Me head is alternating between spinning and pounding. Its a sure sign I'm about to crash.
Last night I was out edditing the film we shot on sunday until about 8:30 and with the 1hour drive home I got in just in time to eat some cheerios and hit the sheets.
I think its just been one too many days of go go go.

In better news I think the film came out really well. Its a lot of cheezy funny and gamer type silliness. The only bad thing is its about 10 minutes and contest entries have to be 5 or less. so tonight I have to take the "director's cut" and slice it down to theatrical release. So far I've cut about 4 minutes 20 seconds of all good material. I can feel the pain of many a director as his masterpeice is sliced down to crap by a studio trying to save a few bucks. I just hope its still good enough to make the cut for the contest.

Brain hurts too much to say more.

Another Monday and I'm barly awake. The weekend was good, but busy. It seems even my "free" weekends seem to fill up with stuff quickly.

Game friday went well. The party didn't accomplish much, but the new player didn't die or get too lost. So it was good over all. Bad news is I got no takers on the show up early and do some filming for the 5 minuite D&D film. Looks like it could be another wasted script.

Saturday, I came in to school for like 10 minutes. My plates weren't ready to harvest so they got stuck on the bench. The rest of the day was spent shopping and searching care bears and GI Joe figures. MAny bears found none of the right joes. In our searches we had to go to the west farms mall, which incidently was holding tryouts for american Idol. Needless to say the place was packed and boy did those contestants suck. I could go on a long rant about american idol, but I think I'm too tired to do it justice right now.

Sunday, my friend Ian was able to rally enough troops to actually shoot the 5 minuite D&D film. It still needs to be eddited but currently there is a lot of funny stuff in it. I'm excited for the final product. MY only real wish is that I had better camera equipment to shoot with. The film is a little grainy and the colors could be better, but its better than nothing.

It looks like I'm going to be doing edditing tomorow. I had to rent out an edditing suit because all my edditing software was on my mac, which I donated to my grandfather. Its probably better to be doing in more professional like thought as I'm still not sure if I ever got my software set up exactly right anyway.

Not much to say about today. I'm in a real of unawakeness I'm suprised I'm even here this am.

Its friday and its game night and I'm not as psyched up as I should be. Its been a long and trying week and a big part of me just wants to go home and crash. Instead I need to get home, teach Mn-Michael how to play D&D and then try to get set up for filming my 5 minuite D&D movie. Unfortunatly I don't think there will be enough people around to do it. As such has been the case of late. I can write up decent scripts, but can't seem to find the cast to make them happen. Maybe I should just go back to doing stop motion stuff.

Its going to be an interesting scession tonight. We have 1 guest player and one player substitution, both of who will probably be very lost, due to the crazy campaign we're playing in.

It will be good for doggie to have a bunch of people over. She's been kind of down in the dumps since Kitty went away.
A big thank you to all who sent their sympathies. Its really been a rough couple of days.

Blogger seems to be having problems so I'm going to cut this short.

I'm once again rapidly losing my mind. My head hurts and keeps taking me places.

I had an odd dream this morning about this kid I went to college with, Don Allen. We were living out some sort of kung-fu movie. I'm not exactly sure what else was going on in it, but there may have been a wedding. All I know is it was very real, besides the fact my kung-fu was much better in my dream than it is IRL.

Still missing the cat. Its not quite the same without him meowing at me for food in the am.
BZ is taking his loss really hard and I'm not the most comforting person.
I'm not really sure what else to do.

Oh and the spin doctor's song, 2 princes keeps playing in my head.

I thought this was going to be another day of nothing to report. I had some interesting dreams this morning, but nothing I remember. I got up following my normal routine, took shower, got dressed, took dog out, feed pets.

When I fed Kitty something was off. He just kind of was looking at his food and meowing at it. And he kept making a motion like he was yawning. I just figured he was going to yack like he usually does. I finished geting ready and left for school.
Around 7:30 I got a call from BZ. She had noticed something funny about the cat too. He couldn't close his bottom jaw. She smartly decided to take him to the vet and got an 11:00 appointment.
I wasn't really sure what to think, maybe he dislocated it or something. It didn't seem like too much to worry about.

At about 12:30 I get another call from her. Apparently Mitsu (Kitty) had some sort of cancer in his jaw and it had caused the bone to deterioriate to the point it broke. There was nothing fixative the vet could do, except some thing they termed as radical surgery, which means its going to be expensive and it probably won't work. Deb made the call to have him put down.

