The Occasional Solipsist

I pride myself on being a pretty smart fella. Back before I did all that damage to my cerebellum in high school, I scored a 150 on an IQ test. More recently I still scored a respectable 123, so I don't consider myself too much of a dumb-dumb. Regretting some of the stupider things I did to myself when I was a kid maybe, but still not too shabby.

So it was with something akin to astonishment that I came across a post today discussing our solar system and its 11 planets. I was all over the demotion of Pluto to dwarf planet a few years ago, but it was my understanding that we now had 8 official planets, and an as yet undetermined number of dwarfs. Turns out I was wrong. We have the big 8, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, but now we also have Pluto, Ceres and Eris, the three (so far) dwarf planets. And 6 more on the NASA/JPL 'watch' list.

Guess I should read the news more often. And I also guess its good that I didn't shell out that $100 on the ceiling model of the solar system for Trin's room. I have a feeling it might go on sale shortly.

If anyone else feels like getting an intelligence inadequacy adjustment (like I just did), hit these links:

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/index.cfm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_system

Labels: everything else, narcissism

So my laptop is back and now I so am I, at least in a connected sense. If anyone is wondering what kind of warrantee service HP offers, it rocks. Had my baby back in no time, and it is as good as new now.

UPS however, is a gang of douchebags for leaving my repaired laptop on my porch in a Northern Ontario winter, but since it was mild (for here) and my laptop was none the worse for the experience, I am going to forego making a stink and just let it go.

While I waited for my laptop to come back and have been off on the long break part of my swing shifts, I have been keeping busy doing a ridiculous amount of ice fishing, had a great bud of mine stay with us for a few days, fixed my snow blower (all by myself and I am SO proud of myself about it), watched a few movies, notably the fantastic Juno, and the lackluster Justice League New Frontier, and got caught up on every comic book in my read pile that I hadn't yet gotten to.

And about those comics: My take on the recent Spider-Man One More Day/Brand New Day business is that it fucking stinks. Spider-Man's marriage to Mary Jane and its subsequent Omega Level Retcon was nothing short of ludicrous. I love Spider-Man (and usually JMS), but I don't see how erasing his marriage, his revealing his identity to the world and pretty much anything else than lent substance to the character is supposed to make the character better. And as some kind of struggle between the devil and god no less. Grrr. I always loved the idea that Superheroes can have family lives and still be cool, and the fact that I myself am a family man probably has something to do with that appeal. So, boo Marvel. Bad decision.

And did I mention that I single-handedly diagnosed and fixed my snow blower? I did? Oh. Cause I did. All by myself.

Labels: comics, everything else, family, movies, narcissism, rants

I try to take as few of these quizzes I come across as possible, and this one in particular was about as insipid as they come. But after taking it, I didn't turn out to be Chloe or anything so I figured it was worth a post.

The damn writer's strike means I'll see my last new Smallville episode for a long time (maybe ever) within the next week, and I am so bummed about that. But I can console myself with the fact that according to the folks at Buddytv, whoever they are, I am Clark Kent.

Labels: narcissism, smallville, superman

So my sister called me today to see how I felt about getting another year older and during that conversation I finally realized what the name of the tv show thirtysomething was going for.

I have never actually seen that particular pile of 80's television drek, but I know of it and it dawned on me that the title likely wasn't some clever pun, but rather a reference to people in their thirties not being aware of their exact age because it just no longer matters.

We ended up having a quasi-argument about how old we both were, and during it, I actually lost track of how old I was. I had to do the math to figure out that I am in fact 33 now. I think the reason for the disagreement was simple: We're both thirty something, and once you're there, the numbers seem to hold less meaning than they used to. Of course, I pointed out that there is a big difference between 31 and 39, so it might be more important for her to remember her age than me to remember mine, but she's pregnant with her second, so she's got more important things to worry about than counting down to forty.

In other news, I guess I had the best birthday I could reasonably hope for. I got woken up by Trinity and Superwife, had both my breakfast and dinner made to order for me, got to take my princess for a long ride in her new sled in 10cm of newly fallen snow, got to take my new PS3 for a test drive, and spoke to both my parents and had a great conversation with both of them. I think the only way it could have been better is if Superwife had surprised me by giving me a lap dance dressed in her Wonder Woman costume rather than falling asleep on the couch. But now that I'm getting older and edging closer to heart attack country, those sorts of things need to be more carefully planned anyways I suppose.

Labels: everything else, narcissism

10 / 10
Your Rank: Supreme Trekkie
Did you get Takei's autograph on the last Star Trek cruise?

You scored better than 84.6% of the 846 people who took this quiz.

http://www.jinx.com/trivia.aspx?qid=22

I took another one of those online quizzes from J!nx this morning, and as everyone who knows me knows, I am a huge Star Trek fan, so since the quiz was Trek themed, I ended up kicking all kinds of ass, sort of like Kirk did to that Gorn in 'Arena'. Ahem.

