Tomorrow is Moving Day!

Well the time has finally arrived, tomorrow morning we uproot our lives and plonk it back down into a new home. Tonight we are going to be shifting as much furniture as possible down stairs to keep the actual removalist time down to a minimum, and then we have a joyous weekend ahead of unpacking and cleaning the old house (the sale is due to go through next Wednesday, so it needs to be cleaned ASAP).

But let us talk of happier things! I am on the verge of purchasing my new computer. I actually made an attempt on it last month but thanks to stock shortages, faulty components and then eventually an impending CPU price drop I've been stalled until next week. Now that the new Conroe chips are being released, I am also beginning to re-evaluate my actual choices. This is the system I currently have an eye on:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4ghz)
Intel P965 Chipset 1066FSB Motherboard
1Gig XFX Geforce 7950GX2 Graphics Card (*drool*)
320Gig 7200rpm 16mb Hard Disk
20" BenQ FP202W Widescreen LCD flat panel monitor

All up it is going to be a little over $3500, and will be future proof for some time to come :) Of course most people (*cough*suzy*cough*) think I'm mad for spending that kind of money on a computer, but I just love my PC games and I'm happy to spend that kind of cash on hardware that is going to last me three or four years.

First things first... I'm loading up Half Life 2 and playing it straight through (I have been saving it for when I upgraded, it has been a long hard wait but I'm almost there!!)

News Flash!

Stop the presses... she said yes.

Eucalyptus Bowl - Day 2

Ahh the timeless formula for tragedy, being built up to dizzying heights only to be eventually brought low, in this case by some fiendish poor luck and some very talented opponents.

Going in to the day I thought we had two games left to play, with Ian and I very close on first and second respectively and therefore destined to play each other first off. Little did I know that we actually had THREE games to go so rather than being more than half way through with everything to gain, I had three more matches against the top tier coaches left if I wanted to walk away with the prize.

My game against Ian was fun, as it always is playing against him. He took his Orcs, and handed me my ass. He started off strongly by grinding me down the pitch and scoring at the end of the first half. I received in the second half, and we were both getting bashed fairly heavily. I was looking all set for an equaliser thanks to a failed GFI with a reroll but a shocking quad-skulls put an end to that, and from there he was all set to bulldoze me into a 2 - nil win. We did equal casualties, so I did walk out of it with a few points, but that win put a massive dent in my chances and put Ian in prime position to take the tournament.

My second game was against Paul and his Norse. I met Paul for the first time at CanCon earlier in the year where I played his Humans in the last round. Back then, I gave him quite a thrashing so he was definitely keen to redeem his honor. He started poorly with a few players knocked out and a dead mino (apoth'd). By near the end of half time I was up two nil and looking set for another easy win. He managed to kill a wolf and score a TD in two turns, but things were still looking OK.

In the second half, we had a massive reversal which saw the end of my casualty count and his minotaur getting the ball on a touchback and walking it up the pitch with a series of blitzes. He had the option to stall and get a draw, but decided to go for a win. With four turns left, he was a man up on me and I only had one wolf left. In the first turn I managed to kill out two players, and suddenly things weren't looking that grim. I managed to grind my way up the pitch and watched him lose two blitz in a row thanks to his unreliable mino. He eventually had to throw a two dice my choice block on the ghoul with the ball, failed it and I walked in the third touch down.

That left me in second place behind Ian (who had scored yet another win and was practically guaranteed take it home). To win, I needed to get a full point win in the final round, while Ian would need to get 2 points or less (out of 36, so in other words get completely whupped). My final opponent was Brian, a skaven coach. I was thankful that I wasn't playing Ian's opponent (more dwarves), and hoping to break loads of that lovely av7. Sadly, it was not to be. I just had to sit back and watch as his invicible rats shrugged off all my efforts to hurt him (including almost constant claw/tackle combos on the gutter runners). Meanwhile his four gutter runners ran rings around me, and we ended up with a score of 3 - 1 against and only one casualty in the entire match, against me! Absolutely dreadful result, but he was a nice guy and overall I had a great time despite two frustrating games on day 2.

When the dust had settled, I ended up in third place behind Ian and Brian which I was still very happy with out of 32 coaches (does it make it any better if I say the only people who beat me were in first and second place??). I was a touch disappointed to find out that there was no prize for third place, but as luck would have it my name was randomly picked out of a hat and I won the second blood bowl novel (I took the first as my prize last year, and had been joking around with Ian that he would need to get the second one for when I won).

I had a really great time, and I am thrilled that I managed to make it this year (Suzy started grumbling about painting when I typed that in hehe). I am also looking forward to the NAF rankings being updated, even with my loss against Brian which will be pretty dire, I am still fairly confident of an increase in rankings as the other loss was against Ian who was at least 20 points ahead of me.

