Snow Is Better Than Rain

Today it is snowing here, not the little dusting we had a while ago, but actually snowing. I love it. Yesterday it rained all day, and if you think it is bad when you are inside with one or two children at home on a rainy day, try it out with 18 at a day care.

Getting snow suits on was a bit of a hassle, mainly because it seems that children that are at times fiercely independent become suddenly utterly dependant when it is time to get ready to go outside.

But even with that consideration, going out into the snow with a clouder of kids is so much fun. We threw snowballs at the building, rolled huge snowballs to make a snowman and generally just had a blast.

Plus all this snow gave me a chance to wear my snow pants that I love!

Many people lament the time when it starts to snow, I welcome it, we can go outside and have fun in the snow, even at home I still build a snowman out front each year.

Yay snow!

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FMM–Holiday Shopping

Here it is again friend making Monday with the idea brought to you by www.alltheweigh.com you know the drill by nowm read mine, copy and paste it with your own answers in your own blog and be sure to link back to their original post.

1. Do you like to shop? Sometimes
2. Have you started shopping for Christmas gifts yet? I have bought a few things, but I wouldn’t say I have started really
3. Did you shop on Black Friday?  If so, what did you buy?  Nope!
4. List a few of your favourite stores. To shop at for my wife - Chapters, Simple Wal*Mart
5. Do you prefer to shop in-store or online?  In store for sure.
6. If you could purchase one thing that you don’t need at all for yourself today, what would it be?  More Comics
7. Does your significant other shop with you?  Do they love it/hate it? Amber and I do shop together sometimes.  I think it depends where we are going if she likes it or not.
8. Do you shop at thrift stores? Not usually unless it' is for old video games.
9. When you’re holiday shopping, do you make lists?  I get a wish list from Amber, otherwise I’d have no idea of what specific things to get her.

I Reject Your Reality And Substitute My Own

I tend to watch Mythbusters a lot.  It’s a fantastic show and one that has provided me with dinner table topics and great experiments to try at home and at daycare.  It’s definitely my favourite show that is not a cartoon. 

It turns out the show is eight years old!  I was astounded when I heard that and realized that it was true.  The first episode I remember seeing was the one where they blew up a cement truck.  See the myth was that when you have just a bit of cement caked and hardened on the inside of the barrel of the cement mixer, rather than chip it out with a jackhammer the truck drivers would just toss a stick of dynamite into the truck, wait for the BOOM and sweep out all the bits of cement.  It didn’t really work that well, but in what has become typical Mythbuster fashion they ramped up the whole experience for the finale of the show and had a cement mixer nearly full of hardened cement and packed the rest of the barrel with high explosive.  They stood watching about a mile away and the whole truck simply disappeared as a result of the explosion.  It was fantastic.  It was real.  And it was my new favourite thing to see on TV Sunday nights.

I also find it funny that this is pretty much the only “reality” show I watch and it’s a hundred times better than any so called reality show that has ever been.  There are some parts of the show where they are trying to explain things and they do multiple takes because they are trying to be specific about something, but all the results and reactions are completely unscripted.  Even with that unscriptedness having seen the show for eight years Adam, Jamie, Tory, Carrie and Grant are characters simply due to their personalities and you can see how so many of their interactions come from working together for a long period of time – like how Adam imitates Jamie’s voice and mannerisms all the time.

More TV shows should aspire to deliver the same type of quality with the same type of enthusiasm as Mythbusters does.  The show is fun and entertaining and I learn something almost every week watching it.

Snakebit and Hard Work

At hockey this year I cannot find the back of the net.  It is starting to boggle my mind how much I can’t score this year, I feel like Scott Gomez except I don’t get paid $8 million per year.  Now we are winning and I am putting up points so I’m not complaining that much, but it sure would be nice to score.

This year in 9 games I have scored only 2 goals.  One was our teams first goal of the season a nice shot from the right circle.  The other goal came 5 games later and it was a garbage goal, I was cruising toward the net, a rebound came and I just whacked it in as I twisted and fell because I had to contort so awkwardly to hit the puck.

So after 9 games this year I have 2 Goals, 13 Assists and 23 shots on net.  Not bad, thankfully I can still pass it seems and the guys on my line are filling the net (Mark had a hat trick last night and Jeff had two goals as well)!  This 9 games also includes one game where I played goalie, so it’s really only the stats of 8 games I guess.