Mitsu, though he annoyed me at times, was a good cat. He didn't get on the counters or pee on the curtains. He would listen when told and would come to you if called. He had his quirkes as any pet does. He couldn't stop himself from devouring any house plants we got, including the bloody fake x-mas tree. He did yack a lot, which thinking back on it now, may have had something to do with the cancer. He liked to have his head scratched, but never his belly and would get fiesty if you petted him too much. He liked to drink water out of a glass and would always magically appear any time you were eating cereal to see if he could beg for some of the milk form you. He would usually hiss at the dog and would try to bat her with his declawed paws, but every now and then we would find them sleeping together and I like to think they were secretly pals.

The house will be a little emptier without him there and I will miss him. I hope he has passed on to a better place, with rivers of milk, fresh water filled glasses, and only tasty (but smelly) wet food to eat.

RTK

I've been Meme-ed

Friday meme! Actually its now monday

1. Grab the nearest book.
Doyle, Beuchat, Montville, "Food Microbiology, Fundamentals and Frontiers"
I probably should have waited until I got home to do this.

2. Open the book to page 123.
Its a page of references for the chapter on milk and dairy prodtcuts

3. Find the fifth sentence.
Its not really set up in sentatces, but the fifth reference on the page is for:
Bullerman,L.B. and F.J. Olivigni. 1974. Mycotoxin producing potential of molds isolated from cheddar cheese. Journal of Food Science. 39: p1166-1168

4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
Do you really want to read the next five entries?

5. Don’t you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
What you see is what you get. I forgot to bring in a fun reading book today. The next closest books on my desk are "Bacillus Subtilis and other gram positive organisms", "Biochemistry", "Microbiology Techniques", ect.

6. Tag five people.Tagging: Shadow, BZ, NP (if she still reads this blog), Naya (also if she still reads and blogs), .....sorry I only know four people.

So on to the info of my weekend. For the remainder of my birthday, I went over to the folks house for some filet mignon and muck. Much is my traditional birthday cake. It consists of layers of chocolate cake, spaced with layers of cool whip, chocolate pudding, and smashed up Heath candy bars. Its really good but deffinatly not on my weight watchers plan. Also not helping that they sent me home with all of the left overs.
After dinner we played with my parent's new puppy for a while. She is a west highland white terrier and a little pip. Currently they are calling her Kailey, but I'm trying to get her to come to Scooty Puff Jr. We'll see who wins out. Razul had a blast playing with her.
Razul is bigger and faster, but Scooty Puff fits under the couch. So she would come out and chase Razul, who would run away then do a quick spin and chase little Scooty Puff, who would run then slide back under the couch. It was a lot of fun.
We broke out the Order of the Stick game, probably what I was most excited for, but due to a lot of phone calls, every one has to ring you up and wish you happy birthday, we didn't get to play. It was ok and good to talk to my brothers for a bit. I'm really horrible about keeping up with people.

Saturday, me and BZ hauled our buts out of bed early and drove up to go tubing on the farmington river. We met up with Ian, and the whole crew, Jamie (guy), Nick, J-Web, and more. ItT was really good to see everyone. I haven't seen Jamie or Nick in years. The adventure ended at Dairy Queen with Blizards and Flamethrower Burgers (also deffinatly not on weight watchers). Made it home and passed out.

Sunday started out difficult. I woke up all dehydrated and beat from a long day on the river and in the sun. My parents came over about 10am and from there we proceeded to rip out the old front pourch stairs and slowly put in new ones. We finished up around 6pm. The railings still need to go up and the whole thing needs paint, but at least they look good and sturdy now.

Me and Bz finished up the Anime series Gantz last night. IT was kind of dissappointing. I'm starting to find this with more and more anime TV series. Its just such a let down at the end. The good guys don't really win. All the main characters Die. Evil is stoped...maybe. So its kind of a whole lot of nothing, making the series feel sort of pointless. MAybe there is some JApanese cultural theme hidden in all of this, but for america its kind of sucky.

So this is it, the big 30. The time when I officially pass from my youth and enter middle age. Somehow I don't feel all that different and I still seem to own the same number of toys and games, that is unless someone cleared my out while I was at school today. And if you're planning to do just that, remember I know where you live and I have access to about 60lbs of cheeze wiz.

