I got a response back from Cineplex entertainment yesterday. In a nutshell, they're response was "the distributor made us do it!". Unfortunately, they neglected to tell me who the distributor was.

I did a bit of snooping online, and it seems that the Canadian distributor of the film is Odeon Films, which is owned by Alliance Atlantis Communications.

Now that this enemy of society has been identified, it's time to write another letter...

I have taught my pet rabbit to kill. Intruders, beware!

Until my buddy gets his web server up and running again, it appears that this site will remain under attack. The gallery is down for the time being because of these attacks.

I got two free passes to see The Protector at the Silver City theater in Polo Park tonight. It's a martial arts movie starring up-and-coming martial arts star Tony Jaa. I saw his previous movie, Ong Bak, last year and I really liked it, so I was glad to have gotten free tickets to see this one.

At the entrance to the theater room proper, they had three security guards checking people over as they went in. They asked if I had a cell phone, and I said I did. They asked if it was a camera phone and I said it was not. They insisted on seeing it, and, after some hesitation, I took my phone out of my pocket and showed it to the security guard, holding it firmly in my grasp to prevent them from taking it and examining it themselves.

After this violation of privacy, I went to enter the theater and was told to stop. The next security guard wanted to scan me with a wand to see if I was carrying any other type of recording device. Already upset at being treated like a criminal, I refused to be scanned. The guard insisted that I had to be scanned and, in protest, I left the theater.

So, I did not end up seeing The Protector.

I simply could not believe how Silver City Polo Park could treat its patrons with such contempt. No movie is worth putting up with this kind of treatment. What really bothered me, though, was the fact that this didn't appear to bother anyone else who went in to see the movie. People willingly gave the security guards their camera phones, in effect handing over a history of their personal calls and a listing of everyone in their address book. Cell phones are your private property. No company has any business in taking this from you, for any reason, least of all for movie piracy.

What's worse is the lack of realization that in-theater camera recordings are not a piracy problem at all (if one can call 'piracy' an actual problem). No one wants to download someone's cell phone recording of a movie, especially when pristine, DVD-quality copies are available from industry insiders (which, after a quick check, are already available on the file sharing networks).

Is this really what our civilization has come to? Giving up our personal rights and private property/information in exchange for ninety minutes of mindless entertainment? I am sick and tired of being treated with contempt by an industry I fairly support. I buy movies that I like and think are worth owning. I pay extra for the movie channels on my satellite package. Yet here I am, having to sit through non-skippable FBI warnings on DVDs, and watching inane anti-piracy propaganda in theaters before a show starts.

I think the world-view of the movie industry can be summed up quite nicely by forme MPAA president Jack Valenti:

"I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."

- Jack Valenti Testimony at 1982 House Hearing on Home Recording of Copyrighted Works

These people do not live in the same universe the rest of us live in. We need to wake up and put an end to this nonsense.

A few months after my friend stopped running his own web server and paying another company to do it, our sites were repeatedly hacked by Turkish terrorist supporters. You may have noticed it over the past month or so. The main page to my site was repeatedly hacked. I don't think they've touched the rest of my site's content, but if you see something really odd, it might be the fault of these 1337 hax0rs.

My friend is putting together his own web server again because of this.

My image gallery is working again. Things got a little mixed up after my friend stopped hosting my site directly and went to some other service provider instead.

Our province's premiere has apparently decided to "rebrand" our beloved province in order to attract more business, tourism, and immigrants. Friendly Manitoba, the perfectly good motto that has stuck with us for decades -- and that has well represented us all that time, IMHO -- will now be replaced with...wait for it...

Zip zip zowie! Can you feel our energy?! Our spirited energy!? Woohoo!

Not.

Now, there's nothing wrong with a rebranding every now and then -- we have had Friendly Manitoba since before I was born -- but Spirited Energy?. That so does not represent the Manitoba I know. I guess it's not really surprising that it is so ill-befitting Manitoba when you discover that our premiere paid an American company to come up with this name. So we now have foreign nationals deciding what our motto should be. Nice.

