Category Archives: RANDOMIZER9.COM

ANIME, CONS, FIRST STORM MANGA, FURRY, JUST SAYING, ORIGINAL-GAMER.COM, RANDOM STOPS, RANDOMIZER9.COM, SAN JAPAN, TECH SUPPORT, WORK

24 Things I Noticed While Helping at San Japan 6

My home for San Japan 6

My home for San Japan 6

I have attended every single San Japan.  I went to the first out of curiosity and found myself helping out with tables for First Storm Manga and original-gamer.com for the next four.  As FSM is no more and I have resigned my post from original-gamer.com, I found myself with nothing to do at San Japan Sinister Six.  I suppose I could have gone as an attendee and enjoyed myself, but instead I decided to help out the fine folks of RegIT with processing the 11,000+ attendees.

  1. You either have fun or work at a convention, and I worked at this one…a LOT
  2. That said, the people I worked with were very cool.
  3. It was neat to experience how much work goes on behind the scenes in registration.
  4. Think about it: about 20 people had to process over 11,000.  That’s pretty nuts.
  5. There were a few glitches, but the overwhelming majority of people were very understanding.  Nerds is good people.
  6. I was right about the customers being cooler at San Japan, there were only had a handful of genuine jerkasses to deal with.
  7. Goof-up #1-Not having good sneakers. I put gel insoles inside my casual shoes, which hepled, but my dogs were barking by the evenings.
  8. Holy cats, some of those cosplayers…Good Lord, I thought blood was going to shoot out of my nose!
  9. I’m old enough to have fathered a teenager, so I guess that makes me a dirty old man now.
  10. A friend guessed my age and was off by a decade, so I guess I’m not doing that bad.
  11. If you are going to give something to someone at a con , be sure you have it on you AT ALL TIMES. Sorry, friend of mine…can I mail you that t-shirt?
  12. Cardboard, if applied correctly, can be pretty awesome, as demonstrated by Tall Cardboard Robot Guy.
  13. I found myself shifting into my ‘announcer voice’ on occasion, that hasn’t happened in awhile.
  14. I don’t think I’ve ever done that at my regular job…which probably says something.
  15. Goof-up #2-Not taking Monday off from work. It would have been nice to do more stuff after the show, but I had to be at work on Monday and do laundry.  Stupid responsibilities!
  16. I wore my Wreck-It Ralph cloth pin and got lots of compliments, which makes me feel bad that I don’t remember the name of the artist who MADE it.  Sorry!
  17. The artists I know seemed to be happier this year and the layout appeared to be MUCH improved this time
  18. That is, the few times I was able to get away and see stuff…see #1
  19. Goof-up #3-Not by me, but for those who would ask me where things were…I AM SORRY BUT I HAVE BEEN HERE THE WHOLE TIME. AND I DON’T KNOW WHERE ANYTHING IS 😦
  20. I think the highlight of the whole thing was when my furiends showed up on Saturday to say hi.  The fuzzies gave me the warm fuzzies.
  21. Which is more than I can say for the jerkass who texted me ‘Are you even here?” despite knowing very well where I was the whole time. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
  22. Goof-up #4-Not getting a picture of the gal dressed up as the Ancient Aliens guy…she even had a sign that said ‘ALIENS,’ too!
  23. I seem to be doing a lot of apologizing in this list.  Sorry about that!
  24. Now that I can scratch ‘volunteered at a convention’ off my bucket list, I simply have no choice but to have fun at next year’s San Japan Samurai Seven…maybe!
Standard
Books, BUSINESS, Con Fluff 1, CREATIVE, FlipSide Stories, FURRY, JUST SAYING, One Sheet Stories, RANDOMIZER9.COM, Seven Super-Short Sci-Fi Stories, Tablets, TECH, The Rules of Tech Support, Uncategorized, WORDS, Writing

The Long and Winding Words

writingbear

My last e-book “Con Fluff 1: 2012 Furry Convention Short Story Collection” was released seven months ago, and as the 2013 edition won’t be ready for a few months at the minimum, I feel the need to get another e-book out into the wild.  My (virtual) stack of unpublished short stories has been growing and I’m pretty sure that I have enough of them to assemble another e-book.

