Happy new beer! Well not quite yet but you get the picture.

Keep it together kids, there's only one day left.

That's pretty much a wrap on this year so if you have any regrets then leave them in 2011 with the rest of your emotional baggage. Get hype, get invigorated and get ready because it's as good of a time as any to step up your game.

At least Katy Perry had one thing right: no regrets, just love (or something like that).



I've already made a couple of decisions that will influence how my 2012 plays out. For the most part cheques have been written and promises have been made, so there's no turning back.

The first one I'll be dealing with is easy: take a break from skiing and learn how to snowboard. As a result, it means that I won't be going on any ski trips this year (sadly the streak is over) but I feel like I need to mix it up so I will. The rest of them well...some are easy and some are not - you'll just have to wait and see because I'm cruel like that.

If I have any advice at the moment for the 2012 version of me it's this: do what makes you happy and fuck forget the rest.



Stay safe you freaks, I'll see you on the other side.

I'm sitting at work this morning and nobody is at work this morning.

Talk about quiet…

Christmas just passed by this year and I barely flinched. In fact, we didn’t even put up a tree if you can believe that.

While my kid cousins are literally bathing in piles of toys Scrooge McDuck style, at this age it really isn’t about the gifts for me. If I want a new jacket or something I’ll just wait until it goes on sale then buy it when it does, and not necessarily wait until Christmas or my birthday (because I’m spoiled like that). The same thing goes for most people I know (I guess).

Instead all I wanted for Christmas, the Holiday Season and even this new year is all that nice intangible stuff. Good health, safety, prosperity and to be able to spend time with family and friends. That’s it.

Sure that X100 is pretty dope but at the end of the day if there’s no one to take a picture with is it worth it?



I have to go to the gym today. I need to go to the gym today.

Seasons Eatings!

There are few things I enjoy as much as sharing good food and good drink with family and friends. This is what I live for. Whether it's going out or staying in there's nothing like talking it over some hot-pot, a burger or a beer. That's life, I enjoy it and I've been fortunate enough to enjoy a lot of it over these Holidays.



By my broad estimation I've probably put on 4-6 pounds this break, and I've accomplished nothing exceptional except for eating delicious food and performing zero exercise. This has been the most unproductive vacation I've ever been on, but I guess sometimes you just need to relax and do nothing right? RIGHT?

I don't use the word decadent very often, but I think taro stuffed deep fried french toast qualifies as that. Like I said, Holidays...



Work tomorrow. What. The. Blood.

What you know about Christmas lights?

Turns out people can get really into Christmas lights. Like seriously into Christmas lights. Which is great.



But talk about a crazy electricity bill.



I also saw those other houses with the light show synchronizing to the music, and that was pretty interesting too.



Like I said, electricity bill...and radio station rental? Anyway, happy holidays.

Merry Christmas and all that jazz.

Welcome to online gaming...

The thing you have to realize about the Black Ops emblem editor is that it isn't freeform like MS Paint. They give you 12 unlockable layers on which you can place 12 pre-defined shapes that you can rotate, scale and change color.



There aren't really any letters and most of them are weird like a biohazard symbol, outline of a tree, gears, greek letters... You can't really draw whatever you like and really have to use your imagination to manipulate the canned shapes.



It takes more time and effort than you would think but considering that it pops up on the person's screen that you just killed/tea bagged, would you have it any other way?



With that said, people come up with some real interesting logos...

So I took a break from MW3...

The human machine is a very fascinating one. Everyone knows that things break all the time but what's even more interesting is that nowadays most of it can be fixed. Ok, some of it.

Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology.



I spent yesterday in a hospital and as usual it is not a very pleasant place to be. The day surgery area of Trillium is more or less a huge common area with people laying down in rolling beds waiting to go in or out of surgery. Young people, old people, children - kind of depressing but you know that it's all for the best.

Luckily? It's not me that's getting the work done but it'll happen soon enough. I somehow got roped into spending my week off in and around the hospital, but if you don't have family and friends then what do you got? Especially around Christmas...



