So I have been noticing that a number of people that I stalk follow on a regular basis have been using Twitter a lot more often. Xbox 360’s own Major Nelson tends to give away free things via his twitter. So I have finally caved in and signed up.
Let’s see now, that means I have a:
Blog
Myspace
Facebook
Flikr
Youtube
Zune
Xbox
And now Twitter
I am sure that Lee will have me signed into Linkdin soon too.
This is the one where I talk about politics a little. As anyone who knows me will testify, I don’t really talk about politics very much but this past election, I don’t know how one could get away without talking about it. For starters, I was raised right. (No one show this to my parents or they will get swelled heads). The President of the United States is the Commander in Chief. Whether you agree with some of his policies or not, he is still in the office, he got there through the democratic process and deserves a little respect because of that. Sadly I believe a lot of people have forgotten about this. (To include my parents) When I am out on my travels I head people all the time talk about how horrible Bush is and how he is screwing up the country. While in Vegas I saw people in the wax museum flipping off the wax statue of G.W..
Now, I have a very unique view on how government should be run. I claim to be neither liberal nor conservative, Republican or Democrat (or green or any of those others). I don’t like the labels because they don’t represent what I truly believe in. I am all for the death penalty, the prisons are overcrowded and we are wasting money on keeping scum fed and housed. On the flip side, I firmly believe that same sex marriage should be allowed. Their lives don’t have any effect on mine, why should I deny them the happiness of marriage? I live in a very high cost area, and because of this, I have to make a lot of money even to just survive and pay rent. The amount I make would be a fortune if I lived in BFE Iowa, but I don’t. Because of this, people look only at the amount I make and say “You are upper class and make too much”. (In the area I live, I can assure you that I am in the middle class section.) Under certain tax plans, this means that I will see a tax increase, which means that I will be taking home even less money.
We have a new President Elect now. There are some policies of his that I do not agree with. There are some that I do. Likewise with McCain, there were things I agreed with, and some I did not. Regardless, Mr. Obama has won and he will be my President. Just like Mr. Bush was my President.
What bothers me is all the hype and hoopla I see in the media, and even in some of my friends who believe that Obama is the second coming of Christ and that we are doing away with the corporate Satan. The thing is, While Bush was in office, he wasn’t the only one making decisions. While Obama is in office, he will not be the only one making decisions. We should not place all the blame on a single person. We have the Senate, Congress, and our own state Representatives that all provide input on important issues. There is a process in place for you to deal with the issues you dislike. There are plenty of people that we elect to help fight against the things we disagree with.
If we just sit and bitch about the person at the top, and ignore the process and the people that are presenting that person with the options, then we accomplish nothing. There was a time early on when Bush had an incredibly high approval rating. He was voted, by the people and for the people, into office, not once, but twice. Now the American people have spoken again. Apparently the choice made by them is looking for change. If that is what the American people want, then I will abide by that choice and accept our new President. But I will remind those who flipped off the Wax figures and called our current president names, be for warned that there are those who are not as open minded and respectful as I am, and that there will be people who do the exact same, or even worse to the new President. When that happens, remember that you have lost your right to be upset with them. This is America and they have every right to do exactly what you had the right to do. The goal in this life and this country is to evolve and accept that you don’t need to do such things.
In the next 4 years (and maybe even 8), I will not be looking for Changes, I will be looking for choices. Mine, Mr. Obama’s, and everyone else’s. Let’s hope that we all make the right ones.
Wow, so this was kind of a whirl wind DC for us. Let’s just jump straight to the highlight reel shall we?
We drove down on Wednesday to avoid the rush. A Big thanks to Cheeky Monkey Boy for letting us crash at his new house! Thursday was much easier because of this. We got up, had breakfast and made our way to the hotel. After checking in and parking the car, we did the annual ritual trek to the Hard Rock Café to get my DC pins. (I bet Robert forgot to go back for his). Then it was off to registration.