Last year after 9 games I had 7 goals, 10 assists and 27 shots on net.  Not much difference shots wise, and only 2 points difference, but I had a hat trick myself by then.  Honestly I thought that I would have more goals/points this year as I am not wearing myself out at the gym each Saturday after karate, maybe I should be!Come to think of it, the game last year where I scored the hat trick was after my black belt grading, a gruellingly physical day ( I even added 2 assists that night).

Last night was also the hardest time I’ve had getting air and having my legs work as I would like in a long time, I think it is due to the fact that I am picking up my wife’s cold a bit.  However, in my overreactionary sort of way it mean that cardio will be bumped up.  I think that I’m going to be hitting the gym on Saturdays again too, I mean it didn’t hurt my game last year, I’ll be done there by 12:30 or so and that gives me at least eight hours to recover.

Unfortunately I am not the type of hockey player that is naturally gifted, I have to work hard for what I get on the ice, and I’ve been shown (by myself really) that if I want results in one area there is usually work you can do to back it up in another area.  Hard work at the gym did me a lot of good for hockey last year.  I was hoping that I had done enough that I could afford myself a day off from the gym this year and count hockey as my exercise.  It appears that that is not the case if I want results, and if you know me, I want results!

Animated Movies

My wife has this thing about animated movies where she hates them unless they are made by Disney.  Specifically I mean actual cartoon movies.  Things like How to Train Your Dragon and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs she has no issue with.  But When I bring up the possibility of watching Batman: Under the Red Hood, that is apparently not an option, or she will agree and then promptly fall asleep.

To be fair nearly all of my animated movies are superhero movies (mostly Batman) and she’s not that big of a fan.  But consistently the stories in these movies are far better than the story in live action films.  At least to me that is how it is since there is no time wasted on needing to have a love interest for Batman, and the action sequences can be as big as big since the only cost to the making of the movies is drawing pictures and being creative.  I know they can really do anything they want now in a live action movie with CGI but usually they drop the ball on a lot of those things.  And I know that usually they do not kill anyone in an animated movie, but in the more recent DC movies it happens as they go for a more mature audience.  Really the lines of what you do in one medium and not the other are blurring because of the demographic the producers are trying to go after.

I love animated superhero movies.  To me they are almost always presenting the best version of that character simply because the guys who write the stories for comic books are directly feeding the scripts for the movies.  Those same folks are doing the designs for the characters in the movies as well.  Yes I really like the outfit for Batman in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, but in every comic I have read Batman wears a grey suit and black everything else and you can not see his eyes and his voice isn’t ridiculous.

In my opinion Batman should look  and sound like this:

 

 

And, Although it does look alright, not like this:

Batman sounds like he’s trying to sound that way as opposed to natural… the Joker however is awesome!

Just as I think Superman should look like this:

And not this:

I mean yeah they show him lifting a big thing there, but Superman should be big, a stiff breeze could knock this guy over.

Anyways I’ve lost my point because I have come back to writing this a few times this morning, but animated superhero movies are almost always better than their live action counterparts.  It is a lot more epic to see things real-life-ish, but everything just seems to go together better in an animated film.

Cooking

This I feel is a basic skill.  We watch a whole pile of cooking shows here at home of the Kitchen Nightmares, Top Chef, Hell’s Kitchen variety and just started watching Worst Cook in America.  It boggles my mind that anyone can be that bad at cooking in general.  One girl said she could not even boil water before she came on the show and I really do hope that was an exaggeration.

I learned to cook a few things before I was even a teenager.  Actually in grade two our class learned to cook grilled cheese sammiches (yes I know it’s spelled sandwiches) at school on day using a toaster oven. I could make soup (but really if you can’t make soup from a can I weep for you) and hotdogs.  Side note about hotdogs apparently some people think it’s odd that I cook them in a frying pan – and now in the toaster oven on the odd occasion that I have one, I think boiling them is ridiculous, some much better by the other methods unless you have a barbeque handy.  Oh and I could make Kraft Dinner by then too, which due to a video I watched last night is Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in the US – ours is better by the way.

KD vs KM&C ooohhh try it with ketchup on it, or cut up hotdogs or bacon into it, so good! Yeah I was doing that at 12 too, I was a chef even then.

