| (no subject) |
[Mar. 22nd, 2009|11:14 pm] |
Hey look, it's me, that guy you know who went to another country seeking adventure and fortune.
So far not much adventure and very little fortune.
After a great 6 weeks work leading up to Xmas I have been sitting on my ass, burning up most of the time playing WOW again. Which is MUCH better this time around I must say. However 3 weeks ago I got a proper fulltime job. It's not much but it works out OK. I'm washing cars and driving around doing deliveries for a car workshop. I'm getting $18A an hour (just over $22NZ), and after 38 hours it's time and a half, and my usual hours total 44 a week so that's not a terribel income. After all my expenses here and my loan payment back home I still get around $100A to play with or save, but my only real luxury purchases are a box of D&D Mini's each week for $22.
The guys at work are a good bunch, and being mechanics the language is colourful and enthusiastic, and frequent, which is all good in my books. And I get dirty and messy all the time and get to drive some sweet cars, (and some utter shitters - I'm lookin at you ford mondeo!). The other day I got to drive the latest Toyota Aurion, which is a fantastic vehicle. I'm also gettingo know the city better having to drive around all over the place.
At this stage I'm planning on coming home for a week around Xmas, or I might wait til next January and come back for Kapcon weekend, cos my Mum's B'Day is on the 20th and I can squeeze that in on the same trip. Any plans for gettign into the mining business are seriously onhold while the economy is having issues so maybe in a couplef years I'll have another go at that.
Have joined a fortnightly 4th ed D&D game at the games club just down the road from me, and that's going OK. It's amusing analysing gamers on an international scale and seeing the similarities and differences in the groups I've encountered. 4th ed D&D is still a shit game but when I get bored playing WOW and decide to get a 3.5 game going I'll stop playing 4th and concentrate on that.
Otherwise all is as good as it gets. I have slipped into a pretty good routine and it's basically the same as it was back home, only warmer.
That's all for now monkeys. |
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| BEST MOVIE EVER!!! |
[Mar. 2nd, 2009|12:21 pm] |
Holy shit fuck.
Check out the cast list for this movie.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1320253/
All it needs for absolute perfection is Bruce Willis (circa Die hard 1 or 2), and Jean Claude Van Damme. (circa Hard target).
I have no idea how this will work but I definately want to fucking see it.
It also includes this guy.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001803/
Otherwise known as "That mexican Dude", who is my second favourite movie NPC, after "That Asian Guy"
Oh, it's also written and directed by Stallone, so it shouldn't be a pussyfied copout like Die Hard 4.
Checking out the avergae age of the primary characters I'm thinking there's going to be a bingo table in the Green Room, and a couple crates of Depends in the wardrobe trailer. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 24th, 2009|07:36 pm] |
So what's the deal with M&M's.
Apparently they've split up and now you can only buy one colour per bag, and you can't even tell what colour it is cos the bags are totally covered in graphics.
Apparently if you buy a bag and it is actually mixed then you win a big prize, but this is such a stupid fucking marketing idea cos I'm not going to ever buy M&M's again, and I really like M&M's.
I like that you get different colour's. I'm one of those people who sorts them out and then eats them from least favourite to most favourite colour. That's the whole novelty thing with M&M's. Take that away and it's just another boring sugar treat. I'd rather buy pebbles instead. It's like Kinder Surprise, take away the toy and it's just a shitty, bland tasting egg shaped wafer of sugar.
I'm assuming further down the road they might actually get back together and this whole thing was in fact a stupid gimmick, but I have a feeling it won't work at all and sales will decline.
And what about Red and Yellow? I like those guys, they were a team and they did cool ad's. Are they now going to go their seperate ways, maybe pickup another product, and pimp their belly space to other logo's. Red would do well he can sell coke or fire engines or something else that's red and cool, but what about yellow, what does he get. Not a lot of cool yellow things. Maybe he can bring back the "have a nice day" smiley face fad but that's about the only chance he's got.
