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Fuck Microsoft

Fuck Microsoft, Fuck Sony, Life, Sketchup
PC peripherals 3 – Cobras 1
06.25.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Well last night I got my new work load from James at around midnight. I was in the process of defusing an enemy I.E.D. when the phone rang and I had to let the terrorists win. He wanted to go over the text edits he’s decided to make after spending a few months with my layout.

He suggested we go about it page by page since he doesn’t want to give me his copy and then not have one. I don’t care one way or the other (although I suppose I should bill him for the hours and hours it’s going to take to get this all done over the phone) but I am surprised at how much a tiny amount of writing (with a pen??? wtf??) can start to hurt my wrists and finger joints. We spoke for a little over an hour and a half and got through about 38 pages of edits.

I now have plenty of work to do for a few days, but it’s only the beginning. I also have to add a bunch of photos to the layout, but I’m still waiting on James to supply me with them. On top of that there is still a butt-load of appendix and glossary information that needs to be added yet.

And as my luck would have it, just as I get a new workload my mouse decides to stop working with no explanation at all. That’s it up above, still in pieces but fully functional. I’m not sure how, but I managed to fix it. I won’t be surprised if it dies for good soon, as in the last 12 months I’ve been through 3 (although one of those broke with some assistance when I smashed it into pieces).
Fuck Microsoft, Music, Video
I played a gam3 w1th z0mbies 1nit!!!1
02.02.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Since I got Holly addicted to killing Nazi Zombies, I’ve tried to expand her interest in games her and I can play together. Last week I downloaded a bunch of Xbox Live Arcade demos and had her try a few with me. We fell in love with an Indie game called I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1NIT!!!1.

It was only about $2 to buy ($1 if you’re American), and the entire game takes about 8 minutes to complete, but it’s 4 player co-op and tons of fun. The song from the game is awesome too. I keep getting it stuck in my head, and fell asleep singing it to myself last night. When I got up this morning, the first thing I did was download the song. I highly recommend watching the video, downloading the song, and then buying and playing the game.

It’s only downside, is the lack of online play. But for an 8 minute game, who cares.
Fuck Microsoft, Gaming, Love, Video
Love is: A fountain of red, spewing from matching exit wounds in the back of some zombie’s head
01.04.10 | Permalink | 1 Comment

We got tons of snow the last two days (and it’s not stopping), and that means I managed to talk Holly into killing Nazi-zombies with me for a little bit. She’s never willing to play because she “hates the stupid toggles” (she means analog sticks), but she was just bored enough the other day to try. She did pretty good for someone who has never played a first-person-shooter before. She still refuses to use her pistol and get points, but she’s evolving. Soon we’ll be pwn’n nubs together on the onlines. We can now get to level 11 or 12 on the easiest map, but she has yet to survive the zombie-dogs on my favourite map. I’m sure with more practice though, she’ll be as good or better than I am, and we’ll be singing Pack-A-Punch jingles together, while we splatter zombie guts all over each other.

I tried to get Holly to play Co-op Campaign on World at War, but it’s not a good game for seeing the enemies. You basically have to look for muzzle flare, and shoot dudes you can barely see 75% of the time (even without split screen it’s pretty tough to see dudes). I figured she needed more experience with the basic FPS controls, so I suggested we try Gages new Halo 3 ODST game. The enemies in Halo games are either bright colours or 10′ tall, or a combination of the two. We threw it in last night for about 30 minutes before deciding it was worse than Halo 3, and incredibly boring and frustrating. We gave up on Halo and agreed to never play it again.

I’m glad Holly was willing to try killing zombies with me, and even more glad she loves it. I like that she gets the adrenaline rush I get when she plays (maybe even more than I do – I never scream, ever). Hopefully it helps her understand why I have a hard time tearing myself away from games, and end up awake until 4am most nights.
Fuck Microsoft, Gaming, Random
Codra chronicles
12.18.09 | Permalink | Comment?

I’ve got my television here now, and my xbox is hooked up to it and XBL, so I’ve been able to somewhat cure my video game cravings. I still have no money, so buying (or even renting) new games is completely out of the question. As a result, I’m playing COD:WAW for kicks. I’ve recently reconnected with a friend I lost touch with back when I owned the tattoo shop, as well as his younger brother who used to do Co-op at the shop, and we’ve been teaming up regularly to battle Nazi-zombies online.

