Category Archives: JUST SAYING

Apple, Books, Con Fluff 1, CONS, CREATIVE, FURRY, FURRY FIESTA, JUST SAYING, RANDOM STOPS, RANDOMIZER9.COM, Tablets, TECH, WHATS GOING ON, WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT, WORDS, Writing

38 Things I Noticed During Furry Fiesta 2013

I'm all ears!

I’m all ears!

For the second year in a row, I headed up to Addison for Texas’ one and only furry convention:  Furry Fiesta 2013: The Time Traveller’s Ball.  I had a wonderful time, and so without further ado:

  1. JUST TAKE THE TOLL ROAD around Austin, especially if you’re going northbound.
  2. Driving up was much more pleasant in my still-pretty-new Honda CR-V
  3. The con was made even more fun by the friends that went with me and the ones I met there!
  4. Artist Alley needs to be a little bigger and supervised.
  5. What? No Rock Band in the game room? Aw, I so wanted to do Power of Love…again and again.
  6. BuckHopper just barely got last year’s Voice Over panel uploaded before this year’s show because he was very very busy with work.
  7. Of course when you realize that his work involves videogames, the amount of sympathy you have for him might drop just a teensy bit.
  8. I think his Voice Recording Basics panel needed to be just a little bit more, well, basic.  My head was spinning near the end.
  9. I was a very sad bear just ten minutes before my panel started because nobody was there. *sniff*
  10. People then started to show up, and I became happy, and nervous!
  11. I burned through my prepared material in a half hour…need to rehearse next time
  12. Things went downhill fast during discussion when the subject of DRM and piracy came up…argh
  13. At dinner, the restaurant owner asks how we’re doing and notices the badges. Her: “Are you here for a convention?” Us: “Yeah!” Her: “What kind of convention is it?” AWKWARD SILENCE.
  14. Seriously, I have never seen nine adults (including me) simultaneously freeze like deer in the headlights.
  15. OH YEAH, ITS AN ART CONVENTION! :3
  16. Luckily, I remembered my ‘training’ the next day. Get some furry common sense, y’all!
  17. One guy trying to explain Furry Fiesta to an older person got “What? Fairy Fiesta?” as a reply. That explains a lot, actually.
  18. I’m not sure which made my attempt to record the fursuit parade worse: the lighting, my iPad mini, or the two rubes that stood next to me…seriously, I kept expecting to hear one playing a banjo and the other a jug.
  19. The Furry Psychology panel filled up quick, they should just give Dr. Nuka a video room next time, it’ll be like college but much less boring.
  20. If the International Anthropomorphic Research Project were to change the last word in their  name to something starting with “F” it would be I-ARF which would be pawsome!
  21. Got my first dose of con funk in AA when some nasty dude decided to sit next to me.  Ended up having to shoo him off later, too…jerk.
  22. Not sure which was better: acquiring a pair of bear ears to wear, or my friend Chris’ reaction to them.  “What the hell are those things?!”
  23. There were lots of Marty McFlys but one guy (a fursuiter no less) NAILED IT.  How?  He had a WALKMAN.  Everybody else GO HOME.
  24. There were lots of 4th Doctors, too 🙂
  25. While my panel went well, my attempts to sell berks in Artist Alley did not. *shrug*
  26. I guess I didn’t really need that Sales Tax ID after all, then.
  27. Speaking of AA: If you are going to be in AA read the rules on the wall and don’t whine like a petulant child when they don’t match your expectations.
  28. $3.75 for gas?  Makes me glad the Excelsior gets about 30MPG on the freeway even with 3 dudes with 3 days worth of luggage.
  29. Thanks for putting us in the ‘annoying kid’ section of IHOP, waiter.  *twitch*
  30. Either the con is short on staff or they were not very noticeable, because I don’t remember seeing very many staff members.
  31. One person in AA had an old school early digital camera that I used to take his picture with a fursuiter: a big chunky HP one that was the size and weight of a brick.
  32. Never mind the burgers (which are good) I want In-N-Out to come to San Antonio because the ‘well done’ fries are the BEST. THING. EVAR.
  33. Boston Market.  We also need them in San Antonio, too.
  34. Some friends call TFF ‘CircleCon’ because everything on the second floor is well, in a circle.
  35. Thing I forgot: Electric razor. The ol’ greymuzzle was showing by Sunday
  36. Every time I thought I was going to need/use my laptop, I didn’t because my iPad mini did the job. I may have crossed a threshold.
  37. Of course, just when I start to get familiar with the area around the hotel, they decide to move it next year.
  38. I’ll definitely have to take Thursday off next year…maybe Monday, too 🙂
Standard
Books, BUSINESS, CREATIVE, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, The Rules of Tech Support, WHATS GOING ON, Writing

