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I congratulate my good friends, Sarah and Bryan, who got married today in Australia. I am disappointed I could not be there in person to share in their happiness but I am glad that a few mutual friends were able make the trip. I can only imagine how beautiful it is at Airlie Beach at this time of year. As I type this, the party must be in full swing by now.

It would have been grand to have said to Sarah’s father, “it takes a man to give away angel.” I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Kidd before and I know he would have liked that.

Sarah and Bryan, I know you’ve made each other very happy and will continue to do so. Once again, congratulations on the happy day and I look forward to seeing you soon.

This post might only apply to people who use toilet paper but if you do, this might interest you. In the last few weeks, we’ve been using Charmin Ultra Soft here at the offices of et.com. I tell ya, it must be the softest and thickest TP I’ve ever had the pleasure of wiping with. It feels like I’m using restaurant linens and really, when you’re in the bathroom, that’s the experience you’re trying to go for.

Next time you’re at the supermarket, think about picking up a few rolls.

I like Tom Cruise the actor. For the most part, I enjoy watching his movies. Whether he’s running away from an UAV-launched missile or trying to keep himself and his family from being killed by aliens, it’s good times all around.

It’s Tom Cruise the Scientologist that I don’t like so much. It’s weird because for the most part, I’m pretty down with people who believe in aliens. The Scientologists though, man, they take it to a whole new and odd level. Just do some research on Xenu and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Recently, there have been reports that Cruise plans to build a $10 mil USD bunker underneath his Colorado home. Apparently, the bunker is in preparation for an attack by Xenu whom Cruise believes will return to Earth someday. Sounds crazy right? Well, even though Cruise reps have denied such plans, I think it’s a great idea. Let me explain.

So while I think it’s unlikely Xenu will return to our planet to attack humans, I believe the bunker would serve Cruise well in more likely doomsday scenarios. In no particular order, they are:

1. Global nuclear war

While the Cold War is now decades behind us, that doesn’t mean nuclear weapons have disappeared from the planet completely. All it takes is one military AI system to become sentient and pretty soon we’ll have ICBMs criss-crossing the Atlantic. Cruise’s bunker would be an excellent place to wait out the effects of the nuclear winter that is for sure to follow.

2. Zombie apocalypse

Sure there’s no scientific proof that zombies exist but as movies, TV shows, books, and comics show us, a global takeover by zombies could be feasible (and happen quite quickly as well). Civilization as we know it would be gone. So while you’re trying to board up your windows and looking at the last granola bar in your kitchen, Cruise would be snug knowing his bunker would be completely zombie-proof.

3. Giant meteorite event

Despite the leadership from President Morgan Freeman and the last second heroics by Bruce Willis, it’s quite possible that a large meteor could indeed strike our planet with devastating consequences. It’s been theorized that such an impact killed off the dinosaurs by blocking out the sunlight (on a global scale) and rendering the Earth uninhabitable for many, many years. In such a situation, the bunker would definitely help but Cruise would still be in a lot of danger. The Earth could wind up off-axis which might lead to extreme weather conditions. Also, the planet’s surface could be uninhabitable for centuries, meaning Cruise would almost certainly have to live out his life inside the bunker.

4. Alien attack from other than Xenu

It would be close-minded to think that only one alien in the universe might attack Earth. While, I am sure Xenu would be a formidable opponent for Will Smith and his Marine F-18, the possibility does exist that another race of aliens could attack our planet. Cruise’s bunker would be an excellent place to be during the first wave of attacks where the aliens could be laying waste to the surface. It’s unclear how good the bunker would be if the aliens came looking for Cruise though.

So there you have it! Would Cruise be crazy for building such a bunker? I think not!

The gaming portion of the web site AT&T blue room came to EA Black Box to do a multi-part feature on skate. The host of the show, the lovely Brittany Allbright, did a taped tour of the entire floor where skate. was made. They picked an unfortunate time to come to Vancouver since most of the team, including myself, was on a very well-earned vacation. I didn’t even know these videos existed until tonight. It’s just my luck that the one day an attractive lady comes to talk to the team on camera and I’m away. I know I would have probably just made a fool of myself but hey, I want that chance. They must have did the taping in late August or early September.

Anyways, there were some people around, so a few of my co-workers were able to get on camera. Ms. Allbright was led around the floor by the always entertaining Chris Parry who is also known as “Cuz” in the online community. Click here for the video tour of skate. central. If you look closely in the video, you’ll the see the entrance to the awesome “executive” washroom where people go do their important business. The rest of this series is quite interesting, I don’t think another web site got this much access to the game.

It’s been over a month (about five weeks) since my last haircut. I’m getting my hair shortened on Tuesday.

