Time is counting down and I am getting really excited. We have already laid out the plans for the trip down. We leave here at oh-god-early on Thursday morning. Andrew and I will be meeting up with Doc and Diz, and then onto meet up with Roger (our garrisons Vader) for the long road trip to Atlanta! I have been checking out the schedual grid for the con and I already see a few things that I am excited about:

The Faces Behind Your Favorite Voices
Come see the voices behind some of our favorite characters. Squidward, Space Ghost, Zorack, Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Fry, Dr. Zoidberg, Sigmund the Seamonster, just to name a few. Roger Bumpass, C. Martin Croker, Walker Edmiston, George Lowe, Billy West, Jerry Winsett. Sat 07:00 PM, International South, (H)

Firefly/Serenity Shindig
Join the Southeastern Browncoats as they host this party to celebrate the Serenity and its crew. There will be a costume contest, so come dress as your favorite character, or just in the style of the show, and join in the fun. It will be Shiny! Sat 10:00 PM, Hanover CDE, (H)

Drum Circle
Bring your drum, get in a circle, and play. That’s the idea. Sat 11:30 PM, All Night, Centennial I, (H)

Done The Impossible – A Screening
We’re pleased to present a screening of Done The Impossible, a documentary on Firefly Fandom. Following the film we’ll have a Q/A session with producers Brian Wiser and Jeremy Neish Brian Wiser, Jeremy Neish Sun 05:30 PM, 2.5 Hours

So you wanna be a voice actor?
Hear about and learn the business of voice acting from those with years of experience Michael Brady, C. Martin Croker, George Lowe, Jerry Winsett. Sat 10:00 AM, 2 Hours

Venture Bros.
Mischief and mayhem abound with the Venture Bros! Come join a highly entertaining panel on the venture brothers — one of last year’s faves! Ann-Marie Gearhart Sun 09:00 AM

Voice Actors Extravaganza!
These are some of Voice actings best know voices. Join us to hear them talk about there experences in the studio. And learn what new projects they are working on. Roger Bumpass, C. Martin Croker, Stephen Furst, George Lowe, Billy West, Jerry Winsett. Sun 02:30 PM, International South, (H)

Dragon*Con Parade
Join us as DragonCon spills out onto the streets of Atlanta! Costumes not only welcomed, but encouraged! Show your support for all things McCaffrey and march with us behind the Weyrfest banner Sat 10:00 AM, 1.5 Hours

Neverwinter Nights 2 Preview
Obsidian Entertainment will provide an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at the upcoming sequel to one of the best-selling role-playing games of all time. Panelists will walk fans through every aspect of the game’s progress included with Neverwinter Nights 2. Chris Avellone, Shane DeFreest, Josh Sawyer. Fri 11:30 AM

Meet the Mythbusters!
Drop in and say hello to Tory, Kari and Grant – they make a living building and blowing things up for your entertainment and enlightenment! Find out what they did before hooking up with Jamie and Adam, and what they do when they aren’t mythbusting. Fri 01:00 PM, Centennial I, (H)

Mythbusting for Fun and Profit
How do the Mythbusters decide which myths to bust? Which were their favorites? Which, um, weren’t? Tory Belleci, Kari Byron, Grant Imahara. Sat 01:00 PM, Centennial II-III, (H)

I will try and squeeze in another post before we leave on Thursday!

There are a few things to go over really. One of the first being that Pitching Lucas has been loaded into IMDB. The coolest thing about that is that I now have an IMDB entry for my name! It also comes up first on Google! It’s just kind of cool to see that, especially after doing theater work for years and years. It’s really neat that IMDB is opening up to things like Indi films and Fan films.

The next is that I am almost ready to submit a picture for my official 501st trading card! I went out yesterday and took a bunch of pictures. We used a green screen to photo some ewok hands holding playing cards and found an Awesome park nearby that had a nice set up for the background of the picture. You can see the different shots here. Feel free to comment and let me know which is the better one to use.

