matt dash low dot com

It turned out to be a fairly frantic but thoroughly enjoyable day. Woke up with some tea and inserted the instant breakfast into the microwave. Started the day off with a bit of Warcraft and then the afternoon was spent working on writing. Got my magazine revisions back from my editor. Whoops, I wrote it from the wrong perspective. He wanted them from the first person whereas I was writing the interviews from the third person. No big deal. I still had my raw notes anyway.

Today was to be my birthday party. My actual birthday isn’t for another several days, but I picked this day because it was the day where everyone would be able to make it.

I also did a Family guy marathon of sorts. Big mistake. I always tend to procrastinate. Watched all of season 7 throughout the day while I was playing WoW (Having two monitors is great). 330 rolled around, and it was time to finish my assignment. It was due later that night at midnight. Yeah, big time procrastinator. I got the message one of my other friends was unable to make it. Must’ve caught something extremely bad. I hope she gets better soon.

When 5 PM came, I had to stop my summary assignment. It was time to go. I would’ve been done in another 10 minutes anyway. Went shopping and dropped money on some ingredients for pasta tonight. I should really be supervised better when I go shopping. Probably with at least 2-3 people to triple check everything.

Arrived at my friend’s basement suite. Sweet and sour onion chips and the veggie platter. I had five carrots. Figured that would be my quota for the evening. I introduced my new friend from SFU to my high school friends. She’s still fairly new to the area and didn’t know as much people. I figured I’d try and help expand her social network some.

Anyway, started off with some guitar hero 5. I was supposed to butcher Blink 182’s Rock Show and Elton John’s Saturday Night’s Alright. I wielded that microphone like a meat cleaver, that’s for sure.

Meanwhile, the ones who were most skilled at cooking were busy preparing the pasta and the sauces. Unfortunately, we were only 1 for 2. The Alfredo was lost. I grabbed the wrong kind of cream. Whoops. I thought the marinara was great with the chicken. My other friend’s girlfriend was kind enough to bake me a chocolate cake. Now even though I’ll eat anything, I have supremely high standards when it comes to dessert. I have to say, her chocolate caking abilities were extremely strong. Only thing was the cake had a huge hole in the middle. It was like a donut. A really large donut. I wonder what happened to the middle.

Naturally, as we progressed through the night, it was inevitable that we would reach the stage where embarrassing stories about the birthday guy were told. My SFU friend had been kept in the dark about this. I figured it would’ve been more entertaining if my friends told the story. There’s no way I could do it justice.

On the bright side, they didn’t tell her my propensity for screaming on high velocity amusement park rides.

Finally, we closed off the night playing some Taboo. This is probably one of the best party games in existence. I think some of the highlights of the night were:

“2.99”
”SUBWAY!” (Correct)
”Sapphire”
”RUBY!” (Correct! WTF Matt, how did you guess that?)

Here’s some of the gifts I received. Thanks guys!

The host got me that book. Funny guy! It was suggested that he gave me his own used copy. Frankly, I wouldn’tve been surprised!

This should keep me off of Warcraft for a while. I have this urge to try and solve puzzles.

Yay! Now I can learn more about Warcraft lore!

Day 1

I was anxious to get to school. I had met someone in one of my classes whose company I enjoyed. It’s been a long time since I’ve met a person like that. I was eager to see her again at school.

After I arrived in lecture, I was pleasantly surprised to see she had saved me a seat. How thoughtful. Couldn’t talk much but that’s the way lectures were. We sat and took down what notes we could occasionally glancing at each others papers to make sure we had everything relevant.

I was disappointed after the fact since we couldn’t spend time together. A classmate approached her and started talking. She wasn’t able to disengage herself from the conversation. I sighed, shook my head at her and decided to grab coffee instead to get me through the rest of the day. No worries. Five hours to kill. My parents would be departing for Hawaii today. I’d have two weeks all to myself at home. Would I manage? We’ll find out.

After I picked up Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol from Chapters, I was almost home before I made a pitstop at a friend’s house. He’d just acquired some new hardware that needed assembling and I was the only one available. Several hours later, and after we called for some backup, we were able to finish. By the time I got home, it was 9.

Made myself a nice instant dinner of shrimp, scallop and pasta with some chicken on the side.

Collapsed onto bed after finishing my work.

Day 2

Morning raid. Earl Grey helps in the morning. Pulled another pack of left overs and combined it with some macaroni. I’ve got lots of instant dinners loaded up in the freezer to last me for a few days before I need to make a supply run.

Made a critical mistake. Wiped my face on my sleeve. I still had tomato sauce on it from lunch. Orange stain on my sleeve. Limited supply of shirts remained. 20 minutes of cold water and extensive scrubbing later, the stains were successfully removed.

