When I brought the cans of paint to Julia’s, she was on the phone with mom, “put the paint in your trunk right away so you don’t forget.”

When is she going to paint? They have company on the weekend!

Then, the bombshell… Can you go back home, pick up the huge trinitron Sony tv and bring it up to the cottage because the one up there doesn’t work. They said it was the picture tube… I think they don’t have the right input on.

The tv, by the way, doesn’t fit in the entertainment unit up there. Also, I couldn’t find a tape measure to check right away because they brought all of our tools to the cottage too!

So, anyway, still crazy.

Anyway, Lion. I have it now. I’ve used it. I have gotten accustomed to backwards scrolling which is technically the “natural” way. Let me tell you what I don’t like. Discs.

Apple launched a new Mac Mini the same time Lion came out. I have last year’s model as an HTPC connected to my TV. I love it. The new model doesn’t have an optical disc drive. I’m okay with that.

I hate discs. I’ve hated them for a long time. But I hate them the most today. I have too much software on disc!

When I installed Lion, I did a clean install (erased harddrive and installed from scratch. Ironically, from a boot disc). I had to go back and install everything over again – which is fine. I knew what I was getting myself into.

I didn’t count on having two versions of iLife. And I installed ’09 instead of ’11

In fact, I couldn’t find ’11.

I was ready to pay for ’11 — because on the Mac App Store, I would have it forever and it would remember that.

I didn’t have this problem with iWork because I bought it digitally. But this disc thing caused a lot of headaches and panic attacks (I needed iMovie for work today).

And so, Apple is killing discs. I say good. Give me all my applications in the cloud that I can delete and download as I please. Can’t wait for the next version of iLife to come out. First day download!

Bleh! So annoyed by discs.

Mom has an awful habit of taking everything with her. This week-long vacation included two full-size suitcases. One of them with just shoes. As I don’t pretend to understand why someone needs that many shoes, I won’t speak any more of it.

However, this sickness (and it is indeed a sickness… she’s like a hoarder who travels with her junk) continues past clothing. It also includes food. When mom goes on vacation, you’d think she was prepping for the apocalypse and zombies were one-day away from inheriting the earth.

The day before, she will buy a fridge-full of groceries. Enough that the door won’t close all the way and cool air seeps through the crack – but not open enough to notice because the light is still off. She will pack all of that food into coolers and boxes (yes, more than one but no more than six). She has enough groceries for an army of 10 for two weeks. She’s going with my dad for 9 days.

And it’s not like they don’t have grocery stores up there. In fact, if you’re going to the cottage, buy your corn at the side of the road along Highway 28 – it’s amazing!

Anyway, the worst part is – there’s no food left in the house. I discovered that when I tried to make eggs and toast only to discover there isn’t any bread! Or eggs. Or fruit.

In fact, I have only one lemon, a block of cheese, one sausage, a handful of ravioli, and 1/2 a litre of orange juice. For nine days. And it’s not that I refuse to go grocery shopping; it’s that I didn’t know I’d have an empty fridge after seeing it so full only a day and a half before!

Interestingly, mom asked for a few additional things to be brought up to the cottage on the weekend; steak spice, paint in a 1 litre can, and paint from an 10 litre can.

See what I was saying about that whole hoarding thing?

Tonight I’m heading to my sister’s place for dinner and we’re going to see Harry Potter afterward. Very excited! I’ll report back with tons of spoilers. Or, if you can’t wait, I’m sure said-spoilers already exists because the majority of the world has already read the book.

I haven’t.

I want to go in spoiler-free.

… although I suddenly feel like it would be awesome if people pre-ordered and spent hours in line when I start releasing books. Does not happen to too many authors. Or any of them. Especially those who don’t finish them! Ugh! Need to write!

Wait… I feel like people would line up for Twilight. Shit- that’s depressing.

Now I’m a bit curious. In University I remember english professors criticizing Rowling because her books were “derivative” or “not properly edited”… yet, I doubt anyone was lining up to read that professor’s thesis if it wasn’t required reading for the course. Do the “experts” not really understand what good writing is anymore? Like, have you read Canterbury Tales? Nobody is lining up to read that when it gets a reprint.

Are english professors pretentious jerks? Jealous? Petty? Don’t people just “like what they like?”

… I hope they like mine :(

I’m working through the final pieces of part 5, and really enjoying it.

The game is episodic, taking place in 1986. Doc has gone missing, and it’s up to Marty to find out where (in time) he’s gone. The story will take you through the past, alternate present, and further than the other point in the past in a really engrossing, puzzle-solving adventure!

For fans of the movie, you definitely need to play this. For someone who has never seen the movies before – what the hell is wrong with you, butthead? Get like a tree and get outta here (to go watch the movies and understand these witty and completely original insults).