But just for the record, I do not use either the label Trekkie or Trekker; fan suits me just fine. And no I don't dress up at conventions. Although I did get to sit beside a green skinned Orion Slave Girl at a con once, and I totally got off on it. Are there as many Trek fans out there as we like to think there are?

Labels: narcissism, star trek

Not too much going on around here lately from my point of view. I work shift work and my schedule leaves a nice big chunk of days off in a row. Right now I am in the middle of my time off on this rotation.

I went swimming in the lake yesterday, a personal record for me as far as dates go. Usually by October 21st, the temperature is so damn cold, that you wouldn't even think of getting into the water. But I had been mowing the lawn, and it was a respectable 17 degrees outside, so I had gotten just hot enough that it occurred to me that a dip in the lake would be a good idea. It wasn't. The water was so ridiculously cold, that I actually think my heart may have stopped for a real brief period while it and the rest of my organs tried to figure out what the fuck just happened to them and how to work cooperatively again.

When I came in and Superwife asked me how cold the water was, I told her that it looked like I would have to skip the first few rounds of the longest penis competition that afternoon, at least until I warmed back up. She just smiled politely at me, letting me know that she thought it was cute that I feel as good about myself as I do.

Guess there's no point in talking smack to the woman who knows exactly how full of shit you are eh?

Labels: everything else, narcissism, superwife

One of the things that isn't so great about meeting people from all over the world via either my blog or those of others, is that as soon as I tell a person from anywhere outside North America that I am from Canada, the association that almost invariably occurs within that person is that Canada = North America = United States. And if that person is American, a whole litany of ridiculous preconceptions about Canadians enters the picture.

What follows then is what I send to people that either don't know anything about Canadians, or think they do know because of interaction with (or because they are) Americans. It's from an old beer commercial that did a pretty fair job of distinguishing some of the highlights about being Canadian. Don't get me wrong; I like Americans. I have some great friends from the US. Wow, that sounds just like 'Some of my best friends are insert racial/religious/sexual minority here..' It is just that I am proud of the differences between our cultures. In large part, those differences define us.

Look for the video link of this message after the jump:

Hey, I'm not a lumberjack, or a fur trader....
I don't live in an igloo or eat blubber, or own a dogsled....
and I don't know Jimmy, Sally or Suzy from Canada,
although I'm certain they're really really nice.

I have a Prime Minister, not a president.
I speak English and French, not American.
And I pronounce it 'about', not 'a boot'.

I can proudly sew my country's flag on my backpack.
I believe in peace keeping, not policing,
diversity, not assimilation,
and that the beaver is a truly proud and noble animal.
A toque is a hat, a chesterfield is a couch,
and it is pronounced 'zed' not 'zee', 'zed' !!!!

Canada is the second largest landmass!
The first nation of hockey!
and the best part of North America

My name is Joe not Joe!!
And I am Canadian!!!

I am Canadian video (a la Youtube)

Labels: everything else, narcissism

Amber Mac, co-host of Call for Help and CommandN loves people just like me.

At least that's what the shirt says.

Ok, maybe not just like me, but close enough so that I can believe that in a parallel universe where I am not a happily married family man (and I am honey, I truly am) Amber Mac and I make and eat sundaes off of each other's genitals on a regular basis.

Sounds messy, but what are you gonna do? The nerd-lover enjoys her sundaes. At least the one in that other universe does.

And to attest to my criteria-meeting nerdiness, I even have a Lambda-Lambda-Lambda t-shirt to avoid any confusion. And only a real nerd would even know what that means.

CommandN's pretty good this week. Go share in the webcasty goodness. Go. Go Now.

Labels: narcissism, tech

After a short learning curve last night, I spent the better part of three hours swinging through the skies above New York City as my all time favourite superhero, in the new PS2 game Ultimate Spiderman.

Killer game; cool open storyline, huge environments, amazing graphics, controls are fairly intuitive and easy to learn. It is already one of the best videogames I've played this year.

However.

In the real world (or at least what I think is the real world most of the time) I am deathly afraid of heights, a fact that my wife is infuriatingly eager to share with friends, family, and menacing looking strangers.

Maybe afraid of heights is the wrong phrasing to use. Pants-shittingly terrified is a little better. The real truth of it is that I get stomach churning vertigo whenever I look down any height and allow my eye to follow the path from where I am to the ground.

