Andy McDandy Vent Page

Well since I have not done any postings since May 3rd, I thought I would put something up tonight.

The other night we had a great thunderstorm roll in.  I sat out on the front porch watching the lightening, some really nice bolts going through the sky, not something that is seen often where I am.  Usually a thunderstorm here will consist of a few flashes and some thunder but this time it lasted much longer.  I only wish I had a video camera.

I finally got myself a bike last week given to me by a good friend.  Got it all tuned up and took it for a ride yesterday.  I was a little unsteady on it at times since I placed the seat at the proper height which is higher than where I usually have had it with previous bikes years past.  Anyways, the ride was going good coming back home until the bike just completely stopped.  Looked down and the whole back tire is completely curved.  It appears the tire came away from the frame on one side and when it did, it of course bent against the frame.  A gentleman who was walking by at the time offered another rim for me so I am awaiting his phone call to see about meeting up with him to get it.

Today, a friend got me the wood I needed to make my own horseshoe pits and I went ahead and completed building them.  I put two bags of sand in each pit but looks like they could use at least one more bag each.  I have a piece of wood to make my score board once I get some paint for it then I think I will invite some people over for a BBQ.

Today I also started on some new anti-depressants my doctor prescribed for me.  I hope they work because feeling down and having thoughts of suicide run through your head everyday is not good.  Naturally if women would stop judging guys solely on our looks (judge a book by it’s cover routine) then maybe I would have someone in my life and the loneliness wouldn’t be causing my depression to be so high.

Well I think that is it for now.

The Humble Bundle #3 has now reached $640,000 in just under 7 days with 9 days still left to purchase. Remember you can pay whatever you want for the 5 games in the bundle.

The stats are once again looking well for the Linux community with the average contribution being almost 3x as much as Windows gamers and almost 2x as much as Mac gamers.

The total payments by platform is also looking good for Linux beating Mac by what appears to be around 10%. The pie chart appears to show Mac at around 15%, Linux at 25% and Windows making up the remaining 60%. With these stats, the humble bundle staff have proven once again that there is more Linux gamers than there is Mac gamers. Hopefully Blizzard and Valve are paying attention to this and finally grow a pair and start supporting Linux instead of remaining as cowards.

Will HIB#3 reach the amount that HIB#2 brought in ($1.6 Million) doubtful only because I have read many posts from Linux gamers mention that they already own 3 of the 5 games. Some are paying again but not as much as they would have if they had not already had the games.

That’s right, according to an e-mail that I received from Netflix Canada, they have heard the Canadian cry about how we have very low bandwidth caps and have somehow adjusted their compression so instead of 30 hours of viewing equalling 32 GB of bandwidth, it will now only use 9 GB of bandwidth.  I have not yet had the chance to watch something to see how the quality is but I know when Netflix has auto re-buffered when it detected my wireless Wii connection dropped, the quality of the video was still quite good for viewing.

I was reading through some wrestling news on my iPhone and there was an article about Michael Cole making some kind of statement on his Twitter page calling a fellow Smackdown colleague a faggot.  Apparently this got a whole bunch of people in the same sex community in an uproar.

I don’t understand how calling someone a name can cause such an uproar with someone or a group of people that they name was not directed towards.  It’s like no one has a sense of humour any more not too mention the same sex community forgetting all about the TRUE meanings of the words they now use to describe themselves.

Has everyone forgotten that Gay also means to be happy, fag also means a cigarette and faggot also means a bundle of wood.  These are words that have been around for centuries before the same sex community started taking them over as their own.  No matter how any of those words are used towards someone else, it is just a word and as the old school ground rhyme goes, stick and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.

If you are someone who feels hurtful by a word, then you need to grow up and get some humour in to your life otherwise you will always be a sad sack of crap.  Look at me, I am what is known as an Adult Baby, that is someone who uses regression to escape from whatever negative is happening in their life, I do my best to use humour whenever possible even if it means making a joke about myself and my baby side.  In fact I encourage anyone who knows that I am an AB to make jokes about it if it will make it easier on them to accept me for who I am.

