Wii Want The Funk

I am pretty into gadgets and electronics.  Not having the proper time to truly put these devices through their paces does not stop me from trying to collect this stuff.  I always want the newest and greatest.  Heidi gets pretty excited about most of these things too … which is probably part of the reason we got married.

So it is incredibly odd to me that Heidi has been more excited about the Nintendo Wii then me.  I would love to have one but I had kind of settled on the fact that we didn’t need another game system.  Heidi seems to feel that we NEED one.  This has been pretty constant since the system was released (and we first tried it at a friends house).  So Heidi’s excitement about this system has ramped my own.

For the last week and a bit I have been keeping my eye out trying to find one of these for sale.  And it is not easy.  Here are a couple of sources I have come across to aid the search.

http://www.consolewatch.com/ – this site monitors the online inventory of a bunch of retailers and collects the info all in one place.  You can set it up to email you when something comes in (PS3, Wii, Wii Controllers etc).

http://www.redflagdeals.com/ – I have been using this site for over a year.  It’s original purpose was to simply collect info about bargains and specials for shopping in Canada.  Computer and Electronics is their specialty.  They have very good forum area were you can share tips, deals etc with others.  They have a special section just for next gen console searching.  Lost of rumours about product deliveries etc. 

Apparently Tuesdays is when Walmart gets their shipment of stuff.  So at lunch I did a little running around but had no luck there.  There is a Future Shop near by so I stopped there too.  They didn’t have any consoles but they did have 2 Wii-motes (one of the controllers for the Wii) which are equally hard to find.  I figured I would grab them as I can return them if I have to or even sell them on the E-Bay.

There are lots of Wii’s on E-Bay as well.  For around $375 bucks + shipping you can pick up a system which is about $100 bucks more then retail.  Not too bad if you want to avoid the entire hunt or can’t wait for a couple of months for stock to catch up, but not for us.  Plus I work pretty close to the Pacific Mall which is a bit of a shady place.  Rumour has it that there are Wiis there but with a premium tacked on as well.

So we have 2 controllers and no Wii.  Anyone that has a Wii and not many controllers want to invite us over for a party?

Mini Van Man

Well it’s a done deal.  Heidi and I picked up our 2003 Dodge Grand Caravan last night.  It is the sport edition and pretty close to fire engine red in colour, so it is a little bit ‘manly’.  I spent about an hour in the dark and cold night installing baby seats and moving toys and junk around between cars and going for a joy ride.  I may actually like it.  It drives pretty well and the seat is probably the most comfortable one I have driven in.  Plus the radio has CD, Cassette and DVD so there are tonnes of buttons.  I will be sad to send the Caddy back to Pops.

Here are a couple quick links for your amusement …

Unlawful Accommodations Of A Donkey Act?

Out looking for an early Birthday/Christmas gift for me.  Well look no further …

 

Robotic Beer Launching Refrigerator – For more amazing video clips, click here

Chalk Up Another Interesting Weekend

It’s been a while since my last post.  Thursday of last week I left work a little early to get home before Toronto Ice Storm 2007 hit.  It was no use, it still took almost 3 hours to get home. 

Thursday evening I received a call about my father being in the hospital.  He had passed out at work.  My dad has had bypass surgery, is diabetic and has high blood pressure and cholesterol.  They managed to rule out heart attack and it was determined to be a stress/blood pressure issue.  They kept him overnight for observation and sent him home with a monitor he needs to wear for a while.  He gets a little worked up/annoyed at work by ‘stupid people’.  I figure this little scare will probably speed up his retirement plans.

I was up at 5:30am on Friday and the cable was out, the power had been out (the flashing 12:00 on some clocks gave it away), the airport was closed and the police were telling everyone to stay home.  So I did.  I not the type of person who ignores the kind words of the police.  Rick and Jan were over Friday night for a quick game of euchre … a lucky victory by the girls … Rick and I were up 6-0 at one point but managed to lose 9-10.  I am pretty sure they cheated, they only won 4 hands the whole time (1 lone hand, 3 two pointers).

Saturday, Heidi and I went minivan shopping.  We traveled into Toronto to look at some ‘Mini Van Superstores’ that seemed a little shady.  They looked shady when we got there but ended up being only slightly shady.  We had a reference vehicle from place we really like and trust in town.  The Toronto places prices were a little better but the vans just weren’t in as nice shape.  Plus they could not tell us anything about their history (how many owners, if it was in a accident etc).  So we purchased the one in town we had been eyeing for a week.  We are the proud owners of a 2003 Dodge Grand Caravan.  It has pretty low KMs for the year and has the TV/DVD package.  It is like a mobile party wagon.  We pick it up on Thursday.

The rest of the weekend we managed to spend a pretty good bit of time together.  I rented a couple of movies to watch.  We saw ‘Stranger Than Fiction‘ which was pretty good and ‘Beerfest‘ which was very educational (Jav should see this amazing representation of German culture) and slightly better then I expected it to be.  I give both of these movies a rating of one and one quatre thumbs.

It looks like both Heidi and Travis are sick again.  Hopefully with the help of ColdFX I will be able to fend this round off and Heidi will be back on her feet in no time.  Thanks Don Cherry!

500 Gigs And Perrault

At the Commodore Computer Show in 1989 (I think) I purchased a 90 Megabyte hard drive for $700 (McDollars) for my Amiga 500.  I was really cool for a couple of weeks among computer geeks everywhere.  What would you do with all that storage?

Yesterday I purchased a 500 Gigabyte hard drive for $160. A 25000% better deal.  Science!

Eventually I would like to buy a second one and set up a raid/mirror to protect all my important data.  This data mostly consists of Music (110 Gigs and climbing) and downloaded TV shows (mostly poker shows that I have never seen), so you understand how important it is.

I just finished ripping my complete CD collection.  Previously I had ripped most of the quality tracks from my CDs but I ran through them again to rip the entire contents.  Using 160 VBR (variable bit rate) my collection of 500 CDs was reduced to 30 gigs.  Science!

CDs take up a fair bit of space in my room and Travis has a tendency to through them around so I figured I would rip everything.  Set aside a few ‘must have’ selections and try to sell off the rest.  $5 a piece seems reasonable, there is some real gold in there.

Example, Blood Of Abraham, a Jewish rap group that Easy-E found and produced … I purchased this CD after they appeared on the Arsenio Hall Show … “stabbed by the steeple, scalpelled by the chapel, the choir’s got my tongue and the preacher has my adams apple” … with rhymes like these, why am I the only person that has heard of these guys?

I also have an extensive collection of VHS tapes I may be looking to unload (Mr. Ward) as I don’t even have a VCR hooked up anywhere anymore.

One last thing … The painful to watch, Toronto Maple Leafs have seriously needed a tough guy forward to stand in front of the net, screen the goalie and tip shots, for a long time.  At the trade deadline Ryan Smyth, one of the best in the league at this (rocking an awesome short-long is pure bonus) was traded for next to nothing to the Islanders.  Bill Guerin, Todd Bertuzzi (if he plays again this year after back surgery) and Gary Roberts (who was the last decent Leaf who took this role) also all got traded.  Now Toronto doesn’t really have much to trade to attempt to get these players and can’t keep a lead to save their playoff hopes … but acquiring Yannick Perrault feels like a slap in the face.  Only resurrecting Sergei Berezin from the dead would help this team. 

John Ferguson, your on notice!