The way I figure, it'll be my bad knee that goes first and when it does I'll go Rolls Royce with it (if that's even possible). Pushing around this gut isn't exactly a smooth move, but cheese tastes delicious and everyone knows that I like to enjoy a few beers.



Anyway, I think I pulled a noob move unlocking that extra class with my first prestige token. Getting past that level 30 hump is a bit of a pain so I better choose more wisely next time around.

After getting back from the hospital (and feeling like I had all the mana sucked out of me (and that I was covered in loads of disease)), I sat down and played some Black Ops to get an extra prestige token.

I was sitting at 45, so I thought I could make quick work of those 5 outstanding levels to transfer that credit. Still seems like a lot of people still play it and it was relatively easy pickings up until about that 6th beer. After that it started to fall apart but I basically powered through it and got it done. Early on though, I felt like I should be a YouTube commentator or something because Ground War made me look like a pro (for once).



That's the end of that chapter...

Stop guessing...

You can always rely on me to have something great happen at the wrong moment. I managed to sprout up a pimple just in time for this big dinner I had to go to on Saturday night. I guess nothing impresses the ladies more than a Rudolph style zit, right on the honker. Perfect.

The best part? Of course it dried up and flattened out the next day. I'm going to assume it's because of all the wine I consumed. So wine is good for you right?



Anyway, what a weekend and I'm glad to be on vacation now. I'm lucky enough to have enjoyed so much delicious food over the past 3 days, but I can (definitely) feel my ass start to jiggle...well more than usual anyway. This is for sure vacation mode.

It only happens once a year...

Aside from the usual holiday get togethers with the family, I only really have two "yearly traditions" that I try my best to keep alive...

The first is a Christmas dinner that my family has been going to since who knows when. It's a big banquet that's put on by this organization we're members of, and there's foreign ministers and speeches and awesome raffles and a delicious 10 course meal to boot.

It's a nice occasion for parents to get their kids dressed up and parade them in front of catch up with people you don't see too often. But either way it's a one night a year affair that we're more or less committed too.



The other is sort of much less impressive and has roots in my university years. This tradition includes me pulling an all nighter (I told you it's not that impressive). You can imagine where this comes from (HINT: enjoy your exams kids), but just like getting a significant injury it's a good reminder that you're human after all.

You know what I mean. The puffy eyes, headaches, dizzyness and weird body tingles - just embrace the struggle and feel what it's like for the human machine to do something it's not really supposed to do. Stay up until you see the sun set again, they stay up some more and wait until the next night to have one of the best sleeps ever.



It might not be a big deal for a lot of people, but for a guy who wakes up at the same hour every day of the week something like that makes his system go haywire. Actually, my dad works shift and does this regularly to force his sleep pattern back into whack. Can't say that any of those genes made it my way...

I got pretty close in Montreal this year, but you know that doesn't get you the cigar. Time to keep this dumb tradition alive, son.

...and I'm officially on vacation.

What you know about MW3 titles and emblems?

I'm not exactly sure how MW3 match making works but now that I've done my first prestige I seem to be matched up with more prestiged players, or guys holding out at the max level. My aim isn't exactly great so something like a bare bones M4A1 will probably eat shit every time you go up against a gold Type 95 with rapid fire. Or I'm just making excuses, but unless you're Sandy Ravage or SeaNanners then it's pretty difficult up until about level 30 (where you start to unlock the good stuff).



In retrospect, since I plan to prestige all the way (maybe) I should have unlocked the ACR so that I can use it straight from the beginning and get over that initial hump. That and the PP90M1 are my bread and butter, but I may have pulled a noob move by unlocking that extra class this early...



Anyway, MW3 doesn't have the freedom with your callsign as Black Ops does with the logo designer...which reminds me that I NEED to show you some of the one's I've seen. TRUST ME. The last logo I designed in Black Ops was pretty modest...



Basically an emblem (logo) + title (banners) = your callsign, aka what people see next to your name and when you kill them. Totally unnecessary but necessary at the same time.

