The Dave

Opening wine without a corkscrew?

thedave — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 19:35:52 +0000

Here’s the scene: It’s New Year’s Eve. Or any “time to drink” event really… You’re trying to pretend you’re classy by drinking wine, but the guy who was supposed to bring a corkscrew made the mistake of eating at Taco Bell earlier that day, and he’s stuck in a bathroom somewhere.

Or maybe you’re on a plane, where corkscrews aren’t allowed, although a bit breakable glass bottle that could furnish dozens of useful weapons is just fine as long as you buy it at duty-free.

Either way, you’re thirsty, sober, and need to resolve both of those problems. You take stock of what you have: Wine. Clothes. Glasses. Angry people to please. What do you do?

I don’t drink, but I also don’t drive so I’m useless as a designated dork. Oh well. Have fun, stay safe, and if you do drive drunk, try to not kill anyone else when you kill yourself ‘eh?

(Thanks to Carlos Miller for pointing this out)

Ziploc brand gravy

thedave — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 09:59:42 +0000

Mmmm… Gravy! For the record, this is last night’s leftover gravy with the lid removed.

Oh, and it was delicious!

Pedestrian struck on Butt

thedave — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 02:12:19 +0000

I know someone was injured, but this is still funny, at least to me.

No related posts.

Christmas decorations

thedave — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:32:08 +0000

Who knows if this is real or not, but either way, it’s a beautiful story…

Good news is that I truly out did myself this year with my Christmas decorations. The bad news is that I had to take him down after two days. I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever. Great stories. But two things made me take it down.

First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as they almost wrecked when they drove by.

Second, a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder almost killed herself putting it against my house and didn’t realize that it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy). By the way, she was one of the many people who attempted to do that. My yard couldn’t take it either. I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up my yard

(Shamelessly stolen from wtfcalls.net)

Feedburner – Attempt two

thedave — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 09:39:47 +0000

I am once again attempting to use Feedburner to distribute my feed. Oh, and I’ve completely sold out and enabled AdSense advertising too. Sorry!

Please contact me immediately if you notice any problems?

Note sure what a “feed” is? Wikipedia has a longwinded article that seems to sum it up, or check out this video for a very quick introduction to what Google Reader does (and know that “feeds” are the technical term for how Google Reader pulls information)

Betta Testing Finished

thedave — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:35:23 +0000

At approximately 4:05pm PDT one day at least a couple of weeks ago, my Betta “Phishy” met his maker. Well, his parents are probably dead, breeding fish don’t usually live long healthy lives, but stick with me and bit a bit more philosophical then that, would you please?

Anyway, as a result of the successful betta experiment, I’d like to introduce everyone to my new fish, RC.

Betta Testing

Dear Apple: FedEx and UPS are different companies

thedave — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:52:53 +0000

Since I like ranting, lets talk about my not-too-recent Apple iPhone repair experience.

First off, for anyone who has never been to an Apple Store to get service on a broken Apple product, let me give you a bit of warning: Apple sells so much defective gear that you apparently need an appointment just to return your expensive doorstop to get a replacement pre-doorstop. Who knew?

Anyway, a message to Apple: FedEx and UPS are different companies. No really, they are.

After having flown to another city to go to the Apple Store and having been turned away by said Apple Store, I complained to Apple’s phone based support until they offered to send a replacement phone and was told I just had to put the broken phone in box with the prepaid shipping label for return.

The instructions contained within the box included a toll free number to call to arrange pickup, the number was answered by a friendly UPS rep.

Unfortunately the return shipping label said “FedEx” so UPS wasn’t able to help.

I found a FedEx’s phone number on the tubes, and was told that despite the fact that I already had a FedEx delivery truck coming later this week, I didn’t have the right colour label for pickup service. FedEx then instructed me to take the package to some location near the airport, approximately a $35 cab ride away.

I called Apple, and was again advised to call UPS, after I explained that the return shipping label wasn’t a UPS label, the Apple rep seemed confused and didn’t know how to proceed. I suspect he was really a software program, and had I been able to see the screen, I’d have seen the “sad mac” logo at this point.

I ended up shipping the phone at my cost via Canada Post, $15 for a tracked and insured shipment; this seemed smarter then $70-round-trip cab fare or wasting any more time or effort.