The first two episodes have been great. The first (while quasi-necessary) spent a bit too much time setting things up. And while I appreciated that there’s a lot of history (three seasons) that current fans already know and new audiences know nothing about, there are simple queues that the audience can pick up on if you give them more credit.

I didn’t read any of the books in the “song of ice and fire” series, but I can pick things up over time, and I never felt lost. There’s something to be said about good writing; and I instantly think back to the first 10 minutes of Serenity. You know every character on the ship and what they do in one-shot. It’s brilliant.

The first episode would have benefited from something like that because the pace was a bit slow. Still, a minor complaint.

Episode two went in the opposite direction and showed an action series can have humour. Gwen is awesome.

And from the preview clip at the end, things are only going to get intense from here!

Very excited to see what happens tonight. Watch it.

Just don’t keep ending episodes with a cheesy “Welcome to Torchwood” line. s’alright?

s’alright!

I’m hesitant to include anything from the current generation of consoles since that could be a top ten list all of its own and I won’t know if they stand up to time for another ten years :P (but I’ve added them anyway)

In no particular order:

• Psychonauts
• Thief 2: the Metal Age
• Fable
• Super Mario Bros 3.
• King’s Quest VI
• Prince of Persia: the sands of time
• Beyond Good and Evil
• American McGee’s Alice
• BioShock
• Dragon Age: Origins
• Portal

Video games this year have sucked.

That’s not to say I haven’t been trying to enjoy them. I have spent a lot of money on crap games this year. But, really, of the handful I figured were worth the time to buy, and then subject myself to play, the only contender standing out for me is Portal 2.

And although I loved playing through it… there’s a but.

It didn’t fill me with the same wonder the first Portal did. Overall, my complaint for Portal 2 is “not as good as Portal,” but I can live with that. It’s still awesome.

But let’s talk about the shit.

Dragon Age 2: The environments are boring. The story isn’t very good. At best it’s confusing, and at its worse it’s just stupid.

LA Noire: dull.

Alice: Madness Returns: what was I thinking?

The problem with all of these games, including Portal 2, is that I want to like them! I really do. But I feel like an adult trying to capture the spirit of christmas he felt as a child. It’s just not there. And I can pretend, or trick myself – but really – what’s the point?

I still love video games. But I get so little time to play them these days, and when I do, I’m disappointed with how much of a waste they’ve been. And then I tell myself, “next time I get a bit more time to play, I’ll enjoy it more” but I don’t. Not really.

Alice is my biggest mistake of the year. I tried to claim my lost youth by picking up a sequel to a game I played 10 years ago because the game also included that original game. And it’s bad! The game I considered one of the best – like – in my top 15 of games I played when I was younger, it’s so, so bad!

And that makes me question if any of the games I remember as “good” are actually… really bad!

Why don’t I like video games anymore? Is it you, video games? Have you just been bad this year? I’m really excited for the new BioShock Infinite. You’ll redeem them all, won’t you? Because, BioShock… if you can’t… then that means it’s me.

And that’s scary. I wasn’t ready to grow up that much.

If you were to point out that doing this before the movie hit theatres, you would be bordering on wizard-like intelligence.

And it’s not like I didn’t try! I’m watching them on my iPad before going to bed, but I have this nasty habit of falling asleep. I think that’s more indicative of my level of exhaustion than it is on the quality of the movie.

I take it that’s not really a marathon, though, is it?

Mariella never really cared for the movies. She said she’ll watch the last one with me, but I decided not to push my luck and trick her into watching ALL of them. I’d much rather trick her into something that will secretly give her more nerd cred – like Fullmetal Alchemist, Red vs Blue, or Doctor Horrible.

I love it.

Although it feels like forever ago, deleting Facebook wasn’t a huge impact to my life. Mainly because I hated it. And never used it. I think there were two or three people I infrequently sent messages to on a close-to-but-not-quite yearly basis. And then there was that privacy scandal thing where the terms and conditions change every two weeks and a public profile is opt-out – not in.

Google+ does a great job changing that by letting you decide what you want people to see (and vice versa). So maybe my extended family wants to see the amazing pictures I took at the baptism because my camera is full of DSLR goodness. But my co-workers probably don’t care. In fact, I wager they definitely don’t.

Conversely, my family members don’t care about the cool research people are doing about dark energy, but my friends are. Well, Ibrahim. Well, maybe Ibrahim.

Anyway, all of those pieces I’ll share separately instead of with everyone, because I group those people into circles, and only share stuff with the relevant circles the content is intended for.

And so, it all makes sense – I love it – and if you’d like an invite, let me know :)

you can find my profile at gplus.to/andydrew