Nachos à la matsam

Little food experiment I tried out: I love eating nachos, but can you that as a meal? Not really, because it won't fully satisfy you, there's no meat! Well, that's where my food experiment comes in.

Ingredients

Preparation

Now this is pretty simple stuff, but I still want to get it right. Only the tostitos, the cheese and the meat need to go in the oven, the tomatoes are better fresh and cold, they'll be added after everything heats up.

The food is ready to eat!

This experiment was quite tasty, the salsa and sour creme are always good dips for nachos, especially together. The pepperoni made it more of a meal than an appetizer. Add a hint of cock sauce, along with your favorite soft drink and you've got yourself some great nachos. I give this experiment a 2 out of 2.

Lazy Job - End of the Embarrassment

The busy moments at my job are at the very beginning and at the very end of the shift. When the day starts, it doesn't really matter because everyone is still asleep, still (no wonder, they get here at 5:45am). When the shift is over, however, this is when things get wild (not really). I don't know if you even noticed, but schools are fucking scary at night, when there's nobody else in it. One of the schools I worked in (École Secondaire d'Oka) served as a set for the horror movie "Gothika", to give you an idea.

So when all the construction dudes decide it's time for them to hit the road, I have to be the last one to get out, and I need to check every window, every door, every light after they're gone. You're going to tell me it's not a big deal, but it can really turn into a complex situation, sometimes. Here are a few examples.

Yesterday, as I was getting ready to go, I closed the few last doors, as I always do. Here's the thing though, it's not very often that they have fresh paint on these doors. So what do you know, as I held the door to close it, my hands became blue. The sort of paint they use for these schools is the mean stuff. It doesn't go away with only soap and water! So I ran around the school, trying to find paint solvent to get it off my hands(painters always carry a few bottles because it's a messy job, after all), as I learned when I was painting schools last year. My hands ended up smelling horrible, but at least they were skin-colored again.

Two years ago, as I was closing up the thousands of windows in this horror movie-themed high school, a freakin' bird came inside the school! I couldn't let the thing inside, as there would have been bird shit all over the freshly waxed floors the next morning. So I spent about half an hour chasing the winged one through the corridors, progressively blocking its way deeper into the school, towards the nearest exit. That day, I learned birds didn't have a very good knowledge of what exits look like, and what they mean when a human is chasing you. Damn you, bird! Oh well, I guess I got paid overtime for dealing with that silly business.

The same year, I was unlocking the elevator for some construction dude, since he had to get his equipment up a few floors. Usually, to call the elevator, you need to insert the key, turn it, and press the button (so that regular students can't mess with it), then, to lock the doors open, you have to turn the key in the lock inside the elevator. For some reason, when I turned the key inside the elevator to lock the doors open, they closed as I got out to ask the construction dude if he needed anything else, locking my keys inside the elevator. Of course, there was no way to call it back, since I needed that key to do so... So I started freaking out, desperately trying to find another key set. No luck. I then told the construction dudes I had no way to get their stock back down at the end of the day, as I locked the keys inside the elevator. One of the guys said he might be able to help me. He got his tools and opened the button plate. Turns out he was able to rig the wires to make the setup think I just turned the key. The elevator arrived and I got my keys back. These construction guys are awesome.

Last year, I was doing late night shifts in another high school. As I was turning on the alarm systems, I suddenly felt like the floor was moving a little under my feet. Fuck. I was walking on fleshly installed tiles! Of course, they moved a lot, and I knew they would have to start over if the cement hardened like that. I had to lie down and meticulously replace each tile, which is crazy hard to do, especially when you have no experience (hello!). All I have to say is, I must have done a pretty good job, as they never noticed the following morning.

I seem to screw up a lot, even with an incredibly easy job, but it's never anything really bad, thank Robotsk!

Lazy Job Dream

For the first time in a while, I remembered my dream last night. It was nothing special, mind you, but I'm just glad I recall what my brain created during my beauty sleep. I was doing my thing, just being a cooldude, hanging out with friends. Everything was perfectly normal, until I noticed one of my legs was noticeably longer than the other. I also observed I was walking around with an awkward posture for a while, compensating the fact one leg was longer by bending the knee. Of course, in my dream, it seemed perfectly normal for everyone, until I acknowledged it myself. Suddenly, people started asking me why one of my legs was shorter than the other, and every time someone asked me, the other leg seemed to grow a bit more. I think I was about a foot taller, standing on my long leg. I had to tell everyone that's how I was and they couldn't do anything about it. Except the more I was questioned about it, the more I had to demonstrate how I dealt with it, the more it ended up hurting. Flexing my knees makes them ache (that's a real life problem I have), and my consistently bending it, I ended up resenting my condition.

It surprised me how easily I was able to lie to people about the problem being normal for me. I mean, I knew my two legs were suppose to be the same length, but I kinda convinced myself I was wrong. As a matter of fact, I convinced everyone around me, which is not very hard to achieve in real life.