They are unlocked via certain challenges like shoot two people through the head with one bullet, kill the top player 5 times or kill someone with a chain reaction of explosions, you get the picture. They're fun to go after and impressive to see but after a couple games of going 5-40 because you're trying to kill 5 guys with a riot shield, it can get pretty frustrating.



That's the deal with video games though - frustrating but fun and totally not useful in life.

Pro tip of the day: don't leave valuables lying around in your car, dummy.

Here’s how I imagine it went down…

The department head steps up onto the stage and says, “I just want to formally thank everyone for their stellar performance this year, it’s really appreciated…” In other words thanks for working like dogs because my Christmas bonus is []D [] []V[] []D.

Meanwhile, Rodrigo is in the back rolling his eyes at it all while eating the creme brulee that he conveniently told diners they had just ran out of. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out his Samsung Galaxy S II LTE and texts his brother in law Manuel with two words: GO TIME.

The speeches continue so naturally nobody stands up, enters or leaves in fear of being ostracized by their peers. Waiters stand there eyeing the tables, trying to decide which empty plates to attack first, while the chefs in the back are all eating more of that delicious creme brulee (which they cleverly hoarded, knowing that there wouldn’t be enough for the diners to enjoy).

Outside, Manuel reads Rodrigo’s message out loud and his gang of thieves go to work. Despite the ridiculous size and amount of traffic it sees, there’s conveniently no cameras in this convention center parking lot. And with the speeches going on nobody would dare walk out to their cars either - perfect. Manuel, Juan-Ceasar, Cornelio and Edgardo get out and run up and down the isles, peering into the different windows while Esteban sits in the car just idling.

They all stop and look at each other for a second then Manuel yells, “GO!” All at once the robbing begins. From the first alarm that goes off, they have about a minute until someone realizes that shit just got real. Or not. Without wasting any time the crew uses their spark plugs to break the windows of the cars which they just scoped out not a minute before - quick and dirty and coordinated.

Before anyone even realized it, they are long gone in Esteban’s 2004 Buick Regal SS driving to Parry Sound to meet up with their fence and cash out. They’re in the clear - cheering, drinking tequila, giving each other high fives and kissing each other on the mouth before that first alarm even stopped ringing.

Would it have made any difference if the names were Korean or something?



So I was at my department’s Christmas Festive Lunch yesterday…

It was a big affair with probably a couple of hundred people in a large convention center. The food was cookie-cutter-decent and you could enjoy as much of it as you wanted, so everyone stayed for a while.

Unfortunately, after the itis set in and people started to leave (to get back to work and be super productive I’m sure) they came out to the parking lot only to see a bunch of broken glass everywhere. Horrible.

I got a ride and we were fine, but even still the car directly beside us was not so fortunate. A lot of cars got robbed that day. I even looked inside to see what was up and turns out the woman was a real noob. Smooth move lady, leaving your purse on the seat like that, completely out in the open.

Same story down the line and I can only imagine that the SUVs with their back windows smashed meant that there were laptop bags in the trunk. Unfortunate, but what would you expect?

A steep price to pay for a free lunch…

1 day 2 hours and 27 minutes later...1st Prestige

That's it folks. My first prestige on console and it was a lot of work. I'm not sure how many of these I have in me but I'll keep going, that's for sure.

I believe that number is just in game time only, so by my broad estimation you actually spend about 15-20% more time than that just waiting in lobbies. So for every 5-10 minute game of TDM you have to endure a minute in the lobby of kids telling you how they're going to eat your mom out before the next game begins.

Unlike PC, there's that intermission in between matches that can't be avoided - you vote on maps, shuffle players around, change up your classes, then wait. In retrospect, it's easily over 30 hours that I've spent on my fat ass, with that controller in hand and headset on. But like I said before, I don't watch TV, I don't have a girlfriend, so what else is a brother to do?



It's hard to believe that I saw some kids Prestige after only a couple of days (probably fueled by those double XP coupons you get in Mountain Dew and Doritos), but I imagine some students on PC ranking up even faster than that.