Only 1 week left till we leave for DragonCon. We still haven’t finished Andrews boots, those will be this weekend at the latest. Aside from that, everything is good to go.

With less than 2 weeks left before DragonCon, I have been trying to get things in order for the trip. This year I am only doing 4 costumes total, and probably won’t be in them full time. Let’s face it, most spandex has no pockets. All of my costumes are now done (Including a nifty new flight suit for my Biker scout). Andrew will be in 2 costumes for the con, he is also doing a Biker Scout and Conner Kent (Superboy). The Biker Scout for him is the one taking up all the time. Thankfully we only have the boots left to finish. Those shouldn’t take long at all.

Saturday I was conked out till like 11:30. It was a very late start to the day but we still managed to get a lot done. While we were out doing the grocery shopping, Andrew got a call reminding him (and thusly me) about his friends birthday party. It only started 30 min ago! A quick rush to the wal-mart and he got dropped off. This gave me the chance to run a few errands, Comic book store and lunch. I also picked up a new fascination. I started watching a show called 30 days, so I picked up the season 1 DVD for it.

I am sure you have heard about the movie “Super size Me.” In it, the host eats nothing but McDonalds food for 30 days straight. Every day, every meal. As you can guess this was not the best thing he could do for his body. Well, the movie gained a lot of acclaim to the point where the FX network gave its creator his own show. The premise is, take a person and give them 30 days in a situation. Every episode is a different situation. The ones I have seen were the: Atheist in a Fundamentalist Christian household, New Age treatment, Minimum Wage for 30 days, and Christian in a Muslim world. Much like his movie, the host interjects during the show with little factoids about the situation that are fascinating. I was floored to learn that the Minimum wage limit has not been raised since 1997. I HIGHLY suggest checking out this show.

Sunday was spent working on the costumes. We had to go out and pick up a few extra things. As much as I hate going to G-street fabrics because they are horribly expensive, they happen to be the most organized and have exactly what I need. On the way back though, we stopped off at the Walney Park. It’s a very tucked away little park and rec center. They have quite a few trails and events. We didn’t stay long, just enough to get some info. The rest of the day was bouncing between costuming, playing some COV for a break, and a little bit of TV. By the end of this week, all costumes should be finished and we will be good to go! Pictures will follow that.

Ok, so this minor irritant known as the little head cold has now turned into a week long “oh my god I feel like crap!” I ended up staying home on Wednesday because I just couldn’t focus at work. It sucked. Even now my head is still congested. I am not the only one with this either, there appears to be a bug going around. Ugh!

Well anyways. I guess I could mention that I took last weekend and did some re-arranging. I finally have a real dining room now. When I moved into the apartment it was just me, so I maximized my space and put the computer desk in the dining area. Well, the problem with this came about when Andrew came to live there. The dining area is right next to the door to his room. So when he is in school, I have to be super quiet when I am on the computer. Those that know me (and my gamers tourettes) this isn’t the easiest thing for me. One of the factors in not moving the desk was that there is no network drop in my bedroom. I solved this by picking up a wireless-G router and desktop card. Now the place almost looks normal! Well, except for all the sci-fi stuff all over the place.

I also picked up a nifty new camera. I got a major deal over at Micro Center. I was planning on just getting an in-expensive digital camera, maybe 4 mega pixels. While talking with the guy, he says he has one not on display that he can go grab. While in the back he finds a return of a 6.2mp HP R717. It’s good as new and priced for $135!! How could I pass that one up? It was cheaper than the 4mp ones I was looking at and tons better. I will be out and bout taking pics this weekend.

This weekend will be filled with costume enhancements and such to prepare for DragonCon! Less than 2 weeks!

