Sunday, December 14, 2014

Over the past few months I must say that I've grown to dislike this blog challenge more and more. There have been a bunch of times where I'll have an idea for a blog post, but not write it simply because it wasn't part of the challenge and I was already so far behind I can't possibly justify not writing a post for the challenge. This led me to also feel a need to have truly great ideas for challenge posts since I had put other ideas on hold for them so they had to be "worth" it. All in all it led to me writing nothing and that sucks. So I want this thing to end, but I am stubbornly determined to see it through. What is a man to do? My answer is to take the remaining 15 topics and just give you the speed round answers. To give some sort of flavor variant to this I'll limit myself to 140 characters for each question. Basically if I can't tweet it I have to shorten it. lets go

#15 Popular notion society has wrong. 
The freind zone is a massively overused term that has people use to deal with rejection. 9/10 times shes just not into you. Deal.

#16 Where my name comes from
First I was ClanToll, then this blog Critical Canuck came along. 3 C's = TripleC shortened to TripGG. 

#17 Favorite movie. 
Slightly harder, usually I just say Episode 5 of Star Wars. However I'm going to go with Shawshank this time around. 

#18 What I would say to a 16 year old version of me.
Why are you so dumb? Could you just like stop for like 5 minutes? Yeah that'd be great.

#19 Death Row Meal
Big steak and peppercorn sauce, poutine with more meat on the side, ice cold cherry coke to drink. Potato skins and wings to open. No green. 

#20 My City
Edmonton is a cool place, I actually like the cold, plenty to do, public transport is nice, it is kinda far from like everything else on earth though.

#21 Three Fears
Not fulfilling potential I have. Becoming too jaded. The new Star Wars might suck.

#22 Nicknames
JJ, Jonny, Mr. JT, Papa Jon, Harry Potter, idk prob missed a few.

#23 Favourite Pizza
Homemade Pizza made by my own momma, can't beat it.

#24 What makes me Unique
Idk, I guess I'm more ok with making an idiot of myself than most people. Mostly cause I really don't care what people think.

#25 Perfect 1st Date
Prob home cooked meal at my/her place, then some activity where plenty of conversation can occur. Good conversation is very important.

#26 10 Random songs
Ok can't keep the 140 character thing here. 1. Bend and Break, Keane 2. Going to the Ceremony, Kid Cudi 3. Problem, Arianna Grande 4. Make the Money, Macklemore/Ryan Lewis 5. Bodysnatchers, Radiohead 6. Volcano, U2 7. Radioactive, Imagine Dragons. 8. Halo 3: One Final Effort, London Philarmonic Orchestra. 8. The Riders of Rohan, Howard Shore. 9. The Way I Am, Eminem. 10. B#$#%, don't kill my vibe, Kendrick Lamar. Nice.

#27 Drugs/alcohol
Don't do drugs kids, drinking and driving is bad. Don't be a moron.

#28 Process of writing
I look at the topic, take a rough idea and write a draft in my notebook and then type it up making minor revisions usually. Post when done.

#29 Being single
It's ok I guess. I'm pretty ok with it, but am ready to find a relationship. Not desperate enough yet to do anything silly.

#30 How'd the challenge go?
Awfully, see 1st paragraph.

WE'RE DONE BOYS. NEXT FEW POSTS WILL BE LAZY LISTS OF THINGS I LIKED/DISLIKED THIS YEAR. PEACE BUDS.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Five Easy ways to my Heart

Man it took way longer to get this post together than I wanted to. Freaking school and things getting in the way man. Anyways I'm going to talk about Five different ways to my heart. Now originally I had thought that I would go about this pretty much the same way I have gone about every other post here, with me going a bit more in depth about my reasoning for choosing certain things over others and not just listing a bunch of things. Today I'm going to cut back on the explanations a bit, down to like a sentence or two, but I'll also include some honorable mentions so the post won't be 1/2 a page. So let's get to it!

First off, Food! Surprise I like to eat! Just like all those other humans on the planet. Simple meals  like X with rice and a sauce are going to be the best use of time to get my attention.

