Firstly, I want to thank the infamous Roberto Shamasio for pointing me in the direction of William Gibson’s blog. Good, interesting reading. Particularly today’s entry. Here, here!
Let’s see, what else… not much, since I finally dared to crack open Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. Luke has been badgering me for months, perhaps years, to play this game. I wasn’t hesitating because I was afraid it would suck, quite the contrary. I was afraid of how good it was going to be and how much less sleep I’d be getting. This game is incredible; like Civilisation x10, no make that Civ10.
Oh, on a side note, the property that I jointly own with my sister on St. Joseph Island finally sold. Some Americans bought it (unfortunately), but what’re ya gonna do when you need the cash…
Posted by Ron as Games, Miscellaneous, Politics at 12:57 PM EDT
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This past weekend, my parents came from Sault Ste. Marie to London, where they picked up my sister, then came here to celebrate both my birthday and that of my sister. Jen and I were born about 11 months apart, so this weekend was sort of half way in between.
We went out for dinner to a place called Montana’s, which is a wild-west style roadhouse that specialises in ribs. Let me just say that it was damn tasty.
After that, there came the customary presents and birthday cake. All in all, it was a lot of fun; I don’t think I’ll ever be “too old” for this sort of thing 
I got some DVDs from my parents: Falling Down, a favourite of mine, and A Clockwork Orange, one of the most fucked up movies ever made (I wish I could remember when the first time was that I watched it, or who it was with…)
Jen was so terrified that I wouldn’t like what she got me, and unfortuantely she turned out to be correct. She got me a PS2 game, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. That game just didn’t do it for me; it’s immense popularity kind of frightens me. Anyway, she said she wasn’t offended and that I could take it and exchange it for something else. I just got a refund instead though, because Wal Mart didn’t have anything else that I really wanted at the time for a decent price.
I was considering Prince of Persia, or Mega Man Anniversary collection on the Game Cube, but I figured I could get them pre-owned from EB Games for less. They also had Megaman X: Command Mission, and Silent Hill 4, but both were still at ‘new release’ price, which even at Wal Mart is a bit of a ripoff. Front Mission 4 was very tempting, but it was $40 and I’ve seen it at EB Games for $10 less, brand new. So I didn’t get anything at all to replace it, yet.
Posted by Ron as Miscellaneous at 1:03 PM EDT
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Wow. I bet this will be all over the automotive forums of the web. Once can see why; it’s totally insane.
Posted by Ron as Fire-in-a-can at 2:41 PM EDT
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Windsor is not shaping up to be the land of opportunity I originally thought it would be. Sure there are lots of jobs around here, but none of them seem to be open to newcomers. Like 99% of all the decent jobs around here require you to have plenty of prior experience in that particular job. It’s the annoying ‘chicken and the egg’ paradox scenario.
I’m sure it’s still better than anything the Sault had to offer. At least I don’t have to be Italian to get a job here. But it’s still depressing as hell.
Posted by Ron as Work at 1:27 PM EDT
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This story just made my day…
This was not the fall of Castro I was hoping for.
In totally unrelated news, the GSF audio spec is now seeing the light of day. It is based on the PSF spec by Neill Corlett, a veritable pioneer in the field. Neat stuff.
Posted by Ron as Miscellaneous at 12:03 PM EDT
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A few entries ago, in the comment section, Luke asked me what I’ve been reading lately. I responded with an entry going over the list of things backlogged basically, but it did underscore one thing: I haven’t been reading enough books. Sure, I consume quite a bit of printed text in a given day, but it really is a poor substitute for an actual novel or tome of non-fiction. So that left me with no excuses, particularly with my *ahem* lack of employ.
So I ‘buckled down’ so to speak and polished off the collected works of H.P. Lovecraft that I’ve been working on for like, ever now. I don’t really know what was taking me so long. I guess some of the stories were just getting a little predictable and boring. Not that they aren’t decent, they’re just a little mono-thematic; hapless scholar uncovers Things Man Was Not Meant To Know™ and proceeds to go insane. All the hard evidence is invariably lost and nothing can be found or prooved after the fact, much like the X-Files. And, again like the X-Files (which I otherwise dig), I found that this formula was becoming tiresome. Hence, I put it down for an extended period. I should have been reading other books, but I just didn’t bother.
Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I can get on to other books in the backlog. I’ve decided to rip through the Harry Potter series for a nice appetiser before the main course. I’m not even sure what the main course will be yet. I’m thinking about re-reading the Tolkien books. Its been a long while since I’ve done that, and I think I’m better equipped to get more out of them now (the first time was in the early 90’s - I wasn’t even in highschool yet). Then again, I kind of want something new, so maybe not fantasy, maybe I’ll begin the Dune stuff next. But then, I want to finish the Wheel of Time and get that out of the way too, so maye I’ll read the rest of that. Then there’s that desire to experience the dreaded ‘classics.’ I have Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Dracula, C.S. Lewis, Bradbury, Dostoevsky… all waiting there on the shelf for me. Can’t forget the Dark Tower series; loved the first book and want to read the rest, so perhaps a jaunt down the street to my local branch of the Windsor Public Library.
Anyone have any other suggestions?
Posted by Ron as Miscellaneous at 2:18 PM EDT
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I think I just found the only valid reason for keeping IE around. Check it out, if you dare, right here. Warning: you actually need to use IE (ActiveX). Oh, and you’d better have Spybot to clean up the nasties that will appear.
Posted by Ron as Computers at 9:28 AM EDT
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Like I said, nothing’s going on here, really. Let’s see, overview:
I went home for Thanksgiving, ate a lot, and came back. Took my sister Jen home to London (Ontario, not England, alas) and visited for a few hours. Still looking for work and wasting the rest of my time playing old videogames. Let’s see, what else? Watched a couple of movies recently. One that my neighbour lent me, Walking Tall, and the other, Underworld, Jen lent me.
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Posted by Ron as Miscellaneous at 10:51 AM EDT
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My good friend Luke just got married. I never thought he’d beat me to it, but life’s funny that way sometimes. I’m really starting to feel old now
My congratulations to both of them!
Posted by Ron as Miscellaneous at 2:22 PM EDT
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Back in the middle of July, Meghan ordered a really wicked Athlon64-powered, Radeon 9600-equipped eMachines laptop from tigerdirect.ca. It arrived in a few days as promised, but as we were to discover, it had a little problem: the left speaker had a fault in the circuitry causing it to hiss and crackle at random. It was quite loud and something we were unwilling to live with. So we sent it in for repairs, assured that it would be fixed and returned shortly.
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Posted by Ron as Computers at 4:17 PM EDT
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