I'm assuming he's already blown his fortune on something supid, liek kittens or charities or something, and will eventually end up living in a cardboard box in an alley somewhere, being nibbled on by mice and licked by homeless people. Red on the other hand I figure for a low down dirty business man, he probably bought shares in some asian sweatshop or runs a chain of sleazy whore houses all around the country.
Such a shame. |
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| The future of gaming |
[Jan. 24th, 2009|04:15 pm] |
WOW.
Gaming has developed pretty goddam far since I used to play Pac-Man and Tetris on the C64, and it's gettign evene better.
Last year ALienware reeleased this monstrosity to enhance any gaming experience:
http://gizmodo.com/341413/alienware-curved-monitor-looks-like-its-from-another-planet
And now NVidia have come up with these:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/GeForce_3D_Vision_Main.html
It's a 3D immersion set, a combination of fancy software that works with several of their existing cards, and some not at all geeky looking 3D glasses. It comes ready to roll with about 20 existing top shelf games, including WOW, Fallout3 and various FPS's.
Here's a review of it by the guy who does CTRL/ALT/DEL
http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/index.php
Another 10 years and we'll only need the glasses, a direct brain plug in and a blue-tooth processor so we can just lay back and play games hands free, controlling everythign with our minds.
We could even go shopping in virtual malls and check out goods in 3D and order online.
And of course, next comes a real life second life, where everyone stays home but actually interacts with each other in a virtual mall where clever software can convert a photo of you into a full 3D avatar.
We'll never need to go outside again!!!
And oh shit. Forget movie theatres. How bout you check the screening times being broadcast over hi-speed internet, put on the headgear and watch the latest releases on what appears to be an actual big screen theatre. Sure they'll lose money on food but modern movie theatres will just consist of a house sized room with hi-tech servers. a Fraction of the cost of a real cinema, and it doesn't have to be in a prime spot downtown.
The next 20 years will be full of Awesome! |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 16th, 2009|11:29 am] |
One of the guys from one of the recruitment agencies I'm registered with has the followng name:
Chris Honeybun
No shit, that's his real name and he can never NEVER serve in the military. In fact if they brought in the draft he would have a legitimate excuse to not be enrolled. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 15th, 2009|11:37 pm] |
Today peaked at 39.2 degrees, and right now, just coming up to midnight it's 27 degrees.
That's just not right!
Also, as retaliation for the many cockroaches I have stomped so far, they sent in a Commando Unit. The biggest bastard roach I've seen flew in through my window (oh yes they fly) and we had a 5 minute battle where I chased it around the room with bug spray and trapped it under an empty vegemite jar.
I'll grab a photo and measure the little bugger tomorrow once it stops twitching. |
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| I wasnt wearing any pants! |
[Jan. 4th, 2009|08:00 am] |
Before I woke up this morning I had a dream that I was at an Iron Maiden concert wearing only a towel.
It was a really short concert, the only thing they actually played was the opening to "Fear of the Dark" but we all went mental, stood up, made "the horns" sign and yelled along to the music. From all accounts it was a great event and the Redneck looking biker dude in the seat near mine appeared awesomely impressed by my ability to scream Irooooonnnn Maaaiiideeeennnn!!!!
My subconscious has way more fun than I do. |
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| EASY MONEY!!! |
[Jan. 2nd, 2009|08:03 pm] |
Remember a while ago when I said a towtruck driver came around and left his details in case of an accident.
Well BOYAHHHH!!!! about an hour ago there was a 2 car smash at the intersection by our place. I heard the crash, grabbed the phone, rushed out and oh yea, twisted metal money!
Some Asian guy had run a red light and rammed a car over the middle traffic island. Way to enforce a stereotype Asian guy. Anyways, everyone was O.K. no blood no obvious injuries just a bit of shock.
So, the call was made, and within 10 mins Brian the towey was there and soon after one of his crew. 45 mins later after the cops had marked the crash and everything was moved off the road I went out to see the man and he happily dished out the goods. Two cars recovered at $50 each = a cool $100 cash.
This could be a sign. Attached to Brian the Towey's business card is my $30 million dollar lotto ticket for this weekend. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 30th, 2008|02:15 pm] |
So, I went to the games club just down the road from me last saturday. Not a lot happening but it was Xmas weekend and the D&D players weren't there.