That raised a few questions as soon as I woke up. Why are people so naif and unquestioning once they've been fed a decent explanation? Are we raised to be so gullible? Aren't we taught to always use our critical thinking skills? Or maybe it's just easier to take the first thing that resembles to common sense and make it your own truth. Maybe that's how rumors can flourish in such an impressive way these days (I guess the mass-media exposure and the the internet helps).

I guess it's just weird that today's society is a mix of ignorance and obsessive knowledge. The advent of specialization, I would think. Not that it's always a bad thing; I do think it actually helps to have the possibility to learn about anything at any given time. It's a double-edged sword though. How much time I've sunk into useless bullshit, I lost count a long time ago. For me, it's a way of retiring into my own little space, taking a bit of my time to escape to another world, where the wonders of knowledge aren't restricted with grades and final exams.

Dream on.

The Fifth Element

Sunday, I went for a car ride, I was going to get my birthday present. A present partially from my parents, partially from me. That's what happens when you ask for expensive gifts. Parents sometimes prefer to spend money on floor-heating systems or pool-cleaning robots instead. But they offered me a good deal, one that I could not refuse. So we went to FutureShop to get one of these Xbox 360 bundles. After a lot of research, I noticed they had newer hardware revisions that consumes less energy and has a better chance of surviving more than a few months (I'm sure most of you are familiar with the scourge of the Red Ring of Death).

Unfortunately, it seems all the cheaper models had older chipsets, being at a higher risk from the get-go. I found out that some higher-end models had the new ones, the mythical "Jasper" units. FutureShop had a special on everything in store over 50 bucks, shaving 10 bucks off. Well, it's better than nothing, right? But they didn't have any in stock. They had up to 10 units in all the other locations of the province, but not where I went. Dammit.

I decided to try my luck at BestBuy, giving up on the 10 bucks I wanted to save. I looked in the Xbox section, didn't see the bundle I was looking for...dammit. I asked the clerk if he had any left, and after about 15 minutes of "intense" research, I saw two units on the very top shelf in another section of the store.

Negociation time. This is where I try to seal a deal. I start by showing off the coupon from the other store, telling the clerk I need a better source of motivation to buy the bundle at his store. I says he's not sure he can do anything. Dammit. Suddenly, I remember they have an offer on the Pro models, which nets you 3 free games when you buy the hardware system. Unfortunately, this deal was only available for the Arcade or Pro units, and the one I had in my hands was an Elite unit. The thing is, the Elite model costs a hundred bucks more than a Pro unit and two hundred bucks more than an Arcade unit. Supposing they don't really make huge profits on the sales of video game hardware, I don't see why they don't apply the promotion on the higher-end model.

After a long discussion, not knowing what to do with an insisting guy with too much hair, the two clerks nervously called up a floor manager. He asked if they still had Pro models in stock, looks like they didn't have any more of those, so he said the promo would work on the model I wanted. The power of the manager. It barely took him 5 seconds to decide that. Immediately, a huge grin showed up on my face. I was getting 2 games inside the bundle, and 3 more games with the promo. I think that's a decent deal. I was satisfied and decided to seal the deal. It only took about 20 minutes to find all the games included in the promo, their fault for being disorganized. I didn't mind, because I was getting the best deal, in my opinion. My mom, on the other hand, was not quite happy, as I was ruining her plans for the day.

I ended up buying the console + 5 games for the price of the console. Surely, I would have been too excited about it to do anything else but open it and try all the games, right? Wrong. I spent a splendid night with my girlfriend. We tried a new sushi place and went to see a movie. Lovely, isn't it?

When I got back, with the help of public transportation, I noticed I didn't have my home key and that nobody was home. Dammit. I tried to bang on the doors, in case someone was sleeping or something. No luck. I decided to check at the back, and found an opened window, by which I entered the house. Lucky me! Seting up the beast wasn't very hard, until I tried to connect it to the internet. You see, it doesn't have wireless capabilities, and the only official way to connect it that way is to buy a $100 dongle from Microsoft. No thanks. People told me "Why don't you just run a cable between the router and the Xbox?" Well, it at the other side of the house and crosses a bunch of rooms, it wouldn't be practical at all. I read about another solution which would allow my laptop to serve as a network bridge, taking the wireless signal received by my laptop to transfer it through the ethernet cable from the laptop to the Xbox. Sounds simple, right? I wish.

The problem is that people make instructional videos for everything today, but for whatever is computer related, the videos are only showing ways to get around with the most commonly used OS. So I found instructions on how to make the network bridge with Windows XP, Windows Vista and even Mac OS, but what do you know, I'm using the RC version of Windows 7! It's not much of a difference with Vista, but once you try to mess with control pannel settings, a tiny name change can screw you up. I basically spent all night trying to figure this out, until I read about a related problem someone had on a weird forum. All the official Windows and Xbox boards were no help. You have to dig deep into the dark realms of the internet to find the most simple answers. I ended up making it work, allowing the 360 to update to the NXE interface and allowing me to download the games and themes my Xbox came with. Because, of course, why add a game disc when you can download the damn thing into your humongous hard drive? I'll miss physical media formats. The end seems near, but until then, I'll listen to my newest cd. Arctic Monkeys' debut album: "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not".

I just like to touch.