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Public: Pirate Cat - 11:09 AM 07/05/2012
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Public: Calgary Expo 2012 - 12:05 PM 01/05/2012
A quick history.
2010: Jaymie, Chris and I attended Calgary Expo. We showed up at opening and waited in a really long line. We got in and saw costumes, took photos, met celebrities and bought merch. It was a good time.
2011: Andrea, Chris and I attended Calgary Expo. We showed up later on the Sunday to avoid the crowds. We waited in less lines, saw costumes, took photos, met celebrities, and bought merch. We improved our process.
2012: Andrea, Chris and I heard from Lynne that the Saturday show got halted by the fire-marshall. Overcrowding for the TNG showing had absolutely overwhelmed the con. What were we to do? We returned to the 2010 MO and showed up early to wait in line to ensure we gained entrance. However it appears that the bad press kept the mobs away. We gained entry in under an hour. The costumes were once again one of the highlights. None of us are big on autographs or photo op's, so we don't have to stand in those lines. Catching a peek of the Weasley Twins, Hayden Panettiere was ok I guess. Seeing Lance Heneriksen up close was cooler. Oh hey look, it's Wil Wheaton, Adam West and Stan Lee. Ok, I'm spent. I don't even need to walk over there.
This year we actually sat on a panel of Frakes, Sirtis and Dorn. It was pretty funny, despite Michael Dorn not uttering a word. He just kept taking photos of the other 2. Marina Sirtis was on fire. That lady is entertaining and she knows how to bounce a story off of Frakes. Also, watching her manipulate questions from the crowd shows how she is truly a conference veteran. She knew a question about cross-series promotion (ie: Putting TNG cast on Enterprise) was a boner, so she didn't answer it. Instead she pretended to misinterpret it that he was talking about Gargoyles. You mention TNG cast on a Cartoon at a con, you get a raucous cheer.
We did our standard weave, seeing as many of the booths as possible. There weren't any artists that we needed to get a sketch from, and many of the vendors were taking advantage of the enormous crowds to refrain from offering good deals (BUY NOW! US COVER PRICE!) ugh... This was the first con where I didn't leave with any merch. I did spend a little coin on a photo of me in the Delorean with Andrea on a Hoverboard, which is worth its weight in gold.
So it was a good time. I certainly got my entry fee worth of entertainment and I'll go again next year. Andrea and I are starting to toy with the idea of going in better more elaborate costumes, but for the most part looking at the other ones is a lot of the fun.
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Public - Wrapping the 1st Season of the Mustard Tigers - 11:11 AM 11/04/2012
My newest Hockey Team, the NCHL Mustard Tigers, had a really good season. Born of Free-Agents, we meshed really well and performed well enough to get moved from D to C division. After a great first half of the season, we slumped a little, rounding out the year in the middle of the pack.
Unfortunately, the league bases your win/loss percentage against ONLY the teams who are currently in the same div as you, so some of our wins were discounted, and we actually finished near the bottom. This put us against the highest non-bi seed for our first round.
We fought hard, and came up short. Standard playoff BS ensued with an 8 person roster (including goalie), we had to fight for every second of stamina. We could have beat these guys. We just didn't.
However to end on a high note, playoffs come with a re-set roster. Accordingly, the assist I garnered on Cam's goal shows up as one of the only points our team scored. And alphabetically, I'm hard to beat. Tic-Tac-Toe, I lead my C Div team in playoff points going out of the post season. No big deal, please, no autographs.
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Public: More Twitter Screen-shot posts - 1:33 PM 29/03/2012
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Public: Winter Camping; A guide to failure - 9:36 AM 19/03/2012
Last year's winter hike with Tyler was deemed a sort of failure. Retrospectively (a year later) it was "fun", but the over-preparation we performed made us feel stupid and made for more work than it alleviated.
We wore full telemark-skiing gear, complete with heavy boots, ski's and skins. We had helmets, full winter coats, ski pants, and long-johns. We each wore a full back-country camping bag. We had avalanche transponders and probes and shovels.
We slogged 45+lbs of gear up the mountain and then the whole route was groomed cross country ski trails. It was awful. Dudes in spandex blew past us every few minutes. We were tired and grouchy. Retrospectively it was a learning experience, but at the time it was awful.
Now we've gone and failed the opposite direction.
Andrea, Sean and I left on a similar trip Saturday, taking the past learning and applying it. Long-johns, sweater, soft-shell. Toque, mitts, shoes and snow-shoes. We packed and dressed light, knowing that we had distance to cover. I was still too warm in what I was wearing, but I was bearably warm. I could open vents and be more than comfortable. My goggles constantly fogged up, and wound up getting removed, but it was still an improvement.