So to those in the same sex community who get offended when someone calls someone else a faggot or fag or gay, don’t get angry, simply crack a joke back at the one who is doing the name calling.  If someone were to call me a faggot, using the word in the sense of implying I prefer the same sex, I would simply reply with a joke like “I prefer headlights over a dip stick”.  Ok maybe not the best joke but you get the idea.  Trust me, using humour will make everyone laugh and there is no greater medicine in this world than laughter.

That’s right, the pre-ordering is now available for the new game Oil-Rush expecting to be officially launched come June 2011.  When you pre-order you will receive early access to the game making you a real world beta tester because after all, no two gamers will have the exact same computer configuration.

I have already paid for my pre-copy but unfortunately I must have been one of the first because my download link still has not arrived in my e-mail or in the Avanagate My Account area.  I have e-mailed Unigine about this and hopefully I will have my download link by morning so I can start playing it like everyone else is right now.

Once I get my hands on it, I will post an update to what I think of it.  If you wish to pre-purchase Oil-Rush now, simply go to https://store.unigine.com/ and it will auto detect your operating system.  If you are currently in Windows but is also a Linux user and want to show your support for Linux games then click on “choose a different platform” to select Linux.

I have been a long time WWF/WWE wrestling fan, ever since channel 11 in Hamilton, Ontario start airing it on Saturdays around noon hour plus the monthly Saturday Night Main Event.

Many people around me have out grown it or were never in to watching it leaving me quite lonely when it comes to watching the Pay Per Views at my local movie theatre.  One thing I can not understand is why someone, especially a male, would hate watching wrestling.  I have always seen it as the man’s version of a soap that instead of airing every single day like the women soaps, it air’s twice a week at night.

I live with a friend renting his basement and this weekend I have asked him to come watch the PPV with me since my dad has to work but my friend always gives an absolute NO!  You would think that I had already dragged him to these things 100 times already but instead this is the first time that he would have gone in about 2 years.  Is it really that bad to go with your friend to something you don’t like once in a while?  It almost seems to me that people who flat out hate it and refuse to watch it are actually afraid they may like it.

Well this is my review of Meetup.com, a social networking site suggested to me in hopes that it would help me to get out more and meet new people.  Did it work, absolutely NOT!

There many groups at Meetup.com for Oshawa and surrounding area but the best one for me, or so I thought, would be the Durham Social Connection (35+) because of it’s bowling meet up every Monday.  I love 10 pin bowling, I love so much that if I could afford it and had transportation to/from Leisure Lanes, I would start my day off there bowling 3-5 games Monday to Friday.

The downfall to this gathering though is that Leisure Lanes is not along any bus route and since I have no car and can not afford taxi fare to/from the lanes I am pretty much stuck at home.  I did ask the event planner for assistance to finding someone or at least tell me where I should make a post requesting to get a ride with someone but I was ignored.

After being ignored by the event planner, I found the forums and made a post in there and although 10 people viewed my message, I received a grand total of 0 replies.  Now one would think that after being ignored for as many years as I have been, one would be use to it but shockingly I am not.  It appears the Durham Social Connections group hate people who do not have their own vehicle.  I feel the group name should be changed to Durham Social Connections (35+ with vehicle) because without a vehicle, you will be ignored by everyone there.

It is sad when a bunch of grown adults act like snobs towards those who are not privileged enough to have their own license and vehicle.  Really, really sad.

Lately I have been looking for a good Linux magazine and I have found a bunch online but the subscriptions are always a year long subscription and for most, you can only pay by credit card.

Tonight I decided to visit my local Chapters to see if any of those Linux magazines would be available, to my surprise they were unfortunately I was flabbergasted by the prices of these magazines.  Out of the 6 or 7 Linux magazines available, only one was under $10 and that was Linux Journal at $5.99.  All the others were around $20 each, now this would be okay if these magazines had a lot of info in it but every issue I looked at were very thin, thinner than your average $8.99 PC Gamer or PC World magazines.

