Umbral Echoes Blog

In late April (edit: Yes, April — I originally said August, but it is April), my boss is going to Europe to talk to some European publishers. I will be coming with him to answer tech questions.

The plan is to fly into London, take a train to Paris, train to Toulouse, train to Madrid, then fly back home. The trip will last about 10 days total, and with nearly 5 days of that being taken up with flying/trains, that doesn’t leave much time to spare for fun stuff and sightseeing. But, we will do our best to squeeze some in, and I will post pictures as I can.

I didn’t go to a single damn panel this year. There was lots of partying, drinking, and… well, that sort of thing.

We stayed in the Hyatt this year, and I have to say that having a balcony is very awesome. It was good for socializing so that everyone wasn’t in one loud heap, and also let the smokers go out to smoke without having to leave the room. I have heard good things about the Westin though, and from a brief stint there trying to find a room party (and failing), it looked to be quite a nice hotel. So perhaps I’ll have to have a look at their rooms and prices for next year. Would also be nice not having to deal with the convention elevators. This year the Hyatt updated their elevators I think though, because when we had a full load it went straight to the bottom floor instead of stopping on every single floor as in years past. Made the elevator wait time more like 15 minutes instead of 30-45 minutes.

Sean doing body shots off of Cary

I didn’t really expect my room to be a party room, but these things happen. I could not have predicted some of the things that happened, as seen to the right, but everyone had fun. I was very glad to see my GenCon friends Daniel (aka Frodo) and Lia there, as well as Stephanie and Shawn, and Kirstie and Shaun, and Corinne and Sean and… holy crap, I know too damn many of those Sean guys, and every damn one of them spells it differently! Sean Fannon was holding the Court of Bedlam, in which I was bequeathed the Count of Carousing, and also assistant barkeep. I mixed some drinks, and they were… well, let’s just say stronger than I intended. However, that was perfect for the Court. These are not amateur drinkers. They like their vodka crans to taste like vodka with a hint of cranberry.

I think the most memorable night was MC Chris’s birthday party on Sunday night. I had just the right amount of booze for a good buzz, the atmosphere was very high-energy, I saw an old friend from Colorado, hung out with Loryn and other good friends, and afterwards my friend DJ Catt Ninetails spun some 80’s music, and there was impromptu dancing by attractive women on stage. I’m a sucker for cute dancers, especially if they’re in thongs.

I won’t bore you with the mundane details, but some other random highlights include my (well technically, Loryn’s) luggage breaking due to being overloaded with booze, condom balloons, and finding that there is a leather clothing maker about 1/2 mile from where I live.  Also, chicks kissing.  Can you dig it?  I said, “CAN YOU DIG IT?!”  10 movie geek points if you get the reference without doing a web search.

Yes, I hardly blog any more.  Just don’t have the drive — mostly it’s my own OCD that demands I include various pictures and so forth, which honestly just takes a lot of time.  However, a friend asked if I had blogged about GenCon, and maybe the other two of you who read this might like to see some pictures and hear about it too.  So I blog.

Dicebagging

This year GenCon was a little different for me.  In previous years, I’d gone with Lydia and Dustin, and awesomeness ensued.  The picture at left has a brief story behind it, for example.  First night of GenCon, and our room was making a ruckus.  A random passer-by (who we now know as Frank) with an amazing beard and mustache popped his head in and said, “You people sound like you’re having fun; mind if I join in?”  Of course we invited him in.  At some point a few minutes thereafter, someone (I think it was Frank, but I can’t remember for sure) suggested the idea of dicebagging.  Like the geek version of teabagging, you see.  I jumped up, and proceeded to dicebag the hell out of Lydia — what a great sport she is!

This is just one example, and Lydia and Dustin seemed to be co-catalysts to many fun and zany moments such as this.  This year, neither were there — Lydia because she is doing noble things with the Peace Corps in Swaziland, and Dustin due to monetary issues.  There were other awesome cohorts there, sharing hotel space, but they tend to do their own thing, as do I, and our paths cross at irregular intervals.

