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There is a video rental store that I can see from my apartment windows. It takes me less than five minutes to walk there. It’s been a convenient place for me to rent my Blu-ray movies since the day I moved into my apartment. Unfortunately, the store is closing. As many of you know, people aren’t renting movies as much as they did. The movie rental business is dying out as people get their movies distributed to them with other means, all of them digital. I was a child when I saw the rise of the movie rental business. I remember my father took me to my very first store that rented VHS tapes. The decor sucked and the place was kinda dirty. I rented Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It had no special features because those hadn’t been invented yet. Hard to believe in less than 30 years, the movie rental business has no more use for good, old brick and mortar stores.

Anyways, the rental store close to me is having a sale. I believe they are trying to sell off their entire inventory, which mostly includes movies and games. I really don’t care for the DVDs so my main focus will be the Blu-rays (especially the box sets) and the Xbox 360 games. I have no idea what the prices will be but I’m hoping they’ll be heavily discounted off the original price.

The sale begins at 10am which seems like a reasonable time but if you’re keeping score at home, 10am is like the middle of the night for me. I’m gonna drag my ass out of bed for this because I ain’t got nothing else to do tomorrow anyways. I can sleep in the afternoon. Wish me luck! I really want a cheap copy of that Superman game!

If you use a computer, you probably understand it runs something called an operating system. I bet 99% of you are running either Windows, Mac, or Linux. I can’t even imagine what the other 1% would be. Some DOS 6.22 hold outs?

Anyways, I’ve been traditionally slow as molasses when it comes to keeping up to date with my operating systems. I believe I used Windows 3.11 up until 1999. I totally skipped over Windows 95. In 1999, I installed an illegal copy of Windows 98SE which would serve me well for some of the most critical periods of my life and during the rise of the Internet. Win 98SE was the OS I used while I was in grad school, so it helped me crunch numbers, write reports, gather information from the Internet, and look at porn. In late 2004, about a year before leaving grad school, I decided to install a legitimate  copy of Windows XP on my computer. I had waited almost four years since the release of Win XP to finally upgrade. In late 2006, Windows Vista was released and I had every intention of upgrading. I even had a friend, who worked at Microsoft, get me a discounted copy of Windows Vista Ultimate. As the reviews of Vista started to roll in though, I had second thoughts. Many people stated Vista had a plethora of problems at launch. A large number of companies even resisted upgrading and instead chose to strategically continue to use XP. I’ve read that Vista got much better after the service packs were released but I just never got around to it. I’ve stuck with Windows XP for seven years, which is mostly a testament to how much support Microsoft gave it after all this time.

It’s time to get caught up now, so I have decided to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional 64 bit. I know a lot more people at Microsoft now so it was easy for me to get a cheap and legit copy. Second, Windows 7 seems to be miles ahead of where Vista was in their relative release timelines. It’s been well-received and I’ve used it at work for quite a while now with no complaints. Third, I wanna play Battlefield 3 on the PC and it requires Win 7.

It’s a bit of a chore to upgrade Windows from a previous version so I’ll be busy backing up some data, listing applications I need to re-install, and doing the actual install. If you don’t hear from me by Sunday night, assume that my computer exploded.

The Walking Dead ended on a impressive and stunning note last Sunday as it entered into its mid-season break. We won’t see another episode until February. In the above video, the cast tries to tease us viewers with what is in store in the new year. Unfortunately, they don’t give any real details. So we wait for the two and a half months.

I foolishly went to bed at 5am last night, knowing I had to be awake around 10am for my dentist’s appointment. As luck would have it, I awoke at 9am for no discernible reason. I had trouble falling back asleep so I basically headed off to get my teeth looked at with only four hours of sleep.

The visit at the dentist didn’t take long. I also had a friend who lives basically across the street from the dentist’s office so I dropped by for a social call. My buddy wasn’t working today so it was nice to see him and have a quick chat. I got hungry so I left to get some lunch. It was getting late into the afternoon by this time and I didn’t want to get stuck in the beginning of the rush hour. Surprisingly, I didn’t fall asleep for too long on the train ride back from downtown.