A few experiences that may or may not have anything to do with my phobia:

• Sliding my body between the bars of an apartment balcony when I was very young, maybe 4, and getting seriously screamed at by the idiot that should have been watching me


• Being held by my feet over a staircase by a cousin when I was 5 or 6


• Being forced to go on The World's Largest Ferris Wheel when I was 10 or 11, sobbing in uncontrollable terror and laughed at the whole time

Those things may have contributed to it, maybe not. I am not a big believer in being born with anything but the most basic of instincts. I am a subscriber of the nurture theory, which means that somewhere along the way I picked up this fear, but other than providing further proof that certain family members of mine are dicks, that is not of much consequence.

What is of consequence is that I had thought my fear, if not buried, was at least covered enough to get me through the rest of my life. A belief I tested when I chose to go up the Skylon Tower (520 ft above ground, 775 ft above the Niagara river below) a few years ago. Aside from having to get pretty drunk first, I made out all right.

But last night I was totally immersed in my Spiderman game, and I actually got Vertigo while swinging in between the tall buildings in Manhattan.

Seriously. As in for the briefest of moments I felt the same kind of panic that I get when I experience real vertigo on a real height.

So I figure one of two things is the cause: Either the game is so immersive that I was able to extend my irrational fear onto a false reality that I was choosing to believe, or using this blog as my own personal therapy area is not going to cut it, and I am going to have to shell out for the professional stuff.

Or maybe I can choose to use my new game to conquer my fear for once and for all.

And while that's not very likely (or rational), it does give me an excuse to stay up well past my bedtime again tonight.

Labels: gaming, narcissism

Vanity is a funny thing.

Not that I didn't know about it in my own life, at least peripherally, before now. But for the most part, I'm a low maintenance guy. You know, get a haircut once a month, no real clothes sense of any kind. I'm a t-shirt and jeans kind of guy.

But even to a low-rent like me, vanity can do some serious damage.

See, I've recently noticed a slow but steady march of grey beginning to take over on what was heretofore the no-grey zone of my head. Plenty of it mind you, so at least I won't be bald anytime soon. But definitely grey.

So I tell my wife that I'm going to start dying my hair, and she has the grace to nod and tell me that whatever I do is fine with her.

I've told you before. She's good at allowing me my idiocies.

But rather than begin a lifelong campaign of dying my hair just yet, Superwife suggests that I get my hair highlighted, something I've done in the past. I think that way, she doesn't have a 30 year old husband that dies his hair. I'm still a good distance from metrosexualism, but that's fair enough.

So I go get my hair highlighted (highlit?) last night. And maybe the girl that did it wasn't too familiar with the process. Maybe she cut my hair too short afterwards, and maybe my hair now looks like a blonde skunk with a chessboard carved into the side.

And maybe the dozen grey hairs that no one but me would have seen weren't so bad after all.

Labels: narcissism

'Why, aside from the enormous ... er... ego, is it that you rock', you ask?

Because I just finished installing Movable Type mostly unassisted on my web server. And it works.

That's why.

Man am I proud of myself right now.

So this is yet another new look in a long line of facelifts for my site. This one is more functional than cosmetic, at least for now. I just installed Movable type 3.16 to get away from the manual flat file system I've been using. MT uses CGI, PHP and Perl (none of which I remembered shit about from school) and is supercool for lots of reasons, but here's my main two:

1) It will allow my site to be completely dynamic and

2) I can now blog from anywhere, very easily

So here's to my ability to swear and scream and still get the job done.

When I get time I will migrate over all of my archived entries from the old site, as well as rebuild the few good pages that I'll want to keep around: about me, FAQ, maybe my links. I think I'm doing away with my resume and portfolio pages. It's not like I'm using this site to peddle myself anymore.

If I were, with the things I write in this blog, I'd have to be out of my mind to send potential clients/employers here. haha.

Labels: narcissism

So I'm sitting here trying to think over the sound of the vacuum racing around the house (can I hear a 'nesting'!), and admiring my latest 'achievement'. Its taken the bulk of my lifetime; many, many hours spent walking into dark caverns, figuring out puzzles, fragging baddies, and sighing in impatience in my tight shorts and halter. Oh wait, that was Lara. Well it was kinda me too.

I'll explain.

I just got a certificate from one of the online gaming organizations I belong to. Its the Gamer Advisory Panel, an online forum for gamers who want to have input into PS2 game development. And since that job as a level designer at Silicon Knights hasn't panned out (yet?), this will have to do for now. I actually felt pretty pleased with myself when it came. I got a nifty folio with the Playstation logo to go with it. I know, kinda dorky, but I'll take what I can get.

I also belong to the Global Gaming League, but I really don't put in the time required for that membership to mean much. And then there's that pic I uploaded to Sexiest Gamer to win a free t-shirt. Yeah, the one where I photoshopped pics of Rikku and Lulu into a pic of me. That one. And yeah, that was a pretty crazy thing to do, but although I didn't win, I was a long way from last place...

Labels: narcissism