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Category Archives: Rantings & Ravings

Time for a Rant

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Today’s topic is US vs. Canada.

You’d think it would be pretty cut and dried – Canada should win hands down. And, for the most part, it does. Sure, it’s inevitable that Canada will eventually become states 52 through 57 but that won’t happen in the next four or five generations. And, after that, I don’t really care what happens – I’ll be long dead.

No, my beef relates directly to online shopping. I present to you the following two examples:

1) Season One of Everwood on DVD. I can head over to amazon.ca and pick it up for ~$69. I could head over to Futureshop.com and get it for ~$71. Or, I could head over to amazon.com – the U.S. version of amazon.ca (!!!) and get it for US$19. Yes – Nineteen dollars. Shipping to Canada you ask? Why, that’s $5.98. I could have got the shipping for free though the Canada portal – but that’s because it’s freakin’ $70!!!! So, let’s do some math: $19+$5.98=$25. Okay, let’s throw on 15% for exchange…umm…carry the two…oh, right: $28.75! Hmm…$28.75 vs. $79.80 (14% taxes)…

2) Canon Elura 100 MiniDV digital camcorder. This is the camcorder that I’ve decided I want to buy. It seems to give the best bang for the buck. Futureshop has it for around $700. This includes the starter accessory kit. I can get the same thing in the states for about $400-450. Again, factoring in exchange (AND any potential import duty) an it’s still a HUGE savings. Sure, the warranty could become a bit of an issue, but that’s easily worked around.

Needless to say, I’ll be ordering the camcorder from the U.S.. The funny part about the Everwood DVD is that Warner has stated that the ONLY way they will release more than season one on DVD is if sales are really good. Obviously, at $70 sales will NOT be really good in Canada.

HOLY. FUCK!

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So I was playing around on MLS.ca today just because I was bored. For shits & giggles I was seeing how much real estate was in other cities. I happened upon Calgary, AB. My first search was between $100K-$125K. There was exactly one entry – a bachelor “suite” in a retirement home. Okay, check <$100K. Three entries. $125-150: two entries, but really it was just one. $149,900 for an EMPTY LOT!!!! Okay, let's go to the other end of the extreme: $500K-Unlimited. 474 entries! I forgot how many millions the first one was but on the very last page I found a bunaglow for $519K. It was 949sq. ft. on a lot 50x120. What?!?!?! The?!?!?!? FUCK?!?!?!?! So basically what that tells me is I can buy, basically, my EXACT same house, only in colder Calgary for a paltry $400K MORE than what I paid for it here in London! Our house is 920sq. ft. on a lot 42x120. So, basically the same damn thing. Un-freakin-believable...

The WORST movie ever.

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I went to see X-Men: The Last Stand last night. No, I didn’t make a typo above; however, I will concede that it’s not the WORST movie ever – it’s the SECOND WORST. The worst movie ever title goes to, and shall forever be held by the Donald Sutherland/Adam Horovitz joint Lost Angels.

***WARNING!!! DANGER!!! WARNING!!! BELOW *WILL* BE SPOILERS. IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE YET BUT FOR SOME REASON FEEL THE NECESSITY TO TORTURE YOURSELF DO NOT READ FURTHER UNLESS YOU WANT THIS HORRIBLE PIECE OF SHIT, WASTE OF FILM, RUINED EVEN FURTHER FOR YOU! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED ***

Back when the first X-Men movie came out, I was a little bit pissed on how they managed to completely massacre the timeline of the comics. By the time the second movie came out, I had accepted that Marvel likes to fuck with things. Afterall, how many times have they relaunched the Fantastic Four comic book, updating it each time? (at least twice) With that acceptance, I thought that the first two movies combined, give a good “relaunch” to the X-Men mythology and the casting for these movies is nothing less than superb. I was truly excited to see the 3rd movie. Then things happened.