So, lacking my Dustin and Lydia, I did more work-oriented things this year.  There were several sushi dinners, and things of that nature, but I’ll just hit the notable points.

Thursday night was BeerCon (yes, I said BeerCon), hosted by OneBookShelf and Goodman Games, held at The Slippery Noodle.  On the downside, I had to miss True Dungeon to do it.  there was a small SNAFU at the door — apparently it was a blues night with a cover charge, whcih caused some confusion.  Also, the BeerCon event was quite popular, and the downstairs room we were in was packed to the gills, and pretty noisy.  On the good side, there were cool people there, and I got to have a few drinks on the company (as did everyone else).  Talked to Eddy Webb at White Wolf, my coworker Sean Fannon — no wait, that’s Sean Patrick Fannon.  He really should introduce himself that way, a la James Bond.  ”Sean Fannon.  Sean Patrick Fannon, at your service.”

Brave New World concert

Friday night was the Brave New World concert hosted by Reactor 88 Studios and Matt Forbeck, featuring some video previews of the movie and a live performance by Makeshift Prodigy.  The band was decent, but the lead singer actually had a pretty good set of pipes (in my admittedly unprofessional opinion).  After that there was a get-together at Subterra Lounge.  It was a trendy club, pretty small, but the drinks weren’t too expensive, and the bartender was good about getting drinks.  For me, anyway — it helps to tip well.  Got to talk to some old acquaintances, like Will Hindmarch, former Vampire developer for White Wolf.  He’s doing some independent projects right now, which seem to be getting a fair amount of traction.

After that, we (my boss, Will, and a few others) went and had some drinks at a cigar and scotch bar with the White Wolf crew.  I had some Oban, which is a single malt scotch that I remember being very smooth.  What I was given at this place did not taste smooth, to the extent that I wondered if it was Oban at all.  It tasted more like a Jameson, or maybe even Laphroaig, but definitely not Oban.  I managed to pace myself to avoid drunkenness at least.

Here you might note that so far, I haven’t mentioned playing any games, or anything other than drinking or carousing.  Well, that’s because I pretty much drank and caroused all weekend long.  I played one game, the card game Munchkin, on Saturday for the first time ever.  That was the only gaming I did.  However, that was quite fun, and I got some random swag from it due to a passing-by staff member who was giving swag to whomever was currently winning games.  I played with hotel room-mate Mark, and his friends Paul and Alix.  We had lots of fun with it, though we didn’t have long because of the weekend’s big event: the White Wolf party.

Alix and Me

Yes, the White Wolf party.  The highlight of GenCon.  The night where the drinks are free, the hot goths are out, and inhibitions are hiding in the corner curled up into a little ball.  Within the first five minutes I was groped, and had my ass critiqued by a group of people whose goal in the night was to get their friend laid.  I try to stay away from former coworkers though.  Except Chris McDonough.  If you’re reading this Chris, you know I always reserve the manlove for you.

The club had two floors, various beds and sofas, and a dance floor on each level pumping the goth/industrial/new wave/whatever.  I think I’m developing a tolerance to Captain and Coke, because after 5 of them (not lightly poured, either) in fairly quick succession, I was barely feeling buzzed.  I mingled, drank, and dragged Alix onto the dance floor.  Okay, she was willing, but it sounds better if I say I dragged her onto the dance floor.  Caveman style.  Our friend Mark was apparently having a rough night, but I’ll be damned if I let anyone not have fun around me, and Alix and I managed to cheer him up some.  Kung Fu makes everyone happy, I’m just sayin’.  I also forced Paul to chug water.  He doesn’t drink, he is skinnier than I am, and he was tore up.  I knew he’d be hating himself the next day, and sure enough, I got some profuse thanks for practically forcing the water down his throat.