The guy that sits behind me at work has declared himself to be my “life coach“. He’s a pretty silly guy so he’s not serious… well, maybe he’s a tiny bit serious. Anyways, he coached me to go McDonald’s with him at lunch so we could use his 2-for-1 coupon. I’ve started to call him “El-See” now.

Also in work related news, I finally completed the online sexual harassment training course that I was initially supposed to complete about six months ago. It turns out I was slapping ass in the most inefficient way at work. Now, it’s effortless!

So as many of you know, I spend most of the summer indoors (skate. is now available in stores everywhere for Xbox 360 and PS3, get your copy now!). The one thing I did everyday though was to go up on the patio on the 19th floor and sit outside and get some fresh air. It’s a beautiful view up there. As I sat, I would look across Coal Harbour and Burrard Inlet. My eyes would invariably turn to Stanley Park. I could see people walking on the seawall by the Nine O’Clock Gun. They were outside, enjoying the weather and enjoying the park. I was envious. I’d then get up, go back inside and continued to work. Later on in the evening, at 9pm, the gun that I’d stared at would go off, indicating that I’d been there all day and into the evening. Sad.

Well now the game is done. Three weeks ago, on a gloriously hot and sunny summer day, I went to Stanley Park to walk the seawall myself and go visit the gun up close. I can’t remember the last time I was at Stanley Park I but spent a nice couple of hours there. In the second picture above, you can see this tiny thing in the middle of the image, that’s the Nine O’Clock Gun. That was taken from the 19th floor. In the third picture, I’m standing next to the Gun itself. By the way, the Gun is now silent at 9pm as part of the civil labour disruption. Apparently a city worker usually fires the thing and I guess s/he is a union person.

If anyone is interested, I took a few more pictures while I was there. The gallery is here.

If you’re like most people, you love blogs and you love being a voyeur. What if there was a way to combine those two things into a single application that could run on a web browser? Well, the smart folks over at Blogger/Google have done just that.

Blogger Play shows you what images bloggers are uploading to their blogs in real-time. If you click on show info, it will show you the blogger’s profile, plus a small snippet from the post to which the image was added. The best part is that while Blogger uses a smart filter to prevent naughty images from appearing, they can’t guarantee something spicy won’t show up while you’re watching! How exciting! Go see what other people are blogging because I couldn’t come up with anything interesting for this post!

Did you know that as early as two weeks ago here in Vancouver, it was still sunny and warm? Since about last week, it’s been cloudy and steadily getting colder and colder. Yes, I am aware that last weekend was the official end of the summer.

So that was summer whimpering away. I had a good three, possibly four weeks of summer where I actually had time to enjoy the weather. Other people had about three months but I had other things to do. From now on, it’s about six months of grey clouds, dreary and never-ending rain, punctuated by the odd flurry of snow.

You know, someone should figure out how to make a huge reflector in space and direct sunlight over Vancouver during the daytime. I’d paid at least a dollar to see that happen.

I hope none of you get too squeamish about this post. Anyways, after I got my tooth extracted, I asked my dentist if I could take the tooth home with me. He said yes but gave me strict instructions to disinfect the tooth first and to not touch the tooth with my barehands before it had been sanitized.

After a half day dip into isopropyl alchol and a thorough cleaning, I was able to take pics of the tooth. My camera’s macro mode isn’t the best so the images didn’t come out too clean except for one which was pretty good.

So in all the pics, the colour is really off. The exposed enamel looks it’s this dark shade of gray. In reality, the enamel is actually quite white in colour. The roots themselves are actually this light manilla colour. The first pic shows two roots that were in pretty good shape, which my dentist said made it a shame since it was only one root that was problematic. What you don’t see is this pulpy, fibrous crap that was stuck in between all three roots. I heard my dentist say it was part of the abscess that had formed because of the infection. It took a bit of work to tear that fibrous stuff out of there. As I was cleaning, I was thinking, man, my body made that stuff in there.

The second pic shows the “root” of the problem. There’s the root that went really bad. It’s as black as the pic shows, there’s no colour problem in that image. I was pretty amazed when I saw it for the first time. That thing had been stuck in my jaw for a few years, getting a shade darker as time marched on. Notice that the tip of black root has been cut off. My dentist wanted to see if his root canal had been as good as he wanted it. Indeed it was, it went as deep as it should have been. Also notice the bits of pulpy tissue that I couldn’t clean off. That stuff is stuck on there tightly. You’d need like a nail file or something to get all that off.

The third pic shows the top of the tooth. The improper colour makes it look like my dentist had filled in my root canal with tar. In fact, the filling is very white in colour.

The last pic, though fuzzy, shows all three roots of the tooth. Again, notice the cut off tip of the black root. You can see the material that my dentist used to fill in that root canal.

Thanks for reading and sharing in my extraction experience!