Highlights

Cytoplasmic Writings - April 2006 Archives

April was one of those months. It was warm and cold all the time which got a lot of people sick. Easter was also the first long weekend for many and it was a welcomed paid vacation for many. I did fall for one April Fool's joke (it was a damn good one).

Friday, April 21st 2006

Last weekend was not as productive as I hoped it would be. Signs that I'm not getting an younger. Going from a late night shift to morning shift really did a number on me. I felt and looked like total shit for Monday and Tuesday and had to call in sick cuz of a migraine on Wednesday. Not the greatest of weeks I would have to say. I did manage to get some of the Star Wars CCG pages converted to the new site but I haven't posted them up yet. I'll wait until all of them are finished. It shouldn't take too many days. I'm working this weekend and Jenn is also coming up so I won't have too many updates for the site.

Recently I've been pricing out some computer systems for some friends. I didn't realize how cheap Pentium Dual-Core chips were. For those who don't know, a dual-core chip is two computer processors on one chip. Essentially you have the power of two cpus on one microchip. The benefits? Well Jenn's friend's friend told her that it was twice the power. Um no. Dual-core is only better and faster if your programs and operating system take advantage of it. Most games don't take advantage of dual processors and even most applications don't. I've been running dual processors for over 6 years and I really don't notice any difference except when using Photoshop or I have a multitude of programs running. In fact, dual processors screw up my DIVX playback. Anyways, for people out there looking for a computer, dual-core chips are great if you're a constant multi-tasker and you use programs that take advantage of multiple processors. Programs like Photoshop and AutoCAD. I soooo want a quad-processor system now. Dammit! Hehehe.

As Jenn is coming up today I have decided I need to start cleaning the house. The roommates cleaned various rooms a couple of weeks ago but the rooms are already getting dirty again. It's amazing what hard water can do to your sinks and toilets. Gross. As the warm weather comes, so do the insects. It seems we have a slight ant problem. Not the small tiny ants in the hundreds but the giant black ants from God knows where. I gotta go to Home Despot to look for some poison containers or something. Anyways, Spring Cleaning here I come.....

4/21/2006 11:15:56 AM

Friday, April 14th 2006

Today is Good Friday. I am not a religious person, so today is just a holiday for me. I'm working as well so that's stat holiday pay for me too. So I was interested in knowing the origins of the Easter Bunny. I did a quick Google search and it looks like Easter Eggs and the Easter Bunny were attempts to make Christianity more open to Pagan followers. The Saxon Goddess Eastre (Ostara) was honored in fertility celebrations in second century Europe. Eastre's sacred animal was the hare. Coloured eggs apparantly have been part of fertility celebrations in several different religions. The Easter Bunny (Oschter Haws) was introduced in Germany in the 1500s and edible Easter Bunnies were made in the early 1800s. The Easter Bunny became popular when German settlers introduced it to America. Now kids celebrate Easter by painting eggs and eating chocolate bunnies. For more information here's a quick link. I find it interesting that some Christian groups now denounce Easter. It's history is deeply tied into Christianity's history. Oh well.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have won again! I can't believe I'm missing all these exciting games! Argh! Of course I'm preparing for the worse and I think the Leafs will be out of the playoffs but it's great to see them start playing again. I have that glimmer of hope that Atlanta and Tampa will fail and we'll get in but the Leafs are playing Ottawa, Buffalo and Pittsburgh. Two really tough teams to beat. I love listening to Leafs-bashers. So many people hate the Leafs for no real reason. Then again, I dislike Ottawa so I guess I'm in the same boat. Well, let's analyse this. Ottawa has had a solid team for so many years. They play the Leafs during the playoffs and lose several times. Ottawa fans get pissed off at us. Philly always beats us but I don't get pissed at Philly, I get pissed at the Leafs for losing. Maybe Ottawa fans should look INWARD at the deficiencies of their own team *Choke* *Choke*.I'm not a hardcore Leafs fan, but I still don't like it when people say things like "Leafs Suck" when I mention I like the Leafs. WTF is that about? Ultimately it comes down to this. Even if the Leafs are out of the playoffs, they'll make more money the most of the other hockey clubs. If you're in a small market, winning the Stanley Cup may just prolong your death as a hockey club. The new revenue sharing plan is going to help this so that means the Leafs are essentially helping other clubs win the Stanley Cup. So SUCK IT! Go Leafs Go!