The first thing that happened was that Brett Ratner removed himself from the Superman Returns project. The reason? Apparently Warner Bros. was balking at the proposed $250m budget. This started a chain of events that will hopefully culminate in the homicide of the aforementioned Ratner. Bryan Singer, the director of the first two movies then decided he wanted to direct the Superman project and left X-Men. Then, in some strange spousal-swapping scene right out of a porn movie, Ratner decides to join the X-Men project. This immediately pissed off a LOT of fans of the comics and first two movies. You see, the biggest problem is: Ratner is a FUCKING IDIOT! I’m not sure what confuses me more: Brett Ratner thinks he has the skills to direct a movie this big or the movie studio agrees with Ratner’s ego that he is talented enough to direct a movie this big. Whichever it is, they’re both wrong. Then I saw the trailer for the movie. I thought, “Hey, maybe everyone was wrong. Maybe Ratner didn’t fuck up the franchise worse than Clooney’s Batman. This actually looks pretty decent.” To quote the character of John Locke from ABC’s Lost, “I was wrong.”
In recent interviews, both Halle Berry and Hugh Jackman have stated that the third movie was supposed to be the final one, but that there are tons of stories out there to be told (and, indeed, they are spinning off Wolverine into his own movie, along with one focusing on Magneto) and if the fans demand it, who knows? Very cryptic. There’s only one problem with that little theory:

They’ve killed off basically EVERY SINGLE FUCKING MUTANT THAT HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE X-MEN!!!!!

I was pissed off right from the start when “Dark Pheonix” killed the love of her life, Scott Summers. We didn’t actually see the murder but it was implied, then later confirmed. Then the stupid bitch went and killed Xavier. Yes, you read that write, she killed Chuck. If I hadn’t been with people, I would have walked out of the movie right there. But wait, the death toll doesn’t stop there…

In addition to the above deaths, and the ones to be recanted soon, they also “cured” Mystique by force, turning her into a human and resulting in Magneto turning his back on her. The movie also introduced Juggernaut and Callisto into the fold. Since they join Magneto’s Brotherhood, we’ll talk about them now. Juggernaut – great casting with Vinnie Jones. Problem: HE’S NOT A MUTANT! Make note of this, it comes into play later. Callisto. Ah, sweet Callisto. When I saw the trailer for the movie that showed Callisto, I thought to myself that they did a fuckin’ A-One job of casting her. The look was almost bang-on (except for the eye-patch, mysteriously absent from the movie). Oh wait? What the fuck??? I was wrong. The character I *thought* was Callisto was actually the character of Arclight. Instead, Callisto is played a rather attractive latino woman!!!! Oh, and her powers? I thought you’d never ask. She has super-speed (makes The Flash seem down-right pokey) and can detect other mutants. Now, for comparison’s sake, let’s take a look at what www.marveldirectory.com (as well as two other sources) say about Callisto’s powers: “Superhumanly keen senses of sight (including night vision), hearing, smell, taste, and touch.” So, let’s run down the list: Horribly ugly – nope. Eye patch – nope. Leader of the Morlocks – nope. Correct powers – nope. Fights Storm – check. Well, hey! The dumbass (Ratner) finally got something right. Somebody needs to stick a knife in his eye.

Oooh. I know we were right in the middle of racking up the body count but I can’t forget about The Love Triangle consisting of Rogue, Kitty Pryde, and Iceman. What. The. Fuck? I don’t even know where to begin with this. Wait, yes I do. Ratner needs to be shot. Kitty Pryde was NEVER involved with Bobby Drake. She was in love with Piotr Rasputin. There isn’t a triangle, circle, square or any other shape. It just never existed.

Okay, on with the Body Count. Who’s dead so far? Oh yeah, Cyclops and the Prof. Well, Dark Pheonix offs a bunch of other muties including, but not limited to, Arclight, Callisto, and some porcupine dude. Basically at this point, she’s pretty much offing anything that moves. She’s trying to off Wolvie but his healing powers are healing him fast enough to stop him from disintegrating. Yeah. Right. Dumbass. Anyway, he gets up to her and, in her final moment of Jean-Grey-ness asks him to kill her. So he does. Just before this happens, Wolvie and Beast manage to jab Magneto with four of those cure darts and rid him of his mutant powers.