Off To Binary Heaven

square cover

I have been on a bit of a ‘simplify things’ kick lately, as evidenced by the fact that I am no longer a video game website editor, a drummer in a band, or involved in any conventions outside of being an attendee or panelist.  I cut back on my side projects and decided to devote the majority of my time to writing and getting the word out about my e-books.

Case in point: therulesoftechsupport.com (don’t bother, the site is kaputski and I still own the domain).  It was intended to be a ‘companion’ to my second e-book,  Things being what they are, I didn’t get around to updating it as much as I could have, partially due to the aforementioned side projects, and also because of all the other writing I do.

So its no wonder that there weren’t very many visitors to the site.  The year of hosting I had prepaid for was coming due, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to pay for a site that I didn’t have the time to keep up with and that wasn’t being visited.  So I shut down the site.

While I took the liberty of grabbing all of the articles and pictures from the site prior to shutting it down, I feel a little sad over pulling the plug.  Granted, I’ve had other websites that have gone off to binary heaven for one reason or another, but for what its worth, this one was mine.

Standard
Android, Apple, BUSINESS, Computers, JUST SAYING, Microsoft, Tablets, TECH, WHATS GOING ON

Apple Does Not Like Files

technology2As my iPad mini is my first iOS device, I have had to learn it and adjust to its idiosyncrasies. Some of the new things I’m discovering are good, like the ability to swipe up with four fingers and bring up a list of currently open apps and volume/brightness controls. Of course, there are bad things to discover as well, such as the ‘locked down’ nature of the device. In particular, I was initially miffed that I could not work with files like I could on desktops or Android devices.

I like files. I know how to work with files. I like to make folders for my files and organize them and e-mail them and sort them and rename them and open them and edit them and do all kinds of fun stuff with them.

Apple does not like files.

Apple likes objects. On an abstract level, apps are objects in iOS,not files.  Instead of having files scattered all about, like in Windows or Android, your stuff lives in the app that uses it. If you’re going to work with a picture, you open up Photos, select the picture you want to work with, and get to work. Music lives in iTunes, documents live in Pages, and so on and so forth. The app comes first.

iOS gets irritiating for people like me because unlike Android, where I can get an app like Astro and poke around at the underlying file system, iOS does not let you get ‘under the hood’ at all.  I can’t put stuff where I want it because Apple won’t let me, and coming from a world where files rule and I can do whatever I want to with them, that is frustrating.

Case in point: I use Dropbox to store stories that I am working on. Indeed, one of the first apps I downloaded onto my iPad mini was the Dropbox app.  I also got the Pages word processor because it had totally knocked my socks off on the iPad demo units. Awesome. I quickly learned that Pages does not talk to Dropbox. My file-centric brain then said: “No biggie, I’ll download a copy of my latest story via Dropbox, open it in Pages, do some editing, save my changes, then upload the newest draft back to the cloud. After all, that’s how it had worked on my Acer Iconia Tab A100.”

In response, Pages threw the finger at me and said, “NO SAVING FOR YOU.  You’re going to open the file in Pages and I’ll make a copy there. Its staying there after that, too, because I don’t like Dropbox and I ain’t giving it back.” So I end up with two copies of the story floating around, one in Dropbox and one in Pages. So much for keeping things in sync.

Ultimately, I found a Microsoft Office-compatible app talkd to Dropbox direclty, so that fixed that, but its just one an example of how I have had to work around iOS because it ‘thinks different.’  Its methodology is awesome for end-users because files are icky things and people don’t like dealing with them.  I think its because most folks can’t make the mental leap from objects (like documents, pictures, and music) to files. They can’t wrap their heads around the abstract concept like ‘computer people’ do.

If everything lives in the app, then they don’t have to deal with files at all.  If they want to do something, they open the appropriate app, and everything is there.  Instead of a list of files, they see pictures, songs, and documents, and that’s what they know.