Now, of course, I can cook all sorts of things.  The worst thing I have ever made as far as I am concerned is Mr. Noodles.  Not that I cannot make it, but just that it was, by the hundredth time I made it, inedible.  I have not eaten any since and that was ten years ago at least now.  My biggest cooking failure that I fed to other people was biscuits because we did not have any baking powder and it substituted baking soda – they are totally not the same thing even though they both start with the word ‘baking’.  It was like trying to eat hockey pucks.  The taste was not too bad, but you needed a chisel and mallet to break them apart.

I don’t really know what the best thing I make is now.  I make a pretty mean hamburger (now with ground chicken!) and amazing homefries (no deep fryer required).  Baked pasta is always good and maybe one of my favourite things to eat, I do have the quick version and the extra cheesy version of the same dish.  No, I’ve got it, breakfast bake, that’s probably the best thing I can make,  It’s not overly hard and I got the recipe from Chef at Home with Michael Smith.  Get a baking dish, a bunch of eggs, some day old bread, cheese and sausages.  Cut up the sausages, grate the cheese, scramble the eggs and season them, cut up the bread into cubes, mash the whole pile of that together in the baking dish and them bake it until it’s done.  So Good!

But back to the main point.  Cooking is a basic skill, if you struggle with it, go get some pointers or take a class, it’s cheaper and healthier than ordering out and way more satisfying to your tummy and your ego to cook your own food.

Holidays and Calories

Today is the American Thanksgiving and while I won’t be doing anything in particular about it (other than visiting Calendar Man in Arkham City – I love games with date sensitive content!) I know many of my readers are American, and I was told again yesterday that I should help people out that what to lose weight and get fit.  Which brings up the topic at hand.  Holidays and Calories go hand in hand, it’s pretty much unavoidable unless you are going to sit there and make a pouty face while the rest of your family eats delicious things.

My solution to the whole situation especially when I was losing weight was a two part attack.  Save my calories for the big meal of the day and do something either on the day of the even or the day before and day after.  The second part of that was a cinch for me because I did exercise pretty much every day anyways so there was no extra planning involved at all.  Do something cardio that burns some calories, it’s even better if you can do it the same day.  I have no fact based proof that that is true, but I know it made me feel a whole lot better about eating the big holiday meal.  I knew my weight was going to go up a bit, bit I also knew I had worked hard that day, and that two days hence the going up would just be a little blip on my Wii Fit chart.

Saving calories is a bit harder, depending on when you meal is.  Somewhere along the line my family decided that holiday meals were to be had at about 1pm, something to do with the length of time it took to drive to visit.  Thought about ten years ago that point became moot since we all moved to within a half hour drive of each other, but it stuck so whatever.  Thankfully we had no big eating holidays while I was while I was losing weight, because I ate so little I  would have had to have water and air for breakfast and dinner to have any calories to eat the big meal.  When my first fit Thanksgiving rolled around I was eating about 2200 Calories a day, but as you know pie has lots of calories and I like pie.  So typically then and even now I tend to have a filling but low calories breakfast on a day like that say two eggs and and English muffin, that’s 270 calories, then for dinner it might be something like cereal or left over turkey made into a sammich, so say 300-400 calories so two meals of the day only account for 600-700 calories.  That leaves like 1500 calories to spend on one big meal, not exactly the ideal way to portion out the day, but again I wanted to be able to take part, and eat what I wanted without much worry.

My second year of fit holiday meals is just coming up, well thanksgiving is already past for us in Canada, and I know I can now eat what I want.  It’s a liberating feeling once you are in shape, but the thing is, what I want to eat now is only about half of what I would eat two years ago.  The mentality of eating right is burned into my brain, and I’ve eaten the right amounts for so long that my tummy knows when it’s time to quit and I listen.

So for that reading that are getting in shape, enjoy the day, if your a fanatic I was, go for a run this morning then enjoy knowing you have done your exercise deed for the day and save a few calories somewhere else so you can have a big piece of pie rather than a little sliver.  If you simply don’t have the time for that, then don’t sweat it too bad, you’ll be up in weight tomorrow, but back to watching the scale go down the day after that.

The Legend of Zelda Part II

As I was saying , my love for all things Zelda has been brought to the forefront of my mind due to the release of Skyward Sword. With the game of Zelda came a CD with eight tracks from the 25th anniversary performance of the orchestrated arrangement of Zelda songs.

I thought it would be a great way to share this whole 'Zelda' thing at daycare would be through that music. It really is fantastic and if I was not doing this on my phone I would link to some youtube videos of the music. So I put on the main theme that nearly everyone of my generation would recognize and asked the children how it made them feel. Big said one excited said another. Then I got them to draw how it was making them feel.

