Aouai! Je m'suis gelee le cul!

Translation: Ack! I froze my butt!

I did a whirlwind tour in and out of Montreal this week for a customer visit. Found time to see some family and friends. It was -24 degrees celsius the evening I got there and only warmed slightly while I was there.

It was good to have a reminder of why the pacific northwest's rain ain't so bad.

One interesting thing: Canada has 2 MTV sister stations. MuchMusic and MusiquePlus, english and french stations respectively. Unlike MTV, they play music. Like MTV, the experiment with different shows and content. Current day MTV seems to be about pushing the "reality show" and "dating game" genres of shows in new ways.

Anyhow, I saw a show on MusiquePlus that was kind of a G4-style games & tech show. They reviewed games, reviewed PC software products (e.g. an anti-spam software review), and even had a letter answering section where people got their questions answered ("how can I create a boot floppy for XP").

The interesting thing was (a) that they'd consider this acceptably hip content for their MTV-like audience, (b) that PC's and PC software got more coverage time-wise than consoles, and (c) that game reviews sound way cooler in thick slang-drenched quebec french :-). E.g. In reviewing Viewtiful Joe 2, the review said "Quand les Japonais font des jeux, Ils sont fou comme il faut" - "When Japonese make games, they are crazy like they need to be" is the literal translation, but it's really more of a "..they dont mess around" intent. Either way, the show was better than another "room raiders".