We’re back in the hotel having completed our PAX experience. I’m going to go ahead and declare that it was worth the trip!
One of the more interesting things I noticed at PAX was that the vast majority of people are of the nicer then Jesus mentality. It’s easy to talk to them. We have common ground and the concept of judgment holds no place in the hallowed halls of nerdish brotherhood. Despite being a geek for my entire life, I never fell into a group of people that can be adaquatley summed up as “geek”. So for me, this was definitely an experience to remember.
That said… I think it may have come a tad late in my life.
Being older, married and perhaps a little more “savvy”, I don’t have the desire to sit in lines all the time. They tend to grate on my nerves. I also have developed a keen aversion to massive crowds. Both existed in abundance at PAX this year leaving Karissa and I playing a game of “how much can we take”. We would line up early in the morning for the event we wanted to see, but as the day wore on, our desire to wait hours on end for a simple panel grew thin. Despite these conditions, most of the geeks at the expo lined up happily and seemed to have endless constitution and happy demeanors.
Us grumpy old people could only take our fill before bailing out to go drink some beer and eat fish and chips.
We did bite the bullet this morning and lined up to see Wil Wheaton’s panel. Yes, it was a “panel” involving just one man. But it WAS Wil fucking Wheaton, so I can forgive the presumptuousness of it all. Was worth the wait and then some. Wil is a seriously funny guy and could probably entertain an audience for many more hours then we got to sit in on. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak, get in on it!
Looking forward to the rest of our vacation here in Seattle. Time to leave our cozy 3 block radius and really become tourists!
I used to be able to make fun of those silly little “The Way I See It” quotes they put on their cups.
But recently I’ve been seeing ones that are actually pretty good.
For instance:
The irony of commitment is that it’s deeply liberating — in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life.
- Anne Morris
Course, Starbucks left it unreferenced, so I had to look up the original source.
Still, good quote (as far as quotes go as pearls of wisdom). Getting married to Karissa was the single greatest quality of life decision I have ever made. Life is so much easier now. The thought of trying to date someone at this point seems like it would take so much time and energy that I’d much rather channel into other places in my life. We can go out on a “date” and not have to worry about impressing each other or any of the other nonsense that dating brings.
Then again, I do have to wear pants around the house as a married man. Dems the breaks I guess.
No big updates so far. Heading to PAX in 2 days though, woot!
Also recently got lured into the Xbox360 game Too Human. I honestly hadn’t heard of it till about 6 days ago, so I guess I escaped all the hype and controversy surrounding the game. Most reviewers are going to hard on it for some reason. On an arbitrary scale of 1 to awesome, I give it a solid 7.5 kittens in a bucket. If you want to recapture some of the magic of Diablo, but want to situate your ass on the couch in front of the Xbox360, check it out.
On to the real point of posting. A friend of mine recently directed me towards The Lost Fingers. I’ve become enamored:
All the goodness of the eighties music scene, but done as a jazz interpretation. Awesome.
I made the classic mistake in blogging. I said I hope to update my blog more often. And now I’m doing the classic “I’m sorry” post.
Well actually, not really. Summer hit and I’ve just not been that interested or motivated in finding something to write about. And yet… and I’m going to write about just that.
For years I’ve heard the term “the dog days of summer” and never known what it meant. Summer was usually spent roaming the streets around my neighborhood as a kid, or working feverishly to help pay for University. In recent times I’ve usually been distracted by work or other things to really notice the effects of “the dog days of summer”.
But so far this year I’m into my 3rd week of it, and it’s a really weird feeling. Days drag on and on. Often it’s too damn hot out to do anything resulting in me sweating my pants off* on the couch. I’m finding myself less motivated then ever to get things done. It’s not helping that my current work is tied directly to the Oil & Gas industry which routinely takes July and August off. Works slow, life’s slow, everything is just… slow.
Plus I think I’ve been ingrained to expect things in September. For years summer was a break between school, between semesters. And yet this September nothing will change really. Nothing new will start. September will pass near identically to August which was identical to July. Life is really kinda boring atm; well at least to talk about it.
There is some news. Our cat, Commander Fluffy is going through some rough times. At 3.5 years old he’s been diagnosed with chronic kidney disease. There have already been two distinct times in which I was certain we would have to put him down. The last one was one week ago. His kidneys do not process the toxins in his blood stream efficiently anymore; meaning the Commander requires 2-3 times as much water just to filter his blood. As the toxins build up, his ability to eat diminishes leading to him throwing up anything that hits his stomach. Thankfully he has responded well to the treatment. Unfortunately, the treatment is rather intense (as far as cat maintenance is concerned). Each night we have to pin him down and stick an IV line just under his skin. 100-200CC’s of water is then injected into the “sub-cutaneous” zone, which gives him a large amount of fluids to help his ailing kidneys.
I’m not sure how long this treatment will last, at least at the current amount and frequency. I’m hoping his kidneys will recover enough to reduce the frequency. At any rate, it adds an extra complication for vacation time.
Oh yeah, heading to PAX at the end of the month! I am supremely interested in what video game culture is like at the grass roots level as I’ve never really gone to a nerd-fest before. The fact that Karissa is fully willing to come with me is fraking awesome. Hopefully we will be able to check out some of the Bumbershoot events as well!
Anyways, just an update to say I’m still around. Have a good summer people!
A bit over a year ago I got some web hosting service and setup a small domain for me to play with. Now that I’ve become a bit more of a professional at this type of thing (still not a designer obviously), I thought it was high time to consolidate most of my online presences. And thus, blindhippo.net is born.
This is an evolving project meant to give me more experience programming in PHP from scratch and some exposure to web service APIs. The blog will hopefully become updated more often with something other then random rants or the latest Journey video tribute.
I’ve got a lot of ideas for the new site. Stay tuned! There will be cake at the end.