Oh, and the "spirited energy" motto has nothing to do with the new northern Manitoba hydroelectric plant that just got the go-ahead for construction today. Nope. It's definately not an advertisement for the Manitoba power industry. Definately not.

You know, I probably could've grown to accept the new motto had the government not sent money outside the province to come up with it and that it did not so blatantly appear to refer to the new surplus of electrical energy that we will be able to sell. You know, maybe if we started building power plants over graveyards so that the spirits of the departed could spin turbines on their way to heaven, then I think I could've accepted the motto.

But now, the next time I get new license plates, you can bet I will be putting a "Friendly Manitoba" sticker over this new motto.

We're Friendly Manitoba, dammit!

The move to the new host went well on the weekend. All old links that used to point directly to over parts of my site will now bring you back to this main page, so you'll have to update your bookmarks (or notify the webmaster who provided the link).

My buddy is not entirely satisfied with this new host and is thinking up a new scheme for doing all the web hosting, so things might change a little again in the near future. We'll just have to wait and see.

BTW, I finished reading The Mote in God's Eye. It was a pretty good read. It really had me on the edge of my seat a couple of times. The ending was a little disappointing, but I guess it was appropriate.

***SPOILER ALERT *** Stop reading this paragraph right now if you don't want to read any spoilers. If were head of the commission to decide what to do with the aliens when the humans realized the threat they posed, I would've probably chosen to send warships to the Mote and wipe out every last trace of the Moties. The idea of a blockade was foolish in that such a thing could never act as a permanent solution (a think there's a sequel to this book in which the blockade breaksdown). It was clear that the Moties had few (if any) redeeming characteristics and were not at all concerned with the welfare of anyone other than themselves. This, coupled with their special physical characteristics, made the Moties a permament threat that could not be solved by any way other than complete extinction. I think that, in the sequel, the humans manage to counteract the Moties' fecundity via genetic engineering, but I don't think that's a realistic -- or even workable -- solution. It would be a terrible decision to make -- complete and total xenocide -- but if the alternative is guaranteed destruction at the hands of the Moties, then the choice is clear. ***SPOILER ALERT ***

The Great Deletion has begun. First to go: my mp3s. Other minor things might disappear here and there.

My friend Leo, who is hosting my site, has decided he no longer wants to run a web server and will be purchasing remote web hosting soon. He has agreed to still host my site, but I'll have to trim it down a bit. I'll be getting rid of my mp3 section for sure. The address to my site might also change to:

www.kaejae-worx.com/don/

(the ~ before my name will be gone)

So, expect outages and changes in the near future.

After eight months and over 700 hours of playing time, I've decided to take a break from playing World of Warcraft. The game ran out of soloable content for me, and I didn't really feel like playing in groups or raids.

I'm not sure if I ever plan to play again. Some of my friends who got me hooked on the game are burnt out as well. We'll see how things go in the fall when the expansion pack for the game is expected to come out.

I guess it's good to take a break for the summer. I've actually managed to get a few things done outside the house now (I planted some Lilacs bushes in my yard, finally!). I went out and bought a bunch of books to read, including The Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (a story about First Contact), The Mammoth Book of Science Fiction (a collection of sci-fi short stories that I bought mainly for the story Ulla, Ulla, by Eric Brown, which is sort of a sequel to H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds in which Man goes to Mars), and The Mammoth Book of Terror (same deal, but with horror short stories). Hopefully there are some good stories in those short story compilations.

Kevin Smith (of Jay & Silent Bob fame) recently posted nine blog entries that talk about his experiences living with and helping his friend Jason Mewes (aka Jay) overcome drug addiction. It's a very frank and honest story about a young man's decline into the world of drugs and eventual escape from it.

(Warning: these links contain a lot of adult themes)

• Me and My Shadow, Part 1/9 by Kevin Smith
• Me and My Shadow, Part 2/9 by Kevin Smith
• Me and My Shadow, Part 3/9 by Kevin Smith
• Me and My Shadow, Part 4/9 by Kevin Smith
• Me and My Shadow, Part 5/9 by Kevin Smith
• Me and My Shadow, Part 6/9 by Kevin Smith
• Me and My Shadow, Part 7/9 by Kevin Smith
• Me and My Shadow, Part 8/9 by Kevin Smith
• Me and My Shadow, Part 9/9 by Kevin Smith

I came across an interesting blog today. The Thursday, May 04, 2006 post on the blog was a very insightful piece that I thought I'd repost here in it's entirety (with Cato's permission, of course).