Side story, I don’t believe I posted about this but about 3 weeks ago I sprained my ankle…..again! I have been staying off it the whole time and pampering it so I could enjoy DC but it was still bothering me when I arrived. In an effort to preserve it I decided to use the wheel chair we brought for Sarah’s Oracle costume on Thursday. I knew I would be standing a lot in the Registration line. We had Ticket master tickets so I figured the line wouldn’t be that bad. It wasn’t, until I got pulled out of the line into the handicapped line! They assured me that it would be much faster and I should take advantage of it (even though I told them I was fine and it was just a sprain.) Seeing the world in someone else’s “wheels” is eye opening.
After registration, we headed back to the room and I put on my Jayne costume. This only lasted a few hours as we were due to pick up all of our Battle Star Galactica stuff that evening. After that it was BDU’s all night!
Friday was again a BDU day. We took this time to venture through all the dealers rooms and the walk of fame. We even got to meet Edward James Olmos and Michael Hogan! It was amazing meeting Adama and Tigh while in our BSG costumes! We wandered around until the late evening and then changed into Batman and Poison Ivy for the late night crowd. We did end up calling the evening early because we were doing the parade in the morning.
Saturday morning. This was a long awaited day for me, and an un-known surprise for Sarah. First of all I got the time mixed up and we were an hour early. The parade was at 10am and we got there around 8 for forming up. Sarah was dressed as Oracle from Birds of Prey and I was Nightwing. The Parade runs along one of the many Peachtree streets in Atlanta and bends right at the Hyatt. The whole way up to the bend I tried to speed up and give us a little bit of a gap because right at the bend I dropped to one knee and gave this to her:
You can see some of the pictures and guess her response.
For the rest of Saturday she was in a state of shock. We walked around in a daze and checked out a few things. Honestly I can barely remember much of the day after that. In the evening we prepped for and attended the BattleStar Galactica Colonial Fleet party over at the Sheraton. It was amazing! Late into the party, all the stars showed up and EJO got up on stage and talked about the Fandom and the show and ended with a rousing “SO SAY WE ALL!!” I get goose bumps even now!
Sunday morning we woke up and went off to a Photo shoot with the League of Heroes for the DC Universe. Sarah got to debut her Speedy costume and I went as Batman. The pictures looked amazing but the sun was beating me to death! After that we went for a goodbye breakfast (Lunch) with Lee and Missy. While there, Justin and Nicola joined up with us and we went on one of our very few visits to the Hyatt to see the art room. We had been avoiding the Hyatt like the plague because of all the crap from last year. There were a few incredible artworks including a 4 piece painting set of the seasons that was $25k each.
We were in need of a break so we stopped in at the High Velocity bar and sat in the glassed in section so we can watch people go by. We must have sat there for about 2 hours and chatted with friends. It was a great place to hang out. We eventually headed upstairs to hang out in Matt Nargi’s room to watch the Masquerade. We drank, ventured down to the Bar, Drank some more, even spent a few minutes drinking with EJO who happened to be visiting the bar himself.
Finally at a late late hour we turned in because the morning was already calling us home. We woke up at around 8am. Sore and tired we poured ourselves into the car and drove home.
If I find more pictures I will try and post them.
What a rush.
Odds are, if you know me, you know my cat. Charlie is so much a part of my family that even Sarah admitted that she thinks that, if it came down to her or the cat, I would choose the cat. Charlie is the most awesome cat I have ever owned, and many people who have met him have fallen instantly in love with him. We got him at a shelter in Denver back in 1998. He was the loudest cat in the place and one of the most loveable. Whenever we take him to the vet or even just out in public every makes comment about how he acts and how he looks. It’s how he looks that drew a little extra attention and proves that Charlie really is one in a million.
So if you look at Charlie’s coloring, he looks a lot like a Tortoiseshell cat. He has a mix of black and white all through him. Well, for starters, to get a Male Tortie, the odds are 1 to 3000. Now you add in the fact that Charlie has no orange in him. Wikipedia has a great article on Torties.