So, let’s see here. Who’s left alive? Wolvie, Storm, Colussus, Iceman, Kitty, Beast, Eric Lensherr (no longer Magneto. Oh wait, what’s that? He’s playing chess in a park. Wait! He’s trying to move the chess piece by pointing his hand at it. *GASP* It wiggles. That means either he’s a Jedi, there was a strong wind, or Ratner’s a fucking idiot. Raven Darkholme is still supposedly alive. Umm…who else…probably a few lesser mutants at the Academy. The status of Pyro and Juggernaut is somewhat unclear. Pyro was frozen solid by Iceman and Juggernaut knocked himself out running into a wall. How’d that happen you ask? Well you see, the “cure” was devleoped from this mutant boy who supressed any other powers within a few feet of him. Juggernaut got close to him. Of course, since Juggernaut ISN’T A MUTANT it shouldn’t matter – his strength is mystical in nature, not a genetic mutation. Also, while I’m ranting on about Juggernaut, let’s talk about his relationship with Xavier. You see, they’re step-brothers. EXCEPT Xavier doesn’t even recognize him in the movie!!! One of the characters asks him about his helmet and he replies it protects his pretty face. Well, maybe it does, but it’s real purpose is as a mystical protection against psionic attacks. (thank you once again marveldirectory.com) Hmm…oh yeah! Xavier! If you stuck around past the credits you were treated to a “big surprise”. The scene shows Moira in a hospital room and the person in the bed says “Moira” to which she replies “Charles?”. It would appear that, prior to Jean disintegrating him into billions of tiny atoms, he transferred his “essence” (???) into this person in the hospital. Of course, the genius of this little stunt is that now they can cast a different person as Xavier if they do come back for a fourth time AND he can walk! Moron.
So, to breifly recap: This pompous dumbass of a director comes on board and fucks everything up. Okay, maybe that was too brief but it pretty much sums everything up. The real kicker of that whole director swapping shit is that the reported budget of Superman under Singer is supposedly going to top out at about $300m. That’s $50m MORE than what WB balked at under Ratner. Of course, Bryan Singer is an infinitely more talented director. Maybe WB realized that the more money you give the asshat, the worse he’ll make the movie.

If, for whatever reason, they decide to make a fourth movie it will inevitably be better provided that Ratner is no longer breathing the same air as the rest of the planet. Actually, ANYONE could have done a better job. They really should have considered someone else before hiring Ratner. Maybe someone like one of the homeless guys living under one of the bridges in L.A. At least if he wastes the studio’s money, it’s going to be on grain alcohol.

So, here’s what I would like to happen from all this shit:

  1. Every actor and crew member involved with this movie publicly apologizes for following Ratner’s lead.
  2. Some crazy fan who is seriously unbalanced ends up killing Ratner so we never have to be subjected to his movies again.
  3. Superman Returns fails miserably and Singer never works in Hollywood again. He’s a great director, but this really is all his fault.
  4. Ten or fifteen years down the road, they do another movie and start over, as if these three movies never existed (a la Batman Begins) and actually do it right.
  5. Marvel Entertainment Group also apologizes for letting things get so far out of hand

Obviously, the most important thing that has to happen is number two. There’s enough crazy people in California to do the job. I really feel that the movie company, or, more specifically, Brett Ratner, owes me my money back. There’s more I wanted to say, but it’s early in the morning and my brain isn’t quite up to full speed yet. I may come back and edit this.

Actually, before I go, I do actually have TWO positive things to say about this movie: As I mentioned before, the casting in all of these movies is absolutely superb. Kelsey Grammar as Beast was perfect, as was Vinnie Jones as Juggernaut. I think the weakest casting was probably Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde. She just didn’t fully project the confidence that Pryde always showed, even at the very beginning of her career as an X-Man. The other plus was the CGI. Top notch. A good portion of this movie takes place in San Francisco, yet the cast didn’t set foot in The City by the Bay once during filming. It was all done using CGI. An amazing job was also done “de-aging” Xavier and Lensherr during a flashback. Again, this was done exclusively using CGI. No makeup or prosthetics were involved.

So, to all those involved with the creation of this movie, please feel free to send me your apologies along with your contact information. Mr. Ratner, if you would contact me, I’ll be more than happy to pass along my address to you so you can send me reimbursement for my wasted money and time. Please email me x3sucks (at) surfergeeks (dot) net.

E3, Blizzard, and Me.

