
Here is the link to get it: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx
Posted in Technology
May 3rd, 2009
I have been informed that the Windows 7 Release Candidate will be released very soon. I’ll be posting more about it on the day of its release. It will probably be a bit difficult to get it on the first day due to demand, but we’ll see.
Posted in Technology
April 30th, 2009
Today, I received 4 new CDs from Amazon.ca.
- Diver Down – Van Halen
- A Matter of Life and Death – Iron Maiden
- O, Yeah! Ultimate Aerosmith Hits – Aerosmith
- Weezer (Blue Album) – Weezer
Posted in Loot, Music
