Month: June 2010

Every year at around this time, the gaming industry’s biggest, loudest, and most decadent get-together happens at the Electronic Entertainment Expo or E3. It’s the time of year where every single company tries to outdo everyone else. It’s fun for gamers to see who can pull out the biggest announcement or have the game that impresses the most. The three most interesting keynotes always belong to Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo.

While E3 isn’t over yet, in my estimation, the most amusing on-stage performance was given by “Kevin Butler” a fictional vice-present from Sony. In the video above, he addresses the crowd at the Sony keynote. There are a couple inside jokes, a few digs at Microsoft’s keynote (which featured circus performers), and he makes fun of the Wii along the way. Fun stuff!

A home assessor is coming to my apartment tomorrow morning to estimate the value of my home. Even though this was already done just over a year ago as part of the apartment purchase, the same mortgage company is requesting it be done again. I guess it’s just part of their due diligence for the new mortgage but it sucks because I felt like I had to clean up my place tonight. I suppose my slight mess wouldn’t have impacted the report that much but I just felt like it was the right thing to do.

I wonder if the assessor will say my apartment went down in value.

I’ve mentioned plenty of pet peeves on this blog and unfortunately, I never seem to run out of new ones to write about. This pet peeve I have isn’t really new, it’s been bothering me for months now.

In any major city with a public train or subway system, there’s an etiquette to how to board a train when people are trying to get off the train. Ideally, if you’re a decent human being, the people trying to get onto a train or subway car wait for the people to get out of the car before boarding the train. In reality, very few people adhere to this nicety. A lot of people who want to get onto the train just stand right in front the doors. As soon as the doors open, they rush in, no caring that’s there’s people trying to get out. What a bunch of dumbasses.

When I moved to my new apartment, I started taking the rapid public transit system here in Vancouver much more frequently. At first, I’d try to turn my body sideways to let these idiots by me without physical contact. Then as the weeks went by, I decided I wasn’t going change my ways just to accommodate these failures of society. I had the right of way, so I should be able to walk normally out of the train and onto the platform. So that’s when I started to just walk straight out of the train. If there’s was someone, anyone in my way, we’d be making contact.

It was actually pretty interesting at first. People saw that I was serious about getting off the train and they’d get out of my way (as they should). For those who were still being morons, you’d get my shoulder in your body. I didn’t bodycheck anyone or anything, that would be going too far, but I certainly did make it known you were blocking my way and everyone else’s trying to get off the train. One time, this middle-aged lady just stepped right in front of me as I took my first step off the train. We made some serious shoulder to shoulder contact that even surprised me. I kept on walking though because she had it coming. Other times, there are varying degrees of contact. I might just brush lightly by someone or I might bump into a person enough to make them notice.

Am I a dick for doing this? Hell no. I don’t smack into kids or people with handicaps. I reserve my retributions for those who were asking for it. It’s really not hard to be a good commuter. Just stand to the side of the door. A lot of people get that. I pass these people all the time without incident. While I’m bumping into the boogers of the transit system, the good ones slip in behind me and get onto the train first.

I’m going on a tangent here but don’t even get me started about the time I was the only person to offer their seat to a pregnant woman on Skytrain. She was visibly showing without any doubt. I was sitting four rows from where she was standing and I was on the inside seat. I had to turn to the guy in the aisle seat, ask him to move so I could get out, and then walked over to the mother-to-be. I offered my seat to her. The stupid thing was, I actually had to shoot a look over to my former seatmate to get him to slide his ass over so that the pregnant lady could sit in the aisle. I spent the rest of that trip making eye contact with everyone around me so I could pass judgment on them for not giving up a seat for a pregnant woman.

I could continue but I’m getting all worked up. I’m going to put in my retainer and watch some Hee-Haw now.

Since I didn’t have a baby like every one of my friends in the last year or so, the thing that most indicated I was now an adult was the act of buying a home. I guess more specifically, it was the act of going into massive amounts of debt that made me think I might actually be an adult now. Or is it that I’m still a child but with adult financial responsibilities? Anyways…

As I mentioned in a previous post, I started the process of getting a new mortgage to take advantage of a better interest rate. After a lot of legwork, my broker managed to lower my interest rate by 1.2%, which in my eyes is good. I believe I’m saving about $6000 in interest over five years. It’s not all fun and games though. I knew I’d have to pay a penalty to get out of my current mortgage. I was expecting to pay around $2000. My broker was able to whittle that down to $1100 or so. What I didn’t expect was to pay for another property assessment and lawyer fees. It’s the exact same mortgage company I’m using for my new mortgage. They did an assessment less than two years ago. How bad could have my apartment dropped in value? I suppose they have to do due diligence. I also didn’t realize we’d have to do legal paperwork again. I can understand why you’d need a lawyer to assist with the purchasing of a property but I’m just renewing my mortgage, can’t we leave the lawyers out of this? Can’t the mortgage underwriter do all that stuff?

When all is said and done, I’ll be paying well over $2000 to get a new mortgage. That doesn’t even include my own time that I need to spend while gathering up documents, seeing the lawyer, dealing with the home inspector, and signing a billion documents. All this work so that my mortgage payment is less than $650 a month. I suppose it’s worth it, right?