Since my stories are very short, I have to round up a few in order to assemble a collection of decent length.  One early lesson I learned in my Adventures in Self-Publishing is that five stories was not enough content for 99 cents, as evidenced by the thud that ‘One Sheet Stories’ and ‘FlipSide Stories’ made in their respective marketplaces.  Luckily, people are buying the longer collections I’ve produced since so I think I’ve figured out how much stuff is enough.

The stories themselves are another matter, though.  The longest anything I’ve ever written was about 12 pages.  It also took me a little while to get over my habit of keeping stories about a page long due to printing constraints back in the First Storm Manga days.  Even when I have a hard limit to work with, I try not to think about length, but even then I’m pretty sure that the thought of ‘is it long enough’ rattles around somewhere in my subconscious.

I don’t know that I have a Great American Novel in me but I’d like to write one eventually.  Time will tell!

Standard
Books, Con Fluff 1, CONS, CREATIVE, RANDOMIZER9.COM, WHATS GOING ON, WORDS, Writing

Everybody Dies…Or Not!

writingbearWhenever I write a short story with the intention of submitting it to a conbook, I have a tendency to want to write a happy or silly story.  I’m not sure why, though it may have something to do with the overall fun atmosphere that I see at conventions.  Nearly every large gathering of nerds that I have been to have been joyous experiences, regardless of the flavor of nerds that are present.

Unfortunately, “stories write themselves,” so that happy story might turn into one that is not-so-happy because I had some bad Mexican food or something.  When this happens, I will end up either rewriting the story to make it ‘happy’ or shelve it completely in favor of a happy one.  I have even had a few instances where I ended up with TWO stories that diverge at a certain point and at othertimes I’m satisfied with the happy story and abandon the other one.

I just feel odd sending a story that doesn’t end with a happy ending or a punchline into such a happy place.  I should probably get over it.  After all, I don’t think anybody actually reads conbook stories at the con because they’re too busy having fun!

Standard
JUST SAYING, Microsoft, Nintendo, ORIGINAL-GAMER.COM, RANDOMIZER9.COM, Sony, TECH, Videogames, WHATS GOING ON, WORDS

GAME OVER?

videogamesI think I might be done with video games, or at least done with buying new consoles. I have been playing video games since the days of the Atari 2600 but my enthusiasm for new games and consoles has grown smaller and smaller with each sequel/lookalike/dark-haried protagonist/space marine game announcement for the last year or two.

One reason is I just don’t consume as much media as I used to.  I see movies very occasionally, watch little to no television and don’t buy very many CDs and Blu-Rays anymore.  A bigger reason is a feeling of ‘been there, done that.’  The Big 3’s E3 announcements impacted me with a great big ‘meh’ as I saw the sequel numbers get higher and higher.

So let’s run down the list:

SONY

I like to describe my PlayStation 3  as my “Blu-Ray player that also plays Ratchet and Clank.”  I can count the number of PS3 disc games I own on my hands, and most of the downloadable ones I have are games that I reviewed for original-gamer.com  It should say something that I still haven’t finished Ratchet and Clank: Full Frontal Assault and have yet to even purchase Sly Cooper 4.  As I have nearly zero interest in JPRGs or any of the Sony exclusive titles, I don’t see any reason to get a PS4 anytime soon.

MICROSOFT

The Xbox 360 was easily my favorite machine of this generation, though it bears mentioning that about a third of the disc games I own have either ‘Rock Band’ or ‘Guitar Hero’ in the title.  I’ve also purchased about a dozen downloaded titles and the Kinect is always fun when friends are over.  The Halo and Gears of War series have both been entertaining, but I have little interest in seeing them drug into the ground a la Capcom.  The TV functions of the 360 were also nice: I used it to stream and record HDTV from my PC via Windows Media Center to the living room TV.  I was actually intrigued by the Xbox 360’s TV functionality but the high price and anti-consumer policies Microsoft may or may not be imposing mean I won’t be getting an Xbox One in the near future.

