Flecks of… Gray?

from ap

and a lot of others for a total of 14 gold medals! It was a really great game against a worthy US team which Canada manged to almost lose by allowing a US goal to tie the game with 20 seconds left in the third. Crosby was the hero who got the game winner in OT, nice!

For the record, the Canada 14 golds is a Winter Olympic records for Gold’s won and (obviously) the most of the tournament. Good job athletes!

I’ve found a fun new ball throwing game called Blosics 2. It’s a pretty simple game to understand with lots of challenging and interesting levels to play. The tough part is to try to maximize your score – I was able to get 7430 which is well short of the overall record of 8256 but still a score I’m pretty happy with.

I’ve included a screenshot of my scores per level so you can try to take them down; good luck Eric.

Almost exactly 2 years ago, I made a silly mistake and banged the side of my Subaru to give it a decent bump. Yesterday, I finally found a shop at a price that I went for to get it all fixed up and am I ever happy with the results – it’s amazing! Only if you’re really looking for it can you see anything (and even then, it’s tough).

I was amazed at how great it all looks, the body is smooth, the paint matches exactly and all is very well – I was not expecting the fix to look quite this good.

Next Sub mod is to get the windows tinted for summer so the kids don’t have to complain of sun in their eyes all the time and maybe I won’t have to hide stuff in the hatch quite as thoroughly.

I found a link to a picture article on what various cultures around the world consume as a family in 1 week; this created some good discussion in our house and with our friends. It’s fascinating to see how much beer the Germans have, how much junk the Americans have, how much bread the Italians have, how much sausage the Poles have and how little so many others have. Heidi’s striving to be like the Egyptians pictured above; lots of vegetables with just a few packaged things.

It wasn’t until pretty late in the 2008 tax season that I found out about StudioTax and put out a post on it. This will serve as a reminder to the rest of you to not buy those junky and limited Quicktax, UFile or the new HRBlock programs. Save your money, go with a better program and spread the word about the great and free StudioTax – you won’t regret it!

Reddit has an interesting online community and recently they voted on the best comment of 2009, here it is. It’s a real tear jerker (it’s just been raining on my face) – I’ll give you an excerpt to get you to follow the link:

I asked her if she’s like to go home and she got silent. I coaxed her, she said her parents wouldn’t want her back. I coaxed further, she admitted she stole 5k in cash from her Dad. Turns out 5k doesn’t last long at all and the streets are tough on a 15 year old. Very tough. She did want to go back, but she was afraid no one wanted her back after what she did.

As has been my tradition for the last 7 years (see 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003 and 2002) I’m making a list of my favorite 10 movies that I watched for the first time this year. Of course, I’m not recommending these movies for everyone, if you want personal recommendations, let me know. In the order that I watched them (newest first), here’s the list:




Honorable Mentions to Quantum of Solace, Watchmen, Sunshine Cleaning, Gran Torino and Food, Inc. which are also great films. Read the rest of this entry »

A few months ago, I posted about how I got onto Dropbox. I’ve really enjoyed it so far but the thing I like the most is something I didn’t know much about when I first got into Dropbox, that’s the Portable Applications. This lets me install all kinds of little junk programs onto Dropbox and they’ll be available to any computer that has my Dropbox on it. Now I don’t have to fill up my PC with all kinds of programs that are a little bit interesting but probably don’t warrant an install; also, if I change PC’s, I don’t have to install all this stuff cause it’s right there in my Dropbox.

Here are the legitimate portable programs that I’ve put onto my Dropbox so far:

1. 7-Zip – Zip file extraction
   
2. Audacity – Audio manipulation
   
3. FileZilla – FTP with nice saved sites
   
4. Firefox – Web Browser
   
5. FoxitReader – Light PDF reader
   
6. GIMP – Powerful Photo Manipulation
   
7. Google Chrome – Light Web Browser
   
8. InfraRecorder – CD/DVD Burner
   
9. LBreakout2 – Ball bouncing game
   
10. MPlayer – Video playing
    
11. Notepad++ – Great alternative to Notepad
    
12. Pidgin – Instant Messaging
    
13. Skype – Internet phone conversation
    
14. Sumatra – Light PDF Viewer
    
15. Thunderbird – Offline email
    
16. uTorrent – Torrent downloading
    
17. VLC – Best video player

Here’s the list of apps that I’ve been able to make portable and install:

1. 1-4a Renamer – Powerful file renamer
   
2. 1Time – countdown or alarm program
   
3. Baby Splat – Baby keyboard mashing program
   
4. CCleaner – crap cleaner
   
5. Deep Burner – CD/DVD burner
   
6. DeFraggler – Defragment with power
   
7. Device Doctor – Get the latest drivers
   
8. Dropbox – Sync it all to a thumb drive
   
9. Faststone Capture – Screen Capture better than PrntScrn
   
10. Faststone Resizer – Resize photos
    
11. Goldwave – Audio tool I actually paid money for (a long time ago)
    
12. Kid Rocket – Kid friendly browser and paint tool that I’m not too big a fan of (yet)
    
13. Launchy – Application Launcher to avoid manually finding all these files
    
14. MP3 Splitter – Split large MP3 files
    
15. MP3 Tagger – Tag batches of files
    
16. Process Explorer – Task Manager alternative
    
17. Revo Uninstaller – Uninstall programs and deep clean remove
    
18. Sizer – make your windows snap to a certain size
    
19. Spybot – remove spyware
    
20. Teracopy – copy batches of files with more options

Awhile ago, I got deeply into Desktop Tower Defense – you may remember all my posts on that game. Turns out that Kongregate has some other great online games too.

My favorites are of course the Desktop Tower Defense original and Pro games

Other Strategy/Desktop defense games that I like are Bloons Tower Defense 1, 2 and 3. Gemcraft and Gemcraft chapter 0. Whiteboard Tower Defense, Balloon Invasion and Onslaught2

Some top map plane shooter games that I like are Pixelvader, Upgrade Complete and Frantic

The Physics based puzzle games that I enjoy are Red Remover, Super Stacker 1 and 2, and Perfect Balance 1 and 2

I prefer the puzzle type games normally, and these are some of my favorites, The Company of Myself, Fantastic Contraption, Filler 1 and 2, and Zilch

Some puzzle games that are fun are Open Doors 1 and 2, Wooden Path, and Boombot 1 and 2, and 99 Bricks.

Happy Holidays!!

After ordering and liking the glasses (for the most part) that she got from goggles4u.com, Heidi decided to do it again for two reasons. One, she lost her favorite pair (which is no longer available) from the last batch of three pairs and, Two, they are having a good sale for the next few days (free frames – use the coupon code : FreeFrame). With the coupon, three pairs of glasses are going to end up being $60US; so for $20 a pair, that’s not too bad.

She decided to complement her last selection of glasses by getting new ones this time around. This is her hopefully great pair, her backup wacky pair (see pic above) and the sunglasses pair.