Archive for April, 2005
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Join ourcolony.net! New challenge started today.
By Karen | Thursday, April 28th, 2005 | 1 Comment »
The site may say it’s not an alternate reality game, but the rumour mill says it’s the viral marketing for Xbox’s next-generation console. Some of the prizes for prior challenges have been sneak peak images of the so-called console, and more. Thanks to Andrew and Shawn for their help with the last challenge: “I am in 6 places where you talk.” It seems like the Final Fantasy take was not exactly what they were looking for, but it was a pretty great guess (”chocobo”)! Looks like we got a 10 bonus points for our tries.
Anyhow, this is who’s on our colony so far:
-me
-Kurt
-Andrew
-Shawn (soon?)
-Kyle
-Raf
If you want to join us in solving the next challenge (this one’s an audio clue), go to the ourcolony website and do this:
1. Type “play” in the text field and click the spider to submit.
2. Click on “Join existing colony”
3. Type “39773113” –our team’s password.
4. You’re in! Check out the challenge and the current day’s clue (last paragraph/line in the middle column).
Feel free to pass around this password and get your video-game fanatic friends to join as well. The points you earn are based on the # of people on the team, how many challenges we solve first, and how many countries (based on our browser setting, I guess) are represented by our team members.
For the current challenge, please help log what the daily clues are by posting them as a comment to this entry. I’m gonna Google what the answer was for the previous challenge to satisfy our curiosity on that one.
Transcript of audio challenge:
I told you it would be harder now. Work together, but be mindful of your rank. Did I mention that this one’s more rewarding? Start in the alley.
Are you from the MTV generation?
By Karen | Wednesday, April 20th, 2005 | No Comments »
For the overcurious: a cheatsheet.
What a day.
By Karen | Sunday, April 17th, 2005 | No Comments »
That’s the view from the top of the hill on our street. Great day to go around the GVRD. Kurt and I visited a number of home & garden stores to narrow down the candidates for his May birthday present. I think we have a winner: the Weber Genesis Silver B grill.
It’s pretty. Over our gift budget, unfortunately, but to be honest I’d prefer to pay more up front and having it last for decades than to buy a second-rate one and replace it in a few years.
Quick thoughts.
By Karen | Tuesday, April 12th, 2005 | No Comments »
1) We have a new cordless phone! Yippee! Thanks, Tim.
2) How can anyone possibly have owned a Nintendo and still not have ever heard of Zelda or Metroid?! Call me consumer-crazy but I think that’s a little sheltered.
3) People, please — don’t hit the keeper of the AC Milan team with a freakin’ flare and burn a quarter of the pitch (not to mention the shoulder of the keeper) in the process. It’s a little irresponsible, even for fanatic soccer fans.
4) When is my illustrated copy of the Da Vinci Code arriving?? I returned the normal hardcover I bought last Wednesday since it was only a few dollars more for the Illustrated Edition on Chapters.ca; unfortunately, I had already gotten into the storyline and now I’m itching to continue. If I’m this impatient about this book I can only imagine how antsy I’ll be closer to the Harry Potter 6 ship date (July 16th). Which, according to Ei, is a mere 95 days away. Oooooooh!
Weekend ramblings.
By Karen | Sunday, April 10th, 2005 | 1 Comment »
Another interesting Saturday night. Kurt and I were preparing to settle in for a comfortable pizza n’ movie evening when Dave called. I haven’t seen anyone from his high school circle since I moved to Winnipeg. Except for Dave, who was the only one to drop by last summer–but that was mostly due to his girlfriend being a Winnipegger. Winnipeg is a great place, but apparently I’ve not been selling it well enough!
Dave and Michelle invited us out for a little poker night with the gang in Richmond, so we decided to join in. It was nice to see old friends again, some of whom I hadn’t seen in years. We arrived late so we had the B poker table to ourselves, and had a good time catching up and trying to out-bluff each other at No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em.
When the tables joined later in the night, it got more interesting. First, it was rowdier: the A table had been playing a much more aggressive game and talking a lot more “game”. Karl, who played bartender to all last night, may have been a key factor in the free talking of the evening. It got to the point where some were polishing off bottles of tequila like they were milk cartons. Yowza. I in my infinite grace accidently broke a sherry glass we were using for the shots. Sorry, Brian. Who knew these little bones had some strength left in them?
We got home after 5am and 7 hours of poker fun. It’s now 7pm and I still feel poisoned. I haven’t been staying up past midnight for the past few years so pulling a late night like this is making me feel the slow but sure deteriorations of my bodily functions.
Masters, final round. How exciting! Kurt’s dad is in Augusta watching it live this year. I’m not the biggest golf fan out there, and I’ve only really played once at last year’s Hamilton family Texas Scramble, but I had always loved watching golf on TV. Watching Tiger Woods when he’s on his game is exhilarating. That and the contender, Chris Demarco, wasn’t about to fall victim to the Tiger-Woods-is-so-gonna-kick-my-ass panic that most golfers get on Sunday. For you guys that also caught the event…how about that shot on the 16? Wow. We jumped off our seats and yelled like there was no tomorrow. (I bet Nike is loving that close-up shot of the swoosh on the ball before it teetered into the hole.) Rob even called from Toronto to talk about the shot. There’s a putting green outside of the rec room at work, so this week I’ll definitely be practicing my short game!