You know, these little colds suck. I have a little like 24-48 hour bug. It came on yesterday, with the runny nose and the slightly scratchy throat. Last night I was feeling pretty crappy. This morning is probably the worst of it, but I took some Tylenol Cold and am fighting it. Here is the problem though, it’s not enough to really warrant staying home. I am not so out of it that I can’t function. It’s just enough to be an inconvenience. That’s the part that sucks. I think I would be able to handle it better if it was like a full blown flu, or something like that where I would feel like I should just stay home and get better. This is more of just an irritant. Ok, wow, that medication is starting to kick in. Head feeling a little loopy.

So here I am on a day when I should be in class, but instead I am lounging around in Nashville. This would probably be one of the first “do nothing” vacations I had taken in a long long time. Honestly, when you take a vacation somewhere, you end up sight seeing, or going somewhere where there is lots to do. I don’t know that I have ever taken a vacation where I just got to do nothing. It wasn’t completely like that the whole time, but it was close (and somewhat nice). I did get mired in some school crap. (Group project week was probably a bad time to go on travel) AIU’s website is horrible when it comes to ADA and W3C compliance. Unless you have a PC with IE on it, you’re hosed. My travel computer is a Mac. Thankfully I managed to get through the school stuff and have ample time for visiting and such.

On Friday, Lee and I took Andrew and Damon to the Adventure Zone. It was a discovery type place with a planetarium and lots of cool gizmos. It might have been a bit young for Andrew, but he had fun regardless. We even played a cool mind test game where the person who relaxes their brain functions the most wins. You strap these contact points to your forehead and there is a ball that you have to push with your lack of mind power. I won against everyone, but I am not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. We stayed for the planetarium show (it was just meh). The Planets show was ok, but I think the stars and galaxies show would have been cooler. After that we headed back to the house to relax (It started raining)

Saturday, we slept in. I needed it. I was still tired from the drive down. When we finally started moving, we decided to go to the Opry Mills mall. They have an IMAX theater there that is playing Superman Returns in 3D. It’s not really 3D, there were only 3 scenes in 3D and you had to have the special glasses. The scenes they used were filled with action and almost gave me a head ache. The movie was still as good as it was before. But unless you haven’t seen it yet, don’t bother with IMAX. It is good if it’s your first time, but going to see it again on the big screen was just meh.

Now, before the movie, one of the most phenomenal things happened!!! We were walking past the local sporting store and through the window you could see the climbing wall. I made a comment to Andrew about climbing it and he replied with a “Maybe.”

Maybe??

Rewind to about 6 months ago. Amy, Andrew and I were walking through the Dicks sporting goods and they have a climbing wall there. I had tried to get Andrew to climb it, even offering to do it with him. We argued for about 30 min in the store about climbing that wall and he would have nothing to do with it.

Back to current day, he said “Maybe” and that’s all I needed. I dragged him into the store and we saw it was only $5. Damon said that he would do it too (Damon is only 8). I offered up the $10 for both of them and Damon jumped on it. Andrew was still showing a little fear. This is when Damon whips out the pure gold comment of:
“Come on, you can do it, I am going to do it and I am only 8, you’re 13!”

I about pee’d myself. Andrew was very nervous, but he said he would do it. It probably helped that I offered up a $10 prize if he rang the bell at the top. Damon went first and was up and down in no time. Andrew finally suited up and started his way to the top. He took it slow and was oblivious to everything but the wall.

He did it. I was so proud. This was a huge fear that he completely overcame! You know what he said to me afterwards?

“Maybe when we get back I can try the Dicks one again!”

The rest of the trip was fun with the relaxing and hanging out. Andrew getting over his fear was priceless

Well I am back from Nashville! I went out there for work and made it an extended vacation to visit with Lee and Missy. You know, That’s a long ass drive! I left on Wednesday at like 6:30am EST and arrived there at around 5pm CST. Because I really didn’t want to leave him alone in the house for 5 days, I decided to take Andrew with me. (Thus the reason for driving). We picked up a book on CD and hit the road. We did our best to keep stops at a minimum as we wanted to maximize our time there. The book helped out with that a lot.