It's interesting meeting the geek represenatives of another country, and cross referencing them either on appearance or personality to the geeks back home. Im sure if enough of these semi isolated cliches were diagnosed you could work out a very detailed and accurate anthropological model. I noticed similarities between the Auckland crowd and the Wellington crowd back home, and there were 3 or 4 distinct examples on the weekend that could be tied to people back home.
If I win the $30 Million lottery this comning weekend I'll do a year of RPG con's all around the world and take notes. Maybe even do a doco about it.
In other news, I started playing WOW again. I was going to announce that news in some sort of amusing little story full of exagerations and falsities but when it's 34 degrees your brain says "Fuck it, just tell them you douche".
I was also planning to do a little bit of terrain making around this time of the year but I have come to a dead end. I need 2 very common elements. Small gravel chips and Pine Bark. NONE of which is readily available here. It's amazing. Back home I could go for a walk around the block and find 2 or 3 driveways or pathways with suitably sized samples of gravel and just scoop up a couple of handfuls, but here, the geology doesn't exist. All of that stuff is imported from out of town and can only be bought at a garden centre by the square metre, and there are no pine forests here, so the bark is only available in 5-10 KG bags, whereas Wgtn City Council back home kindly donated me samples from many of it's public gardens around town. They have various other kinds of desert based crushed rock and pebbles but none of it is the right size or shape.
I had a nice selection of gravel back home, I'd even sorted it by size, and a nice supply of good bark pieces, but if you try to bring that sort of thing through customs you get to spend 2 hours in a small room with people who have had their sense of humour surgically removed, and you might even get to meet Mr Glove.
If I had a working bike I could do a wider scan of the area, but I need money for parts, and I can't buy parts until I get regular work again.
Oooo they're having a fireworks display just down the road from us on Wednesday night.
SPLODE!!!! |
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| Fuck Yea! |
[Dec. 29th, 2008|02:34 am] |
Was just watching clips of Pulp Fiction on you tube.
That really is one of the best motherfucking movies ever fucking made. |
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| The city of Perth is run by utter fuckheads! |
[Dec. 26th, 2008|02:38 pm] |
OK first of all let me say that this entire State (West Australia) is stuck in a time vortex. Shops are not allowed to open on Sundays or Public Holidays, due to some thousand year old set of archaic christian morals or some such bullshit. HOWEVER, the actual CBD of Perth city, and 2 other small CBD zones ARE allowed to open, using the barely adequate reasoning that they are "Tourist Centres" and of course it's important to open up the city to tourists so you don't get a bad reputation and they stop spending their money here.
Today is a Friday, it's also Boxing Day, the single busiest retail day of the shopping calendar, and has been for several years. Every undeserving little loud mouthed ungrateful bastard child that got cash or some sort of gift voucher for Xmas wants to go spend it TODAY!. And every Jew, Scotsman and other tight-ass scrooges want to go ot and get the best deal on stuff the stores all over-ordered before Xmas. I saw 3 people carrying boxes with pretty synthetic Xmas trees in them, which seems a bit late to me unless they're planning for next year. As a result town is absolutely full of people, everywhere. I've been here 3 months now and I haven't seen thsi many people in the city yet, it's insane, and they're all spending money, and they all have to come to the city because all the local suburbian malls aren't allowed to open. And how many of them are actually tourists? Less than 1%, far, far less than 1% in fact. Although there's a handful of shops that aren't open, most of them food or beveridge providers, who should be awarded a gold star in fuckupery for not openeing, because whatever extra they have to pay for penal rates to their workers woudl be nullified by the extra business within the first hour of trading. All of the food courts and street food vendors were packed and a lot of retail stores had ques outside the doors.