On golf colour commentary: soooo overdone. I don’t need to hear announcers talking about “spectacular surroundings” and “tearful farewells” and a gazillion video montages of Jack Nicklaus. Sure, it’s sad to see him leave the Masters arena but he’s pushing 90! It had to happen! Deal with it.
Flashbacks to junior high.
By Karen | Sunday, April 3rd, 2005 | 2 Comments »
…according to Kurt. I never really understood the term, having gone to an 8-12 high school and not paying the slightest attention to Degrassi.
Anyhow — it was Saturday night and neither of us wanted to cook. We especially didn’t want pick another leftovers recipe for the Easter ham, a fifth of which is still laughing at us in our fridge.
So off we went down the hill to Domenico’s Italian restaurant, by our morning bus stop to work. We’ve lived in the Capitol Hill area since August and despite several recommendations from bank customers, had never tried it out. Too bad we hadn’t done this earlier. The pizza and tortellini soup we had was delicious! The pasta was super fresh, as if they made it minutes before serving it. There was also a big party going on for a girl’s 18th birthday, so we were treated to some guy’s bday present of singing tunes on his acoustic guitar. He was thankfully talented enough to be entertaining instead of annoying, and made the entire restaurant nostalgic of 1994-1995, when grunge/punk was all the rage. We spent our dinner trying to name all the songs he played, but couldn’t put our fingers on some.
The first thing we did when we got home was break out the ghettoblaster (yes, I just wrote that) and try to find those hard-to-name songs. Our CD collection had hard-baked dust all over it. Guess we hadn’t really bought any new stuff since Napster got popular (jazzfest buys being the exception). Kurt tried to convince me that Pearl Jam was a great band. Still not convinced.
Our musicfest took us from grunge to The Who to Lenny to a lot of James Brown! Too bad I lost my old copy of Jamiroquai’s first mainstream album…you know, the one with Virtual Insanity on it. What’s the name? Argh, hate it when that happens! Leanne, help me out here.
From this, realized that the biggest influence on my taste in music is, blegh: my dad. He had all these great vinyls that he’d play to me when I was real young, like Steely Dan, the Moody Blues, Loverboy, and some others that I could only lump into the “looks like the cover artist painted this while he was on an acid trip” category. He also liked to play me clips from his Cheech & Chong album. Should have clued me in to the kind of stuff he must have smoked in his heyday. But how was I to know that at the age of 6?
Then in high school, when we were doing backup vocals (him and me) and bass guitar (him) for a couple of bands, it was my dad that kept on introducing me to the artists that would in the future go well beyond the one-hit-wonder point. Particularly remember him raving about Sheryl Crow when All I Wanna Do was still being played in the “New Music” hour on Z95.3. We’d practice it as part of the band’s repertoire because he loved it so much. Then after we did a show somewhere, all of us would go down to the Davie strip at 3:30am for 99-cent pizza and talk about music and life. We would do this for a few years, when I was 14-16. Maybe it was a little pathetic that I shared those late-night experiences with my dad and his cronies, but strangely, it was one of the best parts of my adolescence. I don’t think he reads my blog often enough to see my posts about how I appreciate his impact on my life, so SSSSSHHH!!
Enough with the nostalgia and mush. I’ll be back again with more randomness.
Hello, Yaletown.
By Karen | Friday, April 1st, 2005 | No Comments »
So today marks the end of my first week at my new job. I love it here: great team, interesting work, lots to learn. And boy oh boy do I love the neighbourhood!
If you don’t already know, I’m a huge foodie, and being around this plethora of good eats is starting to make my wallet hurt. I’ve already been back to my old haunt, La Boulangerie Parisienne, twice in the past ten days. Guess I’ve been craving their chicken paninis ever since their place near Sinclair Centre closed its doors. Unrelated to work lunches, we got the chance to check out Samba for Leanne’s big 2-5. How can you say no to all-you-can-eat meat?! 14 different meats for as long as you can take. Especially with a Brazilian flair and Carnavalesque dancers to entertain you all night. It was meatily delicious.
Today’s random epiphany — Now that we both work downtown, Kurt and I take the bus to work, occasionally grab lunch together, wait for each other to commute back on the same bus, and then spend the rest of our free time together.
This morning, however, Kurt was running late, so I hopped on the Skytrain for the first time. Got accosted by a Metro paperboy so grabbed a copy to look at on the train. As I was leaving the station, got accosted again, this time by the CBC. Damn. So I got the 3rd degree about whether I supported papers like the Metro (a free “headlines” tabloid) and whether I thought it competed unfairly with normal dailies. They say that they’ll use the footage on tonight’s news. If you’re watching, let me know if you see anything. I’d rather not face the possibility of looking the fool on TV myself!
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