I like giant pink robots

Sorry for the lack of updates, but the weather lately has been amazing (sure we had the freezing cold Victoria day) plenty of opportune time to sit down and finish GTA, but I decided to spend it outside and do some yard work at both my place and at my tenants. Here's something I recently found out gas powered lawnmowers like cars need maintenance too...(im new to this) long story short, many trips were made back and forth from my place to CT back to the tenants all just to mow the grass. and what I did get? dirty backseat and a scratch to my window tint... hurrah.

Clix... well the DC crisis is over with week 11 and I'm kinda glad, see I was getting tired of seeing Earth-2 supes and 600pt teams, I know it's fun the bring out the bruisers every now and then but c'mon have you seen E2 supes? he's got a colossal dial for 317 points! Rant over Wizkids is bringing out their Core sets to attract new players we got Batman and the FF starter packs, now these fig are supposed to be played with the Core rules(very dumbed down version of the norm) but are allowed in tournaments. I'm glad they did this as I've been trying to find a way to get one of my friends in the game before he moves.

http://www.wizkidsgames.com/wk_home.asp sorry but there isn't a direct link to the products, Wizkids has a horrible website, you better off going to the realms http://hcrealms.com/ (unofficial clix forum)

Now for comics and movies, picked up some good trades during the weekend

1) Wanted TPB excellent work from Millar, a bit in the ultra violence but thats where he excels at(Authority) after reading this I'm actually interested as to how the movie will turn out, as there were parts of the book that I know for sure won't be the flic

2) DC universe: The stories of Alan Moore a must read for any DC & Alan Moore fan, funny how writers of today are now using old Alan storylines to flesh out the current Crisis. Notable  stories from this trade are

"For the Man Who Has Everything" - Superman Annual #11 - 1985  1st appearance of the Black Mercy, a plot device now being used in the current Green Lantern Corps stories, also the basis for one of the best Justice League animated episodes.

"Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?- How they ended the silver age Superman(before Byrnes reboot) pretty sad actually.

Theres one more about Abin Surs and some Empire of Tears inhabitants which foretold of his death and the coming of the Sinestro Corps can't remember the title name though.

3) The Hellboy companion  A Who's Who to the BPRD universe, I've been a sucker for Who's Who and the Marvel equivalent since I was a kid.

Well thats all for now really, watched the Indiana Jones the kingdom of the blah blah and I have to say it wasn't anything special, poor poor Harrison Ford shouldn't be allowed to make action movies any more.

Niv
@ work and bored

A late gift, but a great gift nonetheless. Yesterday I got a Asus EEE PC, you know one of those mini laptops labeled a "internet device" check it out mine came with Linux, not bad out of the box but very limited, so after a couple of hours of tinkering I successfully got an XP install on it, kinda hard since the thing lacks a optical drive and theres no way I was going to buy one(they retail fro 90$)

So some googling got me a how to install from usb, now the only problem is that a full XP install with SP2 almost breaks the 2gig mark, and my EEE has 4gigs of storage, so another hour was spent trimming the fat, deleting files i'll never need, such as help and multilangue support, realised I went too delete crazy, whne i plugged a optical mouse to my system and couldnt install it because someone foolishly got rid of default drivers.

Still even with that slight drawback, im happy with my EEE, it does everything I want, net/music/movies anything more and I might as well do it on my desktop,this is how i rationalize to myself that i did'nt need a uber gaming laptop.. though eventually I will move up to a MAC. Another cool thing I found is that this thing has quite the mod culture, theres a eeepc user forum dedicated to everything EEE guides to installing other OS es and  even games that can  work  it (wow) http://forum.eeeuser.com/

Niv
-typed this whole thing on a EEE

Got to catch Iron Man last night, WOW I haven't been this excited to watch a superhero movie since Spiderman, Favreau made hero movies fun again (Marvel line that is) especially with the recent clunkers, it was going downhil with the release of XMEN 3 and the Fantastic Four everything after those were straight to DVD quality.