Second, be funny. It's pretty cliche since everyone lists this as something they want in the a significant other, but it's because it's important! If nothing else just roll with my sarcasm and we should be just fine.

Third, try to be cool about my weird little obsession with E-sports. It's not for everyone and I know that, I love it though. If you don't automatically dismiss it I promise to not bore you to tears with 4 hour lectures on "Rotations".

I know it's not me, but I don't got time for photo shopping. 
Fourth, Since you are going to be cool with my strange hobbies, I can be cool with your strange hobbies, but first I need you to talk about them. Don't go overboard, but I can promise to never be dismissive of your hobby.

Lastly on this list I ask that you have decent taste in movies/music/TV etc. There are shows beyond One Tree Hill, music beyond Country and Pop, and movies made by companies other than Disney. Some of them are even good!

Alright we got the main portion of this done, so let's go through a few more honorable mentions, and note that most of these will be jokes so don't get offended if I say something you don't agree with.

#1 Honorable mention! Be attractive.
#2 Don't be unattractive.
#3 Read this blog, share it with your friends!
#4 $$$$$
#5 $$$$$ family
#6 Have an uncle that works for Microsoft/Blizzard/Riot/Disney/Marvel/The President
#7 If you hate the character Tauriel because she's not in the books, go home.
#8 Like birds
#9 Know the 157th digit of Pie and not the other ones
#10 Drink Coke, not Pepsi and definitely not diet Pepsi.

I'd do more but I have class to attend now. I'll be streaming some of the new Dragon Age game and giving some of my first impressions tonight, or something along those lines. That will be at http://www.twitch.tv/tripgg and I'll be going up around 9:30 hopefully and going for a couple of hours. Come by and make fun of me! Peace buds!

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

My Lottery Winnings

So I sort of fell off there for a bit, but I am definitely not out of it! I've still got the need to give you something to read! (bad rhymes ho!) anyways I'm going to talk about what I would do if I won the lottery. Following some janky math I figured 35 million would be a suitable number to work with for this hypothetical. Now first things first. That is an unreal amount of money right? jeez, hard to even comprehend the idea of spending it all, but I will try for your entertainment. Also as a side note, for the sake of this post we will assume that this is AFTER TAXES pay out. Ok? ok.

The first thing to do when obtaining an massive sum of money is to make sure that you stay absurdly rich for the rest of your life. This for me would involve finding some sort of financial adviser to handle the task of investing the money I have safely and with intelligence. So I turn 30 million of my total winnings over to the task of investing and the likes. I'm not a expert but I'm pretty sure that much invested properly should keep me very rich for the rest of my life rather easily. Now we have 5 million dollars left, and I'd just one more responsible thing before I start goofing around, something simple like making sure anyone in my family has their debts taken care off, which shouldn't even put that big of a dent into my money unless there is some crazy crime debt stuff going on like on TV, but like come on, what are the odds of that? For the sake of numbers we'll say I dedicated half a million to this. I Definitely don't think I'd come even close to using all that but whatever.

What are the odds of my dad being Heisenburg? Zero, it'd be my mom obviously
It seems silly to say this, but I'd also like to move this blog onto a site of its own as opposed to being hosted here on blogger, not that I don't appreciate this service, but I'd like to have it be functioning on it's own. I'd also get some quality design people to come in and make sure it's well built looks nice. It's something that I would really like to have done.