I expected to nap before dinner but I didn’t feel tired enough. I headed back out to have a really enjoyable dinner with a friend and felt great during our meal. It was upon my return to home that I felt fatigue setting in again. I was watching an episode of Mythbusters when I nodded off during an explanation of how they were gonna blow something up. I have absolutely nothing planned for tomorrow and I’m looking forward to having some crazy good sleep. The plan is to wake up when most of you have already eaten lunch.

I have an appointment with my dentist at 12pm tomorrow. It’s not pleasant to visit the dentist even at the best of times but considering I’m typing this at 4am in the morning will make the appointment that much worse. The people at my dentist’s office tried very hard to get me to come in at 8am on multiple days but I wasn’t having any of that. I can’t imagine doing anything these days at 8am other than be sleeping. Only a true unemployed bum could write such a thing.

In other news, I bought my parents a new computer today. They’ve been using my old computer which I had since before 2002. It runs like a turtle in molasses. The total price after tax was about 40% of what I paid for my current computer. Though much cheaper, the majority of the components in this new computer are faster than what I have in my current rig, which I bought in 2008. That’s computers for you.

I really need to go to bed. There’s nothing more fun to wake up early for than a dentist’s appointment.

Congratulations to both the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and the B.C. Lions for putting on a great game for the 99th Grey Cup Championship game here in Vancouver on Sunday. The home team Lions ultimately took the top prize in the Canadian Football League. This was first time the Lions won the championship at home since 1994. Interestingly, back in 1994, the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup in seven games. In 2011, the Canucks again lost the Stanley Cup seven games, which was then followed by the Lions victory. I’m happy for the Lions but I’d rather not see the Canucks lose another Stanley Cup Final as a precursor to the Lions’ Grey Cup triumph.

I was in the downtown core on both Friday and Saturday evenings. It appeared that all of western Canada had arrived for Grey Cup festivities. There were fans from Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, all very visible on downtown streets. Everyone was wearing jerseys from their respective teams. Of note, there appeared to be more green-clad Saskatchewan Roughrider fans than any others (including Lions and Blue Bombers supporters) in Vancouver this weekend. For them to turn out in huge numbers in Vancouver, even when their team wasn’t even playing, is a testament to the love of football that all of Saskatchewan has. It’s also possible that since Saskatchewan doesn’t have an NHL team, everyone just loves the Roughriders.

Anyways, I hope everyone who came from out of town had an awesome weekend in Vancouver. It was great seeing all the visitors!

Being unemployed allowed me to pick up my parents from the airport today. They were returning home from a trip to Hong Kong. I drove them from the airport back to their home. I also then went out to get them some lunch. After eating, my mother wanted to know what I wanted for dinner. As this was just 2pm, she implied that I was somehow going to hang around my parents’ home for four hours or so. I respectfully declined as I had stuff to do at my own home and I really didn’t want to find someway to amuse myself for four long hours at their home.

As soon as I got home, I felt very tired as I had woken up “early” to get to the airport on time. It was nap time! I love naps. After dinner, I played nearly four hours of Battlefield 3 with some friends. I’m living the dream… of a ten year old boy.

It was back to another day without an alarm clock and it was great. I woke up around 11am and felt like I needed more sleep so I willed myself back to sleepytime again. The next time I woke up was enough sleep for me.

I crawled out of my bed and made myself a salad for breakfast. That may seem weird but I have no responsibilities, no job, I sleep until I want to, and I spend most of my day in my PJs. Salad for breakfast just seems natural after that. While still in my PJs, I bought some RRSPs online. I did about five minutes of research before deciding on which funds to buy. As you can tell, I still have no idea what to do with money. Sometimes I’m surprised I have any money at all.

After feeling pretty good about doing serious business like buying RRSPs, I decided to take a break by watching some of the early NHL games that were starting on the east coast. I then needed to walk to the supermarket to get some stuff for dinner. I actually showered today because I needed to go outside. After showering, I went and bought my stuff. For those keeping score, I made Hamburger Helper salisbury tonight. Judge me all you want, HH salisbury is tasty.

