Soul Searchings

Last night, I went to Silvercity Riverport to watch The Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo Drift. I very rarely watch movies in the theater - I think paying $10 or whatever it is per person is too much. We had discounted tickets for under $7, so that was definitely a more reasonable price to pay.

A lot of people seem to think that the original The Fast and the Furious is a crappy movie… and maybe it is, but I actually really enjoyed it. Yes, it is definitely ricey, but I think that the storyline is very decent, the action is good, and there are so many great cheesy one-liners that are unforgettable! It’s a movie I don’t mind rewatching numerous times.

Here are some quotes that got a little modified to be The McFast and the McFurious… got them from a really old thread on RevScene. =)

See if you remember the original quotes from the movie…

1. I live my life a quarter pounder at a time… for those 500 calories or more, I’m free.
2. I need fries! 2 of them, the big ones! Oh, and I need them by tonight.
3. More than you can afford pal - Big Mac.
4. Bryan: "Welcome to McDonald’s, may I take your order?" Hector: "Yeah, I made a list. I want 3 of everything."
5. Johnny: "Go have him fetch my Big Mac." Dominic: "Fetch your Big Mac? We’re not in McDonalds anymore, you better watch who you talk to like that.
6. Don’t do it! I’ll bet he’s got at least a triple cheeseburger under that bun!
7. My cholesterol topped out at 240.
8. Bryan: "I thought if I got in your good graces, you’d let me eat that burger." Dominic: "You are in my good graces but you aren’t eating that burger."
9. The name’s Ronald. Got a last name too, but I can’t pronounce it.
10. Jesse: "I see a Big Mac, it’s got Supersize fries and a large root beer, Dominic, I see a chocolate sundae, it has… a side order of gravy…" Dominic:  "Yeah, and a 20-piece box of nuggets. Not a bad way to spend fifteen dollars."

The sequel, 2 Fast 2 Furious, I thought was not very good at all. There was just nothing very memorable about it. In fact, I can’t even recall what the main plot of the movie is. The only thing that sticks in my head from that movie is "We hongry!".

As for this latest installment… I would rank it in the middle: not as good as the original, but better than the second. The storyline was very weak, but it had decent action. I think they overdid the drifting just a bit. For example, the scene where DK is chasing Sean and Han through traffic… they would have been a lot better off just maintaining grip. There definitely are situations where drifting could be faster than gripping, but weaving through traffic is not one them. I also thought it was a bit of a stretch that Sean goes from a pretty crappy driver to pro drifter in like a span of two days. It wasn’t that he just didn’t know how to drift in the beginning… they made him look like he doesn’t even know how to drive. Why Han would even take him under his wing is beyond me. =P

In a totally random, huge coincidence, Elaine and I had watched Better Luck Tomorrow yesterday afternoon for the first time. The significance of this is that both Better Luck Tomorrow and Tokyo Drift were directed by Justin Lin and have a character named Han, and they are played by the same actor, Sung Kang . While there doesn’t seem to be any official statement saying that this was a direct tie-in, there isn’t any reason to think otherwise. In Tokyo Drift, Han reveals that he moved to Tokyo as a fugitive from the law, which would make sense given the ending of Better Luck Tomorrow.

I thought that putting Vin Diesel in at the very end as a cameo was lame… but whatever. As an aside, if you haven’t seen his breakdancing instructional video from when he was young, you should. =)

Here are some interesting facts about Tokyo Drift…

I wonder if they’re going to make a 4th installment… and if so, what it will be about?

So in the past week, I’ve been thinking about buying another tennis racquet, so that I would have two decent racquets to use, instead of having to use my 10+ year old Slazenger whenever my Babolat Pure Drive needs restringing. I was seriously considering getting the Babolat AeroPro Drive, which is the actual racquet Rafael Nadal uses. The racquet costs US$179 from online retailers, and about US$150 from eBay. Locally, I think it’s usually CDN$250, but Impulse Sports has it on special right now for CDN$209. There are some of them on eBay going for about US$120… but I discovered that… they’re fake!

That’s right… there are FAKE tennis racquets being produced. Here are a couple supplier sites to illustrate that: Supplier 1 Supplier 2

For example, the Wilson nCode nSix-One MidPlus:

Fake Model specs:
Length: 27.0 inches
Tension: 53-63 pounds
Weight: 289 grams / 10.2 ounces
Headsize: 98 inches²
Balance: 4 points head light
String pattern: 18 x 20
Price: US$55

Real Model specs:
Length: 27.0 inches
Tension: 50-60 pounds
Weight: 346 grams / 12.2 ounces
Headsize: 95 inches²
Balance: 10 points head light
String pattern: 16 x 18
Price: US$179

Suffice to say, it’s easy to see that these are not the same racquet.

