Tamakun's Journal

So I've taken a little bit of time to look into the WiiU Preview Video, and I have to say, while the tablet is great tech and all that, I'm still not really sold on it...

THere's a couple of neat games that I want to try (The Wonderful 101, and definitely Pikmin 3), but at launch I can't imagine myself going out and picking this unit up for $300 - or even the "deluxe" version for more, and still only 32GB of memory...

I still haven't got my own 3DS yet, mainly because there isn't any "killer app" for me just yet -- however, with Professor Layton and Virtue's Last Reward coming out next month, my weakness is breaking down... (and heck, I still haven't finished the latest Layton game...)

I think it's come down to the fact that I've said rather frequently that I would stop buying games until I get through the backlog/"Pile of Shame" that I have accruing here... and as I haven't really gotten through too many games (including ones I really want to finish, like The Gunstringer and No More Heroes 2), I haven't really bought anything recently (other than a couple of cheap games)... but I haven't made much progress on the "Pile of Shame"...

God, when did I become such an adult :

So, it's been quite a bit since I've been posting on here, and work's been busy, but small victories are making me feel better about the place almost every day.

Anyways! I need to let you all know that Christine and I are off to Cuba on Tuesday afternoon for a much-needed and well-deserved week off!

To be honest, there's not a lot of info that I have for the trip. We know we're staying at Club Cojimar in Cayo Coco. It has a white beach, and there's a place where I can go swimming in a coral reef. Those were pretty much the two stipulations that we were looking for. XD

We'll be entirely offline for the whole week. There is internet there for a fee, but I'm not taking much electronic stuff with me - a camera, maybe my phone for MP3/music, but other than that, we're travelling just with our clothes and some books to read.

So yeah, Cuba! We'll definitely be taking lots of photos. I'm really looking forward to swimming with fishes. Maybe they'll have a swim-with-the-dolphins thing there, too... I'm looking forward to walking a beach without a care in the world. :D

Hey, apparently, as of five years ago, Cuba permitted people to bring in VHS and DVD Players. ^^

Okay, I have to say this and get it out of the way: I was surprised when I first saw the trailer for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter; because I saw it on Youtube, I figured it was a parody trailer, like the ones for Monopoly or Battleship. What a bizarre concept for a film, but oh, what a laughably-bad-yet-incredible film this is. XD

Christine and I went in with very low expectations, what with the concept of one of the presidents of the United States slaying vampires while still trying to make his way in politics and free the slaves. At first, with Abraham only being a young boy, I thought I was watching a Heritage Moment. It was only after the owner of the company make his appearance, wearing those oh-yeah-those-are-vampire-glasses-and-the-top-hat that the movie started to pick up.

I'll admit, there are some points in the film where the movie would drag on, and most of it was the historically-accurate points, when they started talking about freeing the slaves - and yes, they actually wove both stories together, in a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies kinda way. (And now I have discovered that this, too, will be a movie...)

I don't want to spoil anything from this film, because I feel you have to see it for yourself to laugh at it. I get this feeling it's going to be one of those hidden gem kinda films in a few years, when people pull it from their shelves and pop it in their BluRay player, telling their friend "oh, you gotta see this..."

Once the film ended, I was surprised - yet somehow not - that the movie was directed by Timur Bekmametov. He's been directing quite a few action movies as of late, including Wanted and 9, and I was always amazed at his incredible action sequences. Let's just say that I had no idea Abraham had such moves in him despite his old age. XD

So yeah, I would recommend that people go see this. It's absurd and absurdly funny at the same time, and if you like over-the-top action sequences, I think you'll like how well they're handled here. The script is a little dusty and dry at times, but hey, it's Abraham Lincoln killing vampires. Doesn't that just make it awesome?

(On a somewhat related note, why is Laura Secord associated with chocolate? I can't figure out the connection at all. Or is there no connection?)

I was walking home from an event downtown, and I was taking a different way home, which took me to a bridge where construction crews were turning cars away from entering. Being a pedestrian, I walked right by, noticing other pedestrians on the other side of the road were being stopped. I guess they didn't see me...

The building that I was walking by was very strange, all concrete, but I noticed that it was very quiet (with no echo, unlike so many concrete structures), save for the large gravel I was walking on. I was just looking at the structure with the glass and concrete, when suddenly an area underground opened up, forcing out a large amount of water, tinted heavily blue and almost gel-like in thickness, which ebbed and flowed before sinking into the gravel around me. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but I thought the behaviour of the water was pretty cool-looking.