For a non geek- Favreau stuck pretty close to the Iron Man origin, he must have been listening when the continuity guys give their little talk to would be directors, of course he had to change some things here and there to make it a bit more contemporary, If I remember Tony Stark got wounded in Nam. What's even better Jon gave him a villain that jived with the plot, which if you think about it is pretty hard because IM(tired of writting Iron Man) rogue gallery is somewhat limited and actually pretty boring(Crimson Dynamo,Titanium Man) and the all good ones ie Mandatin would need their own movie, maybe the sequel?

Anyway to keep this short, IM rocked, the ending was kinda meh, and Robert Downey Jr. played the perfect Tony Stark.

Niv

Is what I got yesterday after playing GTA IV for a good 6 hours, GTA on a workday? yes lets just say I ate something that did not agree with me the next morning and that I'm damn lucky the WC is 10 feet away from the living room.

I can only assume that I'm in the 2nd chapter now that my 1st for lack of a better word "quest giver" is now dead I don't count the main chars cousin as one(hes like the tutorial) So now I have Little Jacob the Jamaican drug dealer and  Faustin/Dmitri both Russian mobsters, sofar here are a couple of factors I like/dislike

1) Storyline is ok, nothing new  lowbie works his way up the criminal ladder
2) Voice over work is the best I've "heard", they have the Jamaican  slur spot on, only thing I found weird is that EVERYONE on the street sounds Russian.
3) Driving still sucks
4) Good music offsets the fact driving sucks, many times I've found myself parked just to finish a song
5) The girlfriend/mini game thing gets annoying
6) Combat is soo much easier now with the autolock feature

Theres a ton more I'm forgetting, but I must get back to work

Niv

GTA 4 is out now, that is all

Niv -Obey

We've been experiencing un-seasonably nice weather lately here in Montreal, Spring started early, usually our April is soggy with the occasional snow here and there. So like most shortsighted Montrealer I decided to put on the Summer tires... 3 months early, see it's become tradition for me to wake up at 6 on some random Saturday (in June) to find a garage that will change my tires for a) cheap b)no appointment I've yet to find one that does both. What about Wally mart? yes they are the cheapest at 6 dollars a tire but I've already gotten burned by them. Woke up at 5 to get there for 8. First in line! yet somehow I still get bumped to 10th spot? meaning my car won't be ready till 4:55pm. How about Speedy and the rest of those named places, well those need appointments and of course the weekends spot are the most sought after, who wants to change their tires on a Tuesday say 11am...

Which brings me to my main story, instead of doing the above I took the initiative and decided to do it myself, a co-worker was nice enough to lend me his jack, one of those heavy duty ones along with his industrial tire iron, I'm sooo glad he did there was no way I could have done the job with the pathetic tools that came with the Honda. So there I was jacking the car up getting all oily and "supposedly" giving the plumber to all passers by(ass crack) about an hour later I was done covered from head to toe in dirt also very sore but I was done. So now comes the test will my tires fall off, I drove up and down my drive way at varying speeds and threw in some sudden stops, I guess this was a valid way to test... so I thought hey lest go around the block! around the clock turned in up the street to cote st-luc for a car wash, followed by a side trip to Rockland then to St. Leo for a co-workers birthday.

Ahhh 30-40 dollars well saved and I got the feeling of accomplishment.

Now about the St. Leo thing, there are areas of the island I just don't go to, and St. Leo is one of them reason being is that there aren't a lot of visible minorities there. I have to say I was the only Asian person there for a good 5 block radius. Hell going inside I sure the waiter was trying to block my way till I told him I'm here for this person birthday...

The place was nice enough Cafe Victorias, an Italian cafe by morning filled with you atypical old folk playing cards in the corner turn lounge in the evening for the young-uns. I was lucky to see both crowds, beer was non existant I think they had 50 on tap, so rum it was mmm watered down bicardi... After a couple of these I finally relaxed enough to ask about the surroundings, and found out that victorias is sandwiched between to great delis chiciheros and milanos(sorry if I mispelled them) So looks like I'll be visiting this place a bit more nowadays, oh and the ladies there are pretty easy on the eyes too ;)

Niv

Yup, maybe next year, anyway here are a couple of headliners from the con(links are to cbr) which I found interesting

NYCC: Age of Conan: Hyborean Adventures

I'm not a big mmo guy, used to be but not anymore, when my interest in WoW was fading I started looking for alternatives one was Conan, and I'm glad to hear an official release date May 20 if you don't want to read. Now all I need is a release date for Warhammer.

