The Billionty-Oneth Geek: Older Than 8 Since 1991

Continuing with my Campaign of Cheapness, I finished reading Adland by James P. Othmer this past week at Chapters. I picked it up not knowing anything about it but I knew two things: a.) I wanted to read a book that was somewhat related to business and/or economics and b.) it was on a display shelf, so I figured it had some sort of notoriety. Last year on a trip to New York, me and my friends took a ferry tour of the upper bay in Manhattan. The tour was led by a fast-talking witty young man, chock full of jokes and fun facts about the Big Apple. One of his trivia questions to us was, "what's New York City's biggest industry?". We threw out guesses and if I recall correctly, we guessed the top 2nd to 5th biggest ones, but we couldn't figure out that 1st one. After leaving us stumped for a while, he finally revealed that, yes, the advertising industry was the largest. Those of you who know me or have been reading my blog for a while know that I'm an engineeri...

As part of my Campaign of Cheapness, I've been starting and finishing books off at the bookstore. This is the third book that I finished in the store over the past few months and I can't believe I never did this before. Combined, it's saved me over $50. I know, I sound like a cheap sonuvabitch, but were my employment situation any different I would of bought all of those books. Which brings us to Yes, You're Pregnant, But What About Me . Over a year ago, Kevin Nealon was on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and I remember he was there to plug this book. I usually enjoy his brand of humour and the title of the book made me laugh, so I added it to my "To Read" list. For those of you unfamiliar with him, he's most known for being a cast member on Saturday Night Live from the late 80's to 90's. His Hans and Franz sketch with Dana Carvey is probably his most famous bit. Also, he has a recurring role on the show Weeds and is in just about all o...

In another effort in my "Campaign of Cheapness", I purchased Dead Space brand new for $7. Now, before I actually talk about the game, I'd like to preface it with a story. If you want to skip the story, just scroll down past to the bold where it says 'End Story'. Well... Commence Story! For my Canadian friends out there, you may know of this website called RedFlagDeals . It's basically a message board where users can post up any hot sales or deals going on at the moment, in an effort to share the glory of saving money. Anyhow, last month someone posted up the deal that Dead Space along with a few other games (eg. Mass Effect, Lost Odyssey , etc.) were going on sale for $10 at Futureshop the coming Friday of that week. It was such a hot deal because regularly the game retails for $40, the game is only 8 months young and it was a well reviewed game. However, a deal so hot catches the eyes of a group of rabid shoppers that RFD boarders have dubbed "hoard...

As part of my "campaign of cheapness", the past 3 months I've been going to the Indigo bookstore downtown about twice a week to read Chris Jericho's autobiography A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex . I'd park down for about 1.5 to 2 hours per visit and it took 3 months to do, but I finally finished it. Let it be known, that Jericho was my favourite wrestler from 1997 to 2002 (it only lasted this long because from 2002-07, I stopped watching/following wrestling completely). I learned of him during my junior high school years when me and my friends would watch WWF and WCW programming religiously. I knew there was something that stood out in Chris, it might have been his style of fighting, his comedic arrogance on the mic or his boyish good looks. Well whatever it was, I believed in him. My friends at the time were skeptical, but I would argue with them why he was so great. It was during his cruiserweight feud with Dean Malenko that really brought ou...