I'm still on the fence deciding what to use that token on. It's boiled down to either the ACR 6.8, PPM90M1 or a Custom Class. Considering that it took over a month to get this first prestige, I think I might do a gun this time around and a class the next.

I was considering taking Assassin with me but that would be cheese.

Vacation in 5...yeah.

My cousin's family is spending XMAS in France this year because his sister is there teaching and they couldn't let her spend the Holidays alone. So in preparation he tells his dad, "You know that you can't go over to Europe looking like a scrub. Trust me, I've been there before. You have to dress up nice because everyone dresses up nice. We need to look good." To which he replies, F-that-s, she told me to bring two pairs of jeans and two t-shirts. I'm a wear what I want, I don't care about the French.

Okay, so maybe I'm paraphrasing a bit and that's not exactly what went down, but you get the picture.



The same thing kind of applies in Toronto because you'll always see people dress up way nicer than they need to, to drink a bubble tea at the mall or eat a hot dog on the street. Maybe it's because I live in the suburbs and never have to worry about running into anyone of consequence, but wearing multiple layers, jewelry and random accessories is not really my thing.

Anyway, while downtown over the weekend enjoying some delicious Korean BBQ, this group of like 20-something overly stylish students walk in and they're all flossing fresh new clothes, which is kind of weird considering the stench that these gas grills and assorted meats will give to them.

First of all I though to myself, how the hell do children like this afford such expensive clothes? But then I realize that they all have ridiculous-ass haircuts too. Like I'm talking mullets and side combs and mohawks, all in the middle of winter.

Judging Looking at them again I came to three conclusions: 1. They are all liberal arts students celebrating their last exams, 2. They are all hair stylists celebrating their last hair cut exam, 3. They are all members of some vague student association where they have somehow convinced each other in a vicious cycle that impractical hair cuts (that probably take like 20 minutes to style in the morning) and canvas shoes that offer zero foot support are totally the tits.

So says me as I sit there staring at them way too much in a cheesy flannel shirt, stupid scarf, while drinking a Sapporo and chewing on a piece of short rib...



Mini bacon weave, perfect for a Sunday afternoon sandwich. I just have to make it through this week then it's break time. Is it Friday yet?

Modern Warfare 3: It's time to Prestige...

The combination of being on course all week and getting home way earlier than normal basically meant that I got to play COD a little more and catch up on Ancient Aliens. It was a very productive week but I didn't get much of a chance to blog since I was locked in a classroom and considering where I do most of my blo...

Anyway, I played a whole bunch of COD and according to Elite I'm 1.6 away from my first prestige. I figure I'll do some work and get it over with tomorrow - I plan on using that prestige token to either take my PP90M1 with me or more likely to unlock another class slot.



I don't know how many people actually use COD Elite, but considering that the service was busted for the first few weeks due to traffic I'm going to assume that it's a lot. I actually use it a lot to stalk friends but also watch Friday Night Fights. As far as I know you can't watch it on anything else except for Elite TV.



Stacy Keibler is the hot-hot-hostess and every week two teams face off against each other and you get to witness the back and forth. Last week was my favorite episode so far where it was Rap vs Rock. The Rap team consisted of The Game (that's right) and Cali Swag while The Rock team consisted of Jack Osbourne and Good Charlotte. It's interesting to watch, let's just say that.

Anyway, If you didn't already know COD Elite also allows you to upload gameplay clips to YouTube from within the menus. It's a bit of a headache, but all you really have to do is select/edit a clip from your automatically saved games, save it to your online vault, then render it and it gets sent to your online theater for all to see.



Unfortunately the time limit on these videos is lame - if you're a free COD Elite user then it can only be 30 seconds, but if you're premium (like me (Hardened Edition FTW)) then you get to upload a clip that's 60 seconds long. Big whoop.

What's also even lamer is that I can't figure out how to get it in HD. What up with that?



And that was the final kill cam too. Boom goes the dynamite.

I do my shopping on the internet...