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Okay, so anyone that has been following this blog for the past few years knows that whenever E3 comes around, I’m always anxiously awaiting the Blizzard announcements. For those not in the know, E3 is the video game industry’s annual convention in L.A. Blizzard is a software company that makes, among other things, Starcraft and World of Warcraft. Each year, I await Blizzard’s announcement of Starcraft 2. Each year, I am disappointed. This year, I have given up. They win. They beat me. As the past couple years have come and gone, Blizzard has become more and more of a one-trick pony. They’ve got EVERYTHING riding on World of Warcraft. Which is great for them because there’s literally a gazillion geeks living in their basements playing WoW 24/7. Forget socializing, forget getting laid, hell, forget bathing. It’s all about WoW baby! This year’s announcements thus far? Well, let’s see. A new race for the WoW alliance side and a live-action WoW movie. wow (note the lack of capitalization on that one).

They’ve been developing Starcraft: Ghost for the past decade and have pretty much shelved it. Hmmm…didn’t see that one coming. They’ve dumped millions into the development of a game for XBox and PS2 systems. Gee, that’s great. Too bad all the new, great games are coming out for the XBox360 and PS3. Idiots.

So, if they announce Starcraft 2, I’ll probably be quietly happy. Aw hell, who am I kidding, I’ll jump up and down for joy! Then reality will set in and I’ll expect to play it in 2010 at the earliest.

West Virginia Miners…

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So, it appears as if the governor of West Virginia has ordered all mines shut down until the mines can all be inspected and the miners (well, those still alive) receive a refresher safety course.

I don’t think the problem really lies with the mines. While it’s certainly obvious that the safety standards in the U.S. are quite inferior to our standards up here (after all, we managed to get 73 miners out in perfect health last week), I’m sure that the safety standards in the U.S. are probably sufficient. (note: dead miners and their families will probably disagree)

Here’s the problem: the mines are in West Virginia! I mean seriously, you don’t see NASA setting up a JPL lab in Kentucky do you? I read an article a while back that was talking about why Ontario was being chosen for all these auto plants. One auto plant put it simply: the southern states are not educated. They LITERALLY (pardon the pun) had to teach workers there using pictures! Come on! Pictures!?!?! The “employees” were fucking illiterate! Or at the very least couldn’t read and comprehend at a level required for proper and safe operation of the job!

As back-breaking as mine labour is – it is NOT for the unintelligent. Miners CONSTANTLY have to be aware of the conditions surrounding them. Unfortunately, West Viriginia may not be the best place to find workers intelligent enough to do the job safely. Don’t misunderstand me, I have a great respect for the people that do the work – I would never do it. I just think that IF you are going to do it, then have the sense and intelligence to do it safely and properly. Part of that intelligence is knowing when to refuse going down into the mine – even if it causes you to lose your job. Afterall. I’m sure your family would rather have you alive and unemployed in your trailer park rather than dead in a mine.

Well Fuck

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Welcome to Canada, the next police state of the world.

So, let me get this straight. We’re going to get more money for children, increase military spending (woohoo! troops in every city!), cut-down on hospital wait times by increasing health care, and, oh yeah, we’re going to CUT the GST by 2% (1% this year followed by 1% next year). Yeah, right. Perhaps someone didn’t explain accounting to this guy…$100 says the Conservatives cannot get anywhere NEAR a balanced budget during their short reign of terror. The shitty part is, the opposition won’t even be able to get away with another vote of non-confidence down the road. There’s no way in hell the public (including me) would put up with another election before it’s time for one. The sooner we get the election reform in place, the better this country is going to be.

Oh, and don’t worry folks, when Harper mandates conscription so that he can send troops to Iraq in support of Bush’s war on oil, I’ll send y’all a postcard from Iraq.

Too funny

Posted on by Posted in Local Politics

Okay, this isn’t exactly local politics, but it’s funny as hell.
Here is a blog that is being kept up-to-date by the head speech writer for the Prime Minister. He’s doing the blog from his blackberry as he travels across the country with Paul Martin on the campaign trail.

Even if you hate his party, give the blog a read, it’s good for a laugh.