Managed to power through the rest of Dan Brown’s book today. It’s now 130 AM. So exhausted.

Have you guys seen this?

Wow. Kanye’s a douchebag. He seriously shot himself in the foot that time. He completely cut Taylor Swift off during her acceptance speech during MTV’s VMA.

“I’m sorry, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time,”

Like, seriously? Crossed a line big time with that one, I think. Beyonce seemed shocked. Pink had to get escorted by security away from Kanye. Apparently he got kicked out of the awards show though.

How’s this for being classy? Beyonce called Swift up on stage and encouraged her to re-do her acceptance speech.

It’s a fairly well known fact that most guys are opposed to shopping. No guy wants to go shuffling from store to store with a woman who isn’t sure of herself. You can call it “window shopping” or whatever. But in my mind, I’m busy plotting the 435th way to kill that virtual dragon and looting the chest of gold it’s guarding (which, by the way, is caving in the entire dungeon).

Now let’s get something straight. Geek guys shop too. There isn’t really a time where I stop shopping. Whether I’m playing Warcraft, doing some homework or reading, I might stumble across a product I want.

When that happens, I resort to looking online. Books are a great example. I’ll read a blog post about a movie or a book and I just might decide to pick it up. The first step is knowing what you want. The second step is to fire up Google and look for the cheapest places to pick it up. The third step is isolating what the closest and convenient destinations are.

Once all that information is in place, it’s cost-benefit analysis time. Every geek has this mentality ingrained in their system. For example, the cost of buying a game isn’t 50 bucks. It’s the 30 minutes it takes to go to the mall, lineup, deal with annoying mothers asking about whether or not Grand Theft Auto is appropriate for their kids, and then shelling out the 50 bucks.

All for the sole benefit of completely kicking the crap out of other players on the internet. The benefit is absolutely worth the cost. It is even more so when your greatest rival is bragging about his e-prowess and you just have to shut him the only way you know how: Beating him at his own game.

But that’s another topic entirely.

Here is the ideal shopping scenario for guys.

Yesterday afternoon, I went shopping with a friend. She’s got shopping down to a science. We went to a shoe store and she simply went up to an assistant, asked for a pair of boots of a certain size, and paid for it right there. Turns out she tried them out before twice and had her mind firmly made up.

Later on, we found out that one of the retail prescription glasses stores were having a renovation sale with everything nearly 50% off. We decided to go take a look. The sunglasses she was thinking about getting were a pair of Ray-Bans. At first she wanted to know if they had them in stock.

But here’s the kicker.

She knew the exact item number of the sunglasses in question.

Right away, the guy picked out the exact glasses from the display counter and presented her with the only pair remaining. Didn’t have to stand there trying on pair after pair after pair while looking for the perfect set.

And yes, she looked awesome in said Ray-Bans.

By the way, here’s pro tip: If you’ve unconsciously memorized the catalogue number of an item, chances are, you really want it.

Anyway, if you’re having a hard time getting a guy to go shopping with you, keep the following in mind:

• Out of supplies. There’s no more Mountain Dew/Red Bull/Coke/Pepsi/Pizza Pops/Beer. Any guy will go out on a resupply run and stock up accordingly. Playing games like Starcraft and Command and Conquer have taught us to never run too low on resources in case you need them. While he’s stocking up on gaming essentials, you can disappear quickly enough to get your items of interest.
• Need an escort. What’s that? Going into hostile territory with aggressive shopping moms and you need protection? He’ll be there. Every guy loves to feel important. Tell him you need a body guard in case you get attacked by zombies or giant, mutated bugs. By the time you’re ready to go, he’ll have a map of the whole mall. Probably knows where all the crowbars are, too.
• Be organized. Know what you want, know how to get there, know the ideal times to go. The single most important thing is to not waste time. Zero in on your purchase and get it. If you have to try on clothes to make sure it fits, by all means do so. Just keep in mind that you’re on the internal timer.
• Buy him a treat. You can sweeten the deal if you pick him up a copy of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown for his DS. Of course, coffee or iced tea will work. Bonus points: Copy of this months Wired magazine.

Personally, I don’t mind going out. It does get me away from the computer once in a while. And even I can certainly appreciate that.

It’s rather unusual to have tutorials before lectures are held. I was also assigned to do some readings. This is going to shape up to be an interesting course. Basically the professor looked for the most extreme and sensitive topics and tossed journal articles relating to them in a customized text.

So what did we get for week 1?

A journal article proposing applying therapy to homosexuals in order to make them go straight. We’re not talking like a miracle drug. Just a simple sit-down and talk for hours on end. The rest of it just goes on and on about why it’s valid and should be accepted. It does state that homosexuality is not a mental disorder and all the standard cover-your-ass type stuff.

