Hello to all! I’m sorry I haven’t written lately since the pigeon incident, but I’ve been crazygonutz busy over here. About what? Well, it’s a surprise! Only my family and close friends/colleagues know what’s going on. I just wanted to take a little time out to write this entry. I will be almost non-existent here from now until around the latter half of the first week of November. All I can say is that I will be tweeting on Twitter and posting to friends on Facebook, and maybe even posting a few cell pics on Flickr. What I do on those accounts should give you an idea of what’s going on.

Until then, cheers!

We have been living in our new home for about one and a half years and, so far, things have gone good for us. No major repairs or gripes about the way that the home was built. However, I do have to question one small aspect of the design. Why would any builder in this state make a roof that has cubbyholes overhanging the front sidewalk? These are the kind of nooks and crannies that invite pigeons to make their home on your home and proceed to make things a bit unsightly.

As you can imagine, the result of our little pigeon friends living with us is a front sidewalk and roof overhang getting caked with bird feces. With expenses being what they are, I wasn’t about to hire someone to take care of the problem. I had a stepladder, but not quite tall enough to get to the roof. As of late though, I did buy a pretty neat extension ladder so that I could better take care of the problem. Another slight problem was that our feathered friends had a nest and clutch ging on, and I wasn’t going to be inhumane enough to kick out the chicks. Recently, the nest became abandoned and I finally could do something about the situation.

I’ll confess that I don’t know much about pigeons, but yesterday I learned more than I ever wanted to know. Going up the ladder, the first thing I noticed was the lack of a true nest, twigs and mud and all. It was all layers and layers of crap! I couldn’t believe how much of it there was. I decided that pigeons have to be the messiest birds on the planet! Our pet birds can be messy too, but they don’t wallow in their own feces, much less raise their young in it. I started hacking and scooping away at this stuff, trying to get my roof to appear again, and then I find a dead chick buried underneath it all!

After getting most of the pigeon "gifts" out of there, I used the wrapping and cardboard from my new ladder to temporarily block the overhang nook so our skyrats would be discouraged from making their home there. Later, I plan to buy some "tackboard" or something else along those lines (something more sightly than plastic wrap!) to lay in there to keep the pigeons out. Next, I sprayed and doused my overhang and entryway sidewalk with a diluted mix of Pet Focus Avian Formula cleaner  and let it sit for a few minutes before scrubbing it down and rinsing with water. We use that stuff for the bird cage and supply cleaning and it works too well.

Now I have a nice, clean house exterior and I plan to keep it that way! The only new problem I see is that the pigeons looked at me, said to me "You’re not kicking us out that easily, filthy human!!", and proceeded to make the upper roof their new home. *Sigh*… I guess I’ll have to deal with that when I get the tackboard!

One thing I did notice while being on the roof is that the shingles seem to be held in place by one or two nails each. I have no idea why Richmond American would be that cheap. I only say that because, when I was walking on the roof, the shingles felt like they were a hairsbreadth away from sliding out from underneath me!

Well, that’s all I can say about my little home cleaning adventure. Cheers!

Last night, Christine and I had the good fortune to catch the premier of SciFi Channel’s new show, Sanctuary. Though it was only the two-hour pilot, the show looks to be very promising. It started out slow, but I think that’s to be expected, as the characters are very deep. Because of this, the main premise of Sanctuary virtually necessitates some good character exposition since the overall plot wouldn’t make sense without it. However, the story’s pace moved very smoothly even while giving us good insight into the characters. Still, the writers and series creator gave the characters a lot of room for growth. The show itself is somewhat of a cross between The X-files, Torchwood and a healthy dollop of X-Men for genetic abilities abounding in some of the characters.