With dinner out of the way, I then drove to Walmart to buy a bar stool. This was my first time buying furniture at Walmart. You might be wondering why I bought just one bar stool. As many of you know, I hate having my TV sitting on top of my fireplace mantle. I have to crane my neck up to see my TV. It’s ok when I’m watching non-interactive entertainment but when I’m playing video games, it’s hard on my eyes to have to frequently look up and also scan left and right at the same time. I get eye fatigue really easily. The best solution is to bring the TV down to my eye level and that would require getting rid of the fireplace mantle. That’s an expensive solution. As a stop-gap, I thought that instead of bringing the TV down to me, I could put myself higher. Sitting on the bar stool raises my eye level high enough that I feel much more comfortable. I actually own two other bar stools but those don’t have a back rest and they aren’t padded. This one is way more comfy. It’s obviously not a permanent solution but it’ll have to do for now while I figure out how to get rid of my fireplace.

It didn’t take me long to get into my natural sleeping cycle. I went to bed at 6am this morning. Perhaps it was a mistake to start cleaning my kitchen at 4am. I really did want to say I did something productive on my first day of unemployment. On the bright side, I did use a granite cleaner/polish on my kitchen countertops and they’re super shiny now. You can easily see reflections on their surface. Unfortunately, I started to get hungry while cleaning my kitchen. I had to move some stuff around and I grabbed a can of powdered won ton soup mix and I instantly wanted some won ton and noodle soup. I had neither won tons nor noodles so that sucked. Before rolling into bed at 6am, I looked outside from my windows. It was still dark but it’s amazing how many people are out and about at 6am. The major streets around my apartment were beginning to fill with traffic that probably wouldn’t die down until 10am.

Every day since Saturday I’ve been waking whenever my body tells me to wake up but this day was different. I’d scheduled a hair cut with the lady that is trained to cut hair. The appointment was for 2pm and going to bed at 6am meant there was a strong possibility that I might wake up too late to be on time. It pained me somewhat but I actually had to set my alarm again. I totally messed it up. I didn’t know it at the time but I screwed up the whole AM and PM thing. It’s a good thing I didn’t have a marathon to run or something. When I awoke, it was nearly 1pm which puzzled me because I wanted to be awake earlier. It was then I realized my mistake. I still got to my appointment on time but it always feels bad to know you didn’t set your alarm properly.

The rest of the day was uneventful. I had a nap around 5pm which was awesome. I then saw a movie with some friends and then had a bite to eat. I plan on getting to bed a bit earlier than 6am this morning. My last task before bed time is to make a list of things I need to do in the short term. I like making lists because it feels good to cross things off lists. Eat fried chicken? Done! Meet the person that delivers my mail? Done!

As many of you know, my last day of work at Radical was on Friday. What I didn’t write in my other posts was that Radical’s 20th anniversary party was on Friday night as well. It was a well-organized and impressive shindig at the Canvas Lounge. It wasn’t cheap to throw a party of that size but props to Radical spending the big bucks to celebrate an anniversary properly. I was most impressed with the hors d’oeuvres served at the party. The shrimp and scallops were my favourite.

The first part of the evening was devoted to current Radical employees only and I was lucky enough to be in that group. Someone said I was technically a Radical employee until midnight. Radical gave away a ton of door prizes, more than I expected them to. After 9pm rolled around, the party was then opened up to anyone who had previously worked at Radical. Lots of people showed up. Some I already knew from our interactions outside of Radical. There were plenty of people I didn’t know though. As you can imagine, when a company has been around for twenty years, there can be a quite a few former employees. The former employees seemed to really enjoy seeing their old co-workers again.

I left the party about an hour before closing time. I was really tired and had been standing on my feet for about four hours when I left. Classy right to the end, Radical gave everyone a taxi voucher so we could all get home safe and for free! I also took home a party favour. Throughout the lounge were sprinkled these glowing orbs with the Radical logo on it. They looked really cool and many people said there were gonna steal one before leaving. I was one of those people. You can see in the video above what they look like. I love brightly coloured things.