What follows is a copy of a posting made on Cato's Republic. This is not my work. I just feel that this was such an insightful piece that it warranted a complete quote rather than just a link. By all means, check out Cato's blog for more interesting articles!

Examples of Self-induced Tragedy - By Cato

I have a couple of good examples of what I talked about last time that I've seen on various blogs lately. I'm not going to link to the blogs in question -- and I'll try to not give too much info so the writers can stay anonymous -- because both seem to have taken a lot of flack from anonymous commentors about various things they've said (although, not what I'm going to point out) and I'd hate to add to anyone's frustration level. Both demonstrate the same mistake.

First there is a girl who was in love. She dated the guy for a year. When they started dating he was a virgin and she quickly cured him of that. She loved him. And he left her for another woman and broke her heart. Her blog started shortly after that, as she tried out the world of on-line dating sites and had some rather humerous (and weird) experiences. She finally met a good guy and has hooked up with him -- going so far as to quit her job and move across country.

The second was a girl who really, really liked sex and being with guys, but had another side of her personality that wanted to stay a virgin. So, she'd hook up with random guys, get them all hot and bothered, get them off orally, and then back out of the real thing. She eventually fell in love, gave it up, and he, of course, left her and broke her heart.

Real tragedy. Real pain. Really, really avoidable.

The issue her is also well demonstrated in a Washington Post article from a few weeks back entitled "Marriage is For White People":

Key quotes:

"The marriage rate for African Americans has been dropping since the 1960s, and today, we have the lowest marriage rate of any racial group in the United States. In 2001, according to the U.S. Census, 43.3 percent of black men and 41.9 percent of black women in America had never been married, in contrast to 27.4 percent and 20.7 percent respectively for whites. African American women are the least likely in our society to marry. In the period between 1970 and 2001, the overall marriage rate in the United States declined by 17 percent; but for blacks, it fell by 34 percent. Such statistics have caused Howard University relationship therapist Audrey Chapman to point out that African Americans are the most uncoupled people in the country."

And

"Among African Americans, the desire for marriage seems to have a different trajectory for women and men. My observation is that black women in their twenties and early thirties want to marry and commit at a time when black men their age are more likely to enjoy playing the field. As the woman realizes that a good marriage may not be as possible or sustainable as she would like, her focus turns to having a baby, or possibly improving her job status, perhaps by returning to school or investing more energy in her career.

As men mature, and begin to recognize the benefits of having a roost and roots (and to feel the consequences of their risky bachelor behavior), they are more willing to marry and settle down. By this time, however, many of their female peers are satisfied with the lives they have constructed and are less likely to settle for marriage to a man who doesn't bring much to the table. Indeed, he may bring too much to the table: children and their mothers from previous relationships, limited earning power, and the fallout from years of drug use, poor health care, sexual promiscuity. In other words, for the circumspect black woman, marriage may not be a business deal that offers sufficient return on investment."

She ends the article by pointing out that this is not just a black problem. It is spreading to all other groups in America.

Why? Why aren't black women getting married? Because there aren't enough guys who meet their standards. But, judging from fertility rates, these same guys DO meet their standards for sex.

Lower standards for sex than marriage. Lower by far.

So? Well, as anyone with a brain will tell you, guys will generally do what it takes to get sex. That is, in general, a big part of male motivation. These guys are meeting the necessary criteria to get as much sex as they want. What is their motivation to do the hard self-sacrifice it would take to meet the criteria for marriage? Why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?

If women had the same standards for sex as for marriage -- or, SHOCK, actually wait for marriage, than they would find that, magically, all the guys would be striving to live up to these expectations. That's just the way the world works.