NINTENDO

“Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be,” the old joke goes.  Nintendo has finally gone to the well once too often because Mario has become the new Madden as far as I am concerned.  I think the breaking point was when they started making sequels.  I may yet acquire Super Mario Galaxy 2 but my initial reaction was “Oh boy, they added Yoshi…whee.”  When New Super Mario Bros. 2 was announced,  I saw the ads about the whole ‘collect a bajillion coins’ thing and thought, “That’s IT?”  I am intrigued by the Wii U, but its initial lineup landed with a great big thud and the current game drought makes me feel like I didn’t have it so bad after buying a launch 3DS.  The sad thing is that the one franchise I would like for Nintendo to drag into the ground is one they’ve completely forgotten about: StarFox.

PC

I haven’t done any PC gaming for quite a few years now.  Seriously, the last PC game I bought was Portal…on disc…at Circuit City.  Oddly enough, I may end up playing games solely on my PC from here on out.  Since most of the big multi-platform releases end up on PC, I shouldn’t miss very many of the few AAA titles I’m interested in and there are loads of smaller devs doing interesting things these days on the indie scene.  Maybe I’ll get an Ouya after its had a little more time in the oven.

So there you have it.  I have been a gamer for well over 30 years now, and while it has been loads of fun, it may be time to hang up the controller for good.  Will it happen?  Who knows, but my current consoles and 3DS are doing just fine for now.

Standard
BUSINESS, HOUSE, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, WHATS GOING ON, Wild Nights, WORDS

In Soviet Russia, house occupies you!

homeYou know, I can never resist a good ‘in Soviet Russia’ joke.  Actually, I can’t resist a bad one, either.

Buying a house has all but consumed my life for these last two months.  Nearly everything that I have been thinking about or doing (or blogging) since early March has been house-related.  Finding a house, negotiating for it, digging up all the documents for the bank, shopping for insurance, finding a storage unit, moving all of my stuff out of my apartment into the storage unit, moving in with my cousins, closing, moving out of my cousin’s, then getting all my stuff from storage into the house and now I’m taking things out of boxes and putting things in their place and buying appliances.

Along the way, I missed out on quite a few things due to either poor planning, bad luck, or fatigue: Wild Nights, the St. Phillips Anime Club Bubblehead Tea event, Free Comic Book Day, the Central Texas Toy and Comic Expo and the Anthrocon conbook deadline.  My stress level got pretty high and I even got sent to the “principal’s office” at work for getting a little too rowdy with a customer.  My aggravation got to the point that I went from “this will be totally worth it” to “this had better be worth it.”

It has been just over a week after I got the keys, and the number of moving boxes cluttering up the living room is gradually decreasing.  I am hoping to be at some semblance of ‘normal’ (or at least as normal as it gets for me) by week’s end, especially after the new refrigerator is delivered later this week.  I ask myself, was this worth all the bother and stress and money and time and missed fun?

Without hesitation, I think:  Yeah.  Totally worth it.

Standard
HOUSE, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM

27 Things I Noticed In My Just-Bought Home

homeAfter about 2 months of looking, negotiating, gathering money and signing a metric crapton of papers, I am finally in my new (to me) home. Of course, I noticed a few things:

  1. As mentioned previously, we didn’t discuss which, if any, appliances were going to be left. They left behind the one thing I didn’t want: the electric range.
  2. I took a peek inside the oven and wished I hadn’t. I don’t think it has EVER been cleaned.
  3. On the plus side, there appears to be a gas line present. Time for an upgrade!
  4. Well, after I buy a refrigerator, first.
  5. and get the utility guys to make sure the gas line is good…guess it might be a while. :/
  6. Seriously, it looks like it was never used, some people just don’t know what they’re missing
  7. No refrigerator, but there’s a water line so I can get an ice maker.  Woo!
  8. There is a general air of uncleanliness around the place. The oven, the tub needs scrubbing, the floors need sweeping, and the carpet is shag-nasty!
  9. I even had to sweep some webs and stuff from a few walls…ew.
  10. Speaking of the carpet, there’s this weird red-pink fuzz all over the master bedroom floor??
  11. Checking the keys, I found one that didn’t work in the outside locks…it was for the master bedroom. Oh-kaay.
  12. …and the second bedroom door doesn’t lock.  I’m sensing some trust issues here.
  13. The doorbell doesn’t work, and I thought I was antisocial.
  14. It’s only temporary anyway; I want a doorbell that sounds like the one from the Jetsons…seriously!
  15. Finding bug traps everywhere…well, maybe if they cleaned up a little.
  16. First major upgrade (after a gas stove) will be a new shower/tub, but for now some bleach and a good scrubbing will have to do.
  17. People have gotten smarter about their network security, no open hotspots nearby.
  18. Spent the first night vacuuming and filled up the machine’s dust canister after one bedroom…EW.
  19. I don’t think I’ve ever filled up the dust canister when vacuuming my whole apartment.
  20. Yeah, definitely going to need a new shower head, I like to feel the water bouncing off my chest like I’m Superman
  21. I’ve never had a garage before, its nice.
  22. Scratch that, having a garage is AWESOME.  Yes, it has rained recently, why do you ask?
  23. I found what appear to be used plastic bags and aluminum foil in a kitchen drawer…I wonder if the previous owner was also Mexican.
  24. I didn’t think I was going to need a lawn mower anytime soon and then heavy rain came down the day I got the keys.  Nuts.
  25. Once again, I get to pick between the duopoly of suck for internet: Time Warner and AT&T 😦
  26. Actually, I think I’ll go with Clear
  27. Damn, it feels good to be able to walk around in my boxers again!!
Standard
BAKING, BUSINESS, COOKING, FOOD, HOUSE, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, WHATS GOING ON

How Home Sweet Home It Is!

homeAfter years of dealing with annoying neighbors one wall (or floor) over, lousy parking, poor management, constantly increasing rents and not being able to own a cat without a big deposit and paying ‘pet rent.’ I am finally going to take the plunge and buy a house.  I’m almost there, too:  if all goes well I’ll be a homeowner within a few weeks.

Its a big step for me and more than a little bit scary.  For better or for worse, I am setting down roots here in San Antonio.  There’s also the whole ‘what happens if I lose my job’ bit, but these days, that cloud is constantly hovering over everyone’s head, so that’s nothing new.  Instead, I choose to focus on the Good Things associated with having my own home:

It’s my house, and if you don’t like it… – On a philosophical level, an apartment is never ‘really’ yours, and it will be nice to do whatever I want without having to ask myself whether I’ll be dinged for something when I move out.  Also, there is the whole ‘investment’ angle, but I don’t care too much about that.  In my opinion, the mentality of the home one lives in being an ‘asset’ instead of a ‘home’ is partially to blame for the nutzoid homeowner’s associations I always hear about in the news.

More room! – I have always lived in one-bedroom apartments and even lived in a efficiency once when things got tight.  Unless I get a Unabomber special (i.e. an isolated shack)  I’ll be getting a 2-bedroom house at the bare minimum and it will more than likely have a garage, too.  That’s going to be a LOT of extra space that I’m not sure I know what to do with.  I might rent out the extra room and I hear garages are great places to store things.  I’m also looking forward to hosting parties again, it has been way too long since I’ve hosted a Super Bowl or New Year’s Eve gathering.

Do What I Want – One of the crappier parts of living in apartments is you have to be careful with your noise level lest you arouse the ire of your neighbors.  While I am not a very noisy person, I do like to turn up the sound when I play video games and movies and have occasionally been ‘that guy’ that has had his stereo or surround sound system up too loud.  Conversely, I have also had to bang on a few doors and tell neighbors to tone it down.

WOW a Garage! – My parent’s house does not have a garage and so I have never had the pleasure of having one.  Based on what I have seen from friends, I understand it is a storage space.  I might go nuts and actually keep my vehicle in mine.