It seems just about every year my birthday is a time for reflection and depression. I just don't know if I have time for it all this year. There is just too much going on. Too much lab work to do. Some Biz-Pirates to thump. A wedding to plan and more.

Other than it being my birthday, not much to report. Lab work today was sub standard, or in my case very standard.

Ah yes, the present list.
So far I have recieved in order:
1 book of star wars stickers.
1 compliment.
1 copy of samuari 7 eppisode 7
1 queseda maker
1 toaster/egg cooker
1 box of the lates release of D&D minis
........

Well today was a brilliant start.
So I'm driving to work and I see this bird swoop down over my car. Then there is the horrid, "Ptink" noise and in my rearview mirror I can see two things fall down somewhere behind the car. In slow horror I pull back the cover to the sun roof and see the splatter of blood going accrost the glass. Apparently it looks like the bird got bisected on the roof rack. Totally gross.

In better news, lab work is going stellarly. I got two more transformations done. I still have to check their DNA to see if they are right, but it looks promising. I'm still reruning my gremination assays. The new results still point in the same direction as my orgional, but not to the same severity.

And Once again, minesota is the bane of my existance. The combat-pad the main competition to the adventure board, which I am a co-developer of was released by a compagny based out of mineapolis Mn. Once I take over the world I may have to remove Minesota from the map. Maybe I'll make another wisconsin, or just call it Canada Jr.
From what it looks like, they launched for Gencon, so with luck they also got signed up for gencon late and had to pay all the extra costs. They also had their own booth which is more expensive too. So with real luck, they lost a lot of money on this product and hopefully will give up after a bit. With how long its taken us to just be close to breaking even at cons, I would think it would be mighty discouraging for anyone else out there.

This would have been up sooner but I've been beat for the last two days and haven't had the energy. So without further adieu

Gen con Day 6,
I roll out of bed exhausted, barley functional. Too many days without sleep. Too many days spent being infomercial guy. Ugh.
K-biz finds some more magnet packs we didn’t cut and feels like we need to do them right now. So I don’t get out of the hotel until 9:30. The dealer’s room opens at 10am and our booth isn’t set up.
K-biz: hey I’ll be down around 10:30.
Me (to myself): F-ing great.

I try to stop of me daily breakfast burrito but to no avail. Time is ticking and I don’t want to be late.

I get down to the dealer’s room and finish setting up at 9:55. The doors open and the initial rush I was hoping for never comes. The day drags out and sales are much slower than Saturday. I get some final shopping done, pick up a dragon which breathes smoke for BZ, and some final pieces of swag. At days end we’ve sold 25 boards, which is about double Thursday or Friday, but still less than Saturday. We pack up and get the hell out of dodge. Actually I do most of the packing and K-biz sits in the car.

So the final figures for the weekend: total sales 85 but with the return, 83. I outsold K-biz by a little more than double, 718$ in cash sales to me, 304$ in cash sales to him. We also did 391 in credit sales, most of which were also by me.

For being Mr. professional, K-biz really doesn’t know much about selling.
I had forgotten how condescending he is at times and really doesn’t seem to give people any respect. Maybe I’m just more genuine.

Here is an example from the trip home.
We get a ways out of Indianapolis and swing into a steak and shake for dinner. Our waitress is a bit chatty(friendly) as many people in the middle of the country are. She asks where we are from, we tell her NY and CT. And she asks us about 9-11, were we there when it happened, ect. Here’s our responses.
Me: No, I was in Groton, just across the sound, but I had friends who were there, only a block away or so. It was just horrible. They couldn’t really speak about it for weeks afterward.
Waitress: That must have been awful. I cried when it was happening.
K-biz: I wasn’t there at the time, but I wish I had been.
(I’m thinking that he was implying he could have tried to help or something, but he continues)
K-biz: Property in the city was really cheap after it happened and if I was there I could have cashed in.
Waitress:…..(look of disbelief and rightly so)
We’re talking about the most emotional thing that’s happened to the country in the past 10 years and here is K-biz babbling about not being able to make a profit off of it.

I steer the conversation back to the horror and into new terrorist threats and it ends up being a good conversation after K-biz shuts up some. Now I’m no master of reading people and their attitudes, ect, but K-biz just is clueless.
Also he is clueless as to direction, as we got lost just about every time he was in charge of getting us anywhere we didn’t have map quest directions to.