Eucalyptus Bowl - Day 1

Well, as you may or may not know last year I had a surprise win at the first Eucalyptus Bowl (a Blood Bowl tournament). I had only been playing the game for a few months, and basically had a two day string of bizarre luck which led me to taking home first place.

Last year it was held in September, but this time around they decided to move it forward to July to better fit in with the other Aussie comps and also avoid Fathers day which fell on the Sunday last year. Considering it is held in an RSL, I am sure you can imagine how busy the place was on Fathers day, so they weren't really prepared for a 40+ person event being held at the same time.

So this year it is a smaller event, I think somewhere over 20 people, and many familiar faces (and names) from CanCon, last years Euc Bowl and online via fumbbl. I went into it expecting to get thrashed this year to make up for my freak luck, but much to my own surprise I ended up winning all three of my games, although none of them were easy. And keeping to form, I have taken my Necromantic team for the third tournament in a row. Assuming I do well with them, I will definitely be taking a different team next time around, probably Skaven.

The first game was against a human team (Nils from Canberra). He started strongly, with a score early on. We also rolled sweltering heat which took out one of my wolves and one of his blitzers. I managed to equalise on turn 8 of the last half and went into the second half with a 3 man numbers advantage thanks to the heat, one cas and 2 KO (I was also down a few players, including a golem). In the second half, his team basically fell apart with a bunch of casualties and KOs. By the end of the game, his entire team was off the pitch, and this was after several turns of doing nothing but unstunning his team. The final score was 2 - 1, with 5 - 1 casualties.

After this win, I was feeling pretty good but this changed quickly when I found out who my next opponent was. Brendon and his dwarves! He had been sitting at the same table as me during game one, and I had just watched him demolish another necro team. Plus as a general rule I hate dwarves, so I was not happy at all! But it turns out I shouldn't have worried, as my luck kicked in to give me a hand. After Brendon failed a GFI and left the ball wide open early on, I managed to keep him on the run and generally avoided any damage thanks to his failing to break armour. While I only got one casualty, it was a death with a failed apoth, so that is always nice :) Final score was 2 - 0, with 1 - 2 casualties.

Ok, now around this time last year when I had inexplicably won two games, I was feeling really stoked but also I was well aware that I had been very lucky and it probably wouldn't last. And last year, it turned out the third game was also the hardest... and there was no changes this year! My final game of the day was against a new face, John, and his Khemri (dum dum duuuummmm!) It is always scary facing khemri, especially when all four mummies have block (along with two block thro-ra, which in my opinion was a poor choice, he should have taken some Dirty Player to really crush the other teams).

He kicked off (his choice) and I started off very strongly with a crowd surf and four zombies keeping his four mummies pinned down. I scored reasonably quickly (I probably could have dragged it out for the entire half, but it didn't seem very sporting). In the second half he got the ball and managed to form up a cage with his team. It took me a few turns to crack it open, but he did his bit to help me by not moving up when he had a chance, leaving tacklezones on the corner of the cage plus also throwing one dice blocks with the ball carrier (which leaves the ball in one place, rather than moving it up the pitch). Ultimately he ended up with a mummy in my half with the ball, but using Strip Ball I managed to take it off him and end any chance he had to make it a draw. I followed up with a 5+ pick up and a bunch of dodges to pull off a pass to a wolf, and managed to move the ball more than three quarters of the way across the board deep into his half in a single turn. So the end result was 2 - 0, 3 - 1 casualties.

So at the end of day one I had won all three games, with only Ian Williams matching that and everyone else having at least one draw or loss. So tomorrow I will probably face Ian, and if I can pull off one more win against him... who knows?

Better late than never

Well, after a week and a half of stress and wasted cash, we finally settled on our new house and have even dropped the first shipment of our crap off to make it official!

Next friday we are moving in, and the week after that our old place is due to settle and we will say goodbye to it for the last time. I'm really looking forward to moving into the new house, there are going to be lots of good changes (eg, no stairs and within walking distance to a train station). The only real downer that I can think of is that we are finally becoming victims of the " nanny state" as the new hot water system is subject to the asenine law which prevents our water from getting hotter than 55 degrees! Because that protects the STUPID from burning themselves, and everyone else just has to suffer because of it... I'm secretly hoping that I can find some instructions on the net to fix the problem, but I would assume that is going to depend on the make and model.

Anyway, just over a week to go before we are installed into our new home, happy days are here again!

Week from Hell!

