Campbell Valley Park

Yesterday I ran the trail at Campbell Valley Park with Ryker in tow. The trail is 11 kilometers. By finishing my book One Man's Wilderness, I was inspired to do something outside, that took endurance and time. Ryker was finally happy to be home.

I did it. I got back into World of Warcraft. I had to re-roll my character literally ten times to figure out exactly the type of character I wanted to suffer playing through potentially 85 levels. No I don't think I'll make it up to level 85. I'll probably get bored around level 40. I decided to lay a Human Shadow Priest (aka the face melter). A good time waster. Got him to level 25 so far on the Fizzcrank server.

Today Chelsey and I are sitting around at home on the computers. We just finished watching Tangled. The disney cartoon about Repunzel. I made pancakes and bacon for breakfast (btw that was yesterdays breakfast too, I wanted to see how it would feel in me during the 11k). I don't know what the rest of the day holds. Most likely shopping, coffee, going for a walk. Who knows. I do need some new t-shirts.

My legs hurt.

Glorious Day Off

Took a much needed extra day off of work this week. Friday. Chelsey is working today so I don't get to hang out with her. Instead I have solitude at home (except for the dog and cat) to do whatever I want. Somehow I always manage to waste my time though. Maybe I'll finish reading my book, "One Man's Wilderness" by Sam Keith based on the journals of Richard Proenekke. Excellent reading so far. It reminds me of my grandpa John's cabin in the middle of nowhere. (Mom you should check out this book).

I've also been literally forcing myself to get back into playing World of Warcraft. It is a painful ordeal because I can't help but think that I'm wasting my time. I know I'm wasting my time playing any game but, that's what leisure time is for. Wasting time enjoying what you're doing. It doesn't have to be meaningful or purposeful. You don't even need an end result because on a long enough timeline, the end result of anything is nothing. Maybe analysing gaming too much and I should just take it for what it is. That is,  mindless killing of wolves, boars, bears, goblins, and skeletons (amongst others) because it's fun.

Here's an abridged version of the full documentary, "Alone in the Wilderness" which is based on the book I'm reading. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYJKd0rkKss

And here's an unrelated photograph of a gigantic cedar!

Cats can learn from dogs

Chels and I trained our dog Ryker to ring a bell hung from the back door whenever he wanted to go peepoop. The point was to give us an audible indication that he needs to go out while preserving the paint on the door (so he won't scratch).

Our cat, Tiberius, has been a keen and silent observer of the dog in his day to day activities since the two first met. At first out of instinct for fear that Ryker might attack him, now because he's just curious. The cat learned from Ryker through observation and now imitates the dog.

Cat sees and hears Ryker ring the door bell.

Cat learns from Ryker that the humans will open the door when Ryker rings said bell.

Cat begins to ring bell.

Humans are astounded that cat learned from dog and thus, reward his actions by letting him outside.

I know I'm making a mountain out of a molehill here but, as the old saying goes, with simple minds come simple pleasures. I stress the word simple.

Epic meal time - Fast Food Sushi

Chicken nugget nigiri? Takes a genius to think it up, but even a two year old can prepare it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXjxHQQxcLw

LOTRO is good but I'm not into MMO's anymore

I tried LOTRO for about 1/2 an hour yesterday. From my limited exposure to it the game seems solid. The graphics are good and the game mechanics are sophisticated. I realize that I'm just not into questing and slow levelling etc anymore. I need instant gratification.

Not as much instant gratification as say, COD Black Ops. First person shooters on the console don't do it for me either. So far, I've been getting the most enjoyment out of Diablo 2 and Starcraft 2. I need hack-and-slash dungeon crawler games or a superior RTS like SC2. Although I enjoy the 1v1 or 2v2 experience of Starcraft, a good old comp stomp is always in order. I get too jacked in multiplayer matches, but they do have their time and place.

On an unrelated note, here's a video of Scamp playing in the mud. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w_0mL1A0J8

Pics recovered

I managed to recover the pictures off of the flash card that normally goes in the camera. The program I used is called Photorescue Advanced. Excellent program. I'll be uploading a new video of our trip to the Olympic National Park in a little bit.

On another note, I signed up for Comp 1409 at BCIT today. It will be my second part time course there on my way to the Computer Systems Technology diploma (and hopefully degree shortly thereafter). Comp 1409 is a introduction to programming in Java and C# programming languages. I feel good.

On yet another note, I'm downloading Lord of the Rings Online today to try it out. I'll post about whether or not it's any good.

Lost Photo's but some video saved

Chelsey and I took a trip down the west Washington coast on January 1st. We got tons of great pictures on her new birthday camera but I somehow managed to delete them by putting them on to my Linux computer thinking I was being a tech savvy computer guy. Somehow all of the pictures went missing. I don't know how or why, but they're gone. I managed to salvage some of the videos from the camera though. Here's one of Ryker playing fetch. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i5tx0BI8Ms