Those were my words, and they do not taste good.

I will go to see it, I may be entertained, but I don’t believe it’ll feel like Star Trek.

That was my statement regarding the new Star Trek film, before seeing it. Earlier this week, however, the ladywife and I both took in the new Trek at a local cinema, and we both came away entertained.

Most of the reviews out there are correct, and I won’t rehash much of what they say. This movie was what the Star Trek franchise needed - a huge breath of fresh air. It’s action-packed and neatly ties itself to the existing legacy of Kirk/Spock/Bones in a simple (if totally flimsy) way. I can’t say it’s up there with The Wrath Of Khan or The Undiscovered Country, but it’s definitely in the category of good.

It will be interesting to see what the next one does. This ‘reboot’ edition was really a lot of getting reacquainted with the characters, and proving to losers like me that Kirk and Spock are alright even when portrayed by other actors. This film was filled with one-liners and nuances that help the die-hards warm up to the whole concept, and it’s something they can’t rely on for the next film. It’ll need some stronger plot development and some moral dilemmas, and less of the big explosions and fist fights.

In all, I was wrong about this new Star Trek, and I will freely admit it.

Birthday Day Two

Yesterday was set to be day two of birthdaying (my actual birthday consisted of dinner at Denny’s), where my ladyfriend was to take me out to a fancy dinner and we were to spend the day doing fun stuff outside. We even woke up before noon to do all this.

Around noon we jumped into the car, with the top down, excited about a day outside in the sun. I turned the key and … click. Nothing. Car no worky.

After checking what we could (which wasn’t much), we decided to push it down the back alley to the mechanic shop, which thankfully is only a block away. We got it about 90% of the way there, at which point my arms and legs and lungs had turned to jelly. Also thankfully, they weren’t too busy to make us wait, took a look at it, and it was only a dead battery. I thought for sure it was the starter - and the mechanic’s first thought was the same when we described what had happened - but it was a much simpler and cheaper repair. While we waited, we enjoyed cold treats from Dairy Queen and watched a bikini car wash occuring just across from the shop. If only every car repair could have such benefits. However I think we both agreed that our vehicle probably got its last stay of execution. This will likely be its last summer.

Two hours (and a repair bill) later and we were back on track. We headed to Broadway to check out bikes, and we have probably found the ones we want: folding bikes! Since we have a small vehicle, and our next one will also be small, folding bikes make perfect sense. Plus, they can be put in storage over the winter. We’ll do a little more comparison shopping but I’m certain the folding bike is our destiny. The rest of the day was spent near Broadway and Granville, visiting shops and looking at expensive stuff that we love rolling our eyes at.

The evening was dinner at Brix, a place we’ve been a couple of times previously, where I ordered duck and the ladyfriend ordered mushroom risotto. Delicious! My ladywife sure treats me nice.

Overall the day was a lot of fun despite the start (or non-start, I suppose). It looks like summer is here to stay, with the rest of the week set to approach 20 degrees most days. And it’s very likely that next weekend we’ll have bikes to ride in the sun.

I am old now

I made it to age thirty-one. If this were a few thousand years ago I would be the village elder.

Factoid: this is the 301st post to my blog. I started blogging roughly 1150 days ago. That’s almost one post every four days!

Birthday Eve

Tomorrow I turn thirty-one. From now until age thirty-five is the age range where birthdays are no longer momentous - turning thirty is a milestone; maybe thirty-five is too, but thirty-three? Snooze.

Anyhow, as a birthday present to myself - and to fill the mantastic compulsion to buy a gadget every six months - I got myself a Sony a200 Digital SLR. Normally I wouldn’t spend a ton of money on something like that, and I didn’t. Futureshop was selling it along with an additional 55-200mm lens for $500. That’s basically the cost of the camera alone, so a regularly-priced $250 extra lens was ‘free’. But that’s not all! Due to putting everything from gasoline to toilet paper to transit passes to my pectoral implant surgery on a Sony points reward credit card, I had $300 to use towards any Sony product. So when all is said and done (ie. six to eight weeks for processing) I got nearly $800 of fancy new camera for about $250 after taxes. There’s some photos on Flickr from the first day of playing around, a day the ladyfriend and I went to Deer Lake to feed ducks and squirrels.

Anyhow, tomorrow I shall be taking advantage of a free plate of gut-rot dinner at Denny’s. Also, Tim Horton’s is offering free iced lattes tomorrow between noon and 5pm! It will be the finest free food day ever!