Who would want to make the most famous person in Austria go straight anyway?

In any case, this was a lesson in seeing if certain studies are full of shit or not.

Method

Always look at the method of study. Self report surveys are usually an indicator that one should dig deeper. Studies that involve control groups and experimental groups fare better and are more easily acceptable. In this case, the paper reported that people went into treatment with the intent of changing their sexual orientation. After therapy, all of them reported either they were straight or that treatment was ineffective.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the administrator of the study should be the one who determines that not the ones that undergo it.

Dates

The article cites studies from the 30s and 40s. That’s not exactly recent work. There’s another red flag.

Sources

The paper cited Freud. Yeah, Sigmund Freud. I know he was instrumental to the development of psychology and stuff. But psychoanalysis went out of style decades ago.

Peer review

This particular study was not submitted for peer review in certain journals. Now why is that? Maybe it’s for political reasons or something else is at work here. But if you genuinely believe what you’re researching, why not lay it open for the rest of the community to critique it?

So how else did the rest of my day go?

They renovated my self-patented spot. All the seats that were against the wall were remade into solid wood. That’s going to suck for prolonged seating. I should bring a cushion or something.

For once, instead of sitting alone and letting others filter into my table, I decided to try something different. I noticed there were these two other girls sitting at a table and opted to sit with them. I basically asked if they had read the assigned reading and how they found it and then managed to just sneak in with a seat. After that, I introduced myself. Found out they were both first years and new to the university.

I’ve been in school for a long time. I want to get out.

So let’s talk about bad habits. I have many of them. One of the biggest bad habits I have is overextending myself when it comes to various project. My concept of time and project management has deteriorated over time. I’m probably tackling like 3 blogs and a print production at the moment.

And school’s coming up. Just great. I wish I could leave already. I wouldn’t mind finding me a writing gig somewhere. I sort of wish I had gone into communications or journalism. I originally started my WoW blogs as a hobby. Somewhere along the way, it became a profession when I got paying offers to write for other sites. Crim just doesn’t hold that same appeal for me as it used to when I signed onto it initially.

Or maybe what happened is my goals changed.

Unfortunately, I’m stuck where I’m at now with little chance of changing. If I could wipe my academic career and start over again, I’d probably do it now that I know what I want to do. It’s not very often people find a job that they enjoy getting paid to do.

I just have to micro-manage these habits. Or get me a personal assistant. Actually, I probably have a better shot of the latter.

“Ugh! It’s still bleeding!”
”OMG, it’s moving!”
”How can you possibly EAT that?”

Those are the reactions I get everytime I order a Prime Rib medium rare. And this is what medium rare looks like. Sorry, but I just thinking eating meat that’s well done is just a waste! It’s so savory and tasty! I think this one’s a 12 oz that I ordered from Outback Steakhouse down in Anaheim.

I also ordered me a Hefeweizen down there as well. First time I tried it. Pretty good considering the only alternatives were Bud, Bud Light, Budweiser, Coors, MGD, and Sam Adams.

Where’s all the Canadian beer at? The 7-11’s had Stella, Corona and even Asahi from Japan! But no Molson Canadiens, Alexander Keiths or any of the stuff I like to call real beer.

Staring at that picture is making me hungry again!

I have not yet decided what to do on my birthday yet. All I know is that it will involve friends and food. I don’t know if I want to go out somewhere for dinner or not. My birthday falls on the last Friday of September. That’s a prime date that can work on either the Friday night or the Saturday night schedule depending. I’ll end up doing something on Friday for the time being unless something happens.

Given the choice between eating in or eating out, I can safely say I prefer eating in. There’s something to be said about creating your own food. It’s far easier on the wallet too. On the other hand, there’s also the issue of cooking. For one, I’m no Emeril. I feel bad about making others go through the motions and the efforts of doing so especially when I feel powerless. The only thing I can do decently well is supply laughs and liquor!

And so the dilemma continues. Eat out and spend money, or eat in and spend less money, but incur effort on the parts of others? I’m definitely going to involve the usual suspects no matter what we do. As I continue to get older, what we activities do doesn’t seem as important as who we do activities with. Even board games, or card games or Wii games is enough for me with friends around.

Wish list

Just intended as a guideline. Even monetary donations to contribute to next year’s Blizzcon and California adventure will be great! But gifts are not required. Nope. Just bring yourself, a smile, and laughing at my lame jokes will be enough for me!

Wii Sports Resort – This will definitely keep me off of WoW for at least 4 or so weeks. Plus I’m sure it’ll be a fun party game.

Professor Layton & the Diabolical Box – Only the best puzzle sequel ever made!

Luminous Arc 2 – Another DS RPG type game.