Anyways, I decided I should try the AeroPro Drive first before blowing a couple bills by buying it… so I rented the demo racquet from Impulse Sports. I tried it out last night, and… it sucks! I don’t know what it was, but it just felt terrible. The ground strokes felt okay, but it felt so incredibly unstable when I tried serving with it, almost as if it was head heavy, even though it’s supposd to be 5 points head light. In fact, the specifications on the racquet is absolutely identical to my Pure Drive, but yet they feel so very different. I’m definitely not going to be purchasing this racquet.

Another thing I learned yesterday is that there is a big market-wide tennis racquet racket going on where the manufacturers are clearly deceiving consumers. Many of the pros don’t actually use the racquets that they are advertised as using. They use other racquet models that are paintjobbed to LOOK like the racquets they are supposed to be using. It’s one thing to modify the stock racquet model to their liking by adding weights and such, but another thing altogether to not even begin with the same racquet model.

Those in the market for a new tennis racquet… buyer beware!

The Nintendo DS Lite arrived on North American store shelves last Sunday, June 11th. I had been thinking about getting one, so that I could have a DS of my own. I had already purchased some games in the past, to play on Elaine’s original DS, so I thought I might as well get one of my own now. We would also then be able to play multi-player on some of the games.

The retail price for the DS Lite is $150. There were several offers to be had from the various retailers, but in the end I purchased it from FutureShop with a $15 off coupon, and it included some free screen cleaning kit. Toys R Us had a deal starting just this last Saturday (five days after launch) where if you purchased the console for $150, you could get New Super Mario Brothers for $5 more. For those that had the patience to wait a few days, that’s actually a very good deal. I would have gone for this, except I had already purchased the game a couple weeks ago when BestBuy had it for $25 instead of the $40 regular price.

FutureShop had been accepting pre-orders for the DS Lite for weeks before the launch date. I had held off because they didn’t offer in-store pickup for the pre-orders, and if it needed to be shipped, it likely wouldn’t arrive at least until a few days after the launch date. As with all new gadgets, you get that extra little bit of satisfaction knowing you’re one of the first to have it. So when midnight rolled around on June 11th, the FutureShop website started accepted online orders for in-store pickup, so just a few minutes after 12am, I placed my order for the Bridgeport store.

I went to sleep and woke up at 11:45am. I checked my email and to my dismay, saw a message that said my order had NOT been filled. I called the store and they still had two in stock, so I quickly drove there and ended up picking up the last unit they had. Unfortunately, when I got home, I found out there were two defective pixels on the screen. Apparently the DS Lite sold 135,000 units in North American in the first two days, so suffice to say, pretty much all local stores were sold out. I needed to replace my DS Lite, but couldn’t until the store got new stock. So I just played with the defective one in the meantime.

The new DS Lite is definitely a heck of a lot better than the original DS. It’s significantly smaller in every dimension, and weighs over 20% less. The screens are the same size, but are much, much brighter than the original. Even with the protective case I bought on eBay around it, I can very easily slip it into my pants pocket without any real inconvenience.

I’ve since replaced my DS Lite with a new one, and it seems that this second one is perfect. Quite a few people actually had problems with defective pixels. On RedFlagDeals, someone made a poll asking about DS Lite dead pixels, and over 10% of the respondents did have problems with it. When I brought my unit back to FutureShop, I was surprised to find out that Nintendo actually has a very strict policy on dead pixels. They require a minimum of 5 dead pixels around the middle of the screen to accept the unit back as defective. Because of this, all FutureShop did was put my returned unit back on sale as an open-box unit for 10% off. That’s a pretty crappy policy, since obviously the next person who buys the unit will have the exact same problem. I guess FutureShop is hoping the next person isn’t as picky and/or doesn’t care about the dead pixels

So the 2006 FIFA World Cup has kicked off in Germany today, and apparently 3 billion people around the world are expected to be tuning into at least some of the action in the next month. That’s close to half of the estimated current world population of 6.5 billion. It’s no wonder soccer is the most popular sport in the world.

Strangely, it’s not that popular here in North America. We call the sport soccer here, while the rest of the world prefers the term football. Our definition of football with the pointed oval ball doesn’t make very much sense - only a minor part of the game involves using the foot. Calling soccer football makes a heck of a lot more sense.

I’m not much of a follower of soccer at all. A few of the coworkers here at the office are though, and they’ve got a pool going on, so I paid my five bucks just so I can be part of the hoopla. Go Czech Republic!

