Greatest prank ever

I appreciate a clever prank and this one gets top marks for creativity in my book.

The good news!

My Dad saw the doctor today and got the go ahead to start weaning himself off the neck brace! It appears that he's healing nicely and will likely be in good enough shape to take a planned trip to Germany this September. He sounded great on the phone, lots of energy and even talked about getting a replacement truck for his business.

Cool Beans.

Death Kittah

I have only three words for you: Grim Reaper Cat

This story is so strange it even weirds ME out a little.

Not bad...

Sometimes cruising YouTube yields interesting results. Here is a gentleman who seems to have built how own Bag End (complete with a *twitch* round door)

In hindsite...

I have read on the internets that Daniel Radcliffe (He who is Harry Potter) will turn 18 this month and when he does, he will obtain control of $40 million dollars.

Wow. I was, you know, going to get him a card...or something but uh...

Anyway. I can only hope that Mr. Radcliff will have wise and helpful hands to guide him away from the kinds of temptations $40 MILLION can buy. I am tempted to look back at my life and wonder what I might have done with $40 million when I was 18 and am forced to conclude that I would have no freakin clue. I would likely have saved some of it, but there would be some pretty large purchases that I would be regretting about now.

Like the full sized millenium falcon in my back yard, or the Hoth Base (complete with Imperial walkers) I built in Norway. Or perhaps the strip club with a Star Trek theme. The possibilities are endless.

What would you regret having bought or done with if you'd been given $40 million on your 18th birthday? And if you say "I would have invested it all in a broad range of well managed blah blah blah: you're LYING.

These are the times...

You may have heard me state at some point that I enjoy what I do. And most of the time that is true. I like what I do, I like to travel, I like Conventions and I like the people I meet at them.

Most of the time.

But the fact is, many of these events are run by volunteers or some other semi-organized entity. What I and my fellow merchants like to call Dumb Monkeys.

Dumb Monkeys are a threat to who I am and what I do. Why? Because they are DUMB. This is not to say that they are evil, they often have the best of intentions, but that doesn't help me when they fuck up a convention, and by extension, fuck over ME.

Let me explain. There are hundreds of cons, gatherings, tournaments and ren-faires held a year. We can't afford to attend them all. We can't risk spending a chunk of change to drive to Oregon only to find out that only 200 people are showing up and there are no guests and the hotel is a cesspool. So we screen every event we hear about. First, we visit the website. If the website sucks, we don't do the event. If it's an okay website that never gets updated? We don't do the event. Then we email them a question. Don't get a reply? We don't go. We talk to our fellow merchants and swap info. We search flickr for pictures of the event. Are there crowds in the picture? How does the site look? Is the vendor fee super low? That's a warning sign of a bad event. The process of finding good events is slow, tedious and very very time consuming.

I know it isn't easy setting up and running an event, but its a shitload easier than it used to be. But despite email and collaborative tools and years of experience and numerous resources some people still cock it up. There are a number of ways to kill and event. Poor planning, no advertising, spending too much or too little on guests, too narrow a focus, lack of staff, no financial backing etc etc.

And then there's the worst kind of fuck up. The management break up.

We did PyrateCon a while back and it was an okay event. It could be better but the guys running it had a lot of heart and put a lot of work into the event. Plus its PIRATES in NEW ORLEANS. I mean, they didn't have to twist my arm, I was keen to go again. Things seemed even better when we negotiated an exclusive deal to be the only vendor selling corsets at the event. I sent in my money and marked my calendar.

Then the shit hit the fan. Someone took over the PyrateCon Website. Accusations are made that the previous staff ran the event poorly. New Managament were now running things. Except they don't seem to know who I am. I hit google. Now there's another website claiming to be the REAL PyrateCOn, the others are thieves and frauds! Litigation is under way!

And just like that, this event is fucked. There is no way to fix it. Say one side does sue the other (not much chance because these people aren't running a for profit company or if they are they usually operate on very thin profit margins) most of their money will be eaten up by lawyers. Say they don't sue but fight it out online and in blogs and on myspace pages. Guess what, it hurts both events. Neither one flourishes. And again, I'm fucked.

I'm being told I have to contact the old management to resolve my "payment issues". Yes, I did make out the check to a specific person (i.e. Joe Blpw/PyrateCon) which in hindsight was a mistake. But these new guys are claiming they're pyratecon so I'm going to put their feet to the flame. I doubt the old management team has the money to refund to me (they're suing, remember?) The best I can hope for is a credit towards the new event and I'm not holding out too much hope of that.

Dumb Monkeys.

Geeky

I was poking around youtube when I came across this. If you understand this bit, congratulations, you are a full blooded geek.

Aaaaaand we're off!

The first weekend of the official summer season went off pretty well. It wasn't easy, but we managed to run two shows at once. Origins in Columbus and Great Lakes Medieval Fair in Geneva. Although it was four days straight I was glad to be at Origins. It was indoors and that has advantages. Sunday was brutally hot in Geneva.

I am amazed at how smoothly things actually went considering when we showed up to Origins they had NO IDEA who we were. Apparently there was a cock up. I'm not going to point any fingers or assign blame. Lets just say that some guy, who may or may not have a blog did not get the vendor fee and application to the right people. This guy is obviously an idiot but please cut him some slack, he fills in like 20 of these a year and each one is for an event 6-10 months away.