Wanted – DVD. Really, all I want is the 5 second clip where I can see Angelina Jolie’s ass.

Day 5

9:33 AM – Realized the day before we’re running low on fresh clothes. The heat and humidity here is a little more then us Canadians are used to. Had to do a laundry run.

10:02 AM – Found a laundromat. First time I ever did laundry. It all boils down to necessity, don’t it?

11:04 AM – Finished washing and drying! Didn’t realize it would take an hour or so. Timing was about right. Went to Carl’s Jr right after to meet a a fan of the blog. Turns out he works at disney and reads my site. Offered us three 1-day passes into Disneyland! Thanks Scott!

11:40 AM – Parted company with my roomies. Met up with my guild mates 5 minutes later. Went out for sushi.

5:15 PM – Mini golf tournament with my guildies! Naturally, I come up short on the bottom end.

8:01 PM – Just left. Traffic reeeeally sucks down here. Wow. I’m amazed.

9:46 PM – Arrived home! Yay! Bed!

Day 6

6:19 AM – Woke up. Had to check my email and Twitter.

9:03 AM – Had to shake my Curtis and Leah loose. Time to go grab breakfast and then off to Universal!

11:03 AM – Just pulled into the parking lot! Time to go off and lineup!

11:18 AM – Whoa, this place is huge. Theres a Starbucks, a movie theater, Tony Roma’s, and all this other stuff. More importantly, I see a lineup! And its HUGE! But first, a picture with the Universal Globe…

11:21 AM – Lined up!

12:02 PM – Finally got to the front of the line. Geeze, people have a lot of questions.

12:17 PM – Heading down the long escalator to the lower lot. They’re playing different TV themes for people to guess with. I heard Friends, Seinfeld, and the last one is some legal show. Can’t remember which one it is.

12:25 PM – Entered the Jurassic park lineup. Its 5 minutes. Sweet!

12:33 PM – Good idea: Not wearing a white T Shirt to a water ride. Got myself soaked pretty good.

12:45 PM – Onwards to the Mummy ride!

1:03 PM – Irk. Scary. I don’t wanna do that again. Over to Backdraft!

1:23 PM – WOW that was quite the sauna. Geeze. Good story about firefighters and stuff. Heading back up the escalator of at housand miles to the Simpsons ride.

1:51 PM – Finally, front of the line. There’s a lot of people here. Entered a car. Looks like its a 3D ride. Didn’t know that.

2:07 PM – Whoa, very realistic stuff! At least, it sort of felt that way even though its animated.

2:37 PM – Arrived to the Universal tours lot. I wish Conan would give us a tour.

2:41 PM – ITS THE HULK!

3:14 PM – Saw the Jaws set. Saw Angels and Demons set. Saw Pirates set. Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Got wet again. Why do I always sit at the edge? I always seem to get the ones with all the water.

3:33 PM – Got a Jambo Juice or something. Wasnt very good. Avoid it.

4:05 PM – Heading home now! Gotta make sure we get to Medieval Times in time!

6:11 PM – Arrived to MT! Thought we were late. Nope!

6:43 PM – Saw a horse. Sorta figured out where the phrase “Hung like a horse” comes from now.

7:15 PM – This show is cool! Lots of jousting and fighting and such!

7:58 PM – Yum! Dinner was good. Half a chicken. Very crumbly.Tomato soup. Garlic bread. One rib though. A baked potato. And a pastry.

8:45 PM – Damn, team yellow lost. Oh well. Time to head home! What a good show!

9:21 PM – Passed by an El Pollo Loco (Crazy Chicken). Heard good things about it. have to go hit that for sure.

11:23 PM – About to watch some Family Guy while playing Sociables (Kings) with my roomies.

Disneyland tomorrow!

Wow, what an exhausting few days it has been. Lined up at the con during day 3. There were about 20000 people in attendance. It was unbelieveable. Got my goodie bag and my toys and then it was off to the wow.com pre-con party at the Annabella. Dinner was graciously paid for by the company (I think). Gave away lots of great stuff. FINALLY met my fellow cobloggers and superiors.

Heres what 20000 people looks like. Actually, thats more like 5000 or so. But the line was HUGE.

Zach, the guy flew all the way in from half way around the world just to attend the con. Good man. Gave me a cool shirt too!

Managed to hit up every demo station that was there. Played Diablo 3 (Monk), Starcraft (Terrans), and the Cataclysm expansion (Goblins).

Pulled off a siege tank drop on my guildie. Nice to see those are still in style. Took out his expansion base while he was working on my decoy tanks in his main. Had him hemmed and was just aapplying general pressure. Asian racial bonus to RTS? Check.

Diablo 3 was great fun. I played a Monk but died a lot. I’m terrible with melee class characters no matter what class I am.

more to come…