"The problem is, alcohol is fun as fuck. You know there’s very few things that are as fun as just a good night out when you’re drunk, with a bunch of fun friends and you’re all laughing and cracking up. And then at the end of the night you go eat somewhere stupid. Eat some greasy meat concoction with cheese and gravy and you take your fat stupid ass to bed. Those nights are fun man, those are some brilliant nights, but god damn those Sunday mornings suck a bag. Don’t they? They suck dude."
        -Joe Rogan

So I invented a drinking game to go along with this awesome toy that I bought off the net. The rules are simple:

1. If the ball is thrown at you and you don't catch or drop it then you drink.
2. If the ball shocks you then you drink.
3. If you drop the ball because it's shocking you then you drink again.
4. The last person to get shocked starts the round, or any arbitrary person starts the first round.

It's actually quite big - around the size of a tennis ball - and has some weight to it. Don't know how badly it will shock but I'll save it until Christmas day so we can have a laugh/drink with the fam.

Enter December...

I'm on training again this week but this time with IBM. Time to go deep and by go deep I mean get to leave early from work every day. I got off so early today that I had time to walk for an hour before my kettlebell class. Anyway...

I don't want to say that someone screwed up and we ended up seeing a children's movie last night but...someone messed up and we ended seeing a children's movie last night...in 3D nonetheless.



Chalk up another Christmas film, I'm getting festive.

Re-calibrate your iPhone 4 home button / Wing sauce all over it

The problem with anything mechanical is that the mechanism always stands a chance of breaking. There's only a handful of buttons and switches on the iPhone, but ever since 5.0.1 I seemed to have a lot of problems with the home button being "unresponsive" for some reason.

At first I assumed it was because I eat a lot of candy that my hands were just making the button all sticky, but after having a closer look there's not much room for crap to sneak in and if it does my S. Jobs have mercy on your soul. I'm not sure i that's the case and it might even a loose connection or something inside - I don't know and I'm not willing to completely disassemble the thing to have a look.

Anyway after scouring the net and the Apple support forums, it turns out this is a somewhat common problem and I found this step-by-step on how to re-calibrate the home button.

I don't know how much truth to this or if it's just some due spreading propaganda but we'll see. If it does do something my guess is that it resets some sort of sensitivity setting for the button press. I went ahead and tried it - here are the steps:

1. Open any app.
2. Press the power button until the slide to power off option appears.
3. Let go of the power button.
4. Press and hold the home button until you return to your home screen/app pages.

I did it and the process worked as described but like I said, I'm not exactly sure what it does. So far so good though because the situation seems to have improved...or I'm just fooling myself. Who knows?

In other news, my plan of saving money by just playing video games worked out pretty well in October/November. My VISA statements were pretty bare, but then I recently started XMAS shopping. THE FLOOD GATES ARE OPEN.

Keep chili peppers away from your balls.

Well I guess the title says it all.

I woke up Saturday morning and everyone was out of the house, so I lounged around in my underwear and decided to cook up some breakfast. I remember it well: there I was slicing up some cherry tomatoes, an onion and 2 Thai chilis for a very delicious omelette. Then, I get to frying.

Since there isn’t anyone to criticize me, I go ahead and give my balls a scratch while sauteing that veg. Nobody else is going to see me or eat my food, so why not satisfy that itch? I go to town - no holding back.

Noob move. I blame it on the combination of waking up too early after a late night and the fact that there’s no running water in the kitchen (not even a sink, due to renovations)…anyway…

Well turns out those peppers burn like fire when rubbed into the general crotch area. I can only imagine what it would feel like in your eyeball.

So I quickly toss that omelette in a bun, squirt some ketchup on it and consume that delicious western like a boss (while that pain gets worse). Then after that I run to the shower to splash some water on this thing.

It also turns out that soapy hot water intensifies the burning and soothing Dove lotion barely puts a dent in that sting. So what do I do?

Remember how I watched Cowboys & Aliens the other day? Well there was a scene where James Bond is injured and needs to get stitched up by a priest, so to numb the pain he drinks whiskey.

Boom! Shots at 8AM Saturday morning FTW.

