Cue John Cleese
In WoW, warlocks drain soul energy from their enemies and store it to power their spells. Tuesday night, I drained the soul of a parrot. Hey, it attacked first!
Stacey “Pink Five” is back. Amazing to me how one can start off making a one-camera, one-actress short Star Wars fanfilm and go on to making a 60-minute extravaganza that includes a full-scale X-Wing prop and legal agreements with Lucasfilm. But then, we live in a time where Star Wars fandom gets its own Hasbro action figure.
We started up the grill last Saturday, officially welcoming back Spring!
Ah, the wind in my knees
I wore the Utilikilt to work on Friday. Everyone liked it much, and I got lotsa compliments. The shirt I picked out to wear with it was pretty weak, but then I’m pretty sure no one noticed I was wearing a shirt.
Everyone wanted to know what I was wearing beneath it – I told them it was $5 each to find out. One of my co-workers was visibly tempted by the deal. (Yes, I was clad. I’m not going ‘regimental’ to my workplace, no matter how cool my co-workers are.)
Web video link-of-the-day: A City of Heroes performance troupe in Bobbo Number Five.
Intermix at 6000 degrees and rising
I want to rant about the idiots who claim that “freedom of religion” gives them the right to harass people they don’t like, but I am controlling myself.
With great difficulty.
“Mirondarah” could be a Japanese monster movie
Last night, raininva‘s rogue and my mage assaulted the ruined desert city of Zul’Farrak with shrewlet‘s paladin and a little other help. I died a lot; that seems to be the mage’s job. When I moved forward to see what was going on, I attracted aggressive attention (‘aggroed’); when I hung back, stuff snuck up on me from behind and clocked me before the rest of the party could react. Ah, well. At least Shrewlet was able to resurrect me, and I completed 4.5 quests I’d never have finished on my own. 1/2 a level worth of experience; really, a pretty good evening in the game.
One of the quests involved summoning and defeating the giant water lizard Gahz’rilla. Just for rattrap‘s info, Gahz’ruki was nowhere in sight.
Before that, we spent a couple hours at my workplace’s Game Day. The host had a really nice place in an area we wouldn’t mind living… must weasel some info out of her 🙂 Rain and I spread the gospel that is Apples to Apples, and lo, it was good.
Saturday, I played in the comp a bit and then spent 6 hours cleaning the house; you can actually see the floor of my office now, yay! That night we broke in our copy of the WoW board game in a four-person run with Bert and Meche. Took about 5 hours to finish, and Rain and Bert’s Horde characters finished off the boss on turn 33 or so. I have to look up who to contact – upon opening the game, we learned that it’s missing one of the character figures.
There’s an Internet rumor going around that the PlayStation 3 will cost $600 – $700 upon release in the US. Of course, Internet rumors aren’t known for having a lot of basis in reality. However, if it’s true, it may be a good thing that I still have many months’ worth of PS2 games to finish.
A hacker’s machine
A little timeline here (without many dates, cause I can’t remember them):
2005: Apple announces it will be moving the Macintosh over to Intel-based motherboards. Geeks all over the place ask if they can run Windows on them too: Apple says it won’t intentionally block the ability, but won’t support it either.
Later 2005: We discover that Intel Macs don’t use a BIOS to start up their operating system, but something called EFI. Since all versions of Windows use a BIOS, this is a terrible incompatibility, making Windows on a Mac seem unlikely.
2006: Apple releases Intel Macs.
March 2006: Hackers are able to cajole, trick, and otherwise force Windows XP to boot without a BIOS. It doesn’t run great, but it runs. Other excited hackers start working on the “runs great” part.
April 2006: Apple, seeing that it’s about to run out of time on its little 10.5 surprise, says, “oh okay, we were gonna wait ’til later, but look. Here’s Boot Camp. Go ahead and install Windows. It’s beta software, so don’t expect much.” It runs great.
One machine that runs OS X, XP, Linux, BSD, and/or a half-dozen other OSes on command? I’m suddenly a little more interested in a shiny-new Intel Mac…
Fact-checking
I just found an entry on Star Trek: TNG from “TeeVeePedia, the Internet TV Encyclopedia”.
Highlights:
“Star Trek: The Next Generation is set more than 100 years in the future from the original series, when […] the toupee technology employed by the original series’ Capt. James T. Kirk has been banned following the Hairpiece Wars of the late 23rd century.”
“Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton): An instant hit among fans, the character of young genius Wesley Crusher became so popular that Wheaton was forced to leave the show in its third season, after producers could not meet his skyrocketing salary demands.”
“Guinan: Whoopi Goldberg portrayed the Enterprise’s bartender, the last surviving member of a race that went extinct after being devoured by their own enormous, sentient hats.”
TCon 23 report
Some cool things about Technicon 23:
Giving rattrap his combined holiday present for the next several years.
Playing the WoW board game with jsciv, meiran, and candidevoltaire; then buying a copy.
A copy of The Heroic Trio from kittykatya.
Opening the wrong door and accidentally joining this year’s Vile Skit.
Being practically the only character in vileone‘s LARP that was exactly what he said he was: no more, no less.
Friday dinner seated between Dwight, raininva, and Christy.
Friday night panels that went Most Excellently. (Some details soon in a filtered post, heh heh.)
A Vile Script that forced me to wrestle with rainbowsaber. (Oh, shucks.)
Helping southernsinger perform “The Dragon & The Lady” for Holly Lisle.
Late Saturday dinner and great conversation with meiran.
Thanks to trenn, chown -R us:us yourbase.
Frequent backrubby morale- and energy-boosts from shrewlet.
Two boxes full of new reading material from the Auction.
Cool artwork from kittenchan and ranchonmars.
It’s my 20th Technicon.
—–
Some less-cool things about Technicon 23:
It’s my 20th Technicon.
Not enough time to be in Whose Con Is It?
Long drives from and to Norfolk.
Not enough quality time with many friends.
My lousy Simon Cowell imitation.
A body that gave out too early on Saturday night. (For once, stomach issues rather than exhaustion.)
Our air mattress developing a hole.
Not enough time for after-con dinner in Blacksburg. (But a good one with Bert & Meche in Salem.)
—–
I’d call TCon 23 a success, for my part. Well done, nius, and thanks for the good weekend!