I’ve also been playing a lot of Halo3 with Holly’s boys. They play over at their friend’s house, so Gage is pretty good already. Roan on the other hand, is just getting use to using dual analog sticks all the time. He’s more familiar with games like Ratchet and Clank, where you’re not required to control the camera so much. He’s been getting better at killing zombies, but he has that tank mentality that gets people killed – he sees a group of enemies and runs right for them, trying to get as close as possible before shooting and drawing attention to himself, but by this time they are well aware he’s standing in front of them, and they destroy him. I’ll put Halo in for him to play the single player campaign and practice, but that game is balanced so terribly he gets pwn’d or lost before the half way point in any given level.

The other day he asked if I could set him up to play online with his friend Matthew. They were going to play a level of the Co-op Campaign together, but after a half hour on the phone with his friend, trying to exchange gamer tag info I gave up and told Roan to write down my gamer tag (Johny Cobra, of course) and tell Matthew to add me when he got home the next day. Above is the note he wrote for Matthew, complete with awesome gun doodles (no sarcasticness at all, seriously).

With a little more practice, I’m sure Roan will pwn.

Jony Codra, out.
Animals, Fuck Microsoft, Photos
Tabbouleh <3’s windows (not the O/S)
12.18.09 | Permalink | Comment?

This is the special retreat window. It only gets visited on breaks from normal window duties, and holidays. It’s more for relaxation than fecundity.

This is the main window “stance a”. This is where most of her daily work gets done.

This is main window, “stance b”. Sometimes productivity can be dramatically increased just by shifting stances for a short period of time.
Animals, Food, Fuck Microsoft, Gaming, Life, Random, TV
Intergalactic cobra cuisine
11.11.09 | Permalink | Comment?

Shortly after posting on here this morning my brother called to see if I was coming by or not. He apparently missed my calls and didn’t see my messages, so he offered to come pick me up. We played Halo until about 3pm. then he took me to the funeral home. Holly and I went and got Roan, then took some pee pads she got from the funeral home to the Humane Society.

There was tons of cute kittens there, and lots of older, lovable cats. Holly fell in love with one we saw on their website the other day, and almost adopted it. She was super friendly and cuddled right up to Roan – something he always wants Tabbouleh and the others to do, but doesn’t have much luck with. She asked a girl who worked there what the cats name was, and she said Scarlet. She also said she’s off to get spayed tomorrow, then is going home with her new Hu-mans. There was also another calico that looked a lot like Tabbouleh, except much smaller. I wish I could have a thousand kitties.

We came back to make dinner and Gage’s friend was inside destroying the bathroom. He plugged the toilet and stunk up the entire house. It was brutal. Holly decided she wasn’t up for cooking, so we embarked on a mission to the Flying Saucer. That’s it up top, and in my mind, it’s a Niagara Falls icon. Whenever I tell people I live near (or currently IN) the Falls, they ask if it’s cool. I usually mention the falls them self, the gorge, the casino, and the Saucer. It’s the ONLY place to go for shitty food at 3am in the city. My favourite thing to get there is cheddar cheese balls. I could eat a thousand of them. I had those, grilled cheese, and a milk shake. The milk shake and balls were great, the rest was sub par – which is actually incredible for the Saucer!

They finally got their own printed place mats after like 40 years of business. Up until now it was those generic mixed drink mats every dive has. The new ones featured pictures of the food (bad idea?) and the above attempt at humor. I personally think this over weight, hairy earthling would taste better than anything they currently have on the menu (except the cheese balls of course!).

After dinner we came back for Top Model and Ultimate Fighter. I totally picked the final two, and I guarantee you Nicole wins it all. On Wednesday nights, I am now one of those people I hate. It’s actually not so bad.
Angry Art, Fuck Microsoft, Fuck Sony, Gaming, Life, Random, Sketchup
Cobra comics on canvas?
11.11.09 | Permalink | Comment?

Yesterday I got a bunch of work done on the final drafts of the bent drawings, then sent an email to James last night with about 25 more finished final drafts. I have up to Fig 37. finished so far, but realized last night while sending emails, I missed Fig 38. completely! I thought for sure I lost or deleted it, then I remembered it was a drawing that James’ original was a huge bizarre shape, because it was two drawings merged together old school like (pre-Photoshop) with tape and creative folding. Because of that, it had two different perspectives and made it look wonky. At some point I made a decision to leave it until the end, then completely forgot about it.

Today I was supposed to go play Halo and other games with my brother, but I’m thinking he’s busy or sleeping, and I missed my ride with Holly this morning. So, instead of pwn’n noobz for Remembrance Day, I think I’ll smoke some weed and see about doing some work. I’m not really feeling like starting to work yet, so maybe I’ll model a robot with a poppy.

I began a new robot last night while Holly was at the dentist with Roan – who gets fillings at 6:30pm?. It started out looking like Hitler, but at some point began looking more like James Bond. I think when he’s done I’ll name him Secret Agent Bitler.