We listened to “Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader.” This was really a good book! It talked about the events that happened shortly after EP-III and what Anakin was going through. I highly suggest it. I only wish I had gotten a book for the return trip. I ended up calling people at random to talk on the phone.

When I arrived, I set up house in Lee’s basement apartment. Of course, there was no Internet! Apparently his cable modem was fritzing out. So we spent much of the night trouble shooting it and bringing it back online. This took till about 12:30am. I still needed to get up the next morning for my class in downtown. I zonked out shortly after we got the net back up.

The next morning I woke up and headed out to downtown Nashville. I met up with Dave (one of the guys from work) and we hit up the doubletree lobby to find where we needed to go. We were there for the VM-TechEd class on some new VMWare technology. It was only a one day class, but was supposed to be really good. I say supposed to be because it never happened. Apparently they had canceled the class with the hotel, but never bothered to contact any of the students. There were about 10 of us wandering around the hotel trying to find it. Needless to say, we were a little miffed. No one could get a hold of the people putting on the class (even today, I have not been contacted). We called our boss and explained what happened.

With a little spare time to kill now, Dave and I headed out to find breakfast. This is apparently quite the chore in Nashville. The area we were in didn’t seem to have many places open at 8am. We settled on the Hilton hotel and ate our $12 buffet. Afterwards we hit up the Country Music Hall of Fame. Dave has this uncle named Joe Maphis. He had a nifty little display in there that Dave wanted to see. Aside from seeing a bit of Dave’s heritage, this place was NOT worth the 17 bucks that we dropped to get in. He was able to pick up 2 CD’s of his uncle that he wasn’t able to find anywhere else. Just wish we had done that without spending the entry fee. After that we went into a little guitar shop on 4th street where Dave spent a lot of time drooling and speaking un-intelligibly. Without anything more exciting (and it only being 10am), Dave decided to head to the airport and try to get back early.

I dropped Dave off and met up with Lee for lunch. I got to see around his office and meet a bunch of his co-workers. We went out for Mexican (which I learned afterwards that Lee doesn’t like very much). It was a fun time, but I was really starting to get exhausted. I finally bowed out and went back to take a nap. And with that I will say, to be continued!

This was the first full week that Amy way gone. I have to admit that by the time Sunday rolled around, it was a little lonely in the house. Andrew and I did a bunch of stuff over the weekend together. We had to get up really early on Saturday to take the truck in for service. Thankfully I didn’t need new brakes (I thought I did). The mechanic just did an oil change and checked the engine over, then said I was good to go. $37 later and we were done. This, of course, left us the entire Saturday with time to fill. A lot of this was my homework of course. We did get away for a little bit to pick up the latest run of comics. When I finally finished my homework, we sat and watched Monty Python Quest for the Holy Grail.

Sunday we woke up late and decided that we needed a good breakfast. It was off to the Silver Diner for us! After a hearty place of French toast and bacon, we both came back to the house and laid down for a bit. After a while I got up and started work on Andrews’s biker scout costume (like father like son!) We have just about everything we need to finish it, just a few little tweaks and it will be ready. I will, of course, be posting pictures as soon as it’s done.

Speaking of pictures….. Apparently, those bastards over at myspace.com are stealing images from my website! I took a look at the logs for my site and noticed a large number of myspace profiles pulling images directly from my website. Basically, they are adding a link to a picture hosted here so that it displays there. This is a bad bad thing. First of all, if I notice it, I can very easily swap out an image with something else. Secondly, they are STEALING bandwidth. This is very typical of the myspace pieces of crap. They can’t handle making their own site, they have to infringe on others. I could care less if you want to take an image and host it, then display it yourself. Have a blast, it’s the internets! I will find a way to stop you. (I already enabled hotlink protection, apparently the myspace mafia has found a way around that).