Hometown Zeroes

Sunday night, myself and seven others took in what was billed as a battle of the ages: the Vancouver Giants versus the Kamloops Blazers. The two teams are at the top of their WHL division, and Kamloops has owned Vancouver so far this season. I love cheering for the visiting team (especially the Blazers, of course) when attending Giants games, and when Kamloops scored 37 seconds into the game, I was sure my Blazers jersey and blue Mexican wrestling mask would lift my hometown team to a win. However, for the next 59:23 of the game, Kamloops forgot how to play this game of “ice-hockey”. The Giants proceeded to lay a whuppin’ on the Blazers, with a final score of 6-1. The only good thing to come of the game, aside from going with seven friends, was on the way out we received vouchers for a free appetizer at White Spot. So, the Blazers sucked but they got us some zucchini sticks via sucking.

Saturday I finally bought some new shoes. If I get around to it I’ll post a gallery of new shoes to entertain everyone, most of all me.

So with this pair of shoes it brings my total of useful / not painful shoes to four pairs. At this point I think it’s time I review where I stand on the metrosexual scale. Lots of shoes? Check. Use moisturizer after shaving? Check. Sleep in silk pajamas? Check. Occasionally wear cologne? Check. Wear pants that aren’t blue jeans? Check. Looking at it now, I’d say I’m still in the mid-part of the metrosexual bell curve, or putting it another way I register about a 5.7 on the Blazej-O-Meter. I suppose the next steps are complete body hair removal and wearing leather gloves.

TWIG Notes IV

This Week in Garrett:

- standard cable looks rather poor on a High Definition screen. As predicted I’m compelled to get HD cable soon. Another upside to this is the possibility of getting a few new channels like the Independant Film Channel, or BBC, which might actually have some programs worth watching.

- EA stock is up! God only knows why. The latter part of this week may involve selling the remainder of my options, thus making the purchase of a king sized bed a reality. Part of getting my lady friend’s approval in spending a huge pile of cash on a TV was agreeing to improve our sleepytime real estate. Currently we share a double size mattress, at least when I’m not in the doghouse and sleeping on the sofa.

- I tried to start reading The Iliad on Monday. It’s akin to reading the Bible. I think four pages were used to describe armies from different cities. What a bore … someone should really update that story. Maybe throw in some cowboys and robots.

- Soon I’m going to liquidate my CD collection. I haven’t listened to any CD I own in at least a year. If any of my dear readers have a hankering for some Snog or Front Line Assembly, let me know.

Television … FROM THE FUTURE

It happened.

After months of agonizing, researching, gawking, planning, and thinking, I finally bought my big screen HDTV. Naysayers, who have heard me claim I would get one only to listen to me give another excuse more flimsy than dollar-store toilet paper, are now without a chance to say nay. I have finally brought home by baby.

The baby is a 37″ Viewsonic LCD HDTV from the good folks at Costco. The price was right and the consumer reviews were positive, especially for a “low end” High Definition set. Last night, after twiddling with settings, I christened my HD lifestyle by watching The Big Lebowski — perhaps the greatest cult comedy ever made — on my equally new Sony upconverting DVD player. It was glorious, I tell you. Glorious.

Now owning an HDTV means I’m bound to go all the way; that is, I’ve doomed myself to paying for cable in the very near future. An HDTV isn’t living up to its full potential showing standard cable. It’s a bit like drinking Grey Goose from a styrofoam cup: sure, it works, but the experience just isn’t what it was meant to be. So, in the coming days or weeks, I’ll be shopping around for the best/cheapest way to become a Shaw HD customer. If HD satellite were an option, I’d probably do it, since digital satellite is generally cheaper than Shaw, but a) I live in an apartment and b) satellite requires a contract, and if we move somewhere without line-of-sight, I’d be screwed. Regardless, the prospect of watching Grey’s Anatomy, Heroes, Hockey Night in Canada, or softcore smut on Showcase in high definition is exciting. And Erwin: you’re coming over very soon with your X360 so we can be HD game nerds together.