Below, I’ll embed a clip I’ve snipped from Hulu.com. I was very surprised to see Sanctuary on there after it just airing last night. Due to the content provider’s whims, it may be on the site for a while, or maybe not for long at all… so if you like the clip, you can just point the mouse onto the embed’s progress bar and rewind it to view the show from the beginning (You can also head to Hulu.com and view the whole enchilada, with the option for fullscreen!). The first part of the pilot is, like I said, a good story but mainly expository. The second part has some good action and did a bit of further character development. Some of the cast are very intriguing: I loved Dr. Magnus, and Amanda Tapping did a great job with that character. The real pleasure was watching Christopher Heyerdahl play the main heavy, John Druitt. His character is just awesomely twisted abounding with maniacal intelligence. The only weakness is Dr. Will Zimmerman, but hopefully that character will be fleshed out more with the next episodes.

Well, this is the first time I’ve reviewed a TV show. Let me know how you, the reader, liked what I did here, and also if you liked my show recommendation! Cheers!

Today I officially deleted my MySpace account. I actually was going to do this last Wednesday, but I forgot about my promise to myself to nix the account. That’s how unimportant MySpace really was to me.

Yes, I had a lot of stuff on there. I had a music player; a really nifty Flash player that played some mp3’s I have hosted on this blog’s server. I had some neat pictures. I had some witty (I think) things about myself on there. I also had a YouTube player on there playing my latest vids. However, all that pales in comparison to the one thing I’ll miss the most. Family. My cousins sometimes talked to me on my account. Maybe this will encourage me to email them more often. Yes, my wife is on there too and, yes, she isn’t happy about my decision to scrap the account. But it was my decision, mine alone, to make.

Maybe I’m just weird. Last night, my wife told me that my sense of humour and taste is sometimes sophisticated and sometimes stupid. So, yes, I can appreciate what quality I can find in all things. However, I personally feel I had outgrown my tastes and perceptions had grown away from MySpace. My needs simply changed, and sometimes we need to do a bit of cleansing to get rid of some of the things we don’t need in order to make our lives a bit simpler.

A while back, I wrote a post about the differences I saw in MySpace versus facebook. I think that was the start of my reasoning and thinking that led me to the decision. Facebook fits more of my needs, so it makes sense to keep that account. Today, during this writing, I’ll also update my list of profiles in the sidebar. Not much has changed; in fact, there’s more of me spread out across cyberspace! Click the links, investigate and maybe add yourselves on to those sites if you want. I’d love to see you all there!

So… what do you, my readers, think? Have you had, or still have, a MySpace account? Did you ever think about deleting it? If not MySpace, what social networking site do you most frequent and what do you like about it the most?

(Social) Cheers to all!!

Well, that multi-cultural and hyperkinetic extreme power metal band is back to have a go at kicking the tar out of our ears again. It seems like I just recovered from their last album, Inhuman Rampage, only to get a new aural assault when I least expect it.

This time around, I’ll have to compare Ultra Beatdown to their previous albums, since they’ve obviously grown by increments, if not leaps and bounds. If you haven’t heard anything by this band, I’d suggest one of their few anthemic ballads to start, as their speed in any other songs can be quite overwhelming when not expected. If you want, you can read my other reviews of their albums, Sonic Firestorm and Inhuman Rampage, to get an idea of what they sound like. This band plays fast, and even that is an understatement sometimes. One may wonder if they’re not going to be content until they break the land-speed record with their instruments! However, it’s not just speed for speed’s sake; they infuse that speed with their own style, and almost every song has a anthemic, over-the-top and epic feel to them. Because of that, many of their songs can sound the same… but only if you’re listening with half an ear! When you really listen, you can hear a complexity in their compositions that most listeners would ignore.

As I’ve stated, with this new album, the band does some more musical exploration and experimentation. Some of the songs have more of a progressive element, and they use changing tempos even more than ever. However, while I have no problem with softer interludes to make things more interesting, their use of interludes in a few of the songs was quite jarring and left me scratching my head. Otherwise, they’re definitely flexing some serious musical muscle, even compared to the last album…

Heroes Of Our Time - Starting off with a bang, as per usual. A good, catchy beat makes up a song for their first single and video. I like the change-up at :29! Very good opening showcasing what we can expect on the album.

