I caught a free Video Games Live show in Toronto last month at Yonge & Dundas Square, and although it was kind of fun, I’m definitely glad I didn’t pay actual money for it. The show consisted of an orchestra performing music from popular video games on stage with some footage projected on a video screen in the background — plus a few appearances from special guest celebrities (I’m not sure who was more exciting, the Blindfolded Video Game Pianist or Master Chief). I was a bit disappointed, mainly because I was only really interested in hearing music from older games. I didn’t come to hear the actual scores from recent games like World of Warcraft or Civilization IV (although a lot of the other people around me obviously did).

It was actually kind of surreal in a way, very much like attending a rock concert, but instead of people wearing t-shirts of obscure indie bands and shouting out names of their favourite songs, they were wearing t-shirts of obscure Japanese games and shouting out names of their favourite levels. During one ballad, Tommy Tallarico asked people to hold up their DS’s and PSPs in place of lighters. I didn’t see too many people comply, but there was the group at the back triumphantly holding up their lightsabers in approval. Nerds!! The highlight was obviously when Tommy Tallarico strapped on his axe to rock out to the Halo theme song. No matter how much you bang your head and throw the horns, there’s still no way to make that seem cool. But I suppose it was cute to see him living out his dream of being a rock star.

Catch more of my photos on Flickr.

For anyone who is interested, I finally got around to uploading a bunch of photos from my recent California trip to Flickr. You can see the whole set here.

Unfortunately, I still only have a basic Flickr account, which means some of my older photos from other trips are now no longer visible. I’ve been contemplating upgrading to a Flickr Pro account lately, but it seems a bit expensive for what you get. Does anyone out there recommend Flickr Pro? Are there any worthwhile alternatives?

I do plan to write up some travel logs from the trip, but I realize I still haven’t finished writing up the details of our U.K. trip either. I’ll get around to that as soon as I can. Somehow I need to find more time to write in this blog. Speaking of which, I think it’s also time for a redesign. I’m getting sick of the current look, and I want to reorganize things a bit. I guess that will be another project for the summer. Stay tuned!

Alright, I’ll admit there was no real “snow day” since it all happened over the weekend, but we got more snow in the Niagara Region last Saturday than I can remember getting in a very long time. Thinking back to when I was a kid in elementary school back in the 80’s, I feel like we got a heavy snowfalls a lot more regularly back then. Who knows, maybe it just seemed like a lot to me at the time — either way, over the last few years I think I’ve only had to pick up a snow shovel maybe once or twice. Global warming is very real as far as I’m concerned!

Anyway I’m sure there are places that got it much worse, but I thought I would post a few pictures for the newbs who live in warmer climates. See what you’re missing out on?

Last week Alicia and I decided to take the plunge and introduce a furry little bundle of joy to our lives in the form of a new puppy. We had talked over the past few years about getting a dog, but we were living in an apartment and it didn’t seem feasible at the time (particularly because we both have a fondness for larger dogs).

Recently Alicia had been making it a daily routine to check out various animal adoption websites online and when she stumbled across an Old English Sheepdog on Craigslist, it seemed like the pet we had been waiting for. The only problem was, we sat around thinking about it for too long and by the time we had officially decided we were ready to adopt a dog, he had already found a new owner. We were kind of bummed about it, so we doubled our efforts and after a couple more days we found a guy who rescues puppies from farms up north. He just happened to have a few German Shepherd/Collie pups, which seemed ideal since my family had a German Shepherd/Husky when I was younger, and Alicia’s had a Collie.

So as you can probably guess by now, the little guy you see in the pictures is our new dog… Chopper! No, we’re not big motorcycle enthusiasts. His name was actually inspired by another dog we saw up for adoption somewhere else, and since our friend Mikie gave himself the nickname Chopper once upon a time, it seemed quite amusing to us. We’ve since been reminded by many people that Chopper is also the name of the dog from Stand By Me (”Chopper! Sic balls!”). Once we get him toilet trained, that’s the first trick I’m teaching him.

In his first day or two, Chopper didn’t seem like he would live up to that kind of name since he was very tentative and just generally freaked out by his new environment. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) Chopper has since become quite comfortable with our house and is now an unstoppable little ball of energy, terrorizing — I mean, exploring — every nook and cranny within. No wonder so many people like cats, they’re definitely a lot less work! But I think I’ve always been a dog person, and there’s just something great about being greeted by a wagging tail the minute you walk in the door. As a matter of fact, I highly recommend the puppy experience… but don’t expect to get a lot of sleep for the first week or two!

I was in NYC earlier in the month as part of a Dwyer family visit with my relatives (who live in New Jersey, just outside of New York). Being the nerd that I am, I noticed that the time of our trip coincided with the annual Wired Magazine technology expo, Nextfest. Needless to say, I talked Alicia and my cousin Simon into checking it out with me. I think they both secretly resent me now, but what can I say? We got to experience the future… TODAY.

I’m not too sure what I expected from this show, but it was a little bit underwhelming in terms of scale. There were still some pretty amazing gadgets though (and some pretty silly ones too).

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Here’s a fun little piece of Sean Dwyer history that I thought I would share with the world wide web. A few years back I used to work for a local computer company called McDonald Systems. It was a pretty small operation and eventually went out of business, but I worked with some good people and we had a lot of laughs at the time.

Perhaps the biggest laugh of all may have come the day I heard this radio jingle that they actually paid to have produced. It was just such a stereotypically perfect radio jingle that it sounded to me almost like a parody. Maybe it’s only funny if you worked there at the time, but to this day I still laugh when I hear it.

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I have been slowly developing a book loosely based on my time at McDSys and the people I worked with there. I am aspiring to make it something funny in the vein of Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs… but maybe I’m being a little presumptuous there.

The picture above shows me posing with “The Gooch” and “Tinman” in front of our favourite inspirational Microsoft poster. How Does It Feel To Save The Day Every Day? It feels damn good. Judging by the image quality, I think the photo may have been taken on the very first digital camera ever invented.

Well as many of you know, Alicia and I have recently purchased a house and will be moving at the end of the month. It’s a pretty scary thing in some ways to know you’re on the hook for a lot of money and somewhat tied down to a specific location for a long period of time. And to think buying a car used to intimidate me… this is a whole other universe entirely!

One thing I will say is that being a homeowner is somewhat empowering. No offense to people who prefer renting (in bigger cities it still makes a lot of sense, since buying a home can be pretty financially daunting), but the fact of the matter is you still have to answer to someone else about the place where you live. This is the main reason I am glad to be owning a house soon. It’s more reponsibility on your shoulders, but ultimately you are in control.

We’ve had some minor annoyances at our apartment (laundry room headaches, water shutoffs and power outages, weird/creepy/obnoxious neighbours), but the worst thing about it is feeling that you’re always subject to the whims of the landlord. They can basically disrupt your life however they see fit.

Even now that we’re ready to leave, it’s been a real hassle. We just had a bit of a dispute with the management over the terms of our lease. They claimed that we had agreed to another full year when we signed our Rent Increase notice in February (in the fine print it does say we’re approving for another 12 months). The thing is, we have been here for two and a half years now and we were already on month-to-month from the year previous. We just assumed the same terms would carry over. It all feels very underhanded, like they are holding us at the same level as a bunch of deadbeats trying to skip out on their lease, when in fact we’ve been nothing but perfect tenants. Thankfully it looks like they’re going to let us off the hook after all. I guess the lesson here is to always read the fine print, and more importantly — understand it.

Our next priority is to buy appliances and some new furniture. And somehow I need to convince Alicia that this awesome Floating Bed is an absolute necessity.