Mark and Cate

Overall this year’s party was more tame than in previous years.  There was no impromptu photo shoot like last year, wherein I was told to get my ass over there, take off my shirt, and pose with random goth girl.  There were no antics with kickballs and street signs that had been drunkenly torn up out of the street, nor breaking into hotel swimming pools and proceeding to breaking the pool.  There was, however, an afterparty for a limited number of people in the penthouse suite at the Omni, which was fun but crowded.  A couple of friends I brought with me designated themselves as bartenders, and apparently were very well-liked for that — also, they got a fair chunk of change in tips.  Broken bottles notwithstanding.  The suite was well-stocked with alcohol and mixers; these people are professionals.  Nothing of note really happened there, other than it being packed like sardines, and security being called for the noise disturbance and breaking up the party.  Oscar Garza has a psychic sense about these things — a few minutes before the pigs came, he said, “I’m leaving before the police get here.”

Sunday, as per usual, was pretty low-key.  People leaving early, checking out of hotels, some farewell dinners and so forth.  It was sad to say goodbye to friends both old and new, but several of them will be at DragonCon.  And that, my friends, is where the real party is at.

Featuring our beloved PhotoGnome.

As some may notice, I tend to post sporadically. I could make excuses, give reasons, whatever. Basically what it comes down to is that I blog when I feel like writing in this format, and it’s mostly for myself anyway (it’s not like I have a readership to speak of). Hence why the vast majority of my posts lately have been Twitter repostings. I’m actually going to turn that off, and possibly delete all of those entries. I haven’t decided for sure yet.

Anyway, today I was actually given hope for the world. I’ll do this in a nutshell as best I can. Got a letter from a trash company saying, “Hey, we’re taking over for your current company in 2009. Here’s a bill that will cover your services for a year.” I probably should have checked, but I didn’t — I just paid the bill. Well, I notice the old trash company is still coming. Curious. Then I get a letter in the mail from the old company saying that they are still around, and that if I paid a bill to this other company, I should call and ask for a refund.

So I call and ask for a refund.

Amazingly, I get it, with absolutely no hassle.

The woman on the phone was like, “Yeah, we were originally awarded the contract with the county in 2009, but some other companies have filed in court for their right to continue with service. So it’s sort of in a state of limbo right now. I can issue you a refund if you’d like.” That’s right, they offered a refund before I even mentioned it. This pretty much floored me. I called expecting to have to squeeze it out of them like wringing water from an old rag in the desert, expecting about as much success.

This actually makes me look forward to working with that company in the future, if things get worked out and they do become the service provider. More so, I’ve been amazed by the friendliness and helpfulness of companies that I’ve dealt with recently. Maybe it’s some alignment of the planets or something. I ordered my new bed just before Christmas from a company that does price-matching. I showed them another website that had the same platform bed for about $600 less, including shipping. They looked it up, confirmed, and matched the price with no hassle. If you ever need a bed, I highly recommend Online Store, Inc.  Delivery and setup was included in the price, and the setup was very appreciated. It took two professionals with powertools about an hour and a half to set up that bed. I can only imagine what a hassle it would have been for me. But it is spectacular, and huge, and I love it.

In other news, I’ve been under the weather lately. Nothing serious, just the typical cough/sore throat/stuffiness/headache bug. It was bad enough to cause me to not be able to break in my bed properly, and also to miss out on a party Friday night and two events Saturday night — one of the latter events being attended by a couple that I haven’t seen in almost 6 months. Quite annoying. I spent the time resting… in front of the computer, and playing World of Warcraft enough to get my deathknight his flying mount. This will cure about 90% of my deaths in that game, which are from falling. I tend to do point-to-point marches, and generally dislike moving in anything other than a straight line.  Hence, cliffs are hazardous to my health.

I haven’t really felt like writing much recently — I suppose I’ve just been preoccupied with too many other things in life.

The big news is that my company has decided to ditch the office, so I am now working remotely full-time.  I’m still doing a weekly face-to-face lunch meeting, because I think face time is important, but other than that I’m chillin’ at home during the workday.  This week has been the first week of that, and it’s definitely taking some mental adjustments, but I’m really happy about this change.

This also means that I will have much more flexibility to visit a lot of my friends.  Aside from those weekly meetings (which I can skip from time to time), it really doesn’t matter whether I’m working from my house or Istanbul, as long as I can keep the same working schedule as the other employees.