Dumbass

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So, apparently me being sick also makes me somewhat of a dumbass. Of course, I don’t know what excuse I have for any days before this week. You see, as mentioned in earlier posts – today is my birthday. One of the things that one must do on or before their birthday is renew the little stickers on their cars. I was laying (lying?) in bed after watching Veronica Mars tonight, just somewhere close to dosing off when I realized – I didn’t do that. Of course, I have to do that. So now I have to wait until tomorrow to do that. Which means that, legally, I can’t drive my car tomorrow. Which sucks for Nikki – because she’ll have to drive me to work tomorrow and pick me up. She doesn’t know this yet, as she is sound asleep. Grrr. I’m such a dumbass.

The quasi-good news is that I’m feeling at bit better now so I’ll most likely get to have my dinner out and see Harry Potter tomorrow night. Since we’ll be up at Masonville for the movie, I’ll just renew the sticker through their kiosk there. Grrr.

My Brother

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Yeah, so I found out yesterday that my brother hurt himself at work the other day. He’s now on workers comp for four weeks and the injury is pretty serious. He’s alive and he can still walk, but in a technical sense, he’s kinda an amputee.

I won’t go into the gory details, but I guess he was using one of his tools that is like a rotating belt (no idea what it was, I know nothing about being a mechanic), his index finger got caught in it and now it’s a little shorter after surgery.

He was over yesterday and I could see the bandages, it looked pretty bad, and I sure as hell don’t want to see underneath them until it’s all healed.

On the bright side of things, I think he’s got a new girlfriend (she came over to the house with him). Which is a really good thing. He was obsessing over his ex way too much. I never liked her anyway and the way she broke up with my brother made me want to kill her. Travis did not deserve that or someone like her.

Total Klutz

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Yeah, so I’m a klutz. Yesterday, while over at my parent’s place, I sprained my ankle. Badly. For the rest of the day I could barely walk, I’m still limping today. The suckiest part is in order to change Alex, I have to go down two steps, then up two steps. So not fun. But seeing as Alex will insist on being changed occassionally, I still have to take those steps. Oh well, hopefully my ankle will feel better soon. So feel free to make fun of me now… Rob already has. 🙂

Katrina and the Waves

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Okay, I just realized that many of you out there have probably been checking the site for my thoughts on the Big K. Well, let me tell you, it’s a tragedy. Tens of thousands homeless, thousands most likely dead. There’s not much you can say…

Ah hell, who am I trying to kid. COULDN’T THEY SEE THIS COMING A MILE AWAY?!?!?!? They’re FUCKING 10 FEET BELOW sea level for christ’s sake! Surely, somewhere, some thread of common sense must have been sparked and said, “Hey, is this really a good idea? Levees and all are all good, but what if they fail?” Then someone else probably passed him a drink and said “Shut the fuck up and grab your beads, here come some more topless teenagers!”

So, what’s left to do? Bulldoze the entire city a la SimCity and start from scratch? Or does a memo quietly go out to major map makers stating, “Oh, and that New Orleans place down in the south – yeah, strike that from next year’s maps. We’re not quite sure what to do with the swamp now…”

And here we thought that it would be Nevada or Arizona that saw ocean-front space before Kentucky…

Forest creatures my ass…

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Well, our swimming season has come to a premature end. Thanks to the work of one seemingly determined raccoon it is now necessary for us to drain the pool. Apparently it decided that it was thirsty or something so it tried to lean in and get a drink. Well, raccoon’s have sharp little claws. At least one of those claws punctured the air liner. How do I know it was a raccoon you ask? I saw it. We heard a noise out in the back yard and thought that perhaps a squirrel had attemped to perfect it’s high dive. We looked out, saw the air ring partially deflated. I went and got the flashlight and shone it outside. A few minutes after shining it outside I saw some movement around the pool and the little critter appeared and took another stab at seeing what was in the pool – sloshing more water out of it. Fortunately the pool walls didn’t collapse so I’m spending the better part of today draining the damn thing. Grr.

On A Roll…

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Wow, how many posts in how many days???

So, today’s rant comes to you courtesy of Toronto Hydro. A report in today’s London Free Press, clicky, states that 44% of my neighbours would happily snitch on me for “not conserving energy”.

Okay, let me state for the record, that would NEVER be a problem. I would be willing to bet that the only house on my block that uses less hydro than ours would be the one that has had their hydro cut off for non-payment. Maybe an empty house too – maybe.