The Fire Still Burns - I love the epic way this starts; I caught myself playing the intro over and over again. The bridge before the chorus just grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. The chorus is especially catchy. The interlude at 4:27 is good, but it almost threatens to derail the feel of the song because of how long it goes on. Thankfully, the band picks up the pace before it becomes unrecoverable. After the solo, there’s that cool “who-oh-ah-oh!” chant that the band is most famous for in quite a few of their songs. Only they can pull it off that well… and get away with doing it multiple times!

Reasons To Live - Here’s where the band shines! The beginning started off weird, but the band gets it back together early on. Right when the “Hold me, save me!” pre-chorus kicks is, they had me chanting along. The kickdown to half speed at 2:50 was rather jarring, but I can understand why they did it. There’s a brilliant part from 3:36 to 5:06 that they wanted to transition to, but did they have to suddenly drop the tempo to get to that point? The little touches that make many of their songs so special are evident, with an example being the wolf-whistling guitar at 5:06!

Heartbreak Armageddon - This is a track that I found myself playing the most so far. The chorus is just too catchy not to sing along! Dragonforce packs so much power in this song that I seriously believe they could light up a city the size of Chicago with this song. However, the interlude at 3:50 does the same thing as the one in The Fire Still Burns; it derails the overall feeling of the song and it takes a severe jolt from the band to get back up to speed. The rest of the song is just as brilliant as the beginning, and the ending made me forget about any previous musical transgressions!

The Last Journey Home - And now for something somewhat different! Dragonforce proves they can do… not just fast… not just slow… but an actual mid-tempo song! This is actually an enjoyable effort from them. Listening to it, for some reason, made me think of all the cool anime movies and shows I’ve ever seen. It just has that kind of feel to it. Of all the songs so far, this one has them flexing the most new musical muscles. (I’m not making a deal of the interlude in this song because it fits very well.)

A Flame For Freedom - And now we have the “typical” anthemic power ballad that Dragonforce has done something similar to on every album. Yes, nice break from the rest of the album. Yes, it’s beautiful sounding and makes you wanna hug your neighbor and hold a lighter in the air for all the fallen heroes. Nothing wrong with that. However… move along now, nothing interesting to see here.

Inside The Winter Storm - Back up to their usual speed now, this song just sounds so urgent and so much fire is poured into it and then, at 2:36… POW! What the heck happened?! This is the musical equivalent of, as Douglas Adams put it, “going from fourth gear to first, thus making your engine leap out of the hood in a rather ugly mess.” They pull out of it at around 3:16 and proceed to make the rest of the 8:12 song enjoyable. This is the one song, though, that a interlude like that just didn’t need to be there.

The Warrior Inside - An excellent song overall, with all the power, complexity, speed and conviction that only Dragonforce can throw together in their own patented formula. The piano at 3:46 is a nice touch and really doesn’t take away from the song, especially whey they can hold my interest with everything else going on. It wasn’t as abrupt as the interludes in the other songs I perhaps complained about. The chorus is especially catchy! They slow it down abruptly at 5:55, but this offers a nice closing to the song.

Bonus song - Strike Of The Ninja - Here, they do a bit of experimentation with their overall sound and song tempo/feel. The result is very enjoyable in this, compared to the rest of their songs, very short song!

Bonus song - Scars Of Yesterday - Here’s some more experimentation for us. They do some different things in this track, most notably an interlude that has a kind of new age-ish southwestern feel to it, along with a healthy dose of video game influence to keep the gamers in the audience happy.

All in all, I think this is still a great album to own. Not as awesome as Inhuman Rampage, but it still rates as an enjoyable listen for most metalheads with a thirst for power, speed, melody and style. I have this album and their two last albums in a playlist on my iPod, and it mixes so well with their other songs. I sometimes need a good Dragonforce marathon!

Cheers!