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Ritchie vs The Idiot Drivers of Richmond, BC

Good lord, I know that one of my Christmas wishes was more blog fodder that I could write about but this is a bit ridiculous. Now, if you think that this is some sort of racist post then think again. Richmond has many different types of drivers and I’m calling ALL of them bad drivers.

Over the holidays, Cheryl and I moved back to Richmond so that we could tear down and rebuild our house (more on that in a later blog post).

My 15 minute commute has now officially turned into a 30+ minute commute to work. Now rush hour in Richmond is a different type of hell on Earth, if you think that losing a child or seeing your 2 month old puppy get kicked in the face with a steel toe boot is hell then you obviously haven’t driven a car on Number 3 road in Richmond during rush hour.

This morning a middle aged woman driving to work in a Civic could not observe proper traffic etiquette and let other drivers merge into the highway (she kept closing off the space as to not let anyone in). I also saw her slam her breaks (completely unaware of any other cars around her)  in an attempt to merge further than everyone else when she exited the highway into Marine Drive.

Now to the people who are going to say, “Well Ritchie the Canada Line is there now and you can just take the Transit all the way to work.” To you I say, Transit is like allowing a bunch of sick, sweaty and bodily odor-ridden strangers to violate your own personal space. It’s practically a step below rape!

1:03 pm 4 Comments

Cheryl vs. Twilight 2: New Moon

You’re probably expecting a movie review of New Moon on this blog post right? Wrong!

My wife, Cheryl, is a twilight fan. She read the books, got hooked, watched the movie, got more hooked and now she’s obsessed. If we have a child, and that child is pale with bejeweled skin then I’m marching over to Stephanie Meyer’s house and punching her in the face.

Last month, I made her a bet. On November 19th, if she doesn’t watch Twilight for a year then I would buy her any purse. Yes, you read that correctly: ANY purse. No limits on price, no limits of what type, any purse. As long as she doesn’t watch ANY Twilight movie for a year (November 2009 – November 2010).

I’d start taking bets but she’s not decided on taking my dare.

10:00 am 3 Comments

A Netbook Review: Dell Mini 9

So I’ve owned a netbook for a while now. I bought the Dell Mini 9 a while ago. It was half gadget lust and half a need to carry something lighter than the MacBook.

I had operating system issues. I bought it with Ubuntu with the intent of installing OS X on it, but because of hard drive space (I only have 16gig) I ended up moving on. I used a series of Linux operating systems like Ubuntu, Moblin and Jolicloud. Jolicloud was the most fun to use because it gave a nice balance of Ubuntu, a custom skinned front-end, and “applications”. It was really buggy and I couldn’t deal with the system crashes leading to reboots. I never got Moblin to work because the network card required some funky drivers that I couldn’t install, but it looked like a nice OS for a netbook. Ubuntu, although functional, is ugly as fuck.

Eventually, I installed Windows XP. I have to admit, for this netbook, is the best operating system. Everything worked, and I got all my tools working properly. I even ended up ordering a touchscreen for it (arrives next week from the time of this writing). The form factor of XP still requires you to have an external mouse

That being said, I still don’t know what to do with it. I can’t code on it without getting early onset carpal tunnel. I can’t flip it around and turn it into a tablet because I’m too scared to tear the case apart. Document writing is tricky and you eventually hit a wall with the inferior trackpad (maybe the touchscreen can help out). I started watching a movie on it and it was fine until it started working with bigger HD files and then it got really choppy.

So what would I use it for? I would say that it’s a glorified notebook (like the paper kind) / mp3 player and video player maybe a torrent downloader in its spare time.

8:00 am 0 Comments

Dear ABC TV Network, You suck!

Dear ABC,

Let me first say that I hate you for turning me into the livid old man that writes crazy letters to companies. You’re not the first but by expanding from one to two companies, I don’t have a guarantee that it will not happen again. Damn you.

Now onto business, your abrupt stop to Pushing Daisies was a horrible thing to do. It was the equivalent of writing [atom bomb detonates and kills all characters] in the script. I screamed at the TV during the last minute of the last episode. Not fun for TV watchers, it’s the emotional equivalent of stealing a baby’s blankie. You just stole a cute baby’s blankie ABC!

I’d also like to say that because you cancelled Pushing Daisies, Anna Friel (who plays Chuck) did Land of the Lost. Horrible movie! All. your. fault!

You know World Hunger? Yea. That’s your fault too ABC!

Kind Regards,

Ritchie

p.s. Bring back Pushing Daisies!

9:30 am 2 Comments

Spank the crap out of that child

Did you hear? Yea, they found Balloon Boy in the f*ckin’ attic. Scared to come out because his dad yelled at him.

Now really, who am I to offer parenting advice? I have zero credibility when it comes to taking care of children. However, that being said let me exercise my right as part of the crazy blog-o-sphere to offer up a solution that would prevent the world from tarring, feathering and setting your child ablaze at the stake: I suggest spanking the living daylights of that child on national TV. Chase him down with a leathery old belt and slap his butt for every helicopter and news van that came to the scene until it turns a light tinge of pink.

Me personally, I had to endure a million tweets about the same crazy hysterics caused by the commotion in my twitter circle. Arguably, I could’ve just turned it all off but I didn’t want to miss out on all the #glee and #kanye tweet topic trends. Missing that would just introduce a whole different level of crazy into my world.

For future reference Mr PersonThatNamesTheirChildFalcon, let me offer you this flowchart:

It’s just like the boy who cried wolf. The next time your child decides to jump into a contraption for hunting aliens down we’ll only be sending the equally crazy reporters. And finally Mr StormChaserAndInMySpareTimeIHuntForExtraTerrestrials Dad, go buy an Ed Hardy shirt because you’ve officially been downgraded to Jon Gosselin status.

9:30 am 0 Comments