For the sake of argument, let’s suppose I did like to run my 10 air conditioners 24 hours a day. Who gives my neighbours the right to think that they can judge me? Snitch on me? It’s not like I’m running a grow-op here. I pay my hydro bill on time every month. If I want to use 4378KWH in one month as opposed to the normal 380 or so that we normally use then as long as I pay for it no one can stop me.

Now, Toronto Hydro states they have no intention of setting up a “snitch line” they just did this study to gauge public reaction. If you believe that, send me an email, I’ve got some prime land to sell you in Florida and a couple bridges I’m looking to unload. Companies just don’t do studies for the “fun of it” or to “gauge public reaction” unless they’re thinking about doing it.

Please, please, please! Do not misunderstand me. I’m all for conserving energy. I’m cheap. I’m gonna conserve. But to think that hydro companies feel that they can FORCE conservation or COERCE conservation because THEY can’t produce enough power makes me angry.

Jason, Nic, & I were talking about power production last weekend. He and I seemed to *slightly* disagree (although I may have misinterpreted). I think it’s perfectly fine to encourage the province to conserve energy. There is nothing wrong with this. Far too many people are wasting outrageous amounts of hydro. But to even consider doing the above would be far overstepping the boundary of acceptability.

Mark my words: if London Hydro considers this (snitch line) I will be one of the first in line at public meetings (provided they actually have a public meeting. LH has this nasty habit of holding most meetings in camera) to protest – even though it would never apply to me.

Please, comment at will. Let me know what you think about the idea of a snitch line. Backup your thoughts with some reasons.

[EDIT]Just thinking more about this. If the governement and hydro companies REALLY want us conserve energy then they will work together to offer tax cuts and rebates for the installation of so-called “green” energy generation products for the home such as solar panels and wind turbines. I would absolutely love to be able to put up a wind turbine and generate most of my own power – perhaps even provide some power into the grid!

That SUCKS!

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CBC is announcing that the Shriners have voted to leave their Children’s Hospital in Montreal. That sucks. Stupid Shriners. Maybe I’m biased. Well, actually, no maybe about it, I am biased. But still. That sucks. London was a far better choice. Especially because apparently the Shriners aren’t even going to build a new hospital in Montreal now. Instead they’re going to expand the current, outdated 80-year old facility. The kids win how exactly? Brand new state-of-the-art facility vs. busted-ass-old-as-hell-expanded-but-still-cramped facilty where the public chastize you if you don’t speak french. Yep, no contest…

I hope that Quebec separates from Canada now and the Shriners are now stuck with a “Shriners Children Hospital of Quebec” and not “Shriners Children Hospital of Eastern Canada”. Then when they need to spend another $100 million dollars on top of whatever they spend to “modernize” and expand the Montreal one they’ll maybe think, “Gee…maybe we shoulda went with London afterall…”

Ikea

Posted on by Posted in Alex, House, Rantings & Ravings, Websites

Well, we made it down to Ikea on Monday. We went down to buy a crib and a change table. We ended up picking up a nice crib that converts to a “junior bed” once the kid’s too big for a crib. They have a matching change table but it was sold out (good thing too – i’ll explain below). We also bought a couple stuffed animal things for the kid – a bear and rat. The other thing we bought for the baby was an inflatable hedgehog. It’s cool.

For us we picked up 3 DVD storage shelves since we were pretty much full to overflowing. They were on sale and fairly cheap. We also got a new cutting board. The coolest thing though for us was we picked up a Duvet cover and pillow cases to finally make our bed look like it belongs in the room. I’ve taken a couple pics and will post those soon.

We haven’t put the crib together yet (too hot) but we’re hoping to do it tonight or tomorrow night.

So the reason it’s a good thing that they were out of stock on the change table was we simply wouldn’t have had room in Nikki’s car to get everything home. In fact, one more box would have probably put us past the breaking point and simply wouldn’t have fit.

So, we get home, hop onto ikea.com and proceed to order it online. While online we also ordered a bathroom shelf that we forgot about while we were there (good thing too). The confirmation email stated that someone would call us within 48 hours to let us know the shipping cost and firm up the order. Sure enough, Tuesday we get home from work and there’s a message from Ikea asking us to call. Nic calls to confirm everything and then gets to the part where they tell us the shipping: $171.xx. That’s right, $171 (and change) – didn’t add an extra ‘1’ in there anywhere. To ship two boxes. From Burlington. To London. (Ontario – not England). We politely said thanks, but no thanks.