Four and a half million dollars kicking around to just go be dumb with. (#TheDream) Even that is an absurd amount of money to spend. HOW DO RICH PEOPLE DO THIS!?!?!?! oh right yachts and things like that.. nvm figured it out. This is the part I think more people want to hear about since it we all love to indulge these fantasy fulfillment at least a little bit. First thing I would do for fun with my money would be to traveling. My plan for this would be to essentially attend a huge number of E-sports events around the world and  then spend something along the lines of a week after the event to soak in the place I am at. This gives me a solid start in destinations. Now that I'm rich I'll definitely be eating pretty good every night as well, prob not eating out every day, but being able to buy good food to cook for every day is nice. (RIP Ichiban) I'd buy a totally baller custom PC that I would probably have someone with more tech expertise than me set up just to make sure nothing is messed up. A new car would also probably be in order as well, but nothing super fancy. In fact I'd probably just stick with a Corolla, but have it be new. The last really stupid thing I would like to do would be to go to a fast food place, order so much food that they'll tell me that it's going to take like 15 minutes, and then tell them that I'll be going to another fast food joint and I'll be back. I really just want to see the looks on their face, plus with that much food I should be set up to throw a pretty nice party.

This party will require a great venue though, and I'll also want it to be my own place, so I suppose a new apartment/house will be in order. Not a bachelor pad though since I quite enjoy having roommates, I would probably still charge rent on them, but it would be at quite a discounted rate. I'm not really comfortable with just letting anyone free load off of me you know? Another aspect of a new place to live would be that I would have an office. There is something about writing in one's bedroom that I find... less than ideal. It would also give me a good space to continue to goof around and do creative things whenever I feel like it. Hold up. When did it become a priority for me to have space to be creative? I was never like that as a kid. Anyways, I'd stay in Edmonton for at least another year or so, but would be ready to move to a new city as needs be.

I don't have to be really attached to any one place since I won't have any commitments to a particular place. School would definitely become more of a hobby kind of thing, like I'd go just because I want to learn more, but only like part-time and I wouldn't be super concerned with when I graduate, since I don't really need to jump into the job field that early. I'd be there for the pursuit of knowledge and not the pursuit of a piece of paper to get me hired like university seems to be like for most people. Maybe I'd attend schools like NAIT (Northern Alberta Institute of Technology) to learn some of the ins and outs of specific jobs. Cooking classes for sure, things like that.

Lastly, I'd put money into E-sports. Most likely in the form of sponsoring a team since I don't have the know how to run a team, but I want to be involved. With the level of buying power I would have and since it would just be me sponsoring instead or a corporation that could potentially rival sponsors already in place I could probably work with any team/player I wanted to. It's not like there are teams that don't want more money to work with. Personally I'd like to put my money into two specific teams. Cloud9 for sure, I have a lot of respect for their League of Legends team and think the owner Jack Etienne is absurdly smart with how he's running the entire organization. Definitely think he would put that money to great use. I would also like to work with Axiom E-sports if given the chance. While they only operate in the StarCraft II scene, I think the team is amazingly well run and I would love it if they had the resources to expand their roster out. I think it's for the best that I would work with organizations rather than through sponsoring individual players mostly due to my previously stated lack of experience in handling business like this and I would much rather just entrust people, but I would have to go with organizations that are already established and trusted since I actually want the money to be put to good use rather than have it be used in one of those dumb scams that seems to frequent E-sports often. Plus how cool would it be to have something like a graphic for this blog up on a Cloud 9/Axiom Jersey? Only cool to me? Right. Don't care, it'd be awesome.

So try and wrap up this massive wall of text. Invest most of the money to stay rich forever, pay off family debts, buy new house/car, go to school for fun rather than constantly stressing, new place, blog on it's own site, lots of travel and my face on a Cloud 9 jersey or something like that. Peace buds. 

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

One of My Embarassing Moments

Well this ought to be a pretty easy post to write no? I mean the hardest part will surely be deciding which of the many embarrassing moments from my life to choose from. Just the other day even I managed to walk headfirst into a door on campus, that was awesome, really a superb display of grace and control. Anyone that has seen me play games like Just Dance/Wii Sports and such have also received a lot of first hand experience in me embarrassing myself. There is one thing that really sticks out in my mind though.