In other news, I was invited to a Halloween party at the Playboy mansion.  Sadly, it’s a bit late notice and the person who invited me really didn’t have his ducks in a row, so I’m not going to be able to make it.  Which is a pity, since it looked quite cool — professional set creators had designed a haunted house, actors walking around in zombie makeup, Paul Oakenfold spinning (though I am told by a very reliable source that Oakenfold got pwnt by the DJ Sarah Collins when spinning in a club in Seattle), and of course boobs galore.  I was seriously considering getting a captain’s hat and going as the Motorboat Captain.  Feel free to use that one at your own Halloween parties — so long as it’s not one I’ll be at, in which case I reserve the right to that idea.

On the plus side, this guy pretty much has a standing invite, and the New Years party is looking good.

I’m getting more into World of Warcraft, and will be even more so when Wrath of the Lich King comes out.  When I went to Doug’s wedding in Louisville a few weekends ago, the old gang decided to get back together in an online fashion on the Baelgun server.  I’ll have to roll a Deathknight so I can get a head-start to 55, but I was wanting to do that anyway.  It will be awesome to be in better contact with the guys again.

I hear Fable 2 is the new hotness.  I wish I had more time for gaming.  But when faced with the choice of going out with friends or staying at home and watching a TV screen, I generally take the former.  And in the case of the latter… well, aforementioned Warcrack tends to take up that time.

Anyway, if you’re reading this, and would like me to come visit at some point, toss me an email and I’ll work something out.  Sis, you’re at the top of my list.

Whew. Finally through with convention season. Why is it that we so often need a vacation to recover from our vacations?

This year’s festivities were confounded somewhat by a database issue at work that I’m still dealing with now, to a lesser extent. Suffice to say, it was my fault, and is the biggest screwup I’ve ever made in my professional life, intensified by a perfect storm of other bad things happening. But, we’re mostly recovered from it, and mistakes are the best teachers.

So in this post, I’ll go over some of the fun times at GenCon.

This year involved more dicebagging, of course. Frank even set up a website for it… though he never approved my account and I’ve therefore been unable to load pictures. I also convinced Lydia to eat three hot peppers at Steak n’ Shake, for the low price of paying for her meal. I think you’ll agree that it was worth it. Or perhaps I’m just a sadist.

Along the lines of discussion, the question was asked, “What is the least compensation you would accept for macing yourself in the face?” Talking about the chemical here, not the medieval weapon. Initially the thought was, “Would you mace yourself in the face for X dollars? What about half that?” And so on. But it evolved into questions such as, “Would you mace yourself in the face to temporarily be changed into a member of the opposite sex for a day? What if part of that was that you’d be a poorly-endowed member of the opposite sex?” In this discussion, I learned that Lydia is secretly very blatantly a sexual misogynist.

The White Wolf party was a bit more strict this year, actually requiring invites at the door. But, as always, it was an open bar, and this time it was split into two sweat-drenched levels of fun. There was an impromptu photo shoot. Word to the wise: whenever someone says, out of the blue, “Are you ready?” the answer is, without fail, “Bring it ON!” Except envision that said in Brock Samson’s voice in your head, then do your best impression of it. Suffice to say, I was made to remove my shirt and bite random goth chick’s neck. Pictures might or might not be forthcoming on the White Wolf website, depending on the laziness of the people involved in the photo shoot.

Note to self 2: stay away from drunken bisexual dudes. Next time, it will end in blood.

The after-party with the White Wolf folks was somewhat low-key, but we brought the DJ along for the hell of it anyway. Afterward I had to deal with a drunken bitch (drunk to the point where she literally couldn’t walk) who insisted that she was all right to drive not only herself, but a couple of other people who came with her, home. Sometimes I hate having to be the good guy. That one ended up being a couple hours of hassle, and me letting her stumble off to try and find her car. I thought about calling the cops to detain her, but honestly I don’t care that much.