I used to be a soccer player. In fact, back in early elementary school, that was my main sport. I played on those community soccer teams… and I think I was pretty good at the time. I was better than most at both offense and defense, so I mostly played midfield. In high school, I played on the team until grade 10. From grade 11 on, soccer season was during the same time as volleyball season, so I wasn’t able to do both. During the grade 8 tryouts, I remember making a pretty good impression as a defender as people were having a hard time getting around me, so from that point on I always played defense. I actually just realized now that this somewhat parallels my experience in volleyball, even though it involved a completely different set of skills. For the grade 8 season, we actually won the city championship! How ironic it is that my only city championship comes from soccer, not from volleyball.

I don’t remember much from the grade 9 season, and grade 10 was quite forgettable. I missed the first two games of that season, and when I returned for the third game, I don’t think I even lasted half the game. Somehow, when I planted my left foot and pivoted to try and clear the ball with my right foot, I miss-stepped and rolled my ankle badly. As I sat out on the sidelines, our totally inept manager tried to fix my ankle by rotating it around, all the while I was yelping from the pain. I went to school the next day and hobbled around on one foot for the most part… and after school, I drove myself to the hospital, where it was discovered that it wasn’t just a sprain - I had fractured my ankle. Great. This was actually my only broken bone that I’ve had… or at least that I remember. Apparently when I was young, I had an accident where I broke something, but I don’t really even know the details of it.

Whatever the case, of course my soccer season was done. Played all of not even half a game. I think the very next day, the PE class was supposed to do the Grouse Grind for first period. For some reason, I felt like going, even if I wasn’t going to be able to hike… so with my crutches, I took the bus all the way there and took the lift up to the top and met the rest of the people up there.

My fractured ankle didn’t stop me from playing in the volleyball intramurals either! I just hobbled around the court with my one leg that wasn’t in a cast. That was pretty fun, actually.

Whatever the case, back to the topic of soccer… I haven’t played a game since high school. Sometimes I feel like kicking the ball around, but don’t really have anyone to do that with. There just doesn’t seem to be much interest around here.

After work yesterday, I decided to head over to the AMD/Microsoft Tech Tour event since it was so close by to my office. I attended last year’s event, but originally wasn’t planning to go this year. So I arrived at the Raddison a little before 6pm, perused the vendor booths, grabbed a few brochures and free pens, then popped in and out of the presentation room before the buffet dinner was to be served.

Wow, it was a crazy scene. People there were like vultures just waiting for the signal to attack, which came as the presentation ended. It was every man for himself. Circular tables for a free-for-all buffet? Not a good idea. But I managed to get my fair share of food. I thought the fried chicken was really tasty, and ended up going back for seconds and actually ate like 7-8 pieces of it. I also got a couple servings of roast beef, and that was pretty much all I had. Didn’t bother with the pasta station.

Being that I used to do some IT consulting work, and have recommended and/or built dozens of computers in the past few years and am a network/systems operations guy at a tech company now, I did have some legitimate reasons to attend this event. I’m sure a large portion of the people at the event really had no business being there at all, and only went for the food and the prizes given away at the end of the night.

I’ve also been a big supporter of AMD ever since I built my XP1800+ machine and realized that AMD offers much better value than Intel. Almost all of the computers I’ve had built are AMD based. I’m all about getting the best value for your money. Heck, it could be my motto. As discussed in one of my early postings, I’m not afraid of spending money, but when I do, I try my absolute hardest to get the best possible deal. As long as AMD continues to deliver better bang for the buck, I will continue using them over Intel.

I got my first real look at Windows Vista, and I’ve got to say that it does look pretty slick, visually. On the other hand, I personally can’t think of any REAL reason I would want to switch from WinXP to Vista anytime in the near future. WinXP does everything I need it to do. One of the things I’ve learned the hard way is, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

Last night, I played tennis for the second time so far this year… and I actually felt very good about my game! I’m by no means a great player, but decent enough to hold some sustained rallies and have a fun time playing. Going by the NTRA ratings, I’m definitely a 3.0 player. My current weapon of choice is the Babolat Pure Drive, similar to what Andy Roddick wields. I’m contemplating buying another racquet, but at the moment I’m not sure what I want to go for. Like many, I want to get the newest and best, but realistically it would just be for show. I’m not nearly good enough to use a true player’s racquet… and if anything, it would probably just be detrimental to my game. I would probably get another tweeners racquet, which would suit my level of play much better.

I still have a bit of a cough left over from my sickness, but this is common for me. While I’m back to normal health in all other aspects, it seems that the cough remains for a long time, sometimes a whole month. I think I need another shot of antibiotics.

Aside from that, I felt great playing tennis yesterday. Even after over two hours of play, I still felt perfectly fresh. It’s one of those times that fatigue just doesn’t set in. I probably could have still played for several more hours if there was enough sunlight. My forehand was pretty good, and my single attack backhand was possibly the most consistent it has ever been since I started practicing it a couple years ago. I think this is going to be a great tennis season!