What my brain was saying, too bad I didn't listen. 
This is a story that some may have heard recently, but I don't think that they will mind hearing it again so soon. I was on a double date that my friend Brad had set up. The date had been going decently well I think. People seemed to be enjoying themselves and all was well and good until very late into the date. Then I goofed up. You see I am not that good with remembering names, and I had in fact forgotten the name of Brad's date. I had gotten by just fine the rest of the night by using general terms or addressing the entire group at once, but near the end I got cocky.

somewhere in the deep recess of my mind I had apparently remembered her name. I didn't even matter at this point since the date was practically over, and the smart thing to do would be to not take that risk, wait until Brad had dropped her off and then confirm with him, since the worst that could happen there would  be he laughs at what an idiot I am, but he already knows I'm an idiot so it doesn't matter.  I instead made the bold and idiotic choice and just asked her a simple question and addressing her with her name, Jessica. Suffice to say her name was not Jessica. Luckily for me no one got angry, rather everyone there burst out into hysterical laughter. At this point I have no real choice but to own up to my stupidity and own it. Apparently it's now a joke between us all that I just call her Jessica anyways. I'm not really all that fond of the joke to be honest, but as long as other people get a kick I guess I can keep reminding myself of what an idiot I am. It's Karma really. The moral of this story though is to laugh at your embarrassing moments and don't let them haunt you. While I might like it if everyone pretended it never happened, it's better that I do remember so I don't do it again. Hopefully... Also screw sliding doors man, those things are totally out to get us all! You have been warned!!! Peace buds.

Friday, October 3, 2014

Favourite Band at the Moment

This post promises to be shorter than the last one, if for nothing else there really isn't a whole lot to be said about this particular question. Onto the question though, and man am I glad that I'm writing this now instead of in April/May. Back then I was in a stint of listening to 50 cent constantly, and that would have been such a pain to write about since in reality it's not that good. Instead I get to write about Keane since I've been listening to them a lot again. This is good since they are probably in the top 3 of my favorite bands ever and you know... they're really good.

One of their many great albums, give em a try if you haven't already
So why do I find myself always coming back to this band? Seriously, I go through these phases of listening where I'll listen to a couple of groups obsessively and then burnout (remember that term?) and find myself back on Keane, I never seem to burnout on these guys though. I think the simplest answer to that is that so many of their songs just connect with me on a very emotional level. More so than any other band I find personal connections in their songs. Not all of these emotion connections are happy ones though, let's get that straight. I think the best word to describe the feelings I have when I listen to Keane would be, "bittersweet."  The main reason would be that I was introduced to Keane by a very dear friend of mine, and one that I have not seen in a long time. I miss them very much and regret that we've somewhat grown apart. The music does remind me of those good times we had though and I appreciate it for that.

Welp. That's not really a happy note to end on now is it? I'm not going to use Corgis to fix it either, just wallow in sadness with me Kappa.

^ = Grey Face with no space

Sunday, September 28, 2014

My Dream Job

I bet you all didn't see me getting another one of these things written up so quick eh? Well surprise! I did it and there ain't nothing you can do about it. Anywho before I get started on this topic. (12/30 if you are keeping count.) I would like to establish a "qualification" of sorts to the question. This said qualification is simply that money doesn't really enter the equation. When one talks about a "dream job" I feel like you should be looking for job satisfaction and not a fat cheque at the end of the day, because that ends up being the factor that deters a lot of people from pursuing these dream careers. So many of us would much rather, read/write, act, create art, music, or other similar activities, but the unsavory truth is that these jobs are rather top heavy in the sense that if you aren't the best at those things you will probably struggle to keep a roof over a family's head. So we compromise and choose careers that make us the money we need while hoping that we'll have enough time to pursue those interests in our free time. So with that in mind I decided that for this question I would assume that whatever I chose would provide enough to comfortably provide. Fair? Fair. Not like it matters whether you agree with this qualification anyways.