So to end this lovely trip.
Me: Hey, it would be a lot easier for me if we could drive back into Ct and I wouldn’t have to take the train. (As I trained into the city and hauled all my shit there for the start of this trip, it seems fair to me.)
K-biz: ……
A 10 minutes pass
K-biz: I’m worried about traffic. If we get in after 6am we’re going to hit a lot of it.
Me: It shouldn’t be a problem. (I run the numbers in my head going the speed limit we’ll be there around 6am. I’m driving so this won’t be a problem)
K-biz: yeah but there could be a lot of traffic.
Me: we’ll if its getting close we could take the tappen ze bridge and miss all of the city traffic.
K-biz: ……..
A few hours go by. K-biz passes out. He wakes up about 2 hours outside the city. It’s a little after 3am.

K-biz: we made good time. I should be able to drop you off at grand central station.
Me: Actually I wanted to drive into Ct.
K-biz: … oh … Well … When would you bring the car back?
Me: What?
K-biz: the car, Tracy will need it this week so when would you bring it back.
Me: what are you talking about?
K-biz: She will need the car and
Me: I get that. Where do you plan to be for this trip? Do expect me to drop you off at some train station along the way?
K-biz: What do you mean?
(so apparently at this point he thinks I’m going to drive him to his house, then want to borrow the car to drive back to Ct alone, which is insane.
Me: I want to drive back to my place, then you can take the car back to NYC.
K-biz: oh .. .. I don’t want to drive that far. (this after I’ve busted ass through over half this trip all in one stint. If he was driving we’d still be in no where penn.
Me: (trying to compromise) Ok, well then maybe you can drop me off at the train station in Grenich.
K-biz: I guess I could drop you off in secunus. (this stop is still in jersey and from there I would have to train in to grand central, then back out to ct.)
Me: what would be the sense in that?
We go back and forth about what would be faster. He won’t give an inch and finally I’m just fed up with it and drive us into grand central.
I pull the 6 bags of stuff I have from the car, which is almost more than I can possibly carry and drag it all into the train station.

I get onto the train. It cost 25$ and the ride to new haven takes a little over 2.5 hours, which is more time than it would have taken me to drive all the way to new London and K-biz to drive back to new haven from there. Thankfully BZ takes the day off and comes to pick me up in new haven, otherwise it would have been another 1.5 hours on the train and a cab ride back to the house.

Its fairly safe to say I won’t be taking another of these trips with K-biz again, which is sad as it was going pretty well up to the drive home.

I spend most of Monday half passed out or buzzing around talking about the con. I take Tuesday off too to recuperate.

All in all we did well. We were just 100$ shy of fully recouping the con costs plus the manufacture costs of the boards sold. Hopefully we will generate enough online sales to make that back. We would have done better if there hadn’t been two other stands selling initiative boards. I must say ours was the best and I can only hope the other two guys too a big hit at this con and pack it up.

Oh I also blame them on K-biz as if we had held back our launch until we were ready to go and didn’t have him passing the idea and some demos around last year, I don’t think anyone else would have thought to launch a product like this.

Gen Con Day 5,
Woke up rip and ready to go. Got all packed up, grabbed a breakfast burrito from the mexi place on the corner and whipped on down to the con. Today was to start off exciting because I had a ticket for a free game for the first 5 people to bring said ticket to the gametec stand. K-biz showed up just in time to man the booth for a bit while ran off to get my game. I got there second. The dealer running the stand takes a look at me and the other guy and goes, “the deal is only good to players, no vendors.” F-ing A. I crumpled up my ticket and made a solemn vow never to buy anything from that vendor ever. From there I circled around and got into the roll for free swag at the wizards booth. I had a +8 to my roll from doing almost all of the wizard’s demos. The dice falls and comes up 17, which means I had my pick of anything up there and what do you know, after 2 full days of running this they are out of hard cover manuals and just about anything else good so I grab a packet of dungon tiles.
I get back to the booth and K-biz is ready to take off for a bit. I take a breath and I’m ready to pitch. Right away three guys come up. I start my speal,
Me:Are you guys gamers?
Them: yes, we were here yesterday. Do you guys take returns?
Me (puzzled): I guess, is something wrong with it?
Them: no, it just seems frivolous. I don’t need one board let alone two.
I give them back their money. Ass wipes, like anything else you buy at this con isn’t going to be frivolous.

