Europcar Footy Tipping Comp (2008)

 

UPDATE: This season you'll be registering your tips with www.oztips.com and I am pleased to announce that Europcar has allowed access to the site from our work PC's! Now... no excuses for handing in late tips! Best of luck guys!

Get Real Jetstar

As a fairly regular traveller and as someone who has worked in the airport enviroment for the past 8 years I was disgusted to see how Jetstar has shirked their duties and attempted to fob off their customers onto Sydney Airport officials after their flights out missed the 11pm curfew time. Bad weather or not, if there are signs that the airline were going to have customers stranded (some probably miles from home) at a closed terminal which sometimes is home to rats as big as cats then they should have a policy to provide emergency accomodation. If they don't feel it's their duty or obligation they should do it anyway and seek compensation from Sydney Airport authorities later. Throwing people with their luggage onto the pavement or leaving them to fend for themselves as staff run for their cars to get home is not something the public will tolerate.

 

I have been in their situation both as a customer and as a staff member. I understand perfectly well that after 10 plus hours you wanna bail and go home. But even in my job, if we know of a customer who is on a delayed flight, providing that the customer did the right thingand gave us that flight number, we will wait till as long as necesary. We proved this way back in 2001 when Ansett went bust and had staff that stayed till 2am to help with stranded customers.

 

I just think Jetstar needs an uppercut for this one.

 

The End of "Kevin" 07

2007 is just about done with. Time to reflect back on a year that was and make bigger, bolder plans for 2008. It's not going to be hard to name my personal highlight for the year gone by. Buying a townhouse with my wife along with a new car doesn't happen without leaving an impact on your life. My whole outlook on life has been totally changed with this recent event. I no longer even really think to buy new Xbox titles. I no longer think to lounge around the place on my days off. Everything I do now has to contribute in some way, shape or form to the "family". I use quotation marks as I am more use to a family being a mother, father and some brat kids. But I guess our cat, Foo Foo, more than makes up for the void of not having kids.

 

Anyone reading this who is renting should really look into diving into buying an place of their own now before the price hike hits like we think it will now with the change of government. There is a great deal of satisfaction of putting your feet up under a roof in your name!

 

To all my mates and pals who congratulated us on our new place I'd just like to say a big big thank you to you all! The house warming party was a great success. The BBQ was my personal highlight from that day! Yutang and myself hope that 2008 will be full of many more BBQ's and get togethers. We hope that the coming year will bring great news to you all and that you kick all your goals you aim for!

 

Cheers!

Bueller... Bueller... Bueller...

This whole Movember nonsense has been catching on. But it's for a great cause so most of us will let the porno mo's and handlebars slide while the money for prostate cancer and Beyond Blue roll in. Blackout's very own MOn capitain, Rob Spit, has been very enthusiastic and with strange results! We never ever pictured it before but Rob's mo now has transformed him into the hapless, relentless principle from that classic 80's movie, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Ed Rooney was his name (the character that is) and being compared to a DVD freeze frame the vote was anonymous... he's a dead ringer!

 

On a serious note if you would like to contribute to this great cause then click here and sponsor Rob by entering his registration number (105174). It'll help relieve the pain of being victimised by High School students everywhere!

Top 5 Video Gaming Moments

You know it's been a while now. A while of me playing video games. From my earliest memories of snaking free games out of the milk bar owner by simply hanging around the shop long enough. Also accidentally knocking out the power plug when some kids much much older than me were playing. To learning what "tea bagging" a mate online in Halo and getting a visit by a stripper while playing Uno! I got to thinking... what are my best memories of playing games all these (25 odd) years? So... here I go:

 

1) Halo LAN Party - This to me was the pinnacle of gaming. 4 Xbox's, 4 players with headsets in different rooms killing each other and letting the other guys know it! Firsit started out with Halo 1 and we figured "it can't be that hard to connect these babies up can it?". So we strung 2 together and what we started... we still haven't finished to this date!

 

2) Get Ready! - Actual speech in a video game! The year was 1990 and we were all hearing about how big Sega's Mega Drive was going to be. But to actually have the Mega Drive in our house (before the official release) and have Space Harrier's beautiful sound blaring out the speakers was a treat. But hearing that voice ring out "GET READY!" in crisp 6 channel stereo... man. Hard to explain to a kid now how big a deal that was. Guess you just had to be there!

 

3) Tiger Upper Cut! - Super Nintendo killed it when they brought real arcade gaming to the house hold. In fact the whole Street Fighter thing in itself was just so god damn big. Never before and never again did we see one singular title dominate an arcade hall. I'm talking about a whole string of SF2 machines lining the Timezone wall. Spining Bird Kick!

 

4) Play by Play! Sega attempted to pull this off. But they failed miserably. I'm talking about Joe Montana's Sports Talk Football. But years later EA achieved what Sega dreamed of. Commentating in a sports game. I honestly didn't think it could be done so well. Especially in a Hockey game as the game flows so so quickly! But when we bought NHL 98 (PSX) we were in for a surprise! "Wow a truck hit him!" "He shoots he scores". The players names and teams all got commentated on. It was freaking amazing technology and one still in use today. Well done EA!

 

5) Revenge of Shinobi - I include this title for one reason only. Presentation. This was the first title to get it right! The music was from none other than Yuzo Koshiro and it was stinking hot! That guy knew how to milk a 16 bit sound processor for all it was worth! But it wasn't just the music. It was the whole package. When you fired up that game it was no ordinary title sequence. From the moment you saw that ninja pop up and deflect all those ninja stars... you knew that this was going to be a special game! Was one of the big reasons why I wanted a Sega Mega Drive at the time!

 

If you have a list of your own top 5 moments or even just one special moment... leave a comment!

Foxtel Installation Delay

Today I was meant to be watching useless TV. Not the free to air kino. The 40 odd channels of shit type! Foxtel that is. But because this place we moved to was built in the early 90's they didn't build them future proof then. The Foxtel dudes couldn't find the installation points so we need to drill one in. Problem is... I need permission to do that or risk having to do it all and pay a fine. DOH!

 

So ESPN and the History channel will have to wait another 3 weeks... till then... life in the fast lane with Ray on 9 will have to suffice.

Sydney's Internet Blackhole

Having just moved to Jannali, a fairly wealthy suburb, a figured internet connection would be nothing of a hassle. So I went about the process of re-negotiating a contract and arranging the re-connection. First thing I did once the connection was up was catch up on all my emails etc. Even playing Uno on Xbox Live was not a big prob. My real problem only was realised tonight. Halo 3. I was in the middle of carrying out a double kill when my connection went pear shaped and I droped out of the match. Once, twice... every flamin' time. So I rished to the net and looked up my area and any known problems. Found out that I am connected to the Como exchange and I  only have ADSL and not ADSL2 connection. ARGH! iinet have no plans to roll out a DSLAM in our area but TPG do... when? TBA is their answer. So I may close my Xbox Live account till this day occurs. I have gone from a blistering connection at Kogarah to a measly 1,635kbps. All I know is that I never had many connection problems with iiNet at Kogarah. Now I don't know how I'm gonna get my Xbox Live fix...