Enter the internet. Sarah posts on a pet forum pretty regularly and in a bout of showing off cool looking pets she posted a picture of Charlie. One of the other girls that posts there got in touch with Sarah regarding him. Turns out that she is a part of a study on the Feline Genome and they are currently trying to map out the gene that produces the color Orange in cats. When they saw pictures of Charlie they were extremely excited. You see, since Charlie is very obviously a tortie, but has no orange. By looking at his genetic makeup, they can compare with other cats and it will help them significantly in their research.
Don’t worry about Charlie through all this. They only need a small blood sample, fur sample, and cheek swab. They offered to pay for the vet visit and even help out with any medical problems with Charlie while the study is underway! We are very excited about this project and can’t wait to see the results!
My big question is if they can use his DNA and start cloning him! The world needs more Awesome Cats!
So apparently I haven’t done much of anything for the last like 2 months. That’s only partially true. The big thing is that I just haven’t been inspired to write about anything. There was certainly a lot going on of course. Most of what has been going on are things like getting ready for DragonCon, taking care of house stuff, being sick, etc. It’s hard to believe that this will be my 4th DragonCon! And Andrews 3rd. This year will be a low key one with only a few costumes. So far it’s Batman, Nightwing, BSG BDU’s and maybe one other.
One bit of fun I will post about was that I recently got the chance to go down to Richmond and be in a Weird Al Concert. Yes you read that right, I was “IN” the concert. The local 501st group was invited to go on stage with Al during “The Saga Begins”. I bought tickets for Andrew and Sarah so they got to see me, but being back stage for most of it I didn’t see a lot of the concert. They made up for that though with a meet and greet with Al afterwards. Check the pics for more. I had him sign my T-shirt and a paper plate. (I couldn’t find anything else!)
This last weekend was quite the entertaining event. It all started when I was at my desk and I jumped up on my chair to take a look at something. Not to worry, I have done this thousands of times before. Well the thousandth and one time seems to be the charm as I lost my footing and did a free fall towards the floor, back first. Normally this wouldn’t be so bad except that my foot was still firmly attached to the chair. In an effort to protect itself from my fall the chair rotated out of the way, taking my foot with it, leaving me with nothing to land on except the floor. It’s ok though, my tailbone seems to have cushioned my fall.
So now my ankle is twisted, my ass is throbbing, pain is shooting into every nerve on my body. I manage to crawl back up to a sitting position in my traitorous chair trying desperately to catch my breath. I notice that I am a little dizzy and woozy still so I try and control my breathing……
.
.
.
.
.
No longer dizzy or woozy I pull my self up from the floor under the desk and wonder how my computer ended up on its side. Wait what? How the computer ended up on its side? Better question, how did I end up on the floor again? Apparently the woozy feeling was the start of me blacking out. But wait, it gets better. As I blacked out I apparently fell forward knocking my head on the desk hard enough to give me a huge welt and knot on my forehead, I fell down and must have knocked the computer over with my FACE as I had a nice sized gash in my lip. Some where along the line I managed to skin my elbow but who knows when that happened.
As I lay on the ground and try and catch my breath, again, I am perplexed at the chain of events that happened in the last 10 min. I call Sarah and have her pick me up so we can go visit the urgent care clinic. (the only way I will ever go to an actual emergency room is if I am doing it in two separate cars. Think about it). The doctor looks at the egg growing out of my forehead and starts the concussion tests. “So you hit your head and blacked out?”
“No, I blacked out and THEN hit my head. Could you look at the ankle please?”
After she was done poking at my butt to ensure I hadn’t broken my tailbone (I didn’t but it was bruised pretty bad), she x-rayed the ankle and wrapped it up, handed me crutches and said to spend the weekend on the couch playing Grand Theft Auto. Ok so she didn’t say the GTA part, but that’s what I heard. Sadly, that’s not what was to happen.
Lee and Missy were coming in and the plan was to hit up DC and do the walking tour. When I told the Doctor this she looked at me like I had another head growing out of my forehead. (Which, at the time, it felt like I was). After spending all of Friday laid up, I wrapped up the ankle, walked gingerly, used the crutches and bought a cane and managed to get through the whole weekend.
