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I got home from Seattle at 2:00 am this morning. :-P And then I went to school 6 hours later. Boy, am I dumb or what?
But I have to say it was a geektastic weekend. I didn't get anything done school wise, which is not good at all, but I had some fun. Before hitting the road for Seattle I went to Video Games Live. I was mostly unfamiliar with some of the games, but it was so cool to hear the local orchestra playing music from video games. Everything from classic stuff like Frogger to recent games like Halo. And I got to play some Halo 3. Not exactly a cause for celebration but I had never played a Halo game before. I'm not really sure what the hype is all about; you just run around and shoot things.
The drive to Seattle was long. 14 hours. In my sister's tiny car. When we hit the U.S. border the customs officer asked us why we were heading to the U.S. and we shamefully told him we were headed to Seattle to see a Battlestar Galactica movie. Naturally the guy asks why drive all this way just to see a movie and we had to give our geeky explanation. The officer then asked us what we did for a living (PR, technical writer, student, programmer) and our answer seemed geeky enough that he let us pass.
So the rest of the trip pretty much just involved shopping. The theatre was right by a mall, the Super Mall, so being Canadians with a strong dollar in the land of lower American prices we went a little crazy. ;-) I found the Doctor Who season three DVDs. That made me happy, though a little sad, too. It felt like none of the main stores, like Target, had the DVDs. In Canada I could totally expect to find Doctor Who DVDs at Wal-Mart or Zellers. Probably because in Canada anyone can turn on the TV to CBC and see an episode. In the U.S. you have to have Sci Fi so the demand isn't as high. My sister's friend who came along also bought a crap load of beer. Apparently beer's dirt cheap in the U.S.
I'm not sure the drive was totally worth it. "Razor" was okay, but it wasn't awesome. Plus "Razor" got leaked on the Internet like a week before so people were watching it well before the screenings. The staff at the theatre were also a bit lame; they didn't seem very organized. And there wasn't much promotion. The video game Mass Effect and the new media player from Microsoft were also being hyped but all we were shown of both were ads. Doesn't exactly spur people to go out and buy these things when they're not explained all that well.
Getting out of Seattle was a huge hassle. It took us 2 hours before we hit the highway. Hence me arriving home at 2:00 am. Driving in the dark, not fun. But I think the lateness helped at the border. We were worried that sister's friend's beer would get us into trouble since there was a lot of it and we weren't sure how much we were allowed to take back. The equivalent of 10 six packs is what the friend bought. So we're waiting at the border, our receipts all ready. The border guard asks us how much money we spent and we give him a figure for the each of us. Now, he doesn't even ask what we bought. We tell him the numbers and then we're off. So, no duty on the beer. Yay for late night border crossings and tired border guards!
And wow, people talk a lot in three days. I have so much LJ to catch up on. And TV, too. :-D
But I have to say it was a geektastic weekend. I didn't get anything done school wise, which is not good at all, but I had some fun. Before hitting the road for Seattle I went to Video Games Live. I was mostly unfamiliar with some of the games, but it was so cool to hear the local orchestra playing music from video games. Everything from classic stuff like Frogger to recent games like Halo. And I got to play some Halo 3. Not exactly a cause for celebration but I had never played a Halo game before. I'm not really sure what the hype is all about; you just run around and shoot things.
The drive to Seattle was long. 14 hours. In my sister's tiny car. When we hit the U.S. border the customs officer asked us why we were heading to the U.S. and we shamefully told him we were headed to Seattle to see a Battlestar Galactica movie. Naturally the guy asks why drive all this way just to see a movie and we had to give our geeky explanation. The officer then asked us what we did for a living (PR, technical writer, student, programmer) and our answer seemed geeky enough that he let us pass.
So the rest of the trip pretty much just involved shopping. The theatre was right by a mall, the Super Mall, so being Canadians with a strong dollar in the land of lower American prices we went a little crazy. ;-) I found the Doctor Who season three DVDs. That made me happy, though a little sad, too. It felt like none of the main stores, like Target, had the DVDs. In Canada I could totally expect to find Doctor Who DVDs at Wal-Mart or Zellers. Probably because in Canada anyone can turn on the TV to CBC and see an episode. In the U.S. you have to have Sci Fi so the demand isn't as high. My sister's friend who came along also bought a crap load of beer. Apparently beer's dirt cheap in the U.S.
I'm not sure the drive was totally worth it. "Razor" was okay, but it wasn't awesome. Plus "Razor" got leaked on the Internet like a week before so people were watching it well before the screenings. The staff at the theatre were also a bit lame; they didn't seem very organized. And there wasn't much promotion. The video game Mass Effect and the new media player from Microsoft were also being hyped but all we were shown of both were ads. Doesn't exactly spur people to go out and buy these things when they're not explained all that well.
Getting out of Seattle was a huge hassle. It took us 2 hours before we hit the highway. Hence me arriving home at 2:00 am. Driving in the dark, not fun. But I think the lateness helped at the border. We were worried that sister's friend's beer would get us into trouble since there was a lot of it and we weren't sure how much we were allowed to take back. The equivalent of 10 six packs is what the friend bought. So we're waiting at the border, our receipts all ready. The border guard asks us how much money we spent and we give him a figure for the each of us. Now, he doesn't even ask what we bought. We tell him the numbers and then we're off. So, no duty on the beer. Yay for late night border crossings and tired border guards!
And wow, people talk a lot in three days. I have so much LJ to catch up on. And TV, too. :-D
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