Where is Dawn Now? Year 3

Just to catch everyone up....last year I was breaking orbit from Vesta on my way to Ceres. I must be slacking cause I'M STILL NOT THERE YET. Of course looking at the image you would think I could just skip over to Ceres right now since I seem to be so close. But you know, space being all weird and all, looks like I have to take the long way round. They are telling me I'll make it by 2015. OMG I don't know if I can wait that long. It's the journey and not the destination right? RIGHT?

Dawn Mission Status

As an FYI you can follow progress through twitter: @NASA_Dawn

The Eleven Doctors and His Companions

There is a contest for Dragon Con called Fandom Music Video Awards. Every year fans string together their favorite movies/shows to music or what have you. Some are good and some are bad, about what you would expect. If you're interested you can peruse to your hearts content.

This one I liked enough to share. Partly because it's the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, partly because I like the song and partly because I'm all about showing off the girl power in Doctor Who which tends to get overlooked. Other similar tributes on YouTube are waaay sappy or mostly focus on the current Doctors (or worse yet just focus on Rose). I think this one found a good balance between all the Doctors and his companions.

-Enjoy

Preliminarily Scheduled

So the first official schedules are out. And so begins the dilemma of..."So much time, so little to see. Oh wait reverse that."
2013 Dragon Con Pocket Guide

With the addition of the AmericasMart building everything has kinda shuffled around (including the parade route).  Vendors have moved from two floors in the Marriott to take up two floors in AmericasMart. One of those freed areas is now being taken up by the Walk of Fame which was in the Hilton. So basically where you spent most of Con Darkchild has now changed. I guess we'll have to scope you out new spot for next time. The Puppetry track moved to a different floor other side of the same hotel. The Space track moved up a floor to no man's land but hopefully it's a bigger space (ha ha, get it? Space?). I have a feeling this will be a bit chaotic for us.

Also, several tracks have merged but have made way for new tracks. I never understood how there was an entire track just for Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time so no big loss there.

Here are some of some highlights of shows/actors that will be represent'n.

Richard Dean Anderson, John Barrowman, George Takei, William Shatner

BSG (Battle Star Galactica)
    Tom Zarek,Anastasia "Dee" Dualla, Admiral Adama, Karl "Helo" Agathon
Arrow
    Oliver Queen, Malcom Merlyn, Slade Wilson, "The Count", China White, Detective McKenna Hall
Farscape 
    Chiana, Dargo, Stark
Defiance
    Joshua Nolan, Irisa, Stahma Tarr
Torchwood
    Captain Jack, Gwen, Owen, Ianto
True Blood
    Pam, Holly, Ginger, Luna, Hoyt, Tara
SG-1
    Jack O'Neal, Teal'c, Dr. Janet Fraiser
Star Trek
    James T. Kirk, Sulu, "Q", Lt. Worf, Deana Troi, Data, Ensign Harry Kim, Benjamin Sisko, Jadzia Dax, Jake Sisko
Grimm
    Adalind Schade, Hank Griffin, Monroe