I got things that ranged from big circles to people traveling. It was great! I think video game music when it is actual composed music with themes and use of an orchestra in mind really does get overlooked. A great musical score can really set a tone for a game and for the player.

So many of the songs on that CD reminded me of time spent solving puzzles our playing A Link to the Past at Dan's house.

If you have never played any of the games in the series I really encourage you to do so.

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The Legend Of Zelda Part I

Yesterday I picked up The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword in what continues to be a gaming delight that for me personally has lasted about twenty years (though The Legend Of Zelda series is celebrating it's 25th anniversary this year).

For those unfamiliar with The Legend Of Zelda, it is a series of games produced and published by Nintendo (and created by the same guy that created Mario - Shigeru Miyamoto) and while the main thrust of the story is similar in each game the details are always very different.  Basically the Princess of Hyrule, Zelda, gets placed in some sort of peril and the Hero of Legend, Link, must save her and the land, usually by defeating Ganondorf.

Some would argue that the whole save the princess story is done to death, and how can you create so many games (nine console games I think) based on the same premise.  Honestly I think it's because each of these stories is told in such a unique and compelling way. I'm always thrilled to get the green tunic that Link wears, to get my first sword and shield.  It's fantastic.  I think my favourite moment in each game though is when you find the Master Sword. In each game it means that you have finally taken hold of the weapon you need to defeat whatever particular evil is haunting the land.

Now I did play the original Legend Of Zelda on the NES and Zelda II The Adventure of Link as well, but I didn't really comprehend what I was doing with those games at the time.  It was not until the Super NES and A Link To The Past that I really understood Zelda and played it purposefully.  I remember thinking that the world that was crafted in that game was huge and I was always so proud to solve the puzzles of the dungeons.  It is a game so far removed from the mindless fighting (like Mortal Kombat) and high scores (like Tetris) and levels and segmented worlds (like Super Mario) of so many other games.

Indeed the original Legend of Zelda game created it’s very own genre, and the ones that have followed it have tweaked that idea to different levels of awesomeness each time.

I’d write more but I would like to play some more before I go to work today.  I already have something ‘Zelda’ brewing in my head for tomorrow!

Friend Makin’ Monday: Thanksgiving

If you’ve taken part in FMM then you know the rules. If you’re new, please take a moment to answer this week’s question on your own blog then add your link in the comments section over at: www.alltheweigh.com so we can all see your FMM questions and answers. Please invite your blog readers to add their links here too so everyone has to opportunity to be seen. The idea is to connect with other awesome bloggers so take a moment to post your own FMM post and comment on a couple of other posts. Now it’s time for this week’s topic!

It’s actually not thanksgiving for me here in Canada, we had ours in October.  That probably has something to do with the fact that we are a bit further north for the most part and our ye olde harvest time would have been earlier.  If we waited has waited until now most things would have gotten ruined by frost or we’d be trying to get them out from under the snow some years.

As for traditions, my family has had the same tradition for both Thanksgiving and Christmas for as many years as I can imagine.  We go to my Grandma’s house and have dinner – well typically a very late lunch and early dinner , like brunch but in the afternoon, so ‘linner’ or ‘dunch’ whichever playful combination word you prefer.

There is always turkey and squash – which I did not like until about a year ago – peas corn potatoes and candied yams which only my Grandma seems to make right, my mom cannot make them the same no matter how hard she tries.  Only in the last four or five years had the majority of the cooking passed to my mom and my aunt.  Be for that my Grandma would do it all and be sure that everyone had gotten what they needed before she would even sit with her own meal.  I think it has to do with the era and family style she was raised and lived in, she looked after everyone!

There is always pumpkin pie for dessert, which I love! and at Christmas there is Christmas cake as well – which I hate, both because it’s gross and it would make my dad fart all the way home when it used to be almost a two hour drive from Grandma’s house back to ours.

I don’t think there is anything else specific as far as Traditions for the gathering of those two holidays that I can think of, but I’m sure there will be much more talk about Christmas in the weeks to come.

When Is A Hockey Game Not A Hockey Game

When it’s 3 on 3 (or 4 on 3) the whole time with only one goalie.