4/14/2006 12:23:49 PM

Wednesday, April 12th 2006

So electricity prices are going up. I knew about this earlier this year when I was solicited a fixed price plan. We decided to enrol as we were unsure how high the electricity prices will go during the summer. If the summer is as hot as it was last year, we're gonna have problems. I'm already looking into buying some fans for the house. Gotta keep those comic books protected y'know?

I'm a little anal retentive so I know the benefits of following procedures and processes. However, I also know that these processes are never set in stone and a good process is always adaptable to different situations. Some people like to follow "the book" while others do that exact opposite and break every rule in "the book". I've come to learn that if you put too many rules in place, you will accomplish two things. The first is you'll piss off your employees or the people you're trying to regulate. The second is that the rules become a joke as there are so many that you can't enforce them all. Like anything else, too much in excess will ultimately lead to a failure of some kind. So why am I talking about this? I dunno, I just find that some people pride themselves in "bucking the trend" or thinking outside the box. We spend so much time trying to be unique that being unique isn't unique anymore. I find it amusing that kids dress up as "rebels" of society when it's the corporations who sell them the clothes, the music and the attitude. I think unique individuals are now the extremists and I definitely do not want to be an extremist in anything. So where does that leave our individuality? Who cares? If you spend all this time wondering if you're being controlled by outside sources, well, you probably are. Humans are social beings and we will always seek comfort within a "hive" mentality. We're also lazy so it's easier when someone tells you what to do. As long as it "makes you happy" it's okay right? People say choice is what separates many people. But what if the choices were all the same? Not really a choice is it?

Well, I don't know if what I wanted to say came out right but to me it seems we spend so much time trying to be unique that we forget what the important things are.

DRAGONCRYPT 4/12/2006 2:25:03 PM

Monday, April 10th 2006

Another flurried weekend has come and gone. For the first time in months, I went to TenRen's for bubbles. Surprisingly, it was still fairly busy but it's not as busy as the good old days when you had to wait a fairly long time for seats. Nowadays, people are going to Go For Tea. Go For Tea has been around for a few years but it's larger and more popular. The waitresses all have a specific uniform to wear and I know for a fact that everyone hired has to be a specific height/weight (My cousin applied once and they said the uniform wouldn't fit him LOL). The drinks are fairly decent at Go For Tea as well and there's a greater range of snacks and meals. Now the waitresses are attractive but I think they also hired based on how bitchy you can be cuz I've never seen any of them smile. The funny thing is that Go For Tea is beside Bri-X (pronounced brix?) and the clientele for them is usually westerners. So it's fun to see the really fobby crowd and the really yuppy crowd in the same area. Hehe.

I'm working the late shift this week again and staying in Waterloo for Easter weekend. Hopefully I'll have more time to finish off the parts I've started. I still have to do a review for "V for Vendetta". I've also got a ton of movies to catch up on. Jenn doesn't want to see some of the more gruesome movies, so I've decided to watch them on my own hehehe. This week's weather is supposed to be warm so I'm gonna plan to make good use of it.

Anyways, off to what hopefully will be a quiet week at work. Let's hope the long weekend will make everybody take long vacations. TTYL.