Bitter / Sweet Irony

Over the past few days I’ve learned that my former employer may be looking to hire one or perhaps two User Interface Artists in the next few weeks. I readily admit that my bitterness over being laid off has increased since the actual pink slip was in my hand, but here’s two points of perspective to put a cap on this turn of events.

First, there’s some serious irony in the fact that the day I was let go, the studio had two UI artists, and I was the one let go. Now, the one who remained will be leaving mid-development very soon. I didn’t realize the irony until my ladyfriend pointed it out - the studio kept the wrong guy. This is nothing against the one who stayed - he’s a cool dude and whatever his reasons for leaving, I’m sure they’re reasonable. However I did see myself working at the studio for a long time, at least as long as I worked at EA (four years).

Second - and here’s where my bitterness over it all comes out - the studio clearly did not have development needs in mind when I was let go. And I knew this; it was done to satisfy shareholders amid the stock market panic. But let’s take a look at what Disney really saved by dismissing me.

Let’s pretend Propaganda hires a UI artist next week. It would be three and a half months since I was let go. After severance, based on my salary, the studio would have saved a whopping total of roughly $7000. Need more perspective? The cost of developing a game for the PS3 and X360 can run from five to ten million dollars. The cost of a PS3 dev kit, a device every member of a development team needs, costs slightly over $10,000 US. So Disney didn’t even save enough money, by firing me, to buy one dev kit. And as long as we’re playing make-believe, let’s say the studio adopted an energy-saving policy that I advocated while I was there, whereby 100 people shut down their workstations on weekends for a full year. That alone would have saved the company close to $6000 in energy costs.

So in the midst of all this, the couple of people at Propaganda that I still talk to have asked if I want to come back. Thinking about this, I wonder, why would I? It was made clear to me on Firing Day that it was all just a ‘business decision’, meaning I’m just a line on a balance sheet, not a person. And the ‘business decision’ to fire me probably didn’t amount to enough savings to buy Bob Iger his daily panda burger platter. So no, I don’t want to come back. When you’re treated like a disposable good, rather than a person, it doesn’t exactly scream ‘we love you’. Tina Turner knew not to go back to Ike. And I’m Tina Turner. You know, metaphorically.

The Great Wii Fit Unemployment Challenge Results

Remember a long time ago, I vowed to undertake the Wii Fit Challenge? Well, I did go through with it: for four weeks I turned on the Wii, got on the balance board, and did at least 30 minutes of Wii Fit exercises for roughly six days during each week. It’s long overdue but here’s the results. Don’t worry, there’s no topless photo of me accompanying this post.

In terms of benefits, I give the Wii Fit a marginal passing grade. The ’strength training’ portion is woefully inadequate, although the side plank/push up exercise and the ab crunches were at least challenging. The rest consisted of waving an arm or leg around, really only resulting in a slight increase in heart rate. These would probably be excellent for people who never lift themselves up from a sofa, but for people who do walk to the store or try to avoid the choo-choo train to get around the shopping mall, it’s not terribly useful.

The ‘yoga’ collection of exercises was actually my favourite part. It’s probably a bastardized/simplified version of real yoga poses, but again, for beginners it’s not bad at all. I do believe it helped my posture (the Wii Fit software reminds you constantly that better posture is the cure to all that ails you) and it did stretch my back quite a bit. The only downside is that there’s only fifteen yoga exercises - one of which is deep breathing - and once you’ve unlocked and done them all, you develop favourites and it gets boring.

The rest of the Wii Fit regime is ass. It’s minigames based on shifting your centre of balance or waving your arms around or doing extremely slow step training. The only part of this I did was hula-hooping, as it was probably the only workout that felt at all aerobic.

So overall I would find it hard to recommend the Wii Fit for anyone. It isn’t something that can keep you interested or motivated beyond a few weeks. Perhaps it’s a gateway to real activity; I started going to the gym after my month of Wii Fit but fell off that wagon quickly (as usual). Wii Fit really needs more exercises, and would have been much better had they included downloadable expansion. As for the fitness results, I did start to feel less creaky and lazy, and I do know that my abs started to form themselves into something more than just a blobby mass, but it’s not exactly a training tool to propel one to model for Calvin Klein (warning, contains ‘package’).

I’m actually eager to try EA’s Fitness ‘game’ that will be released soon, and am also hoping to receive it as a gift from one of the two friends that works at the company. Hint, hint. No, I’m not above blatantly asking for a gift.