Let me play the game already, dangnabit

thedave — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:30:44 +0000

Coming up on a year ago I got an Xbox 360. This was a new one for me, I haven’t really gamed much in many years. I had a Playstation 2 which held my interest for a couple SOCOM games, but not much more jumped out at me, before that, think back to the Duke 3D/Shadow Warrior and even the glory of the DOOM days.

Since buying the Xbox 360 I’ve been gaming more then I expected.

For me, I play games for the (and I know this will be a shocker) gameplay. I’m not generally there for the storyline; I mostly just play games that involve killing things, if I wanted a story I’d go find a book or watch TV (okay, bad example) or watch a movie (okay, worse example, but you get my point)

Sure, there might be some underlying “rescue the hostage” or “save the world” or “kill the terrorist” plotline around some good gaming, but it’s usually as well thought out a plot as goes into most porn. Porn generally has better acting too, incidentally.

I don’t get emotionally involved enough in the hostage’s well-being to care whether I rescue said hostage or not, my only real motivation to not shoot the hostage is that it usually ends the game if you do.

Now don’t get me wrong, story isn’t all bad. I enjoyed BioShock which had more of a storyline then most of the games I’ve played in the past, I really enjoyed Fallout 3 too so I’m not entirely story-adverse, but when it comes to brainless shooters, the story just isn’t usually a focus.

What ruins a game for me is when a game makes me sit through multiple cut scenes or witless dialog (I’m looking at you Gears of War) over and over without offering a way to skip them after failing and restarting a difficult mission. I get it, I screwed up the mission and now I have to try it again, but do I really need to be punished by watching the damn cutscene again and again?

I can live with a game making me sit through the story once, but especially for “boss-levels”, put the damn checkpoint AFTER the cut-scene; I don’t need to see my AI(*) companions peeing their pants and discussing how the upcoming enemy probably smells as bad as he looks cheesy.

Is that so much to ask?

* I use the “I” in AI only for clarity since their intelligence is usually lacking.

Pedestrians are soft and squishy

thedave — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:25:33 +0000

I sometimes forget that Kelowna is more of an overgrown small town then a big city; even so, it’s a mix of a beach town and a retirement community, and anyone who has lived near a retirement complex can probably attest to the obliviousness of a certain percentage of the elderly population when it comes to rules of the road, but it’s not only when you put them behind the wheel.

Literally the day I wrote my last post about texting while driving I watched a scene play out that reminded me drivers aren’t the only one that shouldn’t be texting on the road.

It started off like this: I’m walking to the grocery store, close enough to the one and only traffic light en-route that I’m already watching the lights to know to either speed up or slow down to avoid having to wait. I see this rather frail looking lady push her walker into the street and start to cross without even glancing up to notice the opposing direction has the green light. I’m thinking she’s old, doesn’t have much time left, and probably just doesn’t have time for traffic lights anymore. Luckily for her, the oncoming traffic was happy enough to park behind their green lights and wait it out (or maybe they just didn’t want a gooey mess to clean off their grills)

I’m not certain whether she was oblivious or just didn’t care, but I am certain that obliviousness is the only explanation for the young woman who walked right past me and started to cross the same crosswalk from the opposite direction as the old lady. This young woman had her nose buried in what appeared to be a Blackberry. Had it been an iPhone maybe she could have been using a silly “augmented reality” app that could have shown her the world around her through the iPhone’s pathetic camera, but as it was, I did see her glance up and notice the lady with the walker before wandering aimless into the street crossing against the light.

It occurs to me that I walk while texting a fair amount too, and although I always put my phone down while crossing streets, I’m also probably less aware then I otherwise believe myself to be. I’m quite sure that the younger woman had no clue at all that she’d walked out in front of oncoming traffic, or how easily she could have ended up squished if a vehicle happened to blast through the intersection in the other lane.

I still say it’s more of an issue for drivers, but the risks are higher when you’re not surrounded by a crash-tested crumple-zoned metal framed box.

Nope, you’re not that good a driver

thedave — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:19:01 +0000

I'm txting while driving

Dear genius: Pay attention to the road when you’re driving would you please? If you’re turning off the road into a restaurant parking lot you’re probably not so hungry that you don’t have time to look around a bit first, nor are you that important that your text message can’t wait the 9 seconds before you’re parked.

If you forget to look whether or not there is a pedestrian on the sidewalk that you’re crossing, at least try to not look like your underwear has a fresh brown stain when I knock on your windshield as you almost hit me, mmmkay?