Anyhoo, things didn't look good because, well, these guys hadn't been paid and didn't know to expect us (or say, assign us a booth space). This is when a great guy named Matt Ragsdale stepped up and saved our asses. He got us in, got us a space and didn't ask for a damn red cent. He trusted us when we said we'd sent in the money. He took us at our word. That's a rarity for an event like this. This ain't no local Sci-Fi con. This is an gaming industry event second only to Gen-Con.

I met Matt at Marcon a few years ago and I have to say that the guy is tops in my book. Needless to say, I'm doing next years paperwork NOW and sending it registered mail this time.

Oh, and we saw Transformers on Thursday and it ROCKED!

Wow

Some people have waaaaay too much time on their hands. And for this I am very glad.

Bigus Dickus

It seems that the Roman legionnaires are getting a bit unruly.

Y'know, this is why the Senate forbid the armies of Rome within the city. Once Julius Ceasar had his troops cross the Rubicon, it was bound to happen ...

Or am I using waaaaaaay obscure references here?

Before and After

I went back and found some of the earliest pics I took of the house and compared them with how things look now. Wow. Pretty drastic changes! All all this is three years. I think we're done with big changes for now. Please dear god, please let us be done...



Here's a more static gallery of Before and After if flash ain't your thing

Cool

A lego aircraft carrier.

Beantown

I managed to get a relatively cheap flight to Boston at 8:30 this morning. The plane left at 9:45. I don't know how I made it but I'm glad I did. It's a 12 hour drive, and while I like driving, it would have eaten up too much time.

It's been just over a year since I last saw my Dad but upon arriving at his Chelmsford home my first impression is that he looked better than the last time I'd seen him. Yes, he's in a neck brace, but it's not as scary as I thought it would be. He's got lots of energy, no scars or bruises. His color is great and apparently he lost a little weight in the hospital. Damn.

His mobility is impaired. The collar bugs him, as it would anyone. He's taking Ambien to help him sleep and it seems to be working. Over the last two years my sleep cycle has kinds sucked and I'm wondering if it might help me.

We talked a lot, which he (and I) love to do, had a great meal and watched his ginormous projection TV. I've managed to make myself useful by getting his printer to talk to his computer again. His DVD-Rom is not working, but that should be a quick fix.

It's hard to relax after so many weeks of busting ass on the house. I need to shop for some jeans. I managed to destroy three pairs doing house stuff. I also wiped out two of my most comfy tshirts but I have lots of those.

Ta Da!!!!!!

The party went pretty damn well. Good weather, maybe too good. A bit warm for all. Many huddled under the new roof chowing down on the amazing amount of food that was available. We got a lot of compliments about the new roof and stucco.

As always, there wasn't enough time to sit and talk with anyone at any length. And there were a lot of people. I got to try a friends new bow, very nice. Alas, I didn't have a string for the crossbow I got on ebay. Frisbee hack had a few new twists this year, and once again, no one cut their own head off. I had hoped to have fighting radio controlled Pirate ships but only one was ready. Maybe next year.

The record for longest distance travelled to attend was 1160 miles by Ms Aleta who narrowly beat out my long time friend Jim Taber who came 1158 miles. I need to find some friends in the UK. That was this can be "An International Party".

The fireworks.... well, what can be said. We got a lot of them. Maybe too many. This was supplemented by my friend Travis. As always, safety was the watchword. (Stop snickering) Last years theme was "The Polish Space program" this year? "Here, hold my beer".

So loud and so large was the display, that we actually had a neighbor complain about it. Luckily I have 'people' to handle such annoying persons. He threatened to call the police . We calmly informed him that it was only 9:30 at night and that we had a licenced, trained pyrotechnition on hand and that the show would be over soon. Some of those statements were actually true.

What was really cool was the clean up crews that picked up the trash and helped clean up the fireworks debris.Very cool. It made Sunday's clean up much easier. People were also very generous with donations to help defray the cost of the fireworks. Thanks guys.

If anyone has any pics (As I once again too none) please email them to me. I'll throw up a gallery for them.

If you missed the party, it sucks to be you. You missed a great shindig. If you didn't get an invite, I apologize. I try to exclude no one. Send me your email and snail mail address for next year.

Its go time

The party is almost here. We're down to the last few projects. I am very glad of this, because I feel like I have been in a perpetual state of filthy for the past 30+ days. Seriously. I have been covered in some kind of filth, paint, stain, mud, mortar or glue for over a month. I have destroyed two pairs of pants and three shirts. Rossana has worked even harder than I have and Lindsey has helped out with all kinds of no fun projects.

The end results though, are pretty impressive. I won't post any pics until after the party. It should be big. Today I hit the fireworks store and again I was UNSUPERVISED. I went way overboard this time. Really. This show will be amazing, but I'm going to need to put out a donation jar to try and recoup the large chunk of change I dropped on this fantasia. I have no ability to say No to things that go boom.

It will be great to see my friends. Sometimes this is the one time a year I get to see some of these people. After the party I'm going to visit my Dad up in Boston. Then it's back to work. Great Lakes Medieval Faire opens soon.