Where I missed a step was in my footwear. After 2 hours, I could feel the snow-pack on my shoes starting to melt. By 3 hours, my feet were getting wet. Losing a toe to frostbite wasn't in the plan. Ski boots are water-proof, but hiking shoes (despite 3 layers of scotch guard) are not. That all said, I was working hard and generating enough heat to keep my feet warm. The problem wouldn't really set in until Sunday when my frozen shoes would have to be put back on. However I was going to tough it out.
We hadn't counted on it being groomed trails, but we found ourselves doing more trail breaking than we'd expected. It snowed constantly, and the snow-pack passed 6' deep at one point of measure. Trail breaking leads to fatigue. While 12km is a lengthy walk to begin with, it's a REALLY long walk when you're packing gear through a couple feet of snow with wet shoes.
We were at the point of no return, when I decided that Andrea had had enough. She was grouchy, dragging her feet, and complaining constantly. This isn't unusual for her, but I had to make the judgement call that she was potentially entering unsafe territory with another full hike ahead of us the second day. We stopped for lunch and Andrea was re-charged. 10 min later she was back to her very slow pace with her head hung low. I finalized the call. We were heading back to the car.
We wound up hiking >17 km instead of the 12 it takes to get to the cabin, but we were saved from repeating it on Sunday. It was disappointing, but necessary. We could have made it, but it was that which we had not prepared for that I wasn't ready to deal with. Winter camping is intimidating, and unfortunately we were under prepared. While last year Andrea toughed it out and bragged about the blisters later, this year didn't provide the safety net of a groomed trail home.
So that's that. We went home and Sean and I BBQ'ed some steak for dinner while Andrea was passed out. She didn't leave the couch the rest of the night. Sean and I salvaged our time into a pseudo boys-weekend, playing with the driving simulator and saluting good ol' St. Patrick.
My legs are still burning as I type this, and that disappoints me. I would have liked to have completed the trip and find myself sitting here with a victory burn. Instead I burn with failure and motivation to chalk this up as another learning experience and more fodder for encouraging Andrea to get into better shape.
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Public - Like being back in Highschool - 3:54 PM 09/03/2012
When I finished reading A Dance With Dragons, I decided that my reading list needed to be populated with some stuff that wasn't as high level. ASOIAF is always a good read, but they're long slogs. I wanted to read something lower level. Candy novels. So I went back to highschool.
I'd always enjoyed Star Wars expanded universe stuff. Chronologically, Shadows of the Empire, The Courtship of Princess Leia, and the Jedi Academy Trilogy are some of the most memorable that I read. However as I travel around the internet, the most commonly cited are 'The Grand Admiral Thrawn' trilogy, that I had missed. So I started reading them.
It all takes place about 5 years after ROTJ. Leia's pregnant, Luke's learning more about the force, and the Empire's last remnants seem to be spiraling towards the drain.. until a left-over admiral from the Emperor's highest authority, begins to rally strength back together.
Let me say, if you ever wanted more proof that the prequels are garbage, look no further than the expanded universe. The rich detail and speculation about just what the clone wars were, is amazing. The concepts that are hinted at when these novels were written (many years before Phantom Menace, etc) are awesome. I wish I'd had a chance to read them BEFORE Lucas had a chance to go at the history with his rusty razor.
Sure, there's a lot of throwbacks to the original movies. Some of the lines are lifted straight from IV, V and VI. I guess when you don't have the opportunity to build your own character, you have to stick to the format. Still, it works, and I can even imagine a perfectly formed middle-aged Harrison Ford delivering as Solo for most of the bits.
Anyhoo, I've really enjoyed this trilogy and will probably follow it up with 'The Hand of Thrawn' duology that follows. There are a bunch of other books I wanted to read too, but I'm on a bit of a Star Wars kick from this, and I like it.
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Public - Uh Oh! - 11:07 AM 06/03/2012
So of late, I'm back to using MSN as an official IM client in the office. Obviously I don't want to install Microsoft's ad-laden bundle-ware onto my computer, so I've installed Pidgin for the first time in a long time.
And with that, comes all the old is new again. I'm on ICQ, basically 8 hours a day. Sure, gone are the days of the flashing yellow envelope, the 'UH-Oh' noise and the grey contact list populated with blue UIN numbers, but it still feels like home.
At any given time I'm seeing about 2 people online. I think it was ICQ 98b that introduced server-side UIN lists, so most of the people I had at one time are still there. Of course no one uses it anymore. It's a wasteland of contacts from my days at Canada's Wonderland, Highschool Edmonton LAN and Starcraft friends. But the memories are there.
I've even gone so far as to sort the list into people that I'd really REALLY like to see sign on. I don't expect to see anyone, but who knows. Maybe someone out there is doing the same thing as me. Maybe that UIN will light up and we'll have the most awesome retro throwback conversation ever. Or maybe ICQ is dark, and will stay dark.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
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Caption contest? What's he saying?
Because this shit was funny, and only a few people got to enjoy the joke.