Saturday was the DC trip and we hit all the spots on the mall. We ended up eating at Biddys Irish pub in Dupont Circle (which was just a hotel bar). Sunday we played pool and say Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
So here is the weird thing. After the accident on Friday, the whole weekend was just a blur as it shot by so fast. I remember all the stuff we did, and going to visit with Doc and Diz. But it was like “What weekend?”
There is a media available today that is rife with extreme violence and sexually explicit content! The worst part about this content is that is it freely available to children of varying age. To test this, my 15 year old son walked into a store, picked up off the shelf, and purchased something with depictions of brutal murder and implied sexual depravity.
It was a book.
The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian was written in 1932 by Robert E. Howard. It depicts the very violent and graphic adventures of Conan the Barbarian, whom I am sure many of you remember from the popular films featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger. The movies, by the way, are also rated R by the MPAA. While I have not read the entire book, I did get through quite a few passages and found many scenes where Conan is viciously attacking various people, chopping of limbs and heads, graphic depictions of blood and violence, and the implied sexual demeaning of women. Now I know that this isn’t much to go on without reading the whole thing, but I am not here to review the book only to show that there are books that contain such things.
I am getting a little ahead of myself here. Let’s back up and see how this all started.
I am a gamer. I enjoy all kind of games. My current game shelf has everything from racing games to table tennis. Lately I have been playing the latest craze, Grand Theft Auto IV. Now, on top of being a gamer I am also a parent. My son, Andrew, is 15 now and has lived with me on a full time basis since he was 12. Because of the mix of the two I tend to pay attention to all the hype of “video games are a threat to our children!” Most of the time I laugh and point when people like Jack Thompson or Glen Beck get up on their high horse and bash developers of games because they are “murder simulators” and how games like Doom and GTA have caused the death of so many people.
Most of the time I laugh.
The rest of the time I am floored by the ignorance. I see the reports of school shootings and street murders and take note that the people that commit these acts were troubled to begin with. I look over at my son and wonder, for an instant, could he do something like that? Then I shake off the webs of deception and realize that, 1: I am a good parent that is involved with my child’s hobbies and activities. 2: I review many of the things he does to make sure they are appropriate for him. 3: I educate him on why certain things are not appropriate. This is called responsible parenting.
I picked up the book “Grand Theft Childhood”. This is one of the latest books on childhood behavior and violent video games. It’s not what you would expect though. This one, unlike all the ones that most of the politicians use, has FACTS! As I was sitting on the couch reading, I began to think about some of the different ratings systems that are in place. Movies have the MPAA, Games have the ESRB, and even many Comic Books had the Comics Code Authority. I looked over at one of the shelves and noticed a book that Sarah and Andrew had been talking about, “World War Z”. I know the basic premise of the book and new that it had a lot of violence and gore. (It is about Zombies you know). So I decided to test something. I walked over to the DVD shelf and grabbed a copy of “Full Metal Jacket”, from the game shelf I picked up “”, and the book “WWZ”. I trudged upstairs to where Andrew was reading a few comic books. (“Blue Beetle” I believe) I handed him the items and had the following conversation.
(handing game first)”Where is the rating on this game?”
(reading the front cover)”Umm, it’s M for Mature”
“And why is it rated that?”
“Because of graphic Violence and language”
“Ok then, (taking back game and handing movie) Where is the rating on this?”
(He pondered the box for a bit and found the rating on the back in small print) “It’s rated R”
“And why?”
“Well, since I haven’t seen it, I can assume that it’s because of violence and language”
“Good, now this. (hands the book) where is the rating on this?”
(This part threw him off as he scanned the inside and outside of the book) “Ummm there isn’t one?”
“Ok now, of the three of these things, which has the more graphic violence and language?”
“Hands down, the book”
Now, Andrew loves to read. He almost always has a book he is working on. There are times where he gets so engrossed in a book that he will zone out of reality for a while and even lose track of time. He tears through books very fast but can still spend hours upon hours lost in the story. This train of thought got me wondering. I know the guys at the local Game store and I know that they won’t sell anything to Andrew that is not age appropriate (or at least they check with me first). What about the local book store?