I turned away and continued to walk, and noticed a number of metal panels were beginning to move on the outskirts of this field I was walking on. Before I had any time to react, I realized that the metal panels were releasing an incredible amount of this water into the field, which, when it came from all around, created a massive tidal wave of which I was near the center. Survival instinct kicked in and I took a deep breath just before the water hit me, and let the wave take me wherever it needed to.

I was underwater for only a few seconds, but I don't have the lungpower of Guybrush Threepwood, and I remember inhaling a massive amount of gelwater before my head broke the surface again...

Quick cut to an observation environment near the water experiment, and it was revealed in a discussion between a media journalist and one of the "scientists" that this experiment is to help people play Scrabble in their sleep. Both muse that it's a fun game, and at that point I was roused out of my slumber...

What a horrible concept for a movie based on a board-game...

Over the past few weeks at work, there has been a song that catches my ears every time I had heard it. All I could really make out of the song was a catchy guitar strum coupled with a xylophone.

Thanks to online playlists, I gathered up all the songs that I had been listening to (including some by The Black Keys and Foster The People), but the one song that caught my attention, this one with the xylophone, was Gotye's "Somebody I Used To Know":



I'm kinda strange eclectic to what kind of music I like. I listen to a lot of Boom 97.3 (70s, 80s, 90s) when I'm at work, and Humbertown happens to stay on The Edge most days. Then, of course, there's plenty of Japanese music which I can't comprehend, and soundtracks from games like No More Heroes which are practically... um, hard to describe but energetic as all heck. But I'm veering way off point.

( Wow, this is long. Cut to hide videos )

Work kinda drew a lot out of me over the past few days, so I'm resting up. Unfortunately, that also meant I didn't go to my Japanese class this week, and I'm skipping out on a Game Night. As it's almost 4am in the morning, my sleep schedule is very different than most people right now, but I dare not sleep during the night hours for fear of screwing up my sleep schedule even worse! I still need to get myself in the correct sleep cycle, and right now, falling asleep once I get home is still kinda making me groggy at work (since my body's been awake for a few hours before work and therefore it's anticipating sleep). Here's a few links I've been meaning to chat about!

- I see that Another World (also known as Out of this World) has been released for the Android with updated graphics. It looks pretty good, but I was never very good at that game. On the other hand however, the same company plans to release Little Big Adventure (no relation to LittleBigPlanet) on the Android in the Fall... and that would be a serious throwback to my youth. I wonder how that would control on a smartphone. XD

- Speaking of throwbacks to my youth, recently a person posted up a blog over at HumanBirdWings.net about creating a pair of wings that would flap in relation to the person's own arms, enabling them to fly. It's been now revealed to be a hoax, and the "creator" does CG effects... it kinda dashed my hopes that someday I could actually fly like a bird. :\ I'll retreat back to paragliding, perhaps, but in the interim I'm going to try to find a short story that I read back in my highschool years. :P I'd also love to see this art installation in Toronto sometime, or heck, release them as part of the Kinect Fun Labs. XD (in other bird-kid mutant story news, Maximum Ride's final novel comes out in the fall of this year as well, and a movie is in the works.)

- Someone is doing a fan-translation of the Ace Attorney Investigations 2 game, since Capcom seems to have no thoughts on releasing it in North America. There's also a translation project for Retro Game Challenge 2 since XSEED has said that RGC1 wasn't as successful as they thought and it would take even more work to localize the second. Homebrew is still going strong, thankfully :) Maybe this should be my inspiration to continue with my Japanese classes!

- I'm noticing that a lot of people are streaming their games/drawings/fanfiction/whatever recently. I'm not going to join in on the streaming-whatever-I'm-doing thing since I don't have the software, but did ProCaster become free or something recently? I'm not complaining about all the streams, btw, I'm just torn between which streams to watch!

- Use your coffee/tea as a basic barometer. This is pretty neat, if it actually works. Also, it's easy to remember: think of the bubbles as clouds - if they clump in the center, it'll be cloudy. If they "part" to the sides, then the day will be clear. If they move slower to the edge, then you'll have some weather.

Okay, I'm still awake and I'm going a bit crazy and over-posting to Twitter. Maybe it's time I stepped away from the computer for awhile...