So right off my day is in the crapper. I start to get down, but am able to rally as more customers come forward. Quick fast forward through this day as I don’t really leave the booth at all the entire day. As the day reaches 5:20 (40 min till the dealer’s room closes) I’m out of ready to go boards. I’ve sold 36 over the course of the day. It’s a damn good thing I brought extra boards and didn’t listen to K-biz’s incredible business sense. Though if I did I would have had all of Sunday to play games and screw around.

I get two more customers come by looking to buy after we had run out and I have to ask them to come back the next morning.

It turns out K-biz didn’t have any of the stuff he thought he did, no extra magnets, no pens, no boards, so we have to run out and shop around for pens and bags. We get back to the hotel, order a pizza, and cut magnets until about 12pm. Then we go upstairs and the only bags we were able to buy were these cheap fruit bags. So we stay up until 2am using an iron to heat seal the bags so they don’t look like total crap.

By night’s end we have about 40 units ready to go.

GenCon Day 4,
Up at 8:40 today, its raining. I try to log in but the hotel net is all screwy. Great just F-ing great. I get an umbrella from the concierge at the hotel and we roll. The umbrella sucks. The wind makes it turn inside out every few moments. I duck into a Mexican place to gram some fast breaking chow and K-biz rolls on. After some struggle I make it to the dealer’s room.
One thing I will say is the burrito is great, its eggs, potatoes, chicken, and a cheese salsa sauce, very tasty.
The doors open and the day really kicks off. Right away we get a few sales. I pop over to wizards and check off a few more demos, but the line for the giant dice roll for free stuff is too long so I tool around for a while checking out other stuff. I get some free minis and see some art I like. Today I remember to bring my camera along so when I get back there will be a spread of nifty stuff, some hotties, and some not-ies.
I successfully find the booth with the cup full of minis for 5$. I see a future containing the party being attacked by hordes of one legged/ one armed mutant monsters next week.
I get back to the booth. K-biz takes off. I sell a bunch of boards. He returns I go out again and this time find some dirt cheap scenery pieces, walls for like 1$ and doors and stuff at 50cents each. I blow about 30$ on that. I meet some guys at reaper who are very interested in the adv board. There is a big space here. We sell some more. I kick out to steak and shake for lunch around 3pm. I get some shitty service and a way too thick shake, had to eat it with a spoon. All in all it was a good day. We sold 14 boards. Peter our booth buddy took us out for dinner to talk about new products and stuff. He was all pissed that Larry, the Settler’s of Catan guy came over and threatened legal action against him because he made a plastic boarder for the settler’s game. Anyone who has played it knows how much the hex pieces shift and come apart so IMO the boarder is a great idea. Larry didn’t think so and threw a fit. What is funny about the whole thing is Larry came over and yelled at K-biz because he thought we were all the same company.
We spent another night cutting magnets. I’ve now had two full days at gen con and still haven’t played a real game yet. I think I’m going to take the time to tomorrow.

ps K'biz warns me that our roomies snore, but who is it all passed out doing his lumber jack impression, you got it