This leads us up to the experiment. I picked out the Conan book because I knew of the content of it. I also knew that the movie adaptation was rated R (even though it was barely adapted from the book). We located the book and I gave Andrew some money and told him to go buy it. I went somewhere else in the store so I could not be associated with him. I didn’t want to give the appearance that I was there and approving. Andrew walked up to the counter and bought the book with the sales attendant not even batting an eye at the content.
On the way home we looked through the book and noticed many illustrations of barely clothed women (angled as to not be too revealing), severed body parts and varying degrees of violence. Granted I had only read a few passages, the text was much more graphic than I had seen in some “Friday The 13th” movies. This was sold to a 15 year old.
Now I am not saying that we should be banning books or anything of the sort. All I am pointing out is that these political media junkies are wasting my time on my TV telling me about the horrors of video game violence and how these underage children are buying games that are rated above their age level. Meanwhile a child can go out and pick up any number of books that have the same, if not worse, content. Does this mean that we should start assigning a rating system to books? Of course not. We have the first amendment here which allows for the freedom of speech! This has worked for us for countless years/decades. As we have grown as a society we have seen countless efforts to ban various types of media and it always turns out the same way, the media grows into a part of our society whether we would like it to or not. Then some new form comes out and the efforts focus on that until the process repeats itself.
The media junkies will always be there. When the holodeck is created I am sure there will be a Jack Thompson Jr that will attack it because it “blurs the lines between reality and fiction” and he will proclaim “this isn’t the type of entertainment that we grew up with, this will be harmful to the children, and it’s not like the fictional games we knew like GTA”. I guess the real point I am trying to get at here is that we are at the next stage of evolution for media. When I was a kid, we had video games. It became a part of my life and carried with me into adulthood. It started small enough back when we had our atari’s and coleco-visions as kids and is coming to a head now. Now, the same people I grew up with are starting to make games tailored to me and my current age and it’s viewed as immoral. When I was growing up, Video games were something for kids and the adults didn’t really understand it. (Think back to when Rock and Roll was invented, kids understood, adults didn’t).
A long rant made short, we really shouldn’t be listening to the media junkies, but sadly, people will. We shouldn’t be banning and punishing, we should be learning and educating. We shouldn’t hide the games from our kids. We should be reviewing them and explaining why the child shouldn’t play it. Learn to find the games that kids should be playing, and play it with them. Does this mean I am going to let Andrew play GTAIV? Nope, but I will explain to him what it is in the game I find inappropriate for him and why it is as such.
When we got home, Andrew set out to read some of his new book. He came back downstairs in shock. He had only skimmed a few chapters but had already found a scene where Conan was attacking a ship and cleaving limb from limb. At the end of the encounter the ship’s captain, a female, came up to Conan, threw off all her clothes, and begged Conan to “Claim her with his fierce love”. This threw Andrew off and even raised the thought in his own head of “Should I be reading this?” It was right then and there that I knew I had done a good job. In educating him on what was appropriate and non appropriate, I instilled on him about what he should or should not be looking at. He set the book down and went back to his Blue Beetle comic.
I went back to playing Grand Theft Auto IV.
Ok so I realize that it’s been a while. I wish I could say that there hasn’t been that much going on but I can’t. There was a TON of stuff. Summary: New Wardrobe, Sarah and I hit 1 year, Trip to Vegas, Rock Band Tourney, GTA IV, Free Comic Book Day, Iron Man, and Andrews Promotion.
Yeah, like I said, Lots!
So let’s start out with the new wardrobe. It all started with a new position that came open at work. It wasn’t much, mostly a few administrative roles added on, but still a good boost to the career. As it was I really needed the boost. The past few years have started to drag a bit and I was starting to get a little bitter. Sadly that showed a bit in the past but over the last 6 months and I had started to pick things back up. Well when it came time for the interview, the new and improved Steve went in and nailed it, but the past Steve still had an effect. I didn’t get the position. This prompted a change in attitude.