I have had the opportunity to play goalie three times in the last seven days.  Last Saturday our regular goalie was away so instead of lining up at my usual spot on right wing for the CFL Flyers I strapped on the pads and played net for our team.  I played pretty well except for one goal that I would like to have back and we won 6-4.  I figure in that game I likely faced about 30-35 shots and so I was quite happy not only with the win, but with the performance.  My team definitely helped be out quite a bit breaking up plays and clearing rebounds along the way.

On Monday I played in my brother-in-law’s place for the local regiment hockey team and again only allowed four goals in what turned out to be a 4-1 loss.  In that game I probably had about 70 shots thrown my way and so while I was not happy with the outcome, I was really pleased with how I played personally.  In this game I did not get much defensive help but at least it was exciting and engaging.

Tonight (Friday that is if you are reading this Saturday morning) I played my usual ‘game’ as goalie for a bunch of guys that play pick up out in Millbrook.  This is the sixth time I’ve played for them and it was by far the least engaging game of hockey I have been in that I can remember, at least from a goalie’s point of view.  We had so few players attending that nearly everyone played the full 50 minutes, so by the end all the skaters were tired, plays were broken up easily and if anyone even had something close to a break the defense simply gave up.  It was not all that fun to be a part of really.  I was bored for long stretches and during those lengths of inactivity I could feel my body stiffening up a bit.  I can see how commentators of NHL games say the hard games are the ones where you hardly face any shots as your mind begins to wonder and it’s easy to lose focus.

I’m glad I get the opportunity to play Friday nights as goalie each week, I’m even more glad that it’s free!  But I’d really enjoy to be in the calibre of games that I was in earlier this week as I feel that it’s in games like that that I am challenged and where I have a better opportunity to improve.  But most of all it is games like that that are fun!

I Miss The Gym

So I have to confess that I have not been to the gym very much in the last two weeks.  This is mainly due to the fact that all last week I was sick and there were things I had to do for this week.  It frustrates me when I can’t get into the gym and while my weight has fluctuated easily within the normal boundaries I feel fat, and soft and weak.

Part of it is that I am not there as much as I used to be simply because I am getting exercise from hockey but also because my tuesday work schedule gets in the way a bit.  Typically I play goalie Friday nights and then as a forward for at least one game Saturday nights.  I think where my issue is coming from this week is that I missed the gym on Sunday due to the fact that I was doing my respite care job starting at 9:00am Sunday morning so that I could take the boys paintballing and that simply gave me too short of a window to get to the gym in the morning.

I did go to the gym Wednesday evening before going to karate and then eating a bit too much sushi.  I loved it, it was Tabada day which consists of ten sets of two exercises done 20 seconds on 10 seconds rest, then switch to the other exercise and repeat four times.  I felt good about that.

I’ve decided that in order to get in as much gym type exercise as I would like I’m going to go buy some weights for at home.  The Tabada day that I do is fairly simply and designed that I need almost no equipment.  Its a day that with a couple of dumbbells and a box I could do at home and that would leave it so that I would have time to get both my arm and leg day in at the gym on the same week.

I miss going to the gym four or five times a week like I was able to do in the summer, so I’ll bring the gym home (and try to remind myself that the hockey rink is a pretty good substitute).

Well, I’m 32 Now

My birthday this year was like the Olympics, we had an opening and closing ceremonies that surrounded the actual event.  On the day of the even I got a few surprises and a few let downs (with valid reasons).  All in all it was great.

This year was not as full of personal epiphanies as last year was, but there was just as many achievements and adventures I think.  We were on another cruise in January, I graduated college and got not one or two but three jobs out of it right away.  Those three jobs boiled down to one fantastic new career at a place I love working.

I began running and entered my first race (and really second competition of any kind) and did just fine in the results, I have managed to stay fit and keep the desire to be at the gym and pursue new fitness goals even after more than a year of being in shape and more than a year and a half of being at the gym almost as much as if it were a part time job.

Year 32 was pretty darn good to me, and from the looks of it year 33 is shaping up to me not so bad either!

I’m especially grateful to my friends who came to celebrate with me and dropped notes on my facebook to say happy birthday.  As I get older I realize that it is things like that, the well wishes and company of others that makes these events memorable.  Thanks!

If you feel like you want to get me something, you can follow me on Twitter ( http://twitter.com/#!/Chrispy47 ) be updated about cool and lame things I do and get notice about new blog posts!

The Contest

I’m not really sure what to offer up as a prize, that is mainly what has been holding me back from having this little contest, especially when I consider the wide range of people I know of at least that read my blog. 

