Dwight is one of my favorite characters on the series, and I wish that I could be half as funny as he is. In this Top 10 you have Jim to thank for the majority of the pranks pulled on Dwight. If you have never seen the Office before it is one of the best shows on television right now and deserves to be watched. The show is basically the new Simpsons where you can do anything in real life and have it somehow relate back to a scene in the Office. It is my number one show on TV and I look forward to watching it every week.
Easy 1000 point Boost to XboxLive Gamerscore
I noticed a video circulating around for a new game just coming out. The game is called Avatar The Last Airbender — the burning Earth. The video clearly shows how to get 1000 achievement points in less than 2 or so minutes. THQ should be ashamed of themselves for making such a mockery of the achievements system but I guess this is one way to increase the amount of rentals and possibly sales of a sub-par mediocre game.  Have a look at the video as its posted on Youtube here. Definitely easier than the 1000 points from King Kong.
Google’s $10M Android Phone App Contest
Google has launched the Android Developer Challenge, which will provide $10 million in awards for great mobile apps built on the Android platform. The first round of the Contest will have $5 million in prizes with the winners having to have their projects in by March 3. There will be 50 projects that earn $25,000 and then out of those 10 projects will received additional funds of around $100,000. I hope I can think up some really cool neat idea and try to get it done. It would be really awesome to get paid to program something cool like this. I just need to think up a cool project idea and I’m set.
New Gold Rush (Soaring Prices) Spurs Rush To Build World’s Deepest Mines
South African companies (among others) racing to build new “ultra deep” mines–deepest now at 2.5 miles, where rocks shatter like glass, temperatures are nearly unmanageable and escalating risks to miners are huge. But gold prices are at historic highs…and there’s big, record-breaking money to be made. The mine that is going to be 2.5 miles deep will have temperatures around 55 degrees Celsius. The mine operators are going to have to find new ways to keep their mines cool. As well no cable can be 2.5 miles long so they will also have to find new ways to get people down to these depths. It is truly remarkable how far we are going to extract natural resources from the Earth.
Canadian Dollar Worth $1.10 American
The Canadian dollar today reached up to a new all time high while it was trading today. It was over $1.10 for a bit today before it crept back a bit. The new heights that the dollar has been reaching are very surprising to many people. There are fears that the high dollar will cause a slowdown in the economy as less goods will be exported to the United States and more people are travelling to the United States for shopping. Right now it continuously appears that Canadian retail is ripping off the consumer. There has been some progress recently with stores like Walmart and Zellers bringing American prices across the border. But now with the dollar trading past parity it makes me wonder, why are they stopping with just matching some American prices and not beating them? I suppose it takes some time to work through their inventories and renegotiate contracts with the distributors. Whatever the case, I just hope we aren’t stuck with higher prices in Canada, and the inability to sell our goods to the United States since thats just an all around negative for Canada.
1000s of Retro Magazine issues for free!
The complete retro gamer‘s old magazine paradise listing. Online available freeware old magazines also include: Zero, Mean Machines, C+VG, Amiga Action, Your Sinclair, The One, Compute!, Official Saturn Magazine and many more. Some of the sites are very good and I would fully recommend taking a look at whats available if you are into gaming. It sure is fun to see how they use to think the graphics back in the day were amazing. It brings back some memories of my old magazine subscriptions to electronic gaming monthly, computer gaming world, Nintendo Power, and so on.
University Strike Confirmed for Friday
News Talk 980 is reporting that the University Strike is confirmed to begin right away Friday morning.  This follows the two hour rally that occurred on Tuesday. CUPE, the union representing the workers, says that the University refuses to go back to the bargaining table and this job action is required. School on Friday could be a whole lot more interesting. I expect it will be things as usual tomorrow but if the strike continues through next week I expect some changes at the University. Hopefully people know that everyone is on strike and clean up their messes. It’s almost daily that someone spills their drink someplace and walks away from it.
**update**Â The university has a webpage setup to show how the strike action is going to affect students.
Helpful Resources for Learning Chinese
I am taking my second Chinese course of University and I have been really enjoying it. Going to class and labs with the assignments has been really good at reinforcing the language. By attending class and participating I can really learn the material well. Right now I am feeling fairly confident in my abilities and I am continually impressed by how much I am learning. I have also benefited from a couple of online resources that allow me to further advance my knowledge as well as look up what I already know. I hope you find these resources helpful if you ever learn Chinese.
My most favorite online resource is www.xuezhongwen.net . This site is a great resource as I can look up Chinese characters that I don’t know the pinyin for or I can search using the pinyin or I can type out the characters and look up the meaning. Overall I would definitely recommend this site to anyone who is learning Chinese.
Another site I really enjoy is the Chinese Flashcards on Yellowbridge. These can be really helpful when you are trying to learn Chinese characters. I have spent many hours doing these flashcards and they have been very beneficial in making me memorize the character, pinyin, and meaning.
University of Regina Staff on Strike
Hundreds of University clerical, maintenance, custodial, and other staff were all on the picket line today at 11am. The workers are looking for higher wages, benefits among other things. The workers set up a gathering with their pickets right in the center of the University of Regina’s Academic Green. So far today it has been classes as usual. It is not expected the striking will affect classes or force any cancellations but that could change if there is any safety concerns. As always I will update with any updates as they happen. As well, people might be able to check out the webcam at the university to possibly see the strike.
**update 12am ** they have taken their marching into the building and chanting as they walk around the University.  I’m not sure how well the profs will be affected by the megaphones passing by their classrooms. Should be interesting to see what they will do next.
**update 1pm ** the striking workers aren’t on the Academic green anymore and I can’t see them in the hallways anymore. Maybe they are picketing someplace else around the University or they just went back to work instead.
Univeristy of Regina Strike
This is a what if situation I’m playing out in my head right now. What if there is the strike at the university and classes are cancelled because of it. Would the students who had classes cancelled receive reimbursement for the missed classes? I know I would want reimbursement since the students pay a lot of money to attend those classes and if they are cancelled on no part of their own doing they should be compensated.  With classes costing upwards over $500 each, class time is very valuable and this could result in a lot of compensation payments paid out by the university. Of course this is a complete what if and most likely won’t happen. The university is surely capable of running off management workers… right??