I’ll keep the roleplaying stories to a minimum, since that’s only interesting to a select crowd (and also, I was only in two games this year). Dustin ran an Exalted LARP that was a continuation of games from previous years. My character was on trial for killing the person who was likely to become Empress. Part of the game was that each character was given a motivation/goal for each scene, and in the trial scene my character’s goal was to bed one of the members of a certain house/clan. Long story short, there was really only one option: the judge herself. I came a breath away from managing it, too. Note to self: follow instincts always, without question.

Dustin also ran a Seventh Sea game. This system, for those not in the know, is made of pure awesome. It’s a game set in Renaissance times, normally centered on piracy. It is epic to a sometimes-silly level, and has such rules as: your character can never die, and when you do something awesome, you get extra “drama dice” for it. The game itself involved undead sheep invading what was supposed to be a child’s birthday party, in a mansion. I think that just about sums it up.

Met some cool new people over the weekend (Michael, Christine, others whose names I forget), which is always fun. Drank a lot less than I expected. At the White Wolf party I was making a conscious effort not to drink myself into a stupor. Which, in hindsight, was a mistake — drink deeply or taste not, and all that. There was only a brief respite (or it felt brief, anyway) before it was time to go sprinting around in the woods in 95 degree weather while wearing plate mail armor and beating on people with padded weapons. More on that later, though.

Two people dropped out of the DragonCon room last minute.  So, if anyone reading this is needing a room at DCon, we’ve got 2 slots open, 3 if we want to push it (go ahead and giggle).  We’re in the Marriott, so it’s convention central.

Also, I apologize for the lack of real updates recently.  Sometimes there’s not enough going on to write about (without trying to make the mundane into something interesting anyway), and sometimes there’s so much going on that you don’t have a free moment to breathe.  I plan to make a post about GenCon, and running around in the woods at 6am like a maniac.

Helped my friend Blue move into her new apartment yesterday, which was an all-day affair.  It seems that most people think that helping someone move is a huge favor.  For me, it’s just hanging out with friends while you happen to be doing some physical activity.  Then again, I moved seven times in a span of five years, so perhaps I’m just used to it.  I love lifting heavy objects.  I just hate having to navigate around sharp corners and through finger-crushingly narrow entryways.

Also, dealing with objects that aren’t really heavy, but awkwardly shaped, is a pain.  I’ve got a nice bruise and minor laceration from carrying a (full) filing cabinet.  To keep a grip on it, I had to squeeze one of the edges against my bicep.  And the more I squeezed, the more the muscle flexed, and the harder the edge pressed into it.

Blue: Jesus, Mike… are you okay?
Me: What?  Oh, that.  Yeah, I’m fine.
Blue: [smirking] Oh, that’s right.  You like marks.

Hey, a little pain never hurt anybody, right?

Sometimes I miss apartment living.  Much less to worry about, and if the place pisses you off or you decide you don’t like it… you get another one.  But then I remember why houses are awesome.  In my first apartment here in Atlanta, the front door had a gap even when it was closed, and I’m fairly sure the seven-year-old neighbor kids used to watch… certain activities that went on in the living room from time to time.

I remember one time in particular when my partner was getting rather loud, and I heard some muffled gasps and high-pitched voices from the hallway.  The next day, one of the neighbor’s kids asked me if I was hurting that girl that was over.  I opened my mouth, meaning to say, “No, we were just wrestling,” or something to that effect.  Instead, what came out was, “Yeah, but she liked it.”

Do you ever have cases of the filter dropping at inappropriate times like that?

I know it’s been a while since I’ve made an actual post, and I’m way past due.  I just feel compelled to post something more interesting than, “Here’s what I did today,” but I haven’t really had the motivation to write much more than that.  Anyway…

I sent the paperwork for the divorce back to the attorney on Friday.  So, assuming everything is as it should be with that, it should be official in 4-6 weeks.

The weirdest thing about this all is that it’s a lot easier than I thought it would be.  Throughout the process, I kept thinking that it just hasn’t hit me yet, but I’m starting to think that’s not the case.  The inner turmoil part came with the initial decision, which was not made lightly.  After that decision was made, everything else just sort of fell into place.  Sure, I’ve felt some pangs of loneliness — that’s inevitable if you’re with someone for nearly 12 years, sleeping next to them almost every night.  Signing the paperwork, I expected to feel sadness, possibly some regret, maybe even to question the decision.  But I didn’t feel any of that; it was just like signing any other piece of paper.