My god, what a god awful week this has been! Our new house was supposed to settle last monday, and it STILL hasn't thanks to blood-sucking lawyers getting their cut. We still have no clear idea what has delayed it by a week and a half and cost us over a grand, but they have promised us that it will settle at 2.30pm tomorrow. IT BETTER!

So that means that we have one less weekend to get the place ready, which is doubly frustrating when we were going to sort out some painting etc before the actual move (and when I say WE, I mean Suzy and her parents. Painting is my kryptonite!) We were also going to shift over a bunch of boxes etc that have been packed, to keep removalist costs down.

The move itself is scheduled for next friday, so we have one last weekend to get the place ready. Ummm, except I'm going to Eucalyptus Bowl this weekend (and you better believe Suzy is none too thrilled). She and her parents will be painting during the day, and I'll be around in the evening to help out. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!

On top of that, it has been absolutely crazy at work this week, one of the busiest times of the year (start of semester) when you work at a University.

In other news, over the weekend we obtained our new fridge (thanks again to the kind assistance of Suzy's parents) and also attended the Harvey Norman Technology Expo at Sydney Showgrounds. I was there looking for computer monitors and ogling TVs, and what do we end up buying? A hair dryer and a steam mop! Woohoo! Well, I did get a 1gig USB2.0 drive for $47 so I can't really complain :)

Brok3n Pix3ls

I just lost it at work.

As I have mentioned in the past, I've been listening to podcasts while doing the more menial parts of my job, starting off with stuff to do with webcomics and then more recently also a few music podcasts and some video game ones. One that I have just started to get into is the 1up show, which is actually a video cast (I have watch it occasionally during my lunch break).

A few weeks ago, they featured an episode of Brok3n Pix3ls, which is basically three guys on a couch playing crappy and obscure old games and ripping the shit out of them. The presentation is interesting, as they alternate between straight game footage, and then also a clever trick which makes it look like they are filming the TV set with the footage and the three guys relfected on the screen (I am assuming it a trick anyway, I guess it could be real, but it seems too clear for that).

The games they played were the Bible Adventures for the NES plus some bizarre japanese female wrestling game which used live action footage rather than game sprites (no idea what game system it was). It was extremely funny, but when I went to search for it on iTune I got nothing, so I figured it was just a one off.

Today I noticed on the 1up website that a new episode has been posted, and for whatever reason it isn't available via iTunes (which is a damn shame, since iTunes tells you when a new episode is posted). Check it out here. (WARNING: DO NOT WATCH THIS AT WORK UNLESS YOU HAVE HEADPHONES. The footage is fine but the audio is not work friendly)

The first half had them playing Revolution X, a craptastic old Operation Wolf style shooter featuring Aerosmith. The second half, the one that caused me to totally loose it at my desk, was an old boxing game called "Ring King", which to put it mildly has some extremely questionable choices of animations. During the Ring King segment one of the guys is telling a story about going to a Taco Bell drivethrough, and it had me in tears. Mind you, that is because I'm like five years old...

I can't wait to check out the other episodes, apparently this was Ep.4 so there should be two or three more out there to check out!

Toasted Twisters - A Cautionary Tale

I know this is pretty random, but I'm watching the latest Big Brother eviction (Perry got kicked out, a surprise to noone watching BB this year) and they had adverts for KFC "Toasted" Twisters, basically chicken wraps. The adverts always focus on someone trying to "toast" their KFC twister using BBQs, blow torches and the like. The concequences are always explosive, with the protagonist ending up with the blackened face that Looney Tunes has taught us is the only concequence of playing with explosives!

Someone is always in the background smirking at them, because little to these well-cooked fools know, KFC will now toast your twisters for you! Much hilarity and forehead slapping ensure, needless to say.

It just strikes me as funny that KFC are so happy to advertise their food as dangerously combustible when exposed to an open flame... I guess it's all the fat and oil that they inject into the chicken :)

Check out one of these stellar adverts courtesy of the Big Brother Website!

EXTRA SPECIAL NEWSFLASH: Suzy has recognised one of the new "extra" housemates being put in next week to replace the turkey slappers. It's James from Ralphs Coffee Shop at the University of Sydney!

Shiver my timbers!

In honour of the new Pirates movie which we saw yesterday... please click here before reading any further.


What can I say, I enjoy the Pirate theme and as much as I dislike Bruckheimer movies in principle, the Pirate of the Carribean movies are an exception, I wish all "Hollywood Blockbusters" were like this, since this is how to do them PROPERLY!

8/10, not quite as good as the first one but still a lot of fun. And as is common these days, don't leave until after the end credits, as there is a little extra salty goodness waiting for you scurvy dogs!

Call me Richard, Real Estate Agent Bane!

