Glad it was on sale

The other night I tried a President's Choice Chicago-style pizza. There was more to the name, but I forget what it was now. Regardless, it claimed to be a 2 pound deep dish pizza, and I bought one because the store didn't have any of the kind I usually get, and it was on sale. I got the pepperoni and sausage flavour.

When I opened it, there was an obvious misallocation of toppings. All the sauce was lumped on one side, with the associated cheese and pepperoni accompanying it. This left a part of the crust exposed, but I figured all that would sort itself out as the sauce unfroze and cooked.

I was wrong, and we wound up with a pizza where some slices were humongously thick and others were pitifully thin. It happens I guess, so I figured I'd try to cut it so the slices came out more-or-less even in size and thickness. It was a good plan, I thought.

The pizza had other ideas. Due to the deepness of the pan, my pizza cutter was fairly useless in cutting through the edges of the crust, and while fighting with those my sizing got thrown off track and every slice came out a different size. One of the biggest ones was also the thickest, and the one right beside it was the smallest. It seriously looked like a pizza cut by a blind chimp.

No offense to the blind chimps in the audience. You're decent people, but generally you can't cut a pizza to save your life. I'm sorry you had to hear it from me.

The pizza was still a bit cold when we started eating, and that's never a good thing. I didn't think it was too bad, but it wasn't as hot as something coming right out of the over should be. I even left it in for a few extra minutes just to make sure it was done. A few seconds in the microwave fixed it right up, so finally I got to sample what I really hoped would be a pizza worthy of all the hardship it had dumped on me.

I was disappointed to say the least. It was bland and mostly tasteless. The crust was nice and flaky and tasted like a pie crust, but it wasn't nearly enough to make up for the nondescript sauce and flavourless meat.

Overall, I'm glad I got the pizza on sale, but I wouldn't buy it again.

Two weeks

Wow, what happened to my ambition? I honestly didn't realize that I wasn't writing anything here, and although I'm not sure how many people I've now permanently alienated, I'm back. And there was much rejoicing.

A lot's happened over the past little while, most of it completely unimportant. There was a preview of Guild Wars: Factions, the upcoming expansion, and this one was to test the new classes in PvP. I made a temporary account (didn't want to delete a character) and made myself a ritualist, who was awesome. I played mine as a spirit summoner, and had 2 to do damage, 1 to strip enchantments, 1 to knock people down, and a last one to make knockdowns last longer. rounding out my skill bar was a skill to destroy a spirit (that did a lot of damage and caused blindness for 10 seconds), an enchantment that gave me health and energy whenever I conjured a spirit, and a nifty resurrection skill with quite possibly the coolest name ever, Flesh Of My Flesh. It resurrected an ally with half of your current health, which I guess is where the name came from. Better than most monk resurrection skills, and it casted faster than theirs do.

School's been going on too, but most of my assignments are due in class, so I have very little homework. I have to write documentation for a mechanical engineering project later in the semester, but my partner and I can't get started on that until the engineers actually finalize things. They're getting there, so we can probably start drawing up plans soon. Hooray.

Speaking of school, our one class on Monday got moved to Wednesday, which means I have Mondays and fridays off. Yup, 4-day weekend every week. You can guess how pleased I am about that. (hint: very)

I have to do a mini tutorial on something in Dreamweaver, but I have no idea what to talk about. I was considering talking about web-safe colour like I did for my research project, but I think it would be redundent. You have to go out of your way to tell Dreamweaver to not work with web-safe colours, so pretty much everyone in the class will likely never take that extra step.

Hm, maybe I could talk about making Blogger templates. Maybe shake up this site a little in the process.

Ouch, my leisure

Tomorrow is my day off. No classes on Friday (woohoo), and I had planned a nice leisurely day of slacking and playing video games.

Turns out I have to go to school instead. Our major project for this semester is to write documentation for some mechanical engineering projects, and the only time that was good for both groups of students to meet was tomorrow.

