Month: September 2012

Today Nintendo announced a whole bunch of new details about their upcoming console, the WiiU. It will launch on November 18th in North America with two versions. The black version will have a larger amount of storage than the white one. Why does that seem familiar to me? Anyways…

While everyone and their dog was lining up to buy a Wii six years ago, I certainly won’t be in that camp this time around. I remember feeling quite lucky to have been selected in a lottery at EA to get a chance to purchase a Wii right after launch. I was super excited to get it home and then soon realized it didn’t have HD graphics. Sure the motion control was neat but that soon wore off. I began to play it less and less. I kept on playing on my 360 and my PC. Pretty soon my Wii became an expensive dust collector.

While I’ll be curious at how the WiiU plays and performs, there’s not enough there for me to be excited about it. The tablet controller seems interesting but hell, so did the Wiimote when it first came out. A lot of my industry friends are thinking Nintendo is going to a much rougher time of it with this console. Let’s see how this thing plays out.

As many of you know, I try to eat properly on a daily basis and usually fail spectacularly. At lunch today, a few coworkers went to a food court and I tagged along. I hadn’t eaten from McDonald’s since I started my new job so I figured it was time for a treat. I ordered a McChicken meal which was very tasty. I felt fine afterwards and went on with my afternoon.

At the end of the work day, I had an appointment to get my hair cut at 7pm. I was a bit early to the salon and I hadn’t eaten dinner. So like any regular person I went to Dairy Queen and ordered a cheeseburger. I somehow resisted shoving more fast food in my face on the way home. When I did get home, however, I decided it was prudent to consume a handful of some Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups ripoffs from Wal-Mart. About an hour later, I finally came to my senses and consumed a salad and a giant nectarine.

Don’t ask me why I have a blueberry muffin in front of me while I type this though. I am not a smart man.

I’d like to announce you, my loyal readers, that I’ll be in the Toronto area the last weekend of October. I’ll be there for a wedding but I should I have plenty of free time to meet up with any of my readers who reside in the greater Toronto area. My schedule is pretty wide open. I’ll be free on the following evenings: 26th, 27th, 28th, and 29th. I’m actually free all day on Sunday and available for lunch on the 30th before my flight. I know a lot of my old grad school friends have settled in Toronto but who among them want to see me?

Today is my parents’40th wedding anniversary. They’ve been able to hold it together for four decades, which in this day and age of 40 day marriages, is quite an accomplishment. I know it hasn’t been easy, especially if you factor having me as a son into the whole equation but they’ve made it this far. My sister, her husband, and I took my parents out to a wonderful dinner on Friday. We dined on various meats that came from animals that lived on the land and in the sea. There was also a cake in the end. Strangely enough, the restaurant just assumed it was a birthday cake even though it clearly said “happy anniversary” on the top.

I know September 11 has a different meaning to most other people but to me, it will always be the day my parents got hitched and instantly were in a more favourable tax position.

On Saturday evening I the 9:30pm Jerry Seinfeld show at the Orpheum in downtown Vancouver. This was my second time seeing Jerry live as he had visited Vancouver just over two years ago in 2010. As many of you know, Seinfeld is a great comedian and a great stand-up artist as well.

There were many, many similarities on Saturday to his last how in Vancouver. For starters, his opening act was performed by Mario Joyner, was also his opening act last time. Joyner is a funny guy but some of his bits I remembered from last time. His piece on the Home Depot was repeated but I can see why as it’s one of his more entertaining ones. As with last time, he used a bit about the lack of black people in Vancouver. He mentioned that he had enough time to meet the “nine black people who live in Vancouver”. That’s still a funny line to me. I forget if this was used last time but he actually made a Surrey joke. Some people were late getting to their seats and he asked, “where were you coming from? Surrey?” That got a laugh out of me because I believe Surrey has a lot of many undesirable residents.

Jerry himself was on top of his game. He provided a very energetic set and he never wavered in his enthusiasm. Like Joyner though, he repeated many bits. I was expecting his last half of his act to be about his family, namely bits about being a husband and a father. He indeed did spend a good amount of time doing those bits. There were a few new pieces but it seemed like I was watching a re-run, albeit a very good and funny one.

Overall though, I’m not sorry I bought a ticket to the show. I get that comedians re-use their most popular material. It probably was all-new to a lot of people in the audience. It’s also difficult to think that they’ll come up with completely new material in less than two years.

If Jerry comes back in 2014 or before I’m not sure if I’d go again but I definitely would think about it.

The above is from my profile on LinkedIn where I recently changed my title. I wonder how many recruiters have skipped over my name because of that. Oh well.

I’ve been meaning to do my laundry now since Monday evening and I keep forgetting. Before leaving work today, I even though to myself, “awesome, I’m going to finally do my laundry tonight”. I got home all starving, went to get some take out, and then came back to eat it. I then lazily played video games for a few hours and then took out the garbage. When I returned, I finally remembered that I laundry to do. By that time, it was too late to get it all done before bed time.

I really need to clean my clothes tomorrow night.

In my previous post, I wrote about a rogue hair on my left shoulder. After work I went to a drug store and bought myself some tweezers. These scissor-style tweezers are perfect for those hard to reach areas because you don’t need your fingers right near the plucking site.

When I got them home, I realized I’d have to contort myself slightly to get the tweezers in the right position. Looking in the mirror, I tried plucking the hair once but failed as there wasn’t much hair to pluck and it was difficult to get the tweezers in the right location. I reset myself and then tried again. I gripped but I didn’t think I actually got anything. I then noticed a short, straight black hair about a quarter of an inch on my shoulder. At first I thought that was just an eyelash or another hair from my head. Then I wondered if that was indeed the rogue hair. I hadn’t felt a thing during my last tweeze attempt so I just thought I had missed. With a finger, I picked the hair off my shoulder and looked at it. It was straight as an arrow and looked like any other hair, just really short and thick. It then tumbled onto my bathroom counter where it got lost amongst the dark marble.

I then felt my shoulder. It was smooth again. That was indeed the mystery hair! I had plucked it! It was really odd. Usually when you pluck a hair, you feel some amount of pain as you’re ripping the hair out of the follicle. This was painless to me. It almost felt like this hair was like a sliver that had gotten embedded into my skin. Anyways, I’m glad I got that damn thing out of there.

So I have this thing that’s currently bugging me. As most of you know, as you get older, random hairs just started sprouting on odd places of your body. Case in point, in my early twenties, my nose hairs started growing out of control, and they haven’t stopped since. I used to have this single, jet-black, thick, and wiry hair that grew on my right forearm with no surrounding neighbours. It was a single lone hair that just decided to grow in the middle of no where. I had to trim it every few weeks because it just looked weird. One time, I trimmed it pretty close and it just stopped growing. You can still see the hair as it’s just a millimeter above the skin now but it’s stopped growing.

Something similar has now popped up near the vicinity of my left shoulder. I don’t have a hairy back or anything so I’m not used to have a single hair there. I first noticed it when I went to rub my shoulder. I felt a single prickly and short hair on my fingertips. I looked in the mirror and it was this tiny black hair that just broke above the surface of my skin, about a millimeter or so. I’ve been wanting to yank the damn thing out for weeks but the location and shortness of the hair makes it difficult. I don’t even own a pair of tweezers which makes things doubly-difficult. Even if I had a pair of tweezers, it would not be easy to get this thing out. I think I’d have to wrap my arm around the back of my head to get at the right angle. You know, maybe I should visit the drug store after work tomorrow and give it a try.

It’s a long weekend so I’ve decided to give all the staff at et.com the day off today. We’ll be back tomorrow with your regular programming.