I had been wearing jeans and polo’s to work but I could tell that if I wanted to step up the overall attitude change I was going to need more. It was make over time! Sarah grabbed her friend Jesse and we went to the mall to build Steve 3.0. New slacks, new shirts, new shoes, everything! I even managed to go through my current stuff and clean out some of the older stuff. I came away with 8 new pairs of pants, 10 new shirts, 2 new pairs of shoes and 2 new belts (because apparently no one liked my old belt). Now, for the most part this is for work clothes only, but I am trying to step it up over all and work some of them into the rotation for going out and about. Try not to be too surprised if you see some new duds in upcoming pics. I don’t plan on missing out on the next position.
I realize that this next part is about a month late but on April 13th Sarah and I hit our one year mark! It’s great to know that I have found someone like her who really understands me. On Sunday the 13th she got me a Spiderman statue that I had been drooling over for some time now (I think I have all of the symbiote spideys now) and I made her a full dinner from scratch (which is a feat for me). We are both very excited to see what the next year brings. (She will probably leave me sometime next month anyways (inside joke))
So as you can tell from some of the pictures sent to the blog from my phone, I was out in Vegas all last week! I went out for the annual Microsoft Management Summit. The conference was great and showed off a lot of new tech that MS is doing. The setting wasn’t bad either! Unfortunately I was there by myself for the most part and it got kind of lonely sometimes. I did manage to see quite a few shows. Blue Man Group was amazing! Bite was…..Interesting. The Star Trek Experience was fun, but it’s getting a little dated, and the Wax Museum was creepy but entertaining. I did do a fair amount of gambling while there, mostly Texas Hold Em. I only wish I had played better.
At the end of the conference they always hold an “After Party” for the guests. This year they threw together a Rock Band Tournament! I signed up as a random drummer and got placed in with a group of guys. We called our band the “Screaming Weasels”. Well, long story made short, out of 6 bands, we won! I know, I was floored too. For the most part we managed to just stay ahead and finish songs where others just failed. They moved us up to the main stage for the finale in front of about 1000 people. Sadly, the sound system was so loud that it caused a delay on the system from the visuals and it was hard as heck to play. We won by getting 80% through Enter Sandman while the other band only made it to about 10%. For winning we all got a folding chair and a brand new Xbox 360 Pro! (Yes I know, this makes 2)
This is a good thing as I have installed it upstairs and can send Andrew up there while I play Grand Theft Auto IV. I am sure some of you out there would give me crap about purchasing it but, the story is amazing. Honestly think of the movie Scarface. There is a ton of Killing, Sex, Drinking, Swearing, and drug use. I couldn’t even tell you how many people were killed in the movie, to include police officers. The movie is rated R. GTAIV is rated M which is the video game equivalent of R. As a parent, I am policing the content by not allowing Andrew to view it as I do not think it is appropriate for him. I do this because 1: I pay attention to reviews of things, 2: I look at the ratings that things get, and 3: I review thing myself and make the final judgment. This is called responsible parenting. From an Adult point of view, the game is stunning. The Visuals, the story, everything is very well done and it deserves all of the praise it has gotten. It does not deserve all of the admonishment from political figures who haven’t bothered to do the above steps 1-3 to form their own opinion. Nuf said.
Last Saturday was Free Comic Book Day!!! I met up with some of the other 501st guys to costume up at Phoenix Comics over in Leesburg VA. I didn’t go as a trooper though, It was a Comic event, so I went as Batman! Sarah, Andrew and I got done up as Batman, Catwoman, and Spiderman! Overall it was a great appearance! The kids loved us (well most of them, there were a few that got a bit scared of the Batsuit). Andrew stayed in Spidey for a while then switched over to Biker Scout. We had a great time and even raised some money for one of the local children’s funds.
After the event we headed over to the theater to catch Iron Man.
Wow….just wow.
Go see it
Now
And stay through the credits.
Lastly, as you may know, Andrew has been involved in Civil Air Patrol for the last many many months. Well he managed to step it up and made it to Cadet Airman First Class! I am VERY proud of him and even got to pin on his rank! I know it probably doesn’t seem like much to him, but it really meant a lot to me to see him succeed like that and I hope to pin on many more ranks in the future!
Wheew, that was a lot!