We're meeting to talk about the project, and try to figure out what we'll need to write and who we're writing it for. Knowing the audience is key to technical writing, and the entire meeting will probably be about that.

It promises to be a roaring good time, I'm sure.

So, Xbox anyone?

My Xbox Live account renewed itself. I didn't have the time or will to wade through Microsoft's voice menu system, so I just let them ding me another $100.

So, I'm going to possibly use it. I need some suggestions for games, though.

First off, I can't play first-person shooters on a console. I simply can't use a controller to play them, it's physically impossible for me. Anyone who claims the controller is superior to the keyboard/mouse combo is a raving lunatic and will be ignored until the sun explodes. Then we'll play Halo and I'll get my ass kicked because I can't use the controller. Then the exploding sun will consume us. Then I'll get back on topic.

Aside from FPS games, I like many types of games, but again, I have no idea what to play online. I wonder if the Atari Anthology has Live support. I feel like some Combat with a stranger.

Or maybe I'll just download Splinter Cell missions. Who knows.

What is it with this city?

Do I have a "Spray disgusting road slush on me" sign on my back? Cause it seems that way.

I was coming home from an appointment at the Rehab Centre, and I wound up getting off a stop early on Fisher. No big deal, because the two stops are the same distance from my building's door. I don't know why, but I prefer getting off at the one closer to Baseline.

Anyway, I got off the bus and started walking. I noticed that there was water next to the sidewalk, but I didn't think anything of it, and continued on my way.

In the time it took me to take 4 steps, the bus picked up enough speed to splash me, and it soaked me from the knees down. Seriously, 4 steps! How hard did the driver have to stomp the gas?

I've decided to give up on sidewalks. This city has the desire to drench me with wet, salty dirt, and I'm sure none of my pants will make it through this winter unsoaked.

If you're curious about the appointment, it was with the respirologist. My speech therapist and I noticed that when I talk I sometimes don't breathe like I should, and we wanted to see if it was a physical problem or a psychological one. Turns out it's in my head, and my breathing is so perfect the department is going to erect a statue of me.

Random segue: How awesome would it be to have a life-sized statue of yourself made out of meat? So you could slowly eat yourself, and not feel bad about it in the morning. A tofu version will be available for vegetarians.

I think there's a market for this. I just need a catchy name.

Go figure

I played Twilight Imperium last night, and after several weeks of complaining about getting war races (which I'm not aggressive enough to play properly), I finally get the Yssaril, the political and action card race. Possibly my all-time favourite race to play.

And I proceed to have the worst game I've ever played.

I don't want to reveal the details, but everybody figured out my secret objective (despite my gambit of taking Mecatol Rex, the planet at the centre of the galaxy and the one that roughly 80% of the secret objectives revolve around) in the first round. My secret was to have a non-fighter ship in each system containing a wormhole. Usually that's a fairly tough one, but this time 3 of the 4 wormholes was close to my home, and the other one was right beside another guy's home system, so if I really wanted to I could have disguised it as an invasion.

Sadly, I messed up the order of operations and tried to be too aggressive with it. I had 2 of the 4 done, and I figured I could do the other 2 easily in the 3rd round. Until Phil (Eric's brother, first time player) moved a destroyer into the system that I needed and then called diplomacy on me, and after that everything went to hell.

I still finished 2nd, but Mat won. He had the technology race, and almost all the public objectives were technology-based. He pulled a power play at the end and could qualify for either of the 2-point public objectives, so there was no way to stop him.

My race's unique ability to not have an action card hand size limit (this is a noun stack), and the ability to get an extra card in each status phase (the end of a round) let me down. I got a very large pile of combat-related cards, but very few that could help me in other situations. I did mange to pull out the one that let me override the current political card, and used it when the law being proposed was crappy.