So, we’re going to keep an eye on the website and as soon as we see that the change table is available again in Burlington we’re going to drive down and pick it up.

And in other news: A big Hello! to Mike a.k.a. Phronk. Haven’t heard from him in ages and he’s finally started keeping his website/blog updated. He raises a good point that applies to me as well as him: we’ve both been “blogging” before blogging existed.

I Never Thought I’d Say This…

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My love affair with Sony is nearing its end.

Anyone that knows me knows that I’ve been a die hard Sony fan for many many years. That’s changing. The odd thing is that the change isn’t being caused by my having direct problems with Sony. I haven’t had any – my Sony equipment works great.

The problem is my customers. We get folks calling in with Sony DVD players, etc. and when we try to find the manual online to do our best to assist them we get nothing. It is NEXT TO IMPOSSIBLE to find a user guide/manual for Sony products online. Try it. Go to Sony’s website and try to find the user guide for the DVP-NC600B DVD player. Won’t find it. I’ve yet to have success in finding the user guide for a product I’ve ever needed. I was considering (and, to be honest, still am, but its quickly losing favour) Sony for my next A/V receiver (specifically the STRDE998) but I’ve tried to find the user’s guide for it online as well so that I can decide if that’s what I really want. Hell, I can’t even find a decent picture of the front of the unit. The back of it, where all the components are? Forgettaboutit.

Sony may have a flashy website that promotes all their latest and greatest gear but that’s all it is – flash. It is next to impossible to find out any real information on the products that Sony offers. Contrast this to Yamaha or Harmon-Kardon (my other two considerations for the receiver) and it is like night & day. Both of those companies offer high resolution pictures of front AND back. They also offer easy access to the user guide online.

My next TV? Not anticipating it for a while but when it comes – probably not going to be a Sony.

E3 Thoughts from a non-visitor

Posted on by Posted in Entertainment, Rantings & Ravings

Okay, I didn’t get to go to E3 this year. This isn’t different than any past year. Neither will it be different than any future year. That knowledge still does nothing to diminish my desire to go to E3. For those that don’t game, E3 is THE video-game expo of the year. It is the place where all the developers roll-out their plans for the next year (or two) and where all us geeks drool over the games.

So, since I’m not part of the elite industry (oh, did I mention that E3 is for industry/media types only) and have no prospects of becoming part of said industry, I must get all my information from the media/industry. Grrr.

So, what was big this year? Only one thing as far as I’m concerned: Blizzard Software did NOT announce Starcraft 2! This is HUGE! It really, really concerns me for a couple reasons: 1) No Starcraft 2. 2) This makes the distinct possibility that SC2 will NEVER be released very real. Here is my thinking behind this: All Blizzard announced/talked about was World of Warcraft and Starcraft: Ghost. Ghost isn’t even planned for release until the second half of 2006, which means that there are no new sources of income for Blizzard except for the continued growth of WoW. This sucks. If they run into any more delays there’s a very real chance that Ghost will get cancelled and Blizzard will effectively shut down, except for a skeleton staff maintaining the WoW servers. Again, this sucks.

Oh yeah, there was also a couple other little things such as the XBox 360 and the Playstation 3. Both look incredible. I love the look of both of them (except for the PS3 controller reminds of the Bat-a-rang from the 1960’s Batman). We haven’t seen any true playability from the PS3 only some video “built to spec”. The playable stuff on the 360 apparently wasn’t actually running on the 360 but instead was running on development boxes – Apple G5 computers – and was only running at 30% speed. Still, with a November launch for the 360 I think that Microsoft is going to get a HUGE jump on Sony (who, even if they do a simultaneous launch in North America and Japan, still won’t be releasing it here until April of ’06 – something unlikely to happen – look for more of a September launch in NA), which could be enough of a head start to give this round of the console wars to the Beast from Redmond!

But still, the most important thing to take away from E3 – NO STARCRAFT 2!!!!!! GAAAHHHHHH!!!!