Now one of the very few good things about Perth, is that it has a FREE inner city Public Transport system. However today being a holiday, it wasn't functioning. Wait a second. The busiest retail day of the year, with the most shoppers in town ever, and there's no buses. Yep. That's insane you're thinking, and you'd be dead fuckign right. Add to that the fact that normal pay buses and trains were running on the pretty damn casual Sunday timetable and you have an almost universal decision to drive into town, creating the biggest traffic snarl up I've ever seen here, it's worse even than normal peak hour traffic, and every car park building has a que spilling out onto the streets making it even worse.
Can you imagine how chaotic it would be if every outer shopping centre in the Wellington area was forced to close. Upper Hutt, Queensgate, Coastlands, K-Mart etc and they all had to come into the Wgtn CBD to shop, and it was all running on Sunday timetables.
Fucking madness.
Oh and while wlaking home, the only obvious tourists I noticed, was a very tired looking english coupel with a young child staring confusedly at the free bus-stop sign wondering why the fuck they weren't running today. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 25th, 2008|08:13 pm] |
A dark malevolent force is constantly attacking my subconscious mind and my will save is getting weaker by the minute.
It's name is World of Warcraft.
I haven't played for well over 2 years now but everwhere I go I see it looming towards me. A lot of the websites I visit have it as a banner ad, all the game stores are riddled with posters about it and even the Warcraft 3 Battlechest I got myself for Xmas came with a free 14 day trial disk.
Add to that the huge truckload of raw, uncut, Class A fucking suck that is the Moria expansion for LOTR Online, and the total lack of any other decent MMO's out now or in the near future, and you have a pretty convincing reason to go back to the dark side.
They also have a lot more cool stuff that wasn't around when I was there, a level cap of 80 instead of 60, which means another 3-6 months of grinding, and now as a Warrior you can pimp out your Talent Tree and Dual Wield GREATAXES!!!
The more I play Warcraft 3 the more I want to sign back up. The graphics, the monsters and all the other little cool bits that make it a hugely successful game are wearing me down.
Plus it's insanely cheap to buy now. I can get a copy of WOW for $30 and the Burning Crusade Expansion (for blood elf cheesy goodness) at the same price. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 24th, 2008|02:14 pm] |
Just after 2 pm and everything I need to do is done. Fuck you Xmas I win again.
In fact I have so much entertainment and food I don't need to leave the house until Monday, but I will go and get some more pork on Saturday.
And last night I was kept awake for quite a while but the futile attempts of Mothra trying to fly through my walls to freedom. Yes that's right, a moth so big the noise it makes colliding with walls is extremely audible. I finally managed to chase it out the window this morning.
As well as the Warcraft 3 battle chest I bought myself 3 packs of D&D mini's. I totally spoil me but I'm so worth it.
Also, I really need to learn photoshop. I have a couple of really cool ideas I can do with my digital camera but it needs some leet photoshop skills to do right. I also need to actually get a copy of photoshop. MS Paint doesn't quite cut it. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 20th, 2008|10:59 pm] |
The other day I had possibly the coolest dream ever. When I woke up it was like I'd just walked out of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie, a good one, not some shit like Pearl Harbour, but one where stuff blows up and there's enough ammunition casings on the ground to build a small castle with, but now, nothing. I can't remember a damn thing, other than I know I had it and it was good. I should get one of those voice activated recorder thingies and keep it by the bed so I can utter semi-consciously into it and take notes the next day.
I have 2 days of work left, then nothign until the 7th or 8th of January, and even then It's probably only a weeks worth of work left. I've been on a casual basis and the available work is almost done so I have to go back on the "Looking for shit" list. It's a bad time of year though since everyone shuts down til mid January or so, but at least I've got 6 weeks more experience than I did beforehand.
I've done, about 80% of my supplies for Xmas/New Years. I have coke and Sparkling Grape Juice, Pavlova, Ice Cream and the last Jumbo bag of Pineapple lumps Mum sent me last month and a bunch of DVD's. I'll be sleeping in til 7 or 8, and eating sugar for half a day, with pork for dinner. I also got Warcraft 3, with Expansion for $40 so I can play that all day Xmas. The Tower Defense Minigame in the expansion pack is worth $40 alone, it's highly addictive stuff. There's a big fireworls display for new years within walking distance of my house so I'll go see that.