DRAGONCRYPT 4/10/2006 2:23:34 PM

Tuesday, April 4th 2006

I was watching TV today and noticed both Rogers and Bell selling their "High-speed Internet". It got me wondering. Who needs all this bandwidth? The only reason you need such speeds is if you are downloading games, movies and such. You don't need these fast speeds to do a lot of everyday things. Sure, there are streaming video sites, but they still suck on what ISPs currently offer in terms of speed. So by offering faster speeds and more bandwidth, the ISPs are encouraging people to pirate are they not? So how is that any different from peer-to-peer sharing? If Hollywood really wants to stop the regular people for pirating movies, maybe they should start suing the ISPs for providing the means to download DVD vob files. Then they can limit speeds back to the 56K modem days. Hollywood should be embracing the Internet and they should find new ways to make more money. Offer movies for download. If people aren't buying your movies, maybe they're shit movies. They spend $140 million on Basic Instinct 2. WTF?! Maybe $100 million was for all the digital graphics on Sharon Stone and the other $40 million was for Sharon Stone's plastic surgery. Who knows? But Hollywood is a bunch of idiots who really don't know how to capitalize on new markets. Learn from PORN!

I was reading today that a new study shows cell phones and other wireless devices will increase the chance of brain tumors by 240%. However, the chances of getting a brain tumor are slim to begin with. This is in contradiction to other studies that say wireless devices do not cook your brain matter. Hehe. I just ignore all these reports because ultimately, the articles never really tell you who fund these reports. Industries fund a lot of scientific research and they skew results so that it's in the industry's favour. Science is about truths and untold truths. Since we're not that smart, we listen to what the smart people tell us. Sometimes, the smart people listen to what the rich people tell them. An these rich people? Who do they listen to? The stockholders of course, who in turn are us. What a fucking mess eh?

Well time to go surf the net a little and check all those interesting sites I go to. No, it's not all porn sites. There's only so much porn one can take y'know?

DRAGONCRYPT 4/4/2006 11:07:29 PM

Monday, April 3rd 2006

Happy April Fool's day to all! So this weekend we had April Fool's Day and also the coming of Daylight Savings Time. So we lose an hour of sleep. I couldn't believe how hard that hit me. Or maybe I was just tired...hmmmm. Well I did fall for one April Fool's Day joke. It was pretty funny and it dealt with a computer game that hasn't been released yet. Other than that, I came away relatively unscathed.

Spent the entire weekend with Jenn. Hadn't seen her in three weeks so we chilled and cooked and stuff. Well we didn't cook but helped my mom cook a little. Bonus points for Jenn with the family right? Hee Hee. I finally went to go see V for Vendetta and I loved it. The only issue I had with the movie was it's rating. I guess they wanted a larger audience but the PG-14 rating meant the bratty kids who didn't really understand the movie watched it. Being bratty kids, they ruined it by talking and making stupid noises throughout the movie. The movie had a powerful message that's still, if not moreso, relevant in today's world. It's hard to imagine that this was originally written as a critique of the Margaret Thatcher government. I simply love how comic book movies are gaining all this popularity. People are finally realizing that there are some great works in comic books. Alan Moore is simply amazing. As are a lot of the British writers. I would love to see an Authority movie or Desolation Jones, or even Fell. Great stuff.

I hope the audience will take some part of the message in V for Vendetta away with them. It may be a movie, but the underlying message is powerful and thought-provoking. Hugo Weaving was simply amazing in this movie. He is seriously underrated as an actor. Natalie Portman was pretty good too. Well, I'm not going to say more as I'll be writing up a review soon and posting it. Just go watch the movie. It's better than most of the crap in theatres right now.

Speaking of movies, Basic Instinct 2 came out last weekend and made only 3.25 million. LOL, sucks to be Sharon Stone. Basic Instinct may be have a great erotic thriller years ago, but in a time where you can easily find naked pictures of you favourite actresses online, or watch some borderline porn movie, Sharon Stone has become dated and old. What the hell were the producers thinking? Hollywood is definitely running out of ideas.

After being pampered for a week at training, I was very reluctant to head back to work. Today was okay because I had a lot of meetings but the days are seemingly getting longer. GULP. I'll still continue to do my job. It's not too difficult and at times it can be fun. There may be an opportunity to go to Singapore. That would be awesome. Okay, back to reading three weeks worth of comic books.

DRAGONCRYPT 4/3/2006 10:08:21 PM