I chose Ancient Artifact, the law that either gives each player 2 free technologies, or destroys everything around Mecatol Rex. Mat wanted to vote against it, and he had more influence than I did, so I used Thugs on him (action card that makes a player unable to vote), and we all got free technology. The outcome of the law depends on a dice roll, 1-5 and the planet explodes, 6-10 and everybody benefits. I rolled a 10, so we succeeded in style.

High point of the game, really.

Very clever, Microsoft

My Xbox Live account renews on Tuesday. I've used it twice, maybe, since I paid for it, so it's a giant waste of money to me. Thus, I tried to cancel it. Not the word "tried" there.

I got signed in, had my account info loaded up, and hit the Subscriptions tab. I assume that's where one would go to cancel a subscription, since that option isn't anywhere else. Anyway, the screen changes, and the subscription thing loads up in the background, and then a message pops up.

This service is unavailble due to technical difficulties. Try again later.

By taking away my option to cancel the account, they guarantee I'll purchase another one, because it automatically renews it if you get past a certain date. Sneaky, devious, and evil. Lousy Microsoft.

Joke's on them though, they have expired credit card info for me, so they hopefully won't be able to automatically charge me if their mysterious technical difficulties that only affect one specific part of the service don't clear themselves up.

I figure they'll have that fixed for me on wednesday, and that $100 for a year of Live isn't refundable. Probably.

Pop quiz

If you're driving along and you see a group of people around a bus stop, and a bunch of road slush in the middle of the bus lane, do you:

a) stay in your lane and keep driving?
b) aim for the slush pile and gun it?

If you answered b) and were driving down Baseline Road, just past the McDonalds at College Square, at around 5:05 tonight, I'm going to kick your ass.

What a waste

I got up slightly late for my class, but still made it on time. 45 minutes later I was waiting for a bus home.

Why'd I even bother going? We didn't do anything, and the class was just an introductory thing anyway. I should have known better, but I can't change that now.

Wednesdays are going to suck this semester, I can already feel it.

my punner was still broken for last night's Rise of Nations game. I got the Germans, and although I was tempted to name all my cities after famous nazis, I didn't. No awards for witty city names, although I did have one named Euro Disneyland (with no people in it).

Title goes here

I went back to school today. Nothing much happened, we just talked about what we'd be doing in some classes and then got to go home early because our second class is being covered in Thursday's class. Or something. I didn't pay much attention to the reason, I just wanted to go home.

Even though it was an easy day, I still managed to be late for it. When class is at 11, getting up at quarter past 10 isn't a good way of being on time. I'm afraid for tomorrow, because my class starts at 9. I haven't had to be anywhere that early in months, and I'm usually just getting up then if I have to be somewhere. I did some math, and I have to get up around 7 in order to be on the bus in time to get the class on time.

I can't remember the last time I saw 7 in the morning , without being up for every hour ahead of it. Seriously, they couldn't find a better time for this class?

Bah.

Anyway, Greg and I have started playing rise of Nations again. We had one game but didn't count on our skills deteriorating quite as much as they did, and the computers mopped us up. It didn't help that I forgot to disable nukes, and the computer will nuke you to armageddon and make everyone lose, and I have no idea why. Your only hop is to get yourself to full research and invest in missle shield as quickly as possible, and maybe you'll avoid the nuke parade.

Anyway, we're going to try again soon, and hopefully I'll be able to report a rousing triumph, with parades in the streets of my hilariously-named capital. I always try to give my cities names that are clever puns involving the nation I'm playing. Some are more successful than others, obviously.

Last game I was the Turks. After renaming my capital from Istanbul to Not Constantinople, I named one of my later cities Marty Turk-o. See, clever pun, and it killed. Killed! None of my other names were as good, but I managed to build a city between 3 mountains and called it Red Hill mining Town, after the U2 song, and I made a city surrounded by forts and military buildings and called in Fort Sensible, a subtle simpsons reference if you didn't get it. They weren't Turk-related, but my punner was running at half capacity.

Hopefully next time will be better.