And these expectations aren't just in the realm of jobs and stability and success. It especially applies to expectations of commitment. Go back to the original examples for the blogosphere. Girl one didn't make any sort of commitment necessary to screw her. So, she ends up with guys who aren't making any sort of real commitment. Sure, he might stay with her while the glow of initial infatuation lasts, but there is nothing real that can last. She didn't make it a requirement (and, just as importantly, neither do the other girls in the same socio-economic circles), and so he didn't have a reason to give it. He stayed while it was fun, and split when something better came along. And broke her heart in the process.

Why is this surprising to anyone?

And her new guy? Commitment definately wasn't a requirement for sex there, either. She did him on the second or third date. So, while she is making long-term plans, she's also walking into another heartbreak with eyes screwed shut.

Long-term relationships are hard. It takes a lot of work. It takes putting up with another person's flaws and the frustrations that goes with it all. It takes a commitment. And these women are encouraging men to never ever develop the ability or desire to make that sort of commitment. And they are only hurting themselves. The guys? They don't get pregnant and are usually leaving because they find someone younger and hotter to screw.

The second girl made the same mistake but in an even more tragic fashion. Part of her had valued her virginity. Part of her had wanted to save it for the right guy in a real relationship. But she gave into cultural pressure. She met a guy, fell for him, and gave it up. Less than four months later he's gone. And she wants to ask "what's wrong with me?"

What's wrong is the idea that traditional morality is somehow irrelevant to our times, or was created simply to hold people back. It wasn't. It was created to protect us. These things like sex are powerful, powerful forces. You disrepect it at your own peril. In particular, sexual mores were not -- as we are usually told -- created to hold back women and maintain dominance by male chauvenist pigs. It was there to protect WOMEN, not men. Oh, and children, because none of these girls have stopped having kids. Kids with no foundation because instead of being raised by mature adults they are being raised by people who have never grown up. People who have no greater goal in life than the selfish pursuit of their own animal lusts.

God help the future.

I came across The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny the other day. The song is pretty catchy, so I added it to the Humor subsection of my Music section. My favorite part is the role call of the heroes and villians that gang up on Chuck Norris. Very catchy rhythm and rhymes.

Then Gandalf the Grey and Gandalf the White and
"Monty Python and the Holy Grail"'s Black Knight and
Benito Mussolini and The Blue Meanie and
Cowboy Curtis and Jambi the Genie
Robocop, the Terminator, Captain Kirk, and Darth Vader
Lo Pan, Superman, every single Power Ranger
Bill S. Preston and Theodore Logan,
Spock, The Rock, Doc Ock, and Hulk Hogan
All came out of no where lightning fast
And they kicked Chuck Norris in his cowboy ass
It was the bloodiest battle the world ever saw
With civilians looking on total awe...

(It's sad I only had to look up two of those guys. I'm such a nerd.)

The chorus is pretty good, too:

This is the Ultimate Showdown
of Ultimate Destiny.
Good guys, bad guys, and explosions
as far as the eye can see.
And only one will survive,
I wonder who it will be?
This is the Ultimate Showdown
of Ultimate Destiny

I'm sure there's another level to this whole thing -- some sort of commentary on modern storytelling and the contemporary heroic epic -- but the song's catchy tune has my brain paralyzed, preventing any further intellectualization of The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny!

I just noticed a link to a section of my own website on the Wikipedia article for Rampage. Cool!

In case you didn't know, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that's basically built up on user's submissions. That is, anyone and everyone who visits the site can edit it. There are sometimes 'edit wars' when people try and put up biased information, or when a company or politician doesn't like the way it's/he's represented, and you can forget about getting unbiased info from any topic on religion or politics, but, for the most part, it works. A user-editable encyclopedia is one of the things that doesn't work in theory, but works in practice.

Midway released a new version of my favorite game: Rampage! I had heard about this game a week or two ago, then did some research into it last week. It was recently released so I picked up a copy for an amazingly low $25 at a local Electronics Boutique. Apparently this game was priced as a budget game, but as a Rampage fan, I think this game is actually underpriced.

I couldn't find too many reviews for the game while I was researching it. Gamespot gave the game an unfair review, rating it a 5.7 out of 10 (it really isn't that bad of a game, Alex). Sadly, this will probably prevent a lot of people from trying out this great game. Hopefully this terrible review will be somewhat mitigated by the user reviews on the same site, which rate the game an average of 8.5.