My dream job at this point in my life would be to work as a coach for a professional league of legends team. I figure the majority of people who read this blog are going to read that and think to themselves, "That's not even a real thing and therefore cheating." So I'll try to give a brief overview of what a coach does for a team. I'll also try to be a bit more general since this could easily be a post on its own. So basically a coach's job is to give their teams the best possible chance to succeed outside of actually playing the games for them. This can vary from a wide range of things from planning out team strategies and analyzing opponents games to find potential weaknesses to even to the role of mediator between teammates in solving internal issues within a team. These issues can be directly related to in game problems like two players not communicating properly with each other during a game to something as silly as two players not getting along outside of the game. The former can be a problem that easily bleeds into the game since the common practice at this time is to have the entire team live together under one roof. Another responsibility of a Coach is to find other teams to practice against or "scrim" with. It's actually quite similar to how coaching works in traditional sports, funny how the works out isn't it? Just on a smaller scale.

Like this, but with less yelling. 
Some of these reasons include that it would be a career in E-sports, something I'm quite passionate about. (See my previous post) It would also be challenging task to perform since there are a lot of things that need to be done and some of them, such as planning out a strategy for the team are evolving tasks that are never totally complete. A job like this also encourages my competitive side since I'd hopefully be working with a team that wants to be the best right? Now some might ask, "Why not just be a player though? Wouldn't getting paid to play the game be more fun?" In short, no you silly goose. Longer answer is that I think being a coach would be better for a few reasons and yes I'll explain it to you thanks for asking. Sometimes you play one particular game for a long time and then become so bored with it that you just stop completely, this is known as "burnout" and I'm quite prone to it, you know what you can't do if you play one game for a living? Stop playing it randomly. So that doesn't fit me. Players in the professional scene are also constantly up for ridicule on sites such as Twitter and Reddit, and I don't really want to be just eating hate from random strangers all day everyday. Coaches receive that hate as well, but not nearly as bad as the players do.  Lastly while a player must be well versed in the strategies of League of Legends they don't have the opportunity to fully immerse themselves in it since they have to spend a large portion of time practicing being good at the game. Since you know, the best strategy doesn't mean anything if you can't execute it and the strategy of League of Legends is what I appreciate most about the game.

So there you have it, my dream job. Why aren't I actively pursuing this? See the first paragraph. It's a massive risk and only the absolute best even manage to get paid positions and even then it's not some massive bag of money to be had. So I'll stick with what I'm doing because I do love it and it will at least land me a steady paycheck... hopefully. Peace out buddies.

You made it to the end! Here is a Corgi with a bow tie for your troubles. 

Friday, September 26, 2014

Misconceptions About Me

Before I get on to answering this question, (Yes I am going to just ignore the fact I haven't updated this in months, deal.) I'd just like to quickly mention what a massive mind game writing this actually is. Trying to not only see yourself in the eyes of others, but to then also try to see what people have wrong about you is a very surreal experience to say the least. Now on to the question!

So I think that a lot of people get the impression that I am an apathetic person. I can totally understand why people would get this impression of me since I know there are many times that I will vocally express my lack of care for a particular idea or thing. Even as some people would call it, "inappropriate" to blatantly express such disinterest in a topic but eh, what do I care? Now some people have the particular circumstance of seeing or hearing me express this disinterest of things in a rapid succession and have arrived at the conclusion that I simply don't care about anything at all! While I can understand why a person might have come to this conclusion, since it isn't the biggest jump to make I can assure you that this is far from true!

Than what is true one might ask? Simply that while there are many things that I really don't care about there are some that I truly and honestly do care about, and believe me I care quite deeply about these things. My family and friends stick out as people I care quite a bit about, but that much should be obvious though? I also have a deep appreciation for music, movies, games, E-sports, comedy, and funnily enough, freedom. These are just a handful of things that I care about, but are probably some of the things I care the most about. So the next time you are thinking about me (come on you do it all the time!) and your mind turns to apathy try to steer away from that line of thought. If you think I'm lying right now just be sure to try and cause some sort of outburst of emotion from me by saying really silly things like, "Attack of the Clones is actually a pretty good movie." or "Wouldn't it just be better if the government was in control of the internet?" I'm sure I'll have some sort of emotionally charged statement to give about that. Peace out buds.

Seriously, this movie is such garbage and don't you dare try to defend it.