Gencon Day 3,
I awake to K-biz going , hey its 6 am. Not a big deal as this is actually sleeping late for me. Get up, get showered, get going.
I glance over at the other bed, it looks empty. Fuck, I slept on the floor for nothing???
Then I see the guy sleeping in the chair and I put on my glasses and there is a lump in the bed, a human sized one. At some time during the night our illustrious roomies seem to have slipped in.
So we head on down to the con. Apparently the info in my book is bad because the dealer’s room doesn’t open until 10, dealers get in at 8. My book says opens at 8, so dealers in at 7. We’re there over an hour early. I take the time to go pick the bag I didn’t get the day before. It does have some interesting stuff in it. There is one thing I can say for gen con and that’s hella good swag. All kinds of new dice and card game demos, with free bys. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I grab a quick coffee and bagel (sucky) and its time for the dealer’s room to open. We quickly find that our booth partner has monopolized most of the space, but with some creative set up we get a workable space. Its now about 30 minutes until the gates of hell open. Our booth buddy shows up and we chat for a bit. He’s a nice guy, selling a card organizer that works for just about any game that uses cares. It’s a nice product, but he spent way too much to make it. Something like 60K for the mold, which is nuts for a 40$ product. Oh well, you live you learn.10 o’clock rolls by and the crowds start to file/mob in. We get some traffic right away, but no sales. I take off for a bit to explore.
I start off watching a new pirate game being demoed, which uses “gold” coins to simulate your ship crew weapons, ect. It looks really neat, but costs 20$ per set and it loos like you’ll need two sets to play, so I take my free coin and move on.
Up next us a card game , which simulates miniature war games. It’s a neat concept and playing it is kind of fun, but I can’t think of any time I’d really get a chance to play it. So I take my free space ship game for demoing and head on.
Up next is anachronism or something like that. Its another card game sponsored by the history channel, which allows you to pit some of history’s big guys against each other, like what if alaxander the great fought gengis kahn. Play is pretty easy and I really like that the game takes into account real historical information to create the characters.
From there I skip around from booth to booth for a while. The wizards booth has a giant dice you can roll and win prizes if you demo some of their stuff. I get a red hand adventure book, which looks cool.
Next I see the new order of the stick game demo. I’m there for like a minute before I’m sure I must have the game. The ling for the game is long and slow. I’m in line a full hour before making my purchase, with a collectable magnet and pin. Later in the day I find that they sold out of the game so I’m glad I didn’t decide to skip out of the line and try to get one the next day.
I come back to the booth and check in with K-biz. So far 7 sales. I stick around for a bit and we get two more, so up to 9. Fearing other stuff will sell out fast I go over to the cheap table and pick up boxes of hack/enemy and buffy the card game for like 4$. I see anyone I bringing souvenirs for getting some expansion packs for one of these games.
K-biz takes off for the night. I do my time for the day and rake in 3 more sales so we’ve got 12 total. This is about the most we’ve ever sold at a con and it’s only the first day. There is lots of interest in the adv board and I have high hopes.
We decide to bypass playing games tonight and instead to cut down magnets to prep for sales tomorrow.
We have dinner at a brew pup sort of place. Their hefeweizen isn’t as good as the bbq place’s, but their ribs and chicken is really spicy bbq and very tasty.
We return to the hotel and make pals with some people who run part of icon. They are psyched to have us there again and offer us some possible deals to try to cut our costs.The night begins to wind down. I buy a pint of chocolate cherry truffle Hagen dais ice cream in the hotel lobby and polish off most of it. It is simply divine. K-biz takes the bed again. He offers to share but I think I’m more comfortable with the floor

GenCon Day 2,
I wake at 6am. The car is getting cold, there are weird noises in the parking lot, and I have to piss. I get out of the car and walk the lot. The door of the place does say it opens at 8am, only 1hr 40 minutes now. I got back to the car and try to pick up a few more hours.
I wake again its now 7am. K-biz gets rousted and we head off for some eats before dealing with the tire dudes. It’s a old fashion diner Bickfords. I get a yummy French toast with bacon and sausage and eggs for 6 bucks. Total barging!
We head back to the tire place. There are two other chumps doing the same thing we are, old crack, who spent the night in his camper and wants like 8 tires and “the mullet” who slept in his truck and also wants like 6 tires. Finally we’re up.
Us: Hi we got a flat, do can you fix it.
They check the computer, it goes down. There is a long manual search and some cussin.
Home town hero Johny: Sorry we don’t carry tires for your car. Its like too new or something.
In Johny’s defense he did then proceed to call ever tire place in a 30 mile radius and see if any of them had the tire.
Johny: Un ha, Un ha, Un ha, thanks anyway (repeat many times)
Johny: well I think your best bet is to try Pittsburg, its like 100 miles from here.
K-biz: *whaaaa* but our spare is only rated for 50 miles.
Me: lets go.
So we haul ass to Pittsburg and by haul ass I mean driving under 50mph because that’s what the tire says.
Finally we find a tire place that has them in stock. They fix it up while we grab lunch. It’s now 1pm.
We have until 5pm to check in and it’s a 7 hour drive, hmmm.
We bust some serious ass and make some calls. They will let us check in by 8pm. We arrive at 7:20.
Check in complete. Hotel acquired.
Go up to the hotel room and low and behold, two double beds. There are four of us sharing this room, wonderful.
I eat some kick ass ribs and chicken wings at the BBQ place next door. They also have a heffeweizen, so I have to try. It’s really good. I think it was called avalanche or something like that.
Oh and when we went to set up our booth, they guy we are sharing with already had stuff everywhere. Also this dealer’s room is huge. If anyone wants anything let me know and I’ll do my best to find.