In Rampage: Total Destruction, as in previous games of this series, you control a giant monster who goes around smashing cities to rubble and eating any unfortunate saps who happen to be in your way. While I didn't like the two sequels to the orignal arcade game -- Rampage: World Tour and Rampage: Universal Tour -- this latest sequel provides everything I've been wanting since I played the original to death.

This new version adds a variety of attacks and thirty(!) different monsters to play as. And now you can pick up vehicles and toss them around. It's loads of fun to pick up a passing SUV and lob it into a highrise. This is the game I've been waiting a long, long time for.

Enough jibber-jabber. Here are some pictures I made from the game (please excuse the poor quality: these came from an analog connection to my computer):

Gameplay video (34 MB - requires XviD codec)

Ugh. I decided to reinstall Windows today after some trouble a program that manages the features for my video card. It's nice having my install nice and clean again, but it's such a pain to reinstall the programs that store their files all over the place. I wish all programs would just store their data in the folder they were installed to so that you can just backup the folder, then put it back after a reinstall (or at least save/restore your settings doing that). Not surpisingly it's usually the open-source, free software that usually lets you do this.

I helped a coworker today who was having trouble working on a Microsoft Publisher document. She was creating a document detailing new features in one of our company's products. The document needed screenshots, which I emailed to her. She tried importing the screenshot images into the MSPublisher document, but when she scaled them down to fit the page size, they became illegible on the screen.

Now, this was a problem as she needed to draw highlights around new features, but it was impossible to distinguish any text on the screenshots. So, we looked through the menus and found the option that manages the detail level of scaled images. You had two options if you wanted scaled images to be visible in your document: they could either be low-detail to allow for faster display, or they could he in high detail, which is slower, but at least you end up with legible images. Not surprisingly switching this option between the two settings did absolutely nothing.

So, the next thought was that MSPublisher was not designed to properly handle the format of the image file I had used. This seemed likely because I used the free, open format PNG, and everyone knows how friendly Microsoft is to anything that benefits society as a whole rather then Microsoft as a whole. I converted all the images to several other formats -- JPG, GIF, BMP -- but nothing else worked.

A little exhasperated, we switched to Microsoft Word as an option, because we knew it could properly scale images without making them look like blocky digital vomit. MSWord didn't provide the handy layout features for creating a booklet, but it let us do the layouts we wanted. We theorized that we could design each page in MSWord, then copy the page into MSPublisher. When we tested this out, however, we were somewhat surprised. The screenshot, when copied from an MSWord document into MSPublisher, scaled fine!

In the end, we were left with only one real option. My coworker now has to open about sixteen screenshots from her Microsoft Outlook email into her Microsoft Picture Viewer, then copy each screenshot from Microsoft Picture Viewer into Microsoft Word, then copy each screenshot from Microsoft Word to Microsoft Publisher. That's the power of Microsoft! All these programs working together for your benefit!

How did we ever get things done before computers came along?

In junior high and high school, my friends and I played lots of roleplaying games. Two of our most played games were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness (an rpg based in the TMNT universe where you play mutated animal characters) and Heroes Unlimited (and rpg where you play various types of superheroes). We played these all the time during lunch hour and after school during get togethers and sleepovers.

These two games were published by Palladium Books, a company run by Kevin Siembieda. There were many other genres of rpg published by Palladium Books, such as Rifts and Robotech. All the games shared the same basic rules set, so if you knew how to play one, you could pretty much play them all.

Sadly, this company has experienced a series of unfortunate events and is likely to completely collapse. The company is currently trying to raise money from dedicated fans by selling a specially made print featuring major characters from the various Palladium universe.

It's been a long time since I've played any Palladium game, having really only played 2nd/3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons regularly over the past six or seven years (with the occasional Call of Cthulhu game thrown in for variety). The terrible mechanics of the Palladium system aside, it was still fun to play when we were kids. It's kind of sad to see that a happy piece of my childhood fall under hard times and possibly disappear forever.