NYCC: The Venture Bros. Panel

Woohoo more Venture brothers! I just finished re-watching season 1& 2 a while back.

NYCC: FINAL CRISIS with Grant Morrison & JG Jones

quickly skimmed over it, looks like it might go on through September by my carpy calculations

now thats done back to some regular news

Army of Darkness/Xena

C'mon! did we really need a comic for this? couldn't this just been left to fanboy discussion forums.

Now this Sunday is our on Montreal comic convention, I know it's not going to be anywhere as big as the the one in Toronto but we try.

http://www.montrealcomicon.com

Niv

If you haven't heard, Habs fans created quite the stir last night with their mini riot on Mackay,Cresent,and Bishop. Don't believe me? go to youtube and search for Montreal Canadians riot. It's fun to live in a city so passionate about it's sport, and this is just the 1st round imagine what will happen if we do win it this year....

I know I'm getting myself either a watch, new receiver or even a tele ;)

Niv

My house is inundated with them! in every corner, shelving unit, drawer you name it. Clix. lately I got the cleaning bug and decided to clean up my place starting with my folly of the early 2000's buying these little things by the truckload. 1st step was to access what how many I have and catalog them, I realized later that I actually have enough clix to make REV sets (sometimes doubles) of a expansion. If you follow clix then thats  A LOT of them with spares leftover. This pretty much kept me occupied the whole afternoon on Sunday. Heres a new word I invented herocut the act of cutting oneself with a plastic miniature, got about 2 on my hands and 1 under my heal.yeahhh

Heres a review from last Fridays & Saturdays clix tourny , which I can sum up in one word Spectre, not too surprised many kids and some veterans were using him this week, considering I showed how borken he is in the right hands with proper support. But did I play him? nah I went with the Darkseid concept team, basically DS with mastermind fodder and an outsider to get around his option 2 omega effect setback. This did ok in the multiplayer, not great but ok, on Saturday I goofed and played a team that didn't follow the 50% floor rules, the only crisis fig was green lantern, idea of the team was to abuse enhancement with energy explosion, old school but still works.

I try to get my Le stack review done later this evening

Was my birthday woot! the big 30, now how did I spend it? I got dinner and a limo ride out of Lynsey & Gen that was uber cool! The next day had a poutine/hot dog brunch with the boys...mmmm celebratory poutine followed by a showing of Run Fat Boy run, ok this movie was totally misleading, it has Simon Pegg from Shaun of the Dead,Spaced and Hot Fuzz so you automatically think cool some UK geekish type comedy WRONG! it's a romantic comedy by Ross from Friends... yeah should have left the theater after the 3rd Sex in the City trailer. Anyway back to my bday, ok yesterday my mother took me out for lunch... thanks mom!

I also snagged a Playstation 3! hometheater 2.0 is almost complete all that lacks is a 1080p LCD. After opening my gift I quickly drove to my nearest EB to buy a game, now heres the lame part I couldn't find a game I liked.... the clerk suggested Drakes Fortune, not bad played it at my friends house think tomb raider with a guy, but I really wanted a game I can just pick up and doesn't require too much thought, besides driving games which I loath the PS3 lacks in that department so I got Resident Evil 4... yes a PS2 game but it's one of those must play games like super mario 3. Ok so I lucked out with games but what about movies? there should be a Bluray only title.. eeeeeee wrong there too or maybe my Videotron just stocks the crappy ones, I so I rented Revolver Guy Ritchies latest film staring the Transporter guy Jason Statham, It starts off like usual suspects not bad, since suspects was a great movie, but then you get this weird twist at the end I won't spoil anything but it ruined the movie.

So thats how I spent my bday, with family & friends, and a lowdef movie w/ PS2 game on next gen console.

Niv