Our new house settles on Monday, so we are getting ready for the final inspection. Earlier in the week, Suzy called the agency to make an appointment for it, only to find that our usual agent was conspicuously absent from both the office and their website...

Yesterday I got a call from someone new and we set up a time. I asked what happened to the old agent, and was told that "she doesn't work for this company anymore".

This is after last week when I felt it necessary to make a complaint about her behaviour, after spending over a month trying to get an answer to a simple question (we needed measurements so that we could buy a new fridge). She spent four weeks ignoring my requests after initially promising to rush the measurements to me, and when she finally got her act together she didn't even get what I needed! So I cracked the shits after having wasted my time and left us with a broken fridge for an unnecessary month, and complained to her boss. Since then, I hadn't heard from her and the next thing I know she has either quit or been fired.

I can only assume that they had had ongoing issues with her and this ended up being the final straw.

Funnily enough, this isn't the first real estate agent we have sent packing! When we bought our first house, the agent we were renting through at the time went through some kind of meltdown, turned into a total cow and then suddenly vanished after trying to screw us out of our deposit. And the agent we BOUGHT through at the time also vanished without warning (but we hadn't had a problem with him at least) and the sale ended up being finalised by someone else.

Agents beware, you have been warned!

I can't believe I forgot this!

Well, I can't believe I forgot the scandal which has rocked the nation! Also known as "Camillagate 2006", or the "Turkey Slapping" incident.

For those living under a rock, two of the Aussie big brother housemates were escorted out of the house on Saturday afternoon for "a serious breach of the rules". The official big brother website made it clear that they would not be commenting on the event and also closed down the forums to prevent people from discussing the event and telling anyone else what had happened.

Naturally this didn't stop the story from getting out, although depending on who you ask the details change subtly. First off, we read on a website that John and Ash had jumped into Camillas bed while she was asleep, one of them holding her down while the other hit her in the face with his penis (this is called "turkey slapping"). She wasn't happy with this, and was quoted as saying "that's not cool". That was at 2 or so in the morning, and that afternoon the two boys were called into the diary room, never to return.

Of course, that has actually been blown out of proportion a bit by some media (and frankly quite a few newspapers and TV shows haven't seemed that interested in correcting their mistakes). I have seen the footage, and in fact not only was she awake and went into their bed when it happened, but there was a suspicious amount of giggling etc involved. She made it clear that she didn't want it to be done to her, but when the actual event is watched it seemed far far less serious (and since then Camilla has seemed more upset that they were evicted over it than that the event actually happened). The two guys were stupid and definitely overstepped the bounds of decent behaviour, but I really don't think it could be called sexual assault.

Now I want to be clear, I fully agree with the decision to remove the two guys, but now that I know more of the story I am pretty shocked at the shoddy reporting that has been shown in the past few days. Of course, this was made much worst by the initial refusal by the powers that be behind BB to make any official press release about the incident.

Richard Returns!

Well, quite a lot has happened in the past week, and I haven't found many chances to post. Last Friday, Suzy and I went out to see Superman Returns and went out to dinner to celebrate our Anniversary. Yes, the lovely Suzy has put up with me now for a whopping five years, and for three and a half of those we have been living together in relative harmony, so either I am not quite as annoying as some would have you believe, or otherwise she has a pain threshold that beggars belief.

The new Superman film was good, but not great. Spiderman 1 and X-Men 2 still stand out to me as what Superhero films should be, and while I think they did a great job with Superman it didn't quite make it. Some would have you believe that it is the worst movie ever made, and that is extremely unfair, but its hardly about to win an Oscar.

Perhaps I am biased, since I don't really like the "idea" of Superman. He is just some guy who has more super powers than he knows what to do with, and rather than actually think of situations where he might find himself in trouble, they just make up kryptonite as his one weakness, and then make it more common than bacon so he can find it absolutely everywhere. It is lazy basically, and as a result kind of boring.

This is also a good time to promote a link to one of my favorite authors, and his thoughts on Superman (Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex). An absolutely hilarious essay into the issues Superman would face trying to reproduce.

Another super fun thing we did over the weekend was to defrost our ancient "frost free" fridge. We have had a tonne of problems with the fridge in the past month or so, and one of them has been over a foot of ice that has formed up at the back and locked all the shelves in place (I'm not exaggerating, a slab of ice which was literally a foot thick, eventually I had to take a hammer to it to get it all out). I have some pictures of one of the biggest chunks I pulled out, but the cables for connecting the camera to the computer are currently in storage sadly. If I get a chance I'll post it later, because it is absolutely crazy!

And we have just one last week before the new house is ours at last! We can't wait, it have been two long ass months but the end is in sight!