I can remember the first Palladium rpg adventure I ever played. It was a one-on-one session with my friend Kris Hiebert, back around 1989 or so. He had recently gotten the rulebook for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness and ran me through a quick adventure. I played a mutant rat character, I believe, who somehow ended up in some elementary school saving the children from terrorists. Good times.

I went thru the drive-thru at McDonalds tonight and picked myself up a meal. Now, McDonald's has a pretty high screw up rate when it comes to drive thru orders. You'd be lucky to get more than 4 out of 5 orders correct. But when I got home and started eating my fries, I made a startling discovery. They sugared my fries. No word of a lie: my fries were sprinkled with sugar. It was disgusting. How on earth does that even happen?

They sugared my fries!!

I work on the 23rd floor of a residential apartment building whose top few floors are office space. Today, while at my desk beside the balcony, I heard a loud bang and saw something dark fall past the glass balcony doors. Thinking a large bird had hit the glass doors, I quickly get up and head out on the balcony. Luckily, I had my camera with me at work today. I took the following photo:

No, this is not a joke. Someone on one of the floors above us threw a desk off the balcony. Seriously.

Well, we managed to help get the general manager of that Future Shop store fired. He was replaced by another manager who is an eleven year veteran at managing Future Shop stores in our city. He called me to personally apologize and get some more feedback, and offered an undisclosed discount if we should ever want to purchase a laptop there again.

While I'm not sure I'll make a big purchase from their store anytime in the near future, the apology and the firing of the previous GM were nice.

Let that be a lesson to the rest of you crappy managers out there!

My brother made a couple of webcomics about a World of Warcraft addict named Jim. Voici les comics:

• Comic #1
• Comic #2

The style could use some refinement, but it's got potential. Let's see some more, Chris!

A buddy of mine at work got me hooked on the US version of the BBC TV series The Office. It's been a long time since a TV show has made me laugh out loud so consistently.

Steve Carell leads the cast as Michael Scott: a complete jackass of a boss who tries way, way to hard to "entertain" his employees with hilariously lame humor. But it's when his character is not trying to be funny thta he manages to make completely and hilariously inappropriate comments:

Michael : "This is our receptionist, Pam. If you think she's cute now, you should have seen her a couple years ago."

or

Oscar : "Both my parents were born in Mexico, and they moved to the United States a year before I was born, so I grew up in the United States... my parents were Mexican."

Michael : "Wow, that is a great story. That's the American dream right there, right? Um, let me ask you, is there a term besides 'Mexican' that you prefer? Something less offensive?"

I heartily recommend this show!

A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion says, "Because if I do, I will die too."

The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp "Why?"

The scorpion replied: "Its my nature..."

Commentary of event relevant to my life. Witty remark. Continued commentary. Closing remark.

I've added a link to the World of Warcraft guild that I helped found. You can find the link on the column of links at the left. Our guild, The Dreadnaughts, is currently in its infancy. We have not yet officially started recruiting (though the guild already contains about twenty active members) and the website is still under construction.

I play on the Nathrezim server on the Alliance side. My main character is a human paladin named Xenomech. If you visit my website and play WoW, it would be neat to hear from you in the game.

The image on the right is my character squaring off against the ogre Glommus in the ruins of Alterac.

The Saturday after I got my flat tire I went to Canadian Tire (where I originally bought the tires four years ago) to get it fixed. They honored their warranty and fixed the tire and another one, which had a slow leak, for free. Kudos to Canadian Tire for not trying to screw over their customer. BTW, it would've cost $50 to do the repair if I had not had that warranty.

I noticed my front, driver's side tire was really low this morning, so I decided to fill it at the local 7-11. On the way there I could feel the drag of the under-inflated tire and was a bit concerned. When I reached the 7-11 store, some vandal had cut the end of the air hose off. Long story short: two tire changes in -47C weather, half an hour, and one broken bolt later, I was back on my way to work. What a wonderful way to start the day. All because one little punk thought it would be funny to cut off the end of an air hose at a local convenience store.