I guess for now I will simply go with out until the cost of Linux magazines comes down to a more reasonable price.

I read an article in the Toronto Sun regarding Welfare on whether tax payers have the right to tell the welfare recipients how to spend the money received.

As you know from a past post I did, I am a welfare recipient although it is now called Ontario Works Assistance and has been called that for some time now.  No worries though since I tend to call it welfare a lot as well.

Anyways back to the article.  The writer was complaining that welfare recipients are spending their welfare cheques at casino’s and on drugs.  I don’t believe a lot of people on welfare are doing this but I’m sure there are some who do.  There have been a few people that I have met in the various classes offered by welfare which I have taken who are probably drug users but I am confident that the amount of people who do that is very low.

The writer made one suggestion in his article about having a grocery card and you know, I agree with this idea and in fact I would extend that idea by making the card good for only healthy foods like fruits and vegetables.  Right now, the welfare amount is quite low, in Durham it is about $500/month with rent costing on average $800/month for a one bedroom apartment.  So if the recipient gets a roommate and split the rent, that leaves very little money left over which means the recipient doesn’t have much choice but to purchase the unhealthy foods like kraft dinner and hot dogs.  If recipients were given food cards that can only be used as the grocery store on healthy foods then not only does this help us start eating healthy but will in turn boost ones energy levels which will in turn help lower the depression a welfare recipient feels while being on assistance.  With that extra level of energy and lower depression, we will then be able to focus better on getting off of assistance.

Another idea would be for OW to pay the landlords directly, that way there is no temptations to spend the money on something else.  It is extremely hard to not spend money on something that you really want, especially if you are around people who are always talking about how they got this or that for themselves or you can’t afford to go see a movie with your friends.  Paying the landlords directly removes the temptation.

The only money a recipient should receive is just enough to pay for phone and Internet.  Why Internet, simple, more and more companies tend to advertise their jobs online.

So if OW paid the rent directly to the landlord, gave out a food card that can only be used at grocery stores, the welfare recipient now has a lot less stress on their shoulders and can better focus on getting a job.  Since all job require a SIN number, OW should be able to verify if someone has gotten a job or not and be able to calculate how much earnings the person is getting.  Once the person reaches a certain amount earned, say three months rent/food/phone then they are released from the welfare program.

Again, I am on assistance right now and I would welcome what I have mention here today.  Right now there just doesn’t seem to be any incentive to get off welfare at all and that is probably the biggest problem with the welfare system in Ontario.

I’m back with another rant, this time it involve the Wii Shop Channel.

The other day I was catching up on my Nintendo Week videos and I watched an episode that announced Ghost & Goblins was now available through the Wii Shop Channel.  Now I must admit, for over a year now that I have had the Nintendo Wii, I only went in to the Wii Shop Channel to download other channels and game demos but never have I wanted to purchase any of the classic games until now.

So I went in to the shop channel looking forward to get my hands on Ghost & Goblins but to my disappointment, the only way to get it is by using a credit card or by finding a store that sell the $20 Nintendo Game Cards.  A $20 card gives you 2000 points to use towards a game, sounds fine but it appears a lot of the games are 800 points to buy leaving you a left over balance that can’t be used.  Some may think that is okay but I don’t.  Why you may ask, well most companies that allow you to carry a balance will usually have a rule where if you do not use up your left over credit in x number of days, it will be deleted.  Lets also not forget that not everyone is within walking distance of a store that sells the game cards.  A lot of people also do not have credit cards which is why PayPal is a must have payment option for any online retailer.

Don’t believe me, well then look at Skype and any cell phone provider who have prepaid cards.  If you don’t make a call within 60 or 90 days, your prepaid time is deleted.

Nintendo should get with the times and start offering PayPal as a payment option and allow the charging of $1 per 100 credits.  That way if all I want is Ghost & Goblins then simply charge me the $8.00+HST rather than me paying $20 and being stuck with a $12.00 credit that may end up expiring.

Come on Nintendo, do you have the balls to step up and offer PayPal?