I believe I may have slept for three hours last night due to the loudest car alarm I’ve heard in my entire life. The thing went off at least four times last night, each time going for about 30 minutes before somehow shutting off.

I’m surprised no one called the police and had that thing hauled away for disturbing the peace. In any case, I’m going to bed right now.

Some of my long time (and most loyal) readers might be wondering what will happen with the older version of my blog. As it stands, there is this version and then the older one that I published via Blogger. It’s really inconvenient that all my posts from eight years ago to present can’t be unified under one system. Never fear though! I am going to attempt to convert all my old Blogger posts to their WordPress counterparts. I’ve read this is possible though it will be fraught with danger. If all goes well, even the comments will be switched over. Let’s hope we don’t have a burnout.

Despite being a PC guy my entire life, I am thinking about getting an Apple product. I currently do not own any Apple devices, nor have I ever. No, I’m not thinking about getting an iPhone, even though today they just announced a new model. I’m actually thinking about getting a Mac Mini for the express purpose of developing applications for the iPhone and iPad.

The Mini is cheapest, most economical way of getting a Mac that can run the iPhone SDK. I believe any Mac running an Intel processor meets the requirement of the SDK, which unfortunately rules out any of the G4 models. A new Mac Mini would set me back $650, which to be honest, is ridiculous but that’s Apple for you. I could get one of the older Intel Mac Minis for about $400 on Craigslist and that would do fine.

The only problem that would remain is exactly what I’d be developing once I got all the stuff together. I really don’t have an idea for an app. I kinda just want to tinker around. At $400+, I wonder if there’s an cheaper way to find a new hobby. What kind of app do you think I should try to make?

I believe some of you are familiar with a somewhat bizarre news story that concluded sometime this weekend in LA. A male adult film actor jumped to his death after an eight hour standoff with police. You can read the story here. This porn dude was the only suspect in a tragic murder and assault that occurred just a few days ago. Apparently he had been living at the production facilities of the company he had been working for. Reports say he was either fired or at least told he could not live at the studio any more. During a social gathering of co-workers, he took a prop sword and attacked three people. One of the people died, while the two others are expected to recover.

While most people would just have a morbid chuckle at the whole sequence of events, I found one interesting fact about the case that I’d like to point out. The man who was the victim of the sword attack was an employee of porn company. His name was Herbert Wong. He was an editor for the company and also starred in their films under the stage name “Tom Dong”. I was shocked when I read this because you can literally count on one hand the number of male, Asian porn actors that are doing straight porn in North America.

Asian males are severely underrepresented in mainstream porn. The same can’t be said about Asian females. For every one Asian male doing porn, there are probably 100 000 Asian females. It’s stats like this which continue to keep stereotypes alive about the asexual modern Asian male. The fact that Wong was such a rare breed in his craft, added social relevance to his work, beyond that of boning chicks on camera. What are the odds then that this fool, this moron, had to go and kill Wong? It’s terrible. It was like Wong was an albino panda, something that you almost never see, whose numbers are so low, and he got taken out. A shame.

After reading about Wong’s demise in the news, I had to go look up some of his work. It turns out I’d seen some of his stuff before (that one and only time I’ve seen porn on the Internet, for realz). He played the unsuspecting store clerk when three saucy females came into his place of employment. The rest of scene played out in the back room of the store. It was so refreshing to see an Asian dude service three chicks for once. Wong is now gone but his work will live on. Thanks dude for representing us.

The porn company’s official web site made a post on their blog about Wong’s passing. While that one specific post is work safe, none of the other links in the post can be considered ok, so don’t be doing any clicking. Having said that, you can the read the post here.

If you live in the greater Vancouver area, you cannot have missed the fact the weather isn’t very summer-like right now. Even though we’re into June now, it’s been rainy for several weeks now. Not only it is wet, gray, and dreary, it’s actually quite chilly out. A light jacket is pretty much required if you’re going out in the evenings. I’ve yet to feel comfortable enough to wear shorts to work.

As always though, if the weather were to turn sunny and hot tomorrow, people would instantly forget about the weeks of wet and gray we’ve had.

Welcome to another edition of “Did You Know?”!!!

In my travels on this planet I’ve heard the term “clingstone” peach used a few times. I never knew that meant until a few weeks ago. It turns out that the terms “clingstone” and “freestone” are related and can refer to other fruits than just peaches.

A fruit that is classified as a clingstone means the flesh of that fruit tends to stick or “cling” to the pit in the middle. Now that I think about it, that’s pretty much common sense. I guess I never put two and two together. Man, being dumb sucks.

Anyways, a fruit that is classified as a freestone means the flesh of that fruit is relatively free of the pit in the middle. Again, that makes a lot of sense as well. I admit, this isn’t one of the best “Did You Know?” editions I’ve written. If I were to ever release a small collection of “Did You Know?”s in print, I’d leave this one out. Oh wait, I just thought of something. “When it gets hot in the summer, my underwear tends to cling to my stones.” Get it? Ok, come back tomorrow.