GenCon, Day 1,
So far off to a god start. I got to the train station at 7:30, in plenty of time to catch the 8pm metro north. While I’m there I notice these two girls buying tickets and think one of them looks familiar. She gets closer and I realize its Lindsey, a friend from UCONN, but who left at the end of last semester to try to get a job in NYC. I wave her over and we say some hi’s. Her friend joins us. This is a friend who I have been told for months how hot/good looking she is. In reality, she’s not that impressive.
So Lindsey runs off to get a sandwich. The friend sits down at a bench opposite to me. We chat for a bit. Lindsey comes back and sits on the other side of the friend, about as far away from me as she can get. Now this is odd. We were, I thought, pretty good friends. We hung out every day, did lunch, all that. She doesn’t say more than a word to me the rest of the time we’re waiting for the train. Train comes, and we leave to board. I’m carrying all my gear and not moving too quickly. No offer of help and the two of them are off like a shot, down the tunnel to the train and vanished by the time I reach the platform. Just very odd over all. I’m guessing “the church” got to her. It’s sad.
Train is long and dull, but I reach Grand central at about 10. Kyle meets me at the terminal. We load up and we’re on the road.
We bust-a-move through NY, NJ. Traffic is heavy at many points due to road construction, but we’re still making good time. Its about 1AM and we switch off. I kick ass through a good chunk of Penn, then hit some more construction. I don’t know what it is with road work in the middle of the night, but apparently that’s the time to do it. Finally I break out of it and get going.
Then I hear it, thump, thump, thump. The car turns slowly as if in water. I pull over. Its now about 2:30. We get out of the car. Its near pitch black.
Me: you got a flashlight in this thing?
K-Biz: no
Me: Crap
So we stare at the tire for a while and in bits of moon light and interior car light we can tell. We’ve got a flat. First things first, change the tire. All we’ve got is a bitch ass Donut and a piss poor jack and as this is still all in the dark we can’t tell a damn thing about it. While looking for the owner’s manual (because K-biz don’t do nuthin not by the book) I find a lighter in the glove compartment. So I end up flicking the lighter on and providing the torch light for him to work by. Spare on, we’re back in business. Now to get a new tire or a patch.

Being this is bunfuck Pennsylvania, nothing is open. Well not quite nothing. A service guy stops (after we’ve put on the spare) and gives us some options. Drive up 1 exit, the off the highway and out into the middle of nowhere to some garage, which opens at 6am. Keep going on the highway to a service station, which does tires. Or push on about 2 exits up to a 24hr service station.
We hit the highway service station first. It looks closed. We go in.
US “Hi, what time does the service station open?”
Waitress, “Its open now.”
US “Ok, we have a flat and ..”
Waitress, “Oh they don’t do that here, you’ll have to go 40 some odd miles up the highway to the al night place.”
FUCK!!
So we pile back in and slowly put put along on the donut, 40 miles at under 50mph, double ugh.
Its now 4am and I’ve been up for 24 hours. We hit the 24hr station. It takes a while to find the guy as he’s in the back playing with some automated garbage machine. He comes around front and takes a long look at the car.
24hr Mac “Them’s 17inch tires you got on that thing. We don’t carry them fancy things. You’ll have to go down to Roy’s Tires, about 7 miles that way”

We slowly put put down to roy’s tires. They open at 8am. K-biz pulls us into the lot and we crash for some restless Z’s.

Well this week is off to a stelar start. We'll get to that in a minuite.
The weeked was fun and good. Satruday, me, BZ, my sister and the Chad all went up to wickham park in manchester and met up with Mn Kim and Michael and Ian for a power round of disc golf. I came in second over all. Its been a long time since I've played and I was way out of shape and practice.
The game ended and we scrimaged for a quick round of Tron. Its kind of like Frisbee tag and lots of fun.
From there me and BZ ran home for a quick shower then were off to stonington to see Pirates 2. I had heard a lot of bad reviews so I was a little worried. Also since we were ruinning late it looked like we would just barly make the film before it started.
So we get to the theatre and low and behold there is a line, maybe 20 people in front of us. Time check 7:06, movie starts, 7:05.
Crap. I jump out of line to grab some munchies so we can do a little multi tasking. Then it happens.
"Reet Reet Reet," The lights flash and an automated message begins to play. "Warrning, There is an Emergency in the theatre. Please depart via the exits in a calm manner." It repeats.
I look around and slowly people are heading for the door, so I follow suit. We end up standing around outside for like 30 minuts as the fire trucks get there and check the place out. Appears a battery in on of the alarms was low or something so it went off. Finally the firemen exit the building and I slowly inch my way through the crowd which has formed. The moment people start moving I'm off like a shot. Being a giant helps at times. I end up 4th in line. We get our tickets. We get in to the theatre and since there was the emergency they start the film at the begging and we miss nothing.