Above is Blingbot, now with his bling and pinstripes. I need to either stop making robots, or figure out something to do with them. I was thinking painting them and trying to sell them, but I don’t know if I can pull it off, or if anyone would even buy them. I was thinking I could create a comic with all of them, but I have a feeling that will take a ton of time. Although it would be fun I’m sure.
Angry Art, Animals, Fuck Microsoft, Fuck Sony, Random, Sketchup
Cobras for the cure
11.03.09 | Permalink | Comment?

I was looking over the stack of corrections I need to make to the first draft of the bents drawings, and I realized I’d missed one of the first drawings in the book. It’s one I never had an original version of, so I had to create it based on the text description. It took a few hours, and then I spent a little time creating a new robot. He doesn’t have a name yet, but he’s definitely a soldier in some army. A breast cancer aware soldier.

Last night I moved my computer stuff finally. The new desk has much more room, but I might need to customize it. There still isn’t enough leg room for me. It was nice to sit there today though. I have enough space on the desk to have my laptop on there as well as my other monitors. Which is handy because I don’t have a wi-fi card in my new desktop. I still need a better chair, preferably one that reclines somewhat.

The new kitty is now loving life here, and is trying her hardest to declare herself Oliver’s girlfriend. She loves up to him constantly, comes running whenever he’s making noise (constantly), and demands head licks on an hourly basis. She also comes running to the kitchen whenever I’m waiting for the kettle to boil, and does laps around my legs. Her and Oliver were napping on the bed today, and I intended to join them, but before I could finish what I was working on they split up and went back to ignoring me.

I’m tired now, and plan to watch Parking Wars and fall asleep. Before I do I’d just like to say that I wish I could get all the seasons of Canada’s Worst Driver in some format other than tiny streaming video off the Discovery Channel website, and I fucking hate Sony, and Microsoft. I hope their cats piss on them in their sleep.
Fuck Microsoft, Life, Random, TV
Cobras <3 complication
09.28.09 | Permalink | Comment?

It turns out the computer I thought was going to be my saving grace, is in fact maybe in a little worse shape than I had expected. It works real nice after a fresh restart, but if it sits idle for too long it starts chugging along, painfully slow. Maybe after six good years, it’s finally time to put it out of it’s misery. I’ve been talking with Jon about throwing together a new machine, so hopefully one night this evening we will have a chance to do that. I can’t really do a ton of work until I get a solid machine setup. Once I do though, I should be able to work easily, and I will hopefully have a renewed interest in the whole thing.

Right now I have a drawing I need to finish, which is in limbo on my desktop. I have a feeling I might have to start a lot of that drawing over, and I can’t decide which machine I should attempt to do it on. The laptop could freeze anytime, but is more comfortable to work at. The desktop will last as long as I don’t ignore it too long, but it’s annoying and uncomfortable to work on. Plus, has no speakers or any other means of providing background entertainment (an important part of focusing on work for me is having noise in the background).

It’s rainy and shitty out, which I really enjoy. I think it will prolong me starting on any drawings for a little while. First I’m going to try and get the desktop running up to speed without losing the drawing that’s in limbo. Then I’m going to watch the two new episodes (or at least one) of Curb Your Enthusiasm I just found out existed – I thought the show ended after season six, but I guess not. Then, I might spend some time thinking about what I can sell to make some extra money. I don’t have much that I want to part with, but maybe it’s time to sell stuff I don’t use, and keep for the wrong reasons. I need to find enough money to buy Jon’s pc components and a new pci express video card, then I should have money for xmas and of course pot.
Fuck Microsoft, Life, Random
Cobras can’t stay in one place
08.25.09 | Permalink | 1 Comment

Holly dropped me at the airport yesterday morning with plenty of time to spare. I checked my bags, cleared security, then found a place to sit and play my PSP while I waited. As soon as I got on the plane I fell asleep. Occasionally I woke up slightly for a moment or two, but then I just fell right back asleep after adjusting a bit.

I got up and stayed up, at about 2000 miles into the journey. I was on a large plane (737), which always rocks, because I find the flight less bumpy, and the in-flight monitors actually have a working map system.

It may not seem so great, but I spent the entire remaining 200 miles of the flight playing around with it. I’ve only been on one other plane with a working map system. I don’t understand why they don’t all work – it’s a nice feature to have for someone with little patience like me.

It’s also perfect for people like me who are too inquisitve for their own good. It’s got tons of information about shit that most people probably don’t care about ever. But to me it was amazing to know what speed I was going and at what height.

When we finally landed, I went to wait for my bags, and Dave was there to meet me. On our way out of the airport I saw a familiar site, in an unexpected location:

The only thing that is certain in life is Microsoft’s ability fail.