I wake up exhausted it's not morning it's back to sleep to re-dream me

I can hear it now, the end is nigh and not a minute too soon.

What a weekend, it was kind of surreal actually. I spent the entire thing bumming around in a daze with no particular goal; eating dim sum, drinking wine, foreign films, enjoying desserts and roasting duck with a gang of misfits who had the same thing in mind. I wore shorts, I made bacon, it was glorious.

We soaked it up because after this weekend it's pretty much an all out sprint of events until New Year's Day. It's all hectic and can't be avoided.

In true loner fashion I did start it off on Friday night by planting my (sweet sweet) ass on the couch with a couple of beers, and probably stayed up later than I should have watching ridiculous movies. Here's what I have to say about that...

Sorry, metro-sexual-hawaiian dude. Arnold was better.



Unless a truly savage actor plays Conan again, I don't know if this movie can work.



I'm also not too sure about this movie, but it was definitely not unenjoyable.



There seemed to be a lot of famous actors in it...



A lot.



Anyway, Paul Rudd is a real likeable dude. I'm glad things worked out for him in the end. Oops.



And I don't know, maybe it's because he was James Bond but DC is a real man's man.



An Olivia Wilde: looking good as always.



Best movie of them all in my opinion (probably not).

December, here I come...

SWAG vs SWAG

I'm slowly making my way though this Marvel Civil War and damn is it a crazy read. The plot line actually jumps between different comic book series and characters all in the Marvel universe to create this out of control story.

Basically what happened was a bunch of noob super heroes trying to create a reality show tried to raid a house in the suburbs where a bunch of villans were hiding. A battle ensued and this one bad guy named Nitro exploded himself and blew the shit out of the surrounding neighborhood killing everyone, including a school filled with children.

One thing led to another and this Superhuman Registration Act became law. That act required that all heroes reveal their identities and work for the government. Those who refused were considered criminals and hunted down by their registered peers - and we're still only talking about just the good guys here.



So on one end you have all these heroes who think that registering is a good idea and on the other hand all the heroes who want to protect their identities. One of the biggest reasons for keeping them secret is the threat that the bad guys will know who they are, and thus can attack their family and friends.

Oh yeah, and you have the bad guys still shit disturbing all over the place because they don’t care either way.

It’s basically Good Guys vs. Good Guys - Captain America is leading the heroes/fugitives against the registration act and Iron Man/Tony Start leading the push for the registration.



What’s interesting is that Captain America is the one leading the heroes against the US Government (and everyone knows his identity anyway), Spider Man decided to reveal himself even though he’s probably one of the people who worked the hardest to conceal his identify (and J Jonah Jameson goes ape shit because of it), and Tony Stark comes off as a douche bag.



Sorry for that horrible pic (not really). Anyway, it's an interesting read.

What up, kettlebells?

Despite the fact that I haven’t lifted a dumbbell in a very long time I’ve recently jumped into these kettlebell workouts because I discovered that the instructor was this slammin’ babe I’ve become quite the lazy bum, not having to dragon boat anymore. And yes, I know that the season ended a couple months ago, but like I told you: lazy bum.

These kettlebell workouts are fairly short but super intense - makes you feel like a caveman doing real man work. They consist of alternating body weight exercises and exercises where you hold/lift/toss around these crude iron balls with handles in all sorts of positions. It’s the closest that I’ve come to non-alcoholic related vomiting in a long time because the instructor really knows how to egg you on and I refuse to be defeated by the 35 year old women also taking the class.

The only down side is that they’re held in the studio rooms where the walls are covered with these floor to ceiling mirrors. Being surrounded by women in fairly close quarters I can’t help it if I try to sneak a peek every now and again. Unfortunately, the walls have eyes (literally) and I have to get creative with trying to play it cool. I’m a man and it can’t be helped, but I know that they’re probably checking out my sweet bod too (probably not).



Anyway, this has been thrown in with the other classes that I do with middle aged/older women at the YMCA. Now that my lower back hurts again it feels like I'm actually getting somewhere.