I need a new MMO to play, or I need a couple of million to start developing my own one, which is one of the thing sI'll do if I win the 30 Million dollar New Years super Lotto they have over here. Woot! |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 17th, 2008|05:31 am] |
I woke up at 2 am this morning, after crashing fully clothed on a pile of laundry on my bed sometime after 9:30.
I evicted the laundry turned off the light and flopped back into bed again, only to be horribly disturbed by an unpeasant scratching sound from within the shelf unit in the corner.
Every time I sat up to check it out, it stopped abruptly.
I is either a muse, the worlds biggest cockroach, or a disembodied animated hand desperately seeking it's master. Either way it remained silent as long as the light was on. COnsequently the light remained on and I will explore the shelf later when I get home from work and have rented a ghostbusters uniform and gear.
Also my TV remote is dead and I'm all out of finglongers.
Will the tradgedy ever end! |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 15th, 2008|09:02 pm] |
Hmmmmm.
I could spend $15 watching "The Day the Earth Stood Still" on Boxing Day or...
I could buy a $5 globe, a figurine of "Neo" from The Matrix currently on EBay for $3, glue him to the North America segment and throw the dog-chewed frisbee we found at work at it repeatedly. I have a feeling the end results would be qwuite similar.
Now I'm sure the idea of the original movie might have been a bit startling for the predominantly hat wearing bipeds of the 1950's but to try and run out the same tired-ass story in todays market, where every 50th film extracted from the Hollywood bile gland involves something from outer space poking intergalactic sticks at planet earth.
Even the names are corny. The Alien is called Klaatu and the giant robot of doom is labelled Gort.
I think I'd rather just get some DVD's.
However, if I do go and see it, and Keanu utters the word Woah!, I swear I'll throw a fucking Koala at the screen and leave. That's how they do it in Aussie, nobody takes you seriously unless you're hurling marsupials. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 15th, 2008|06:00 pm] |
Don't you love a shop monkey with a sense of humour.
On the way home tonight I went to Bakers Delight to get a couple of Sesame Seed buns, but when it was my turn to be served I actually asked for Sesame Street buns, and before I could correct myself the chick behind the counter asked if I wanted them with or without Elmo.
And it actually peaked at 38 degrees yesterday. This will take a bit of getting used to. |
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| DODGY! |
[Dec. 14th, 2008|02:09 pm] |
I got a couple of emails supposedly from trademe that said I have been given a $100 gift that I can use to pay fees or buy stuff.
It has a link to Trademe in the message but the sender is so obviously not legit. I wonder how many muppets will give them their account info so the "gift" can be deposited. |
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| I'll have my eggs over easy, a la pavement. |
[Dec. 14th, 2008|01:10 pm] |
Ok, it is currently 36 degrees Celcius in the city.
This is insane heat. I can't walk on the concrete with bare feet and when you breath in it feels like the air is on fire, and I'm sure I can feel my blood boiling under my skin.
I was just talking to the guy next door,m and he said "wait til it gets hot". |
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| The desert grows money!!! |
[Dec. 13th, 2008|03:52 pm] |
Read an article today in a local community newspaper about 2 guys who went out in the desert to a "secret special location" somewhere in the known goldfields. They spent a week there with metal detectors just scouring the ground and ended up with 166 grams of gold pieces. The biggest was just over 8 grams but most were 0.5-2 grams in size.
At current rates thats over $6500 AUST, or around $7800 NZ
With metal detectors and shovels. Apparently there's a "Treasure Hunters" club that does this as a hobby/alternative income.
I'm not sure hwo it work swhen cashing in gold or how much tax you have to pay or whatever, but damn if you can find a nice spot and know a bit about geology you could quite plausably work 6 months of the year and take 6 months off. Of course if you're a muppet and just go anywhere you could waste all your time and get nothing more than bottle caps but still, WOW!
Also, the pigs over here all carry Tazers and Pistols, they use Glock .40 (10.16mm) with HOLLOW POINT bullets. And it's procedure to carry a round chambered at all times. Apparently the pigs here are not to be fucked with. |
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