For years I have ranted and raved about MySpace. I have always stated that it was a den for the html inept. Those who were seeking to demolish a website by Homer Simpsonizing it. (anyone remember the episode where he made a website that was all animated gifs?) I always thought of Myspace as a place where people fought to have the most friends on their lists to say “Ooo Look at me I have 50 friends!” Well, I am not entirely wrong. 90% of Myspace is exactly that. People who don’t know the html code they are working with load image after image, video after video onto their page and break all the tables so you end up with pages too wide for your screen all on a background that makes reading text impossible.

However, there is that other 10%. I recently check out the Myspace phenomenon by creating an account. Amy had built one (which I encouraged to help her make friends out there) and so in efforts to better understand the beast, I ventured into the untamed world of Myspace! Honestly, after looking at what the site can actually do, and the backbone behind it with all of it’s capabilities, the site is not bad. It’s built effectively, has a ton of tools to help you find people of varying interests. The school finder actually works pretty damn well and I was able to find some old classmates that I hadn’t talked to in years. Sadly, it’s the 90% of the crappy users that give Myspace a bad rep. If you keep pages tasteful and clean, they can actually be useful.

So you may have noticed that there is a new button in the side bar on the left. That would be the link to my Myspace page. I went through great efforts to keep it themed with the rest of the site here. Another main reason for this would be the fact that Myspace has become extremely mainstream. Many movie sites, musicians, actors and writers are using it to publicize their works. So with this in mind, I am treating it as an extension of my personal website. Let me know what you think.

Not sure if I had made the formal announcement yet, but….. She’s back in my life. For the past few weeks I have been seeing someone, a girl, fairly regularly. I used to see her a lot a while back, but our goals were different and we needed some space. Lately I have found that we both want the same thing and that is for me to be happy. We have seen each other about 10 times in the last few weeks, so I think it’s starting to get serious. When I get home from work, I am eager to see her, and she always seems happy to see me as well. (At least that’s what she says).

If you haven’t guessed yet, Maya’s back.

Yup, I started my workouts again! The current plan is 30 min every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Then I go down to the gym and hit the rowing machine for about 15-20 min on Tuesday and Thursday. I have managed to keep this up for 3 weeks now and I have to say, I feel great. I am focusing on my upper body strength. I want to say that after the 3 weeks I can kind of feel/see some results, but that may be somewhat mental. Aside from a few candid photos from like dragoncon or such, I don’t have any before pictures. But you can believe, when I am done, the Spidey/Green Lantern/Nightwing pics will look awesome! What are YOU doing to exercise?

Yup, it’s still here. Sorry for the lack of updates lately. When you spend all day typing at work and get home only to do more stuff, the writing seems to take a curb side. I hate it when it does that as I really love to sit and wrote. Giving my brain the chance to empty out its daily contents so I can start fresh the next day. So given the updates as of late you can imagine there is a lot in my head right now. Sadly, it’s not all going to be emptied out here. As much as I love pouring out all of my feelings and such here, there are some things that just don’t need to be pasted all over the interweb.

As of late there has been not too much of note going on. Yesterday was Andrew’s 14th birthday. This year I got him his own Guitar. It’s an acoustic Epiphone PR-150. It got very good reviews on all the sites I checked out, and it came at a great deal with lots of accessories. Unfortunately, while tuning it for the first time, he wound the E-string a tad too tight and it snapped. He didn’t even get the chance to play too much. I picked up new strings and we spent about 30 min learning how to re-string a guitar! I also picked him up a 512mb Ipod shuffle. We are an Itunes house so I wanted to get him something that would integrate with Itunes so he could easily drag the music he wants to it. Given that he is always listening to music, he can swap tunes off it really quick and easy.

Last night we went out for his birthday dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack. We had gone there a few times before as well as going last year on his birthday. When we walked in, I mentioned to the hostess that it was Andrews birthday (in hopes of embarrassing him in public, like any good Father) and she sat us very quickly. The place was moderately filled for a Wednesday evening. We browsed the menu and figured out what we wanted to eat. A full 15 minutes later we finally got a visit from our waiter with the first of many “I’m sorry it took so long.” We placed our order for two of their “Complete Meals” which has the appetizer and deserts. I also mentioned to him about Andrews birthday. The waiter made promises, of course, for speedy service and getting bread out quickly before the appetizers.

The drinks came out quick, but then we lost our waiter again. A bus boy brought out the appetizers and they were eaten and dishes cleared before we finally got some bread. Our “Speedy” waiter claimed that in “A minute and a half” our food would be out. 10 min later he came back saying (with yet another “Sorry for taking so long”) the food was almost ready. 2 full baskets of bread later, we get our food. The whole time we watch the waiters come out for two other birthdays in the restaurant (Andrew jumped every time he heard the clapping start, thinking it was coming towards him). The deserts were about the only thing that came out in a timely fashion. We boxed up our food and sat and waited.

And Waited

And Waited

20 minutes later we see our waiter. At this point we have been there for about an hour and a half. He come by and picks up the remaining plates and asks about the food. That’s it. I figure he is on his way back to get the check or to come out for the birthday things. Nope, we lost him again for another 10 min. When he comes back (mind you we have been sitting there with no plates and food boxed for 10 full minutes) he asks if we were “Ready for that birthday thing.” It’s now just after 8:30pm. We got to Joe’s at around 6:50pm. 2 people, in a restaurant that is not all that busy. I was pissed. I told him, “No, I’ll just take my check please, it’s far too late for that. Every time he came by the table it was some sob story about “Things are running slow back there” yet every other waiter managed it just fine. I know, I had plenty of time to watch them. Another 5 min goes by while he prints out the check. Big surprise, he doesn’t compensate on the check or anything. He just drops off the check with a “Sorry for the worst service in the world” comment. I made a point of talking to the Manager about the horrible service. He seemed sympathetic and offered us a free trip back as “His guests” where they would re-do his birthday dinner.