I’m still not dating, and not really sure when I will be.  At some point I’ll just click with someone and then dating will happen again.  But I’m not going to rush it, and I’ll just keep doing what I have been: hanging out with friends, and meeting new people.

And as a quick update on other things going on:

• I’ve had a cold since last Monday.  Airborne, Emergen-C, and echinacea tea have kept it at bay, but it is a tenacious bastard, and today I still have a cough.  It’s also sort of drained me of energy, so I spent pretty much all of yesterday veging out, with Kirstie being nice enough to hang out and fetch me liquids and such when necessary.
• Friday, White Wolf had a milestone release for their World of Darkness MMO, and had a cookout.  They decided to rent a mechanical bull.  If you’re asking “why?” then you don’t know the White Wolf folks.  White Wolfers + anything that can cause injury = win.  Just add alcohol and the formula is complete.  Videos will be forthcoming, once I re-encode them and upload to YouTube.  I also got to play this milestone release.  Obviously I can’t give details, but regardless of the fact that it’s still early in the process, I was quite impressed with how far things have come already.  I’m really hoping that they’ll be able to successfully break the mold of “kill, loot, level up, kill bigger shit, loot, level up…” with MMOs just as they did with pen and paper RPGs.
• My friends Blue and Relay invited me out to a “goth potluck” on Saturday, which was interesting.  Saw a lot of familiar faces, from various events such as Phobia and DragonCon.  One girl there, Lara, is apparently highly ranked in the international competitive female Brazilian Jiu Jitsu circuit.  I told her that next time, we would have to throw down, and that I look forward to getting my ass handed to me by a girl. 
• On Thursday a friend got me into an industry-only opening of a new AMC theater downtown.  This one has a twist — it’s a dinner theater.  There is a full bar in the front, and in the theater you sit at an actual table, and have an actual menu to order from.  Except, it being a soft opening, they had limit quantities of everything, and were out of most of what I wanted.  But it was all free, as was the booze.  It’s an interesting concept, and it’s placed in Buckhead (which is a high-rollin’ area in Atlanta), so I think it will do well.  Though the dinner/restaurant feel did seem to encourage people to talk more during the movie, and while I didn’t have a problem with it (was all pretty murmured, nothing loud and obnoxious), I can see how some people might.
• Started using Digsby on my work computer instead of Trillian.  It is the awesome, except it makes me almost too connected to my social networks.  I should turn off the notifications so that I’m not constantly pinged with status updates, Facebook alerts, etc.  But I really do love the ability to archive/mark-as-spam/delete email messages without having to open up the web interface.  Very helpful with my Hotmail account, which gets tons of spam.

I know I could have treated you better, and that sometimes I complained about you.  I didn’t mean to be neglectful or abusive.  I missed you so much when we were apart.  I couldn’t do without what you gave to my life, so I ran around town with a hot newer model for a while.  But it just wasn’t the same, and I was thinking of you the whole time.  I love you.  Let’s never be apart again, okay?

Seriously, I’m really glad to have my car back, and was pleasantly surprised to find that they gave it a minor detailing when they did the repairs.  Which I will have done on a semi-regular basis now (detailing, not repairs).  The Charger wasn’t nearly as fun as I’d hoped, though of course it wasn’t the model with the HEMI or anything remotely sporty.  It did have satellite radio, which was cool because they had a techno station… but it also cut out all the time.  Major no-no — rule #1 of music listening is Thou Shalt Not Interrupt The Groove.

In other news, my aunt seems to have found me on Facebook.  After seeing my profile picture…

…she sent this message:  “This is your Aunt Lynn let me know if you will add me to your facebook? P.S. What are you doing in that picture??? Uncle Bruce wants to know.”  I’m not quite sure how I should answer this question.  Though I will toss into consideration any hilarious suggestions that I receive.