I bought a bag of chips yesterday after work from my local 7-11 store. The price tag said $2.99, but they rung up as $3.99. I brought this to the clerk's attention, but she refused to offer me the advertised price, instead telling me that "they" made a pricing mistake. Excuse me? "They" is "you"! Fortunately for them I was tired from a long day of work and I didn't raise a fuss. It's nothing new to be screwed over by 7-11 (you always have to keep your eye out for them over-charging you), but it's really irritating to be treated with contempt when you point out their mistakes.

Looks like my Rant Page is starting to get a little redundant now that I'm venting on the main page. :-P

It's been a while, but I finally added something new to my Programs section: a .NET dll -- called TaskThreader -- that provides a very simple way to perform a task in a separate thread while giving the user a progress bar with a button to cancel the task. Fully commented with a simple example project. Check it out!

Last October I helped my friend Jer buy a laptop at a local Future Shop store. A few months later he noticed the DVD drive was not working properly, so he brought it in to get fixed. For two weeks he was given the runaround. All Future Shop had to do was send the machine away to get fixed, but in two weeks and numerous phone calls and in-person conversations with Jer, it seemed an insurmountable task for the Future Shop employees.

My friend was completely fed up with their incompetance that he enlisted my help to go back to the store today and either a) get his broken laptop exchanged for the next best model, or b) get a complete refund. There was no more settling for just getting his broken laptop fixed at this point. They had had two weeks to send it off and couldn't seem to even do that.

At this point in the whole ordeal, my buddy had conversed with the general manager of the store on a few occasions. We spoke with the very same man this night. Jer started the conversation with him, but after seeing what kind of a person this general manager was, I just started letting him have it. Keep in mind that, in the past, I've been able to get a collections agent to hang up on me. Twice. In a row. (This was on my brother's behalf many years ago). In this case, I had lent Jer the credit to buy the computer, so I was pretty upset at how my investment was being treated.

A more pathetic and weasly GM I have yet to meet. He simply refused to admit responsibility for the screw ups of himself and the people who work under him. I gathered this was the kind of person who thinks "authority" means being able to boss others around rather than being responsible for what his underlings do. To his credit the guy kept his cool, more or less, but he obviously did not have a leg to stand on. It was pretty much a war of attrition as he stuck to his mantra of "Refunds can only be done within fourteen days after purchase" and "It's against our policy to return defective items for the next best model, even when the model in question is no longer being carried".

At one point the guy had the gall to suggest that he would send Jer's laptop away to get repaired (you had two weeks to do that buddy; what makes you think we'll believe you this time?) and he would give us a loaner for the time being. Now, normall this is an acceptable proposition...except the guy expected us to pay full price for the loaner machine which would be refunded when we returned it after Jer's laptop had been fixed. Now, I'm no Minister of Finance or anything, but I'm pretty sure that's not how "loaners" are supposed to work. When I go get my car repaired and get a loane car for the duration of the time my car is being worked on, I don't have to pay full price for it first. A deposit I could understand, but having to pay $1300 for a loaner machine is simply unacceptable.

After forty-five minutes of tag-teaming this guy -- he had to tell us to keep our voices down once or twice as we were in the middle of the store -- Jer finally pulled his trump card. He threatened to call his lawyer to get the whole mess straightened out. When Jer explained that the lawyer would be going after Future Shop, and, therefore, it's general manager, the guy promptly offered to refund out money entirely. We had succeeded in destroying the general manager of the Regent Ave. Future Shop in Winnipeg (which was worth 500 XP each).

Here's a great article on the question is there evidence for the existence of "spirits" and some "spiritual dimension"? I thought it was pretty interesting.

If I had a time machine, I would go back to 1982 and destroy The Waitresses before they could record the song "I Know What Boys Like".

But I wouldn't stop there. No, no. After that, I would pretend to feel remorse and return to just before the time I went back to the past and convince myself not to do it. This would cause a paradox in which I would not have gone back and destroyed The Waitresses, so I never would've warned myself not to do it, so I would have done it anyway, thereby causing an eternal causality loop in which I would destroy The Waitresses an infinite number of times before they could record the song "I Know What Boys Like".

My goodness what a terrible song. Like listening to a half dead cat moaning for three minutes.