Oh and it just struck me now that I was very excited to hear that Amber got invited to do a guest post on another blog and I thought that was quite exciting last night.  So the prize is a guest post on my blog! Yeah that’s cool, whatever you want to write about as long as you include an introduction about yourself.  There that is the prize.  And something cool that I have not thought of yet.  This of course means that anyone is eligible to win.

‘So what is the contest then?’ you are asking.  Well as I’m sure you have guessed I’ve been playing a lot of Batman and going head to head against the Riddler and so I’m going to pose a few Riddles to you.  You are going to come up with the answers and email them to me so as to not give them away to other folks.  I’ll also include a few questions about facts I have left about myself through the posts on the site.  I’ll leave the contest open for a week.  If there is more than one person that gets all the answers correct then I’ll come up with some sort of tie breaker.

So let the contest begin!!

Riddles – Be honest, don’t use google!

Riddle 1
“If you know me, you’ll want to share me but if you share me, I’ll be gone. What am I?”

Riddle 2
The more there is, the less you see. What could I be?

Riddle 3
“I have a head , a tail, but never any legs. Do you know what I am?”

Riddle 4
”I’ll be right under your feet in the midday sun, you cannot lose me no matter how fast you run, what am I?”

Riddle 5
”Hit me hard and I will crack but you’ll never stop me from staring back.  What am I?”

Facts to find or deduce

1. This year, 2011, I’ll turn ___ on my birthday.
2. I have a _____ belt rank in __(this martial art)__.
3. The first stop I had on my cruise last January that was outside the US was?
4. I lost a bunch of weight in 2010, how much was it? (I did a bit of a recap near the year anniversary date of the beginning of the process).

• Your guest blog post topic might be? (just so I can have an idea).

Email me at chrisbarnes47@gmail.com include answers for all the riddles and questions and a possibility for your guest blog topic.

Contest Closes November 18, 2011 – 11:59:59PM

Thanks in advance for entering, I really look forward to announcing the winner!

What A Week!

What a miserable week!

You may have noticed no posts since Monday.  That is because I slept pretty much all day everyday since then with a fever that hovered around 102.  It was awful.

But the sickness is mostly over now and I can return to living a normal life, well as normal as it gets around here that is.  Pete had a theory about why when he and I get sick it totally knocks us out and that is we live on the edge.  Like having 12-15% body fat is great, except when you need reserve energy for taking on a virus coursing through your veins.  I buy in to that I think because when I was a big guy I got sick once every four years or so and now I have been sick for a week twice in a year.  Of course now I also work with kids so the chances of me catching something are much greater.

I was better enough in time to play goalie for my team last night (instead of my usual place on right wing), because our goalie was away.  We were playing the second best team in the league (the first is us, we have only lost one game so far this year).  I was not spectacular but I was good when it mattered and we won 6-4  that marks my first win in and actual game with set teams and a ref and everything (only on the third try too – one game last year and two this year).

I did mention a contest to celebrate the one year of my blogging and I have not forgotten, I was just asleep for a week!  Later today I promise!

Also today marks one year since I got my black belt at karate!  What a fantastic day that was, it seems both a long time ago and like yesterday at the same time if that is possible.  I remember how tough the grading was and how elated I was to achieve the goal.  Still I recognize how far I have come since the first day and how far I have yet to go.  Karate is something that has given me so much and I am glad to give back by instructing others!

Integrity

Once upon a time I used to frequent a message board on the internet that had to do with all things animated about Batman. It was here that I made my first exchange with another person over the internet.

We didn't have kijiji yet and I think ebay was just barely beginning. So this guy who was in England wanted some Batman episodes and I wanted some Wallace and Grommit toys. We exchanged mailing addresses and each sent the agreed upon items. I actually did this more than once and each time both myself and my trading partner received the items promised.

I bring this up today because I have endeavored to do some trading on the Arkham City board for bonus downloadable content that I can not get in Canada. Out of three trades that I thought I had worked out, one went as planned and two others I trusted that the person on the other end would be honest. They were not, I gave them codes for downloading and got nothing in return.

Are people simply more dishonest these days? Our am I dealing with a different generation who's word means nothing? I'm not sure.

I do know that the people that ripped me of got a very small reward in the end something that is only going to be worth a couple bucks in a months time. But I also know they have no integrity.

Integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is watching over your shoulder to make sure you do it. This world and the internet for sure would be a better place if more people had it.

Sent from Samsung Mobile