What a week! On Thursday at COBS, I finally get my schedule for this upcoming week (our "weeks" start on THursdays), and the scheduling is looking up with us hiring on a few part-time workers. The resumes just keep coming in! (Speaking of which, I'm still at The Beach for one more week, since we are kinda short-staffed. Looks like we'll be good to go in a week, though, and then I'm onto Humbertown, but mostly while the store's closed as I'll be baking. ^^)

I picked up Christine, and being that it was a nice day out today, we decided to drive over to High Park. Yesterday I had noticed that I was low on gas, but I didn't think much of it, but I did notice the Esso station as I pulled up to the light. I asked Christine to keep an eye out for a Petro-Canada -- and just as I was passing the Esso, the car ran out of gas, stalled right out.

I used the remainder of the forward motion of the car to pull into the station, but I couldn't make it entirely to the gas pump, I had to ask a pair of guys to help push my car to the pump. Only about 10 feet.

I have to admit, I've never run out of gas in a car before, but the fact that I ran out right in front of a gas station, in the middle of downtown Toronto (where gas stations are scarce) is one heck of a coincidence.

This post has been sitting here for a couple of days. Seeing that I can't seem to improve upon it, I'll just post it. XD

So, I got a little bit of a surprise today. When my Area Manager pops by, usually she stops in just to see how things are progressing and to offer some suggestions. Today, she sneakily took me aside to tell me that they are absolutely loving the way things are going at The Beach (we've been hitting our numbers for quite a few weeks now, and the Family Day celebrations were absolutely awesome!), but, things are changing a bit.

Things are changing in that we're getting a Production Manager on the payroll here. This person will be taking care of the Production staff - scheduling, ordering, trying to figure out how to better make things efficient, and so on. However, in bringing in a Production Manager, this brings our salaried staff to three. Typically, a store just starting out (as The Beach is only a year young) has a fairly light staff to keep costs down. Having three salaried staff on the team is a heavy burden (heck, even two is heavy! That was why I was moved to Leaside for a bit, other than the fact they needed someone), and so -- I'm going to be moved over to Humbertown's location (in Etobicoke) for approximately the next six months!

I've learned a lot regarding Sales in the past few months, being at Leaside and The Beach. Nicole was doing her Baking Training in January, and when she returned, originally I was to focus on Sales while she focused on Production, but now that we've hired a Production Manager, Nicole will be continuing to focus on Sales and doing the day-to-day management, which leaves me to go over to Humbertown's store for a while (they do about 50% more sales than The Beach does) and learn Production. This way, when I return, I'll be able to return to The Beach and know everything, which is when Nicole will be off on maternity leave. They also plan to get me finally learned-up on my Management Certification (level 4, I think they call it?) while I'm out there, something that I've been wanting to get done for quite some time, but haven't had the time to even peek into the book! Theoretically, it'll be a shorter drive (a longer commute by bus, if I wanted to start doing that again) but we'll see how travel goes. It'll take some time to realign myself and make friends with the established team there, but I'm looking forward to the challenge. If I can handle the Production and learn every aspect of the business while I'm there, it would help me on my way to eventually running (and even owning!) a store on my own. :)

The switchover happens pretty soon - in fact, it'll happen on March 15th. This gives you only another week-and-a-half to come visit me at The Beach if you're wanting to stop by the area, just sayin' ;)

...hm, by the way, did I ever talk about the Family Day celebrations? I didn't! Well, if you want a couple of pictures, here's a local newspaper covering the event! (Odd mascot warning!) The day was a rousing success, we had all pistons firing that day! Lots of scones and breads sold (there was that promotional card that I had made that guaranteed lots of scone sales) and judging from the turnout and sales numbers, it was well-received too! If anything, I like to think that the fact that we're hitting our numbers now is an indicator that we got a few new customers from the Family Day celebrations. It's a good feeling to see everything falling into place. :)

Way back in the day, I downloaded a lot of strange things, of which I have just shuttled from hard drive to hard drive, without even looking at the folder anymore. It's 5 Gigs of just stuff.

Today, I added another item to that directory, of which I have no intention of cleaning up since I have no idea what do do with this stuff.

This is that image.


(credit goes to mandyseley, which was in the comments of this post by zillabean.)

So, this weekend at work was by far the busiest weekend that we had since I've returned to The Beach. We didn't even expect it! Superbowl Sunday was expected, but Saturday was equally busy. As such, I'm glad to say that we're meeting our budget for this month.
God, I should stop writing posts that sound like work emails! Separation of Business and Personal, you know?

Anyhow, the reason I wanted to write was to quote someone who said this to me today: "it's nice to see someone as warm as the bread." isn't that the sweetest comment you've ever heard? :D

I have been working a lot in the past few weeks. Its starting to weigh me down, and its hard to relax. I'm going to need a few days off sometime in the near future so that I can stop thinking about work at home.