KITTEH! – I have wanted to have a cat for some time, but as I mentioned in the intro, certain things about apartments have kept me from getting one.  I can now acquire a cat and hug him and pet him and hold him and call him George. 🙂

Good Old Gas – My parents have a gas stove, and it is awesome.  I have not lived in a place that has had a gas stove since I moved out, and cooking food has royally sucked since.  One of my requirements for a home is that it have a gas connection so that I can once again experience the joy of heating up tortillas and hot dogs the way God intended.

House Party – When I had a bigger apartment a few years ago, I loved having friends over for games and even Super Bowl and New Year’s parties or two.  It won’t be too long before I’ll be hosting get-togethers and this time we can crank up the tunes! 😀

Buying a house is big and scary and fraught with pitfalls, but I’ll take the hits as they come and look forward to the good things that come with owning a home, like freshly-warmed tortillas!

Standard
Books, BUSINESS, Con Fluff 1, CONS, CREATIVE, FlipSide Stories, FURRY, FURRY FIESTA, JUST SAYING, One Sheet Stories, RANDOMIZER9.COM, Seven Super-Short Sci-Fi Stories, The Rules of Tech Support, Writing

Doing It Write

doingitwrongA spectacular failure can have the effect of dropping a big heaping scoop of self-doubt on one’s head.  After failing to sell even a single paper copy of my first furry book, “Con Fluff 1,” in the Artist Alley of Furry Fiesta a few weekends ago, I found myself questioning everything I did there: my sales pitch, my table layout, pricing, and so on.  The bigger question of “Am I Doing It Wrong?” has also been hanging over my head since then.

A friend recently made the observation that I was incorrectly trying to sell clean stories to an audience that was not interested in them.  Given how I joke with friends about how some furry art sites don’t update until you turn off their “not safe for work” filter, I’m hardly in a position to disagree.  A little part of me is wondering if I should cross that line and start writing erotica/smut/porn/what have you.

I’ve never written anything overtly sexual, and I don’t have much desire to…it’s just not my thing.  Despite that, I now have a little nagging voice in my head telling me that if I just cross that line, I will gain a bigger audience.  Oddly enough, the internal debate I am having is reminiscent of when I’ve see artist friends struggle with the question of whether to do fan art for conventions.

While doing your own thing as a creative person is very personally satisfying, it also carries some risk, especially where anime and comic book fans are concerned.  Those fans have popular characters that they like and don’t often take chances on things that are different or new, especially coming from a little-known or new artist.  However awesome an artist’s original creation may be, most folks are going to gravitate to the table with the cool looking Iron Man or Hetalia fanart.  In the same way, I find myself wondering if folks are bypassing my works just because it is clean.

Part of the reason I don’t write smut is that I don’t think I’d be good at it, but that isn’t stopping me from considering crossing that line.  The little cloud of self-doubt that’s been following me around since Furry Fiesta isn’t helping either.

I don’t know.  I guess it wouldn’t hurt if things got just a little more naughty.  We’ll see.

Standard
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, CONS, CREATIVE, FURRY, FURRY FIESTA, RANDOM STOPS, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH, WHATS GOING ON, WORDS, Writing

Time for Texas Furry Fiesta!

The 4 3/8th Doctor

The 4 3/8th Doctor

Another year, another Furry Fiesta!  Texas Furry Fiesta 2013: The Time Traveller’s Ball is happening this weekend, and I’ll be there with bells ears on! Unlike last year where I went for funsies, this year I’m going to be ‘working’ this time as part of my efforts to get word out about my ebooks.

On Friday at 4PM, I’ll be hosting a panel called  “How To Publish Your Own E-Books” where I will discuss the technical challenges involved with taking your literary masterpiece digital.  With 5 e-books under my belt so far, I’d like to think I’ve learned a few things and am ready to share some knowledge!  On Saturday, I should be in the Artist’s Alley selling paper copies of my berks, handing out flyers and chatting up anyone willing to listen, and Sunday will be the drive home…aww.

 

Standard