Pirates 2, dead man's chest IMO was a good film. The first pirates was great, this one could have been better but was still good. I really liked a lot of the fight scenes. The director had some really inventive ways to conduct a battle. I have only two real issues with the film.
1. The end was a total cliff hanger. I don't mind a little mystery at the end of my films or some unresolved issues, but here everything was unresolved and ends in some very precarious situations, the kind you don't want to wait a year to see how they will turn out.
2. The bad pirates weren't scarry enough. They half sea creatures they were, were almost more comical than scarry. The undead moon light zombies the first bad pirates were was freaky and a really cool effect. These new pirates were more like fighting the sidekicks from the little mermaid.

So sunday was a day of shopping. I was able to complete my list of things for BZ's birthday. It was also fairly restful.

Whcih brings us to monday and the horrors. Gencon, which I thought was next week is in actuality this week. This means instead of having a week and a half to prep for it I've got 2 days. We're lacking invintory. We're lacking posters/ advertising/ booth stuff. We're lacking the T-shirt give aways I wanted to do. I haven't finished the scenery peices I was working on. So in short I'm not at all ready. Whcih means this will probably be just another big waste of money. K-Biz thinks we'll sell about 50 boards, which if he had mentioned that earlier I would have nixed the whole thing. Lets run some numbers:
50 boards at 15$ each, minus 7$ production cost is 400$.
Table cost: 600$
Ad cost: 600
Hotel cost 180$ ea (360$ total)
Food: 50-100 if we eat real cheap

So we have on one hand 400$ profit and on the other hand 1600$ costs.
My business sence is tingeling. and that means danger.

Oh and just incease there is a big rush on boards, like crazy interest which looks like it could mean we'd break even, we only have 50 completed units so we can't even sell more than that!!!
F F F F F F F F F F F F F F F F F F!!!!!!!!!

News is slowly geting better. BZ's dad finally agreed to walk her down the isle in costume, which is good. Still trying to figure out how exactly we are going to pay for this whole rig-a-ma-roll. Refinancing the house for what must be the 5th time. I really don't like to be in this much debt, but there isn't much I can do about it.

Saw another "Hell's Kitchen" and the theory holds. Its not even 5 minutes into the show and one of the girls says "I'm not going to get kicked off I'm going to win." Low and behild she is the one kicked off, even with 2 'suprising' change ups. They already played a clip from next week with another of the girls saying she was going to win, so it looks like she will be off next week. Ugh.

Also saw "V for Vendetta" last night. I would have retitled it V for Very very bad. The film was slow, very slow. The world didn't make a heck of a lot of sence and was a bad rip off of whats been going on here for the last few years. There is a 'terrorist' attack on london and some religious right nut job uses it to his advantage to gain power. Then he forced his 'moral' values on the whole country, outlawing atheists, gays, muslims, ect. Wow really deep thoughts went into this POS. The whole thing was lined with polotical crap, which could have been hidden a lot better in the underlying themes. So yeah, the Warkowski brothers have done it again and made another shitte film. They seem to be in a race with M. Knight Shamalon to see who can trash their career the fastest and still be able to make big budget films. He still has a big head start.

Some other things in the film which just didn't make sence.
How do V's knives seem to cut through almost anything? They slice through metal batons and signs like butter.
If this film is ~25 years in the future, why do the weapons suck so bad? They still have at best handguns made in 2000. Some military guys have what looks like better guns but they never shoot them.
Why is the "president/czar/whatever" always talking to his cabinet by way of a big TV screen? Is he such a paranoid coward he can't meet with them in person?
Why do things that explode always have fireworks mixed in with the other explosives? The last big explosion is underground yet wooo, fire works up in the sky.

Over all: long, dull, pointless (besides the obvious 'a country based on religion is wrong'), dull acting, dull world. Seriously, I'd rather have seen a reality show of monkies at the zoo. It would have had a more invoulving plot.

And make sure to not this review is comming from someone who agrees with the "underlining" themes in the film, but I'm not going to give a peice of crap like this a good review just because I agree with it.