Now, let me clear up something. I like Joe’s Crab Shack. The food has always been great and every other time we have been there, the service was amazing. I have nothing against them. Some people though. Having done the whole waiting tables thing before, I know how it is. This guy wouldn’t even come up with a reason as to why he was gone, just “sorry”. So aggravating! We went home and I sat and watched “Bones” to cheer me up. Cause nothing makes one happy than watching 2 wives fight over their newly liquefied ex-husband!

Ok, so I have been out of it for the past few weeks. Work has absolutely hammered me. With different servers failing and political crap going back and forth, when I get home I don’t want to go any where near the PC and I am way to busy at work to do stuff there. So I just needed to take a break from everything. I haven’t posted on any boards, not blogged, anything! I have had a number of things that I wish I could have blogged about too! We missed out on Talk like a pirate day. I finally got around to canceling my COV account which means I am MMORPG free at the moment. Those are just a few.

A friend of mine has introduced me to some new music too! While we were at DragonCon, I was walking through the area where a lot of the bands have booths. Now, these are usually some punk bands, or goth bands etc. They all pretty much sound the same and the band next to them. After a while I stopped paying attention to them. Well, there was this one guy down towards the end of the room, Voltaire. He had a very typical looking booth set up, lots of black, lots of emo feel to it. So, I really didn’t pay much attention to it at all.

Flash forward to the now. I decide to give a few of the tracks a listen to and holy cow! This is NOT your typical goth band. Actually is have only trace amounts of the goth feel to it. I actually sat with my headphones on at work and zoned out while focusing on my work. I have to say I was very much floored by the sound of the music. One of the tracks actually got me so lost in the rhythm and music that I lost track of the lyrics. His website actually has a few tracks available for download, go check it out!

Outside of all that, you know, all the stressful crap, it’s been pretty tame as far as events and such. Last week Andrew and I did attend a garrison event where we trooped the Best Buy release of the Original Trilogy of Star Wars on DVD (again). School has also kept me busy as of late. I am currently in a “Programming Concepts” class which is supposed to teach the logic and layout of programming. So far I have learned that my teacher is an ass and has no desire to actually teach and help students. I have had a few very bad conversations with him and have finally taken it to my Student advisor. We’ll see how this turns out.

Back in January of 2005 I reposted my story of 9/11. Instead of just re-posting it again (Mostly because I don’t want to go through and adjust for dates and times and stuff) here is the direct link to the story: http://www.wizzer.org/2005/01/story-time.html

Hi there, I am here to inform you of the dangers of Post Convention Depression, or PCD. PCD is a very serious condition that effect thousands of people across the world! Let me demonstrate:

This is little Stevie

Stevie: “Hi!”

Stevie has been preparing for a convention for the past 8 months. This convention is called DragonCon. It’s a 4 day convention down in Atlanta.

Stevie: “That’s in Georgia!”

Thank you, Stevie. So for the past 8 months, Stevie has been preparing costumes, and making reservations for hotels and such. Anticipation started to build even more during the last few weeks before the convention.

Stevie: “Like when the grid came out for all of the Panels and such!”

That’s right! When the convention finally arrived, Stevie couldn’t have been happier! All of the planning and project work that has kept him busy for so long is now going into effect for a full 4 days of non-stop fun and frivolity!

Stevie: “WhooHooo Party!!!”

But this all comes with a cost. PCD!! The convention is over. Stevie is now back home. All the costumes are packed back up in the closet. The clothes have been washed and put away. Everything that has been keeping Stevie busy and kept him distracted is now done and over.

Stevie: “But I still have Pictures!……and ….and….Stories!”

Yes Stevie, but what will you do now? It’s still too early to start preparing for the next convention. What will you do now?

Stevie: “Wow, I never thought about that. Hmmm Let me just lay here on the couch and think about that.”

And this is how it starts. PCD starts to set in. Stevie finds himself not wanting to do much of anything aside from the needs of life. The only way out of this slump is for Stevie to get up off his rump and start experiencing normal everyday life again! (Exercise helps too)

Don’t let PCD take over someone you love!

You know how when you go out and drink heavily, the next morning you are usually extremely tired, sore, and just plain running in slo-mo? Well, the con hangover is a lot like that. DragonCon lasted for 4 days. Add on top of that a 10 hour drive there and a 10 hour drive back. I feel all of the normal hangover effects, the headache, the tiredness, the not wanting to eat, etc.. Not to mention that surreal feeling of being home and trying to get back to a normal routine. Work is more than happy to help me out with that as I jumped back into fixing all the crap that broke while I was gone so, I got that going for me.

Pictures have been uploaded, but I haven’t gotten around to captioning them yet. There will be a full trip report coming, but I am sure that it will probably take me a week to wade through it (kinda like the Vegas one) The main point is that we had a blast. Andrew loved it even though he was starting to get overwhelmed. I look back over the pictures from other people and realize that there is just too much to see at DragonCon! I know I saw a lot of it, but every now and then I find a picture and think “Wow, that would have been cool to see!” More to come later.

Pictures will follow soon, Just had to throw in a post that We made it here. Andrew is drooling over the giant game room! Not much is open yet so we are just relaxing. The plan is to do SuperHero for today. I will be changing into either GL or spidey later on. Tomorow will be Biker and Pirate.

Last nights MIB was a huge success! Again, I will post pictures as soon as I can. It would appear that someone in a room next to me has purchased the 9.99 internet access and threw a wi-fi router on it. Hopefully, it will last! More to come!!!!!

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.