Journal

I'm only at -5, not quite dead yet

Thaddeus — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 19:53:00 +0000

Well I made it back from Gencon alive and .....well ..not quite well. The convention was a lot of fun but unfortunately I caught a horrible cold or flu while there on the first day I woke up. If not for NyQuil and DayQuil there's no way I would have gotten any gaming done. As it was I felt like an obnoxious jerk for actually gaming while so sick, spreading my germs, but it WAS Gencon and I'd already payed my money. This year I went board game crazy more than anything else. Got a crap load of various board games, as well as the Pathfinder Core rulebook, WH40K Rogue Trader, and a starter army box of the Sov Red Blok for AT-43 (which is VERY competitively priced now). I'll get the video of the opening ceremonies posted up as a follow up soon.

Roll the dice

Thaddeus — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 03:48:15 +0000

It's almost time for Gencon. I'm damn nervous and excited. I look forward to this convention every year but sadly this will be the first year I'm going without my friends. It sucks that they can't make it this year, and it just won't be the same without them. Since I won't be hanging out with friends at all I went super ambitious and lined up an insane non-stop gaming schedule. Ok, so I left some breaks in there for food and the exhibition hall ....but not much. Anyway, tomorrow I must do laundry pack all my bags etc.

Yo Joe ....Gimme my money back

Thaddeus — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 06:36:17 +0000

So I just got back from the GI Joe movie midnight showing. I know, I know, why in the hell did I go to a midnight show of this movie. Well, ...because I grew up with GI JOE and I wanted this movie to be good. To be fair I don't think it was horrible, but it wasn't very good either. It's certainly not worth the cost of seeing it in the theatre unless you are simply going to see the cool effects on the big screen (and the special effects are certainly top notch). It's certainly not the worst movie I've seen. I was a bit upset at their treatment of Storm Shadow, cause he was the man as far as I was concerned at 8 years old. They make him out to be so badass and then let snake eyes smack him around, which was hardly the case in the cartoon and comics I remember. Perhaps I'm overly critical since GI Joe was such a part of my early childhood, but I don't think so. I recommend you save your money and rent it, unless you absolutely must see it on the big screen.

My Letter To Apple

Thaddeus — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 20:55:46 +0000

Dear Apple,

If Apple continues to block the Google voice app from the app store, I will retire my iPhone and go buy an Android phone as soon as my contract expires. I utterly hate AT&T thanks to their abusive behaviour towards their customers and Apple caving under their every whim doesn't help my opinion of Apple. I recently purchased a mac mini and started to become a fan of Apple, but every time I start to think I might become a mac person, your whole "It's our sandbox and we'll tell you how to play in it" attitude just disgusts me. But thank you for drawing a nice comparison between what it's like to have freedom of choices and what it's like to NOT.

Sincerely,

A soon not-to-be customer if this crap continues

Weekends are over too quick

Thaddeus — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:24:26 +0000

Went to see "The Ugly Truth" yesterday. It's a pretty good moive, worth seeing in the theatre if you are interested. Butler's character is very funny and Heigl is great as always. After the movie I went to Minado with my friend and had some awesome sushi. If you love sushi and there is a Minado or Nori Nori near you, you MUST GO. It was definitely an excellent Saturday. Think I'll start the day off today with some scrambled eggs and toast ....maybe curl up with some of my unread comics, or maybe the One Piece manga I picked up at Otakon.

Otakon Blues

Thaddeus — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:33:11 +0000

Sadly another Con has come to a close and it makes me sad already. I love this con every year and so look forward to it (even with all the jackasses). This morning's "Fist of the North Star" showing was ruined by all the jack asses constantly thinking they were funny for yelling "witty" things at the screen. I say "witty" because quite frankly there were just fucktards trying to get a laugh and I would love a con without these jerks. Regardless of these annoyances though, the Anime World Order folks did some cool panels and "The Old Timers of Anime" were entertaining as well as Frederick Schodt's panel. I checked out a number of different anime while at the con such as: Kaze No Stigma, Murder Princess, Sgt. Frog, D Gray-man, Giant Robo (awesome classic :), Hajime No Ippo (also fanstastic) and Shigurui: Death Frenzy (weird ...very weird ... see last post). I attended the AMV overflow this year and it was fun as usual (next year I'll make sure my ballot counts). I'll be happy to sleep in my own bed tonight. I think I'll start an anime section on the site after this con .... right after I get all my photos edited and posted in the convention photos section!

One day down

Thaddeus — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 12:16:16 +0000

On my second day of Otakon and so far it's a good con. The Vamps concert was awesome and Mell's concert was INCREDIBLE! I found some nice bargains in the dealer room on items I've been trying to get a hold of. The Otakon folks decided to guarantee every person who was in line by 11 Thursday night a badge. It was pretty cool of them since originally it was only those who'd made it inside the doors by 11. I Caught one of Daryl Surat's panels yesterday (one of the Anime World Order podcast hosts), and it was educational as well as entertaining. Also went to the Madhouse panel. Apparently there is a Trigun movie that's been made and will come out early next year I believe. Madhouse creates some very cool anime! "Shiguri: Death Frenzy" is one hell of a bizarre samurai anime. Here's some footage of usual crazy registration line

3-2-1 Otakon!

Thaddeus — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 23:18:26 +0000

I'm packing and preparing for my trip to Otakon tomorrow. I look forward to this convention every year (as my photo gallery may attest to). This will be the first year I've actually got a hotel room at the convention and so it will also be the first year I'll attend Sunday events. It will be nice not to have to drive back to the house each day this year, even though it's not that far. I can't wait to eat some pocky, watch some good anime and take a ton of pictures! I'm hoping the Vamps concert tomorrow will rock:)

Let Microsoft assist you in poor browser security

Thaddeus — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:01:11 +0000

"Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant" is a nice pretty name for a nasty underhanded little trick by Microsoft. They recently snuck a firefox extension into one of their updates that installs without telling you and then makes itself impossible to uninstall. Impossible that is, unless you make a quick hack. I found nice simple instructions on the WyDay site explaining how to manually uninstall this little gem. "Assistant" is a nice name for a rather bad piece of software. This "Assistant" assists Microsoft in installing software into your computer via the firefox browser without telling you about it. It's to make the "click-once" technology work in Firefox, which would be fine if they actually explained what they were doing and asked the user if they wished to install it. It seems like every time I start to believe that Microsoft is getting their act together, they go and do something despicable like this.

Back at work

Thaddeus — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:42:09 +0000

TechEd 2009 was great, but I was a little disappointed that the Thursday night event was sort of lame compared to past events. Anders Hjelsberg, Scott Hanselman, Jason Olson and Mark Russinovich were all great presenters and I really regret missing Mark's big session on the last day. I'm looking forward to using Visual Studio 2010 and it's new tools. I'm curious to see how the MEF addon system will work when we have multiple addon developers that clash in some areas of functionality. The big take away this year for me has been that I need to adopt more agile code principles and unit testing. Just not sure how to implement unit testing in Navision's rather closed up and proprietary system.