Those of us that are more ‘computery,’ on the other hand, have a few options: muddle around iOS as best we can, jailbreak our devices, or just not bother with it altogether. Unfortunately, I think I’ve taken one step too far into the rabbit-hole, because for all that fuss, I’m still loving my iPad mini…even if it doesn’t want me to have my precious files.

Standard
Books, CREATIVE, JUST SAYING, WORDS, Writing

When Do I Start?

A question I often have to ask myself when writing a short story is just when do I start the story. “Well, at the beginning, DUH,” you’re probably thinking to yourself, but things often aren’t that simple.

Since I often have a word limit that I can’t go over, that often doesn’t leave me with enough space to set things up, so the story ends up starting somewhere after the characters, setting, situation, etc, have been established.  Oftentimes, though, those details are not all important to the point I’m trying to make in the story, so that’s okay.

Whenever I’m doing a ‘gag’ story, which is fairly often, I really can’t start at ‘the beginning’ (wherever that may be) because starting near the end makes it easier to hide information that is critical to the punch line. The challenge there is making sure that I give the reader enough information so that they understand what is going on.

Start at the beginning?  If it were only always that simple!

Standard
BUSINESS, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH SUPPORT, WHATS GOING ON

Don’t Make It Worse

She forgot to mention 'hot water'

What about hot water heaters, Fate?

Its not quite a Rule of Tech Support (I’ll have to check the list to make sure) but a good rule to follow whenever you’re fixing something is “don’t make it worse.”  If you can’t fix something at least try to get back to where you were when you started, it just makes life easier down the road, even if it is for the next guy that’s going to be looking at whatever it is you’re trying to fix.  If its someone else’s thing you’re fixing, be up front and honest about what is happening.

The poor handling of an unfortunate situation is one common thread that I see over and over again whenever someone takes to the Internet to air a legitimate grievance, like the musician who recently had a guitar damaged by incompetent baggage handlers after he was denied the right to carry it onto the plane with him.  Something unfortunate happens, the person seeks remedy from the company that wronged them, and the company completely blows the opportunity to prove they’re really all about the customer.  Instead they blow them off, or insult them with a feeble attempt at compensation and look like a bunch of non-caring jerks.

I wouldn’t have been so riled up about the recent hot water outage in my apartment but for the way the staff handled the situation.  The first time it happened, I was upset, but the email I received after the fact offered an apology and explained the situation.  I read it and was satisfied to know that the problem was being taken care of.  If they had sent a properly worded email the second time it happened, I probably wouldn’t have gone onto this blog to open up a can of Internet Wrath™.

Stuff happens, and I believe that most people are willing to accept that stuff happens as long as you don’t insult their intelligence by ignoring them, insulting their intellgence or being condescending.  Own the problem, let your customers know that things are being attended to, and most folks will accept that.  Don’t make it worse.

In any event, the hot water is back, so its time for a bath.  I ain’t dipping my big toe in that tub until its good and ready, though!

Standard
BUSINESS, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT

Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

Click to see what awaited me after work.

Click to see the good news and poor comma usage.

Final Update: 1/9, 1030PM: Looks like the hot water’s back, w00t.

2nd Update: 1/9, 620PM: Still nothing, purchased a “Homer Bucket” from Home Depot to assist with bathing. Not bad for two-fifty or so, though I wish they had tops for them.

UPDATE 1/8, 430PM: After sending a link to this blog to the regional manager via Venterra Realty’s website, I got a call from the complex at about 4PM. I was unable to answer because I was busy at work. They left a message essentially saying they’re really sorry (again) but they don’t have an ETA for a fix. Whoopee. I called back but got a message saying they’re weren’t available. They called me back again and apparently the entire boiler went kerplotz, so they need to get a new one…yeah, I think that’s going to be awhile.

If you’ve lived in an apartment for any decent amount of time, it’s a question that you get to ask yourself every year or so. As the day your lease ends gets closer, you think it over and think it over until finally the ‘renew your lease’ letter drops into your mailbox or gets left on your door. If you’re lucky, your rent stays the same, or only goes up a few bucks, so assuming things haven’t been too crazy, you re-up, and stand pat for another year or so.