In non-nerd events, I attended a bridal showcase with my lady friend and her mother today. It was far, far less painful to endure than you’d expect, probably because nearly all the big responsibilities for our wedding are already confirmed or paid for in one way or another. Our mission was pretty simple at the showcase: enter a pantload of contests, eat some free cake, gawk at pretty girls study the lastest bridal fashions, then go home. All was accomplished in a matter of two hours, which is well within my not-boyfriend-friendly threshold.

Total Blockage!

I’ve been informed by a few of my former colleagues at EA that my blog is now blocked by the company’s fascist control over websurfing habits servers, under the category of “Adult content - sex”. Personally I would love it if my blog featured sex, or discussed sex, or was even remotely sexy. So it’s very amusing to me that the harmless “joy” this blog brings to three people at EA has been denied.

Anyway, on the topic of sex, last Friday I joined my new colleagues for an afternoon of go-karting in Richmond. It was more fun that I can describe. The go-karts aren’t wussy little bumper cars; we were racing in finely-tuned 6.5 horsepower karts that reach 55 km/h. Without a doubt I’ll have to go back there sometime and get my ass handed to me by the Richmond kids who probably race there every week. Plus, here is a photo of Andre Agassi in a racing helmet. Oh wait, that’s me!

Finally, in my last post I admitted to my fondness for Mandy Moore, and pointed out she had apologized for her past albums. Well, I listened to a track off her new release, and Mandy … you’ve got some more apologizing to do.

Mondo Bizzaro

Today’s been really weird. I can’t say much about what happened at work, but at one point a colleague was on the brink of quitting, and a few hours later another one had “parted ways” with the company. Both are/were involved with my day-to-day work on different levels. There’s no point in going into detail, since I’m still new at work and don’t have much of a connection to anyone but it made for a very strange turn of events. Then, of course, the woman who defined “screwed up” died in a hotel. Maybe tomorrow will be a little less weird.

On the topic of celebrities, I feel an odd compulsion to admit my fondness for Mandy Moore. My lady friend already knows of this and rolls her eyes (rightfully so) whenever she catches me Googling her. It’s only a matter of time before I go on a Mandy Moore video-renting binge. I’m also interested to know what direction her music career is headed; recently she apologized for making awful teen pop albums that sold millions. A nice sentiment but is she capable of making better music? She really ought to stick with acting.

EA stock follow-up: as I predicted, the value of EA stock has remained flat at roughly $50 this week. Guess I sold at the right time.

Back Like Bacon

After some domain-renewal difficulties, the blog is back. Has anything exciting happened lately? Well, no. In wedding news, we’ve got our cake business done and paid for, and our registries are almost totally complete. In a short time I’ll be emailing the link (and posting the link here) to our all-informative wedding website. Today I shall be working on designing our invitations.

In non-wedding news, when I quit EA, I had 90 days to sell my stock options, half of which had value and half of which have none. I won’t go into how options work, because it’s about as fun as listening to an accountant talk about dividends. Anyway, this past Friday EA released its third-quarter financial results. The stock price went up about $3 initially … and by the end of the day that gain had sunk to a flaccid 50 cents. I sold half my valuable stock, which nets me about $1000, and have about 76 days left to decide when to pull the trigger on the rest of it. If through some miracle, the stock goes above $58 in that time, my previously worthless stock will be worth almost nothing. I would bet my liver that the price stays well below $58 in the next two months though.

It looks like I may have overcome my motion sickness, at least for now. I find that if I start reading on the train before it starts moving, I’m okay. I also gave myself a test of playing some Nintendo DS on the choo-choo and I can confirm that no chunder was expelled.

Finally, I’ve received word that my last lunch blog while at EA has been read over 130 times. That’s 130 individuals, not just one dude hitting reload 130 times. Apparently this puts me into the EA blog hall of fame. Very few, if any, company blogs at EA get that many reads. Looks like that may be my legacy, and I’m overjoyed by it.