Early to bed late to rise

The Pacific Mall

To Recap...
I went to sleep early this morning. It was about 7am when my body decided to call it quits after spending 20 hours playing the World of Warcraft, or as Darryl calls it, "WarCrack". This wasn't as bad as the 16 hour stint where I didn't get up to even go to the bathroom. No this time it was a bit better. I had timed it so whenever the character had to make bandages, walk across the map, fly to another part of the continent, or do something equally time consuming, I went out to get groceries, cook the roast (as described in the last blog), eat, assemble a hard drive, test the hard drive, start a very long 7 hour copy session on said hard drive and yes go to the bathroom.

My body had started to feel like rigor mortis was setting in. It didn't matter how I sat in front of the computer, my body started to ache. My left hand started cramping and my legs were getting sore. I had been sitting for most of the twenty hours in the lotus position. Thanks to the portability of the laptop I could play sitting on the corner of my bed using a foldable TV table. Tired, full of food and ache ridden, my brain finally gave in to my body's wishes and fell asleep.

As a result of pushing myself (into being a couch potato) I woke up at 2:30pm. Technically I woke up at 11am to a phone call from Marc seeing if I wanted to go for dim sum. I was in zombie mode when I answered the phone, pretty understandable, so I politely shooed him away off the phone and fell back into bed for a nice snooze.

Upon waking up the second time (at 2:30) I called back Marc to figure out what was going on. He had called because he was bored and wanted to do something. I wondered how doing something with me would be that much more interesting. After all I was getting pretty good at the whole living off the corner of the bed playing warcraft and testing computer equipment.

Since the drive tests worked and I needed to get more enclosures. I had six more drives sitting around so I invited him to join me to the Pacific Mall where the Vantec drive enclosures were being sold. The computer store downtown that I know of ran out of these particular units since my last visit.


Canada Computers in the Pacific Mall

After picking up two drive enclosures (that's all they had left) I got sucked into having a $6.50 bubble drink. I fit right in with the other consumers in the pacific mall drinking their bubble tea. I picked the "mango chiller" out of a long menu of variations. Was it worth $6.50? No. It was okay but I'd say up to $4 worth. Actually even $4 seems like a lot.

The pacific mall was packed with people from the moment we arrived. Parking the car was crazy. We thought if we just drove to the far side of the parking lot there would be free spaces. Nope. Packed, every car space taken. Inside the mall it was cramped and congested. I noted that you could buy bootleg HD-DVD movies for only $4 each. Sheesh. From Casino Royale to Garfield 2. How long has HD-DVD been out? Normal format DVDs were selling for 8 for $20.

In North America there are ads against bootlegging movies. One ad has a stuntman complaining that bootleggers are taking money out of his pocket. Not the movie production company or the movie distributor but the lowly stunt guy. It's almost as cheesy as the anti-pollution commercial with the native indian chief crying next to the highway.

Why you should not buy these bootleg movies...

1. The video quality is usually poor. Some movies are taken from footage from a guy with a videocam sitting in a movie theatre.
2. The sound quality is not as good as the commercial DVD.

While looking for the prefect bubble tea place, there's a lot of them in the mall, we passed by a model shop. It's been a long time since I'd been in a model store let alone put together a model kit. They were selling a 1:350 scale model of the Yamato (a spaceship from the TV cartoon series "Star Blazers"). It came complete with a life size hand trigger mechanism that when pulled lit up the wave motion gun. Cool.

Another store worth mentioning but I can't remember the name sold Anime outfits. Full sized for "real" people. I use the term real very loosely. This was probably a convention fan's dream. Upon a quick glance the clothing seemed simple. That is not a lot of detail. "Well, they are cartoon based.", I thought to myself.


Marc in the WalMart parking lot.

After dragging Marc around to get the drive enclosures we went on a quest to pick up a new kitchen garbage can. It's incredible the exciting, wild life I lead (dripping with sarcasm).

A few weeks, maybe months ago, my garbage can broke. The hinge snapped off. Since it was plastic the whole garbage can had to be replaced. I had been putting garbage into a plastic garbage bag that just sat in the hall of my kitchen. While it worked it looked a bit unsightly. Plus there was always a problem of the bag tipping over with the contents falling all over the floor.

There's a lot of work looking for a garbage can. Can in be cleaned easily? Is it made well? Does the lid take up space where the garbage could go? How long will it last? Are the hinges of the lid tiny little plastic tabs that will break off? How tall in the garbage can? What colors are available?

I ended up purchasing an oval shaped plastic bin with a spring loaded pop up door. The roundness would make it easier to clean than that of something with corners.

To end off the night we ended up seeing "Ghost Rider" at the nearby theatre. A truly bad movie. I'd give it a quarter bagel rating. I've said this once and I'll say it again "Really amazing visual effects does not a good movie make." and as far as visual effects goes, there were some really mediocre computer generated effects and some really great CG fire. I didn't notice any cameo with Stan Lee, so how good could the movie be? Flat acting, bad dialogue, bad script in general, but some really nice CG fire (Did I mention the fire?)

Something interesting to note... While in London, Enzo mentioned that here in North America we have huge vista-like scenic places. While I really never gave it much thought before it dawned on me today while standing in the various large parking lots. We do have a lot of space here.