If you aren’t lucky, your rent goes up just enough to make you think over whether you want to pay more to stay in a place that you are not completely happy living in. My renewal letter came in the mail about a week ago. I opened it to learn that my rent is going to be going up $50 a month. Crap.

I initially had a few issues with my current apartment complex after I moved in. The buildings are a bit on the older side and so it seemed that the maintenance guys were coming in at least once a month to fix or do something or other. I also had problems with the office hours not being consistent, I would occasionally have to go to the office to pay my rent during my lunch break to find it closed. Things did seem to be getting a little bit better as time went on, but still I winced when I saw that fifty dollar increase and thus began the internal debate.

Then last Saturday the hot water went out. On a 40-degree morning.

After making that discovery and stewing in my own juices for an hour, I boiled a bunch of water, took a hot bath, and life went on. I received an email later that day containing the management’s apology for the outage. It also said that there was a temporary fix in place and that the boiler would be fully repaired on Monday.

I think to myself: “Okay. These guys have got a handle on this. The boiler will be fixed on Monday. Awesome.’

I spoke too soon. I got home to find the lovely e-mail above waiting for me in my inbox. I turned on the tap, and of course, no hot water. No telling when its going to be fixed, either. All I have is a poorly-written message about ‘a part that needs to be ordered’ that I’m sure was hurriedly banged out by someone before they got out of Dodge.

Last straw, meet camel’s back.

Standard
Books, BUSINESS, CAMPING, Con Talk, CONS, CREATIVE, FURRY, FURRY FIESTA, JUST SAYING, NeRiMa, Oklacon, ORIGINAL-GAMER.COM, Podcasting, PODCASTS, RANDOM REVIEW, RANDOMIZER9.COM, Tablets, TECH SUPPORT, Wreck-It Ralph, Writing

RANDOM REVIEW: 2012

2012 was an interesting year for me.  I got into my first car accident, purchased a new vehicle, and started going camping again.  Needless to say, ‘interesting’ doesn’t always mean ‘good.’

After a year of experimenting with e-publishing my first e-book: “One Sheet Stories.”  I finally completed “The Rules of Tech Support.”  It has been doing fairly well.  I have also published “Seven Super-Short Sci-Fi Stories” and “Con Fluff 1” since then, so things are coming along nicely on the writing front.  Curiously enough, I am now moving from the digital realm to the physical one: 2013 will see me showing up at conventions to sell paper copies of my books and hand out business cards and flyers to get the word out about my writing.  In all honesty, I’m looking forward to going out and talking to people, pressing some flesh, and then reaching for the hand sanitizer. 🙂

In February, I went to Furry Fiesta to see what the whole ‘furry’ thing was about.  There, I discovered a bunch of cool creative people and decided to venture further down the rabbit hole (ba-doom, tissh) when I got back.  I went to some local meets, made some friends, and even went to a second furcon, Oklacon, in October.  While Oklacon wasn’t quite as knock-my-socks-off as Furry Fiesta was, I still had a good time.  In addition, furry conventions have provided me with a plethora of themes to write for, culminating in my first furry e-book: “Con Fluff.”

Somewhere around August, I got the feeling that my ‘side projects’ were getting in the way of my own.  Being the drummer in a band, the editor for a video game website and helping out with a new convention that was starting up in town was just taking up too much of my time, so I quit everything.  Indeed, as the last few hours of 2012 tick away and 2013 approaches, I am now just a writer of stories, podcasts and blogs.

I’m looking forward to 2013, it should be a fun year full of conventions, stories, new people to meet and of course, furries!

Happy New Year, y’all!

Some of my favorite posts from 2012:

“I am a furry”

“You don’t bring a knife to a gunfight, and you don’t bring human art to a furry con.”

“This reminds me of an episode of My Little Pony!”

“There’s just something about seeing your name on paper.”

“I think Dust has restored some of my faith in gaming.”

“I know darn well there’s no signal, but I keep checking my phone. I may have a problem.”

This one is from Dec. 2011, but its too good to not revist: ‘and then came the fishnets’

 

 

Standard
CREATIVE, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, WHATS GOING ON, WORDS, Writing

A “Special Delivery”

I constantly see artist friends posting their art up on various places out on the tubes, and every so often I’ll just browse a friend’s DeviantArt or Furaffinity account to pass the time and to be amazed by their abilities.  As can be evidenced by my book covers, I have ZERO design sense when it comes to anything visual.

I happened to be looking at Amanda Coronado’s artwork on DeviantArt and came across a picture titled “Birds of Hermes.”  To me, the picture showed two brothers having a cute moment; the younger not wanting to go somewhere or do something his elder was making him do.  The smaller one just has that ‘do we HAVE to’ look about him.  As the youngest of three brothers, I could easily see myself in that spot.

Of course, a ‘moment’ does not make a story, so the tale begins just before the picture.  The two brothers have their moment, but also have a task to accomplish, and from then on it becomes ‘my’ story, which means that hilarity ensues.  I titled the story “Special Delivery” and you can read it here.

It just goes to show that you never know where inspiration where come from.  I guess I need to go fishing for inspiration in my friends’ artwork a little more often.

Standard
CREATIVE, FOOD, JUST SAYING, ORIGINAL-GAMER.COM, PODCASTS, RANDOMIZER9.COM, WHATS GOING ON, WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT, WORDS, Writing

Headlines and Butterflies

Must be a country music fan…

I don’t have a family of my own as of yet, so I spend Thanksgiving with my parents.  I drive down to my hometown, catch up with friends, bake a pie or two, eat lots of Mom’s good food, watch football and maybe do a little shopping.  I also make it a point to read the town newspaper.  I saw the article pictured at right and chuckled to myself, thinking: ‘yeah, its amateur night.’  It also made me think about the time I had applied for a job at that same newspaper years ago.

I didn’t get the gig because I didn’t have any writing samples on me at the time.  I remember being irritated about that after the fact because I have two college degrees and this wasn’t exactly The Washington Post I was applying to.  “How hard is it to write about honor rolls, City Council meetings and the occasional tractor accident?” I probably thought to myself at the time.

I got over it, life went on and I would eventually go on to write other things: short stories, video game reviews, podcasts and this blog.  I never again thought about the snub until I saw that poorly written headline.  As people are oft to do, I started to think about ‘what might have been.’  I quickly dismissed those thoughts to the back recesses of my mind, because I had better things for it to do, like get to work on the two short stories I need to have done by the end of next week.

Among other things, I subscribe to what is called the “Butterfly Effect.”  Simply put, it states that a small change can ultimately have a much larger impact at a later point in time.  “Does the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas,” and all that.  You see the theory mentioned a lot in science fiction, especially where time travel is concerned, and it is also the title of a movie that I’ve never bothered to see.

Thus, I believe that if you are truly happy in your current situation, you cannot have any regrets at all.  Even the smallest decision or event from years ago may have significantly altered your destiny.  So don’t waste your time wistfully thinking about ‘what might have been.’  If you are not happy with your situation, do something about it, even if it is a small step.  Small steps can eventually lead to something bigger and doing something is always better than doing nothing.  On the other hand:

If you are content with your life…

Be happy,

Be thankful,

but most of all, be you.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Standard
JUST SAYING, Nintendo, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH, Videogames

Has Nintendo Jumped The Shark?

Detractors of certain games, genres, and even systems often complain that “all they do is make the same game over and over again.”  As much as I hate to admit it, I’m starting to feel that way about Nintendo.

I first got this vibe when Super Mario Galaxy 2 was released.  I still haven’t picked it up and don’t really have any desire to.  The New Thing in that game was the addition of Yoshi.  Yay.  New Super Mario Bros. 2 was announced and I reacted to the whole “COLLECT A BAJILLION COINS!” thing with a great big “whoop-dee-doo.”

Its not just what some call “sequelitis,” either. Indeed, the Big N is almost expected to drop new Mario or Zelda games every so often, its what they do. To their credit, Nintendo has kept their franchises fresh by evolving and adding to their gameplay over the years, but I now find myself unexcited and uninterested in Mario’s latest adventures.  It also doesn’t help that the one franchise I wouldn’t mind seeing them drag into the ground (StarFox) hasn’t seen a new game since 2006.

The Wii U is now here and its not even on my radar; I find myself more interested in hunting down an iPad mini.  As much as I hate to admit it, it’s going to take more than just another Mario or Zelda game to get me to drop the cash for a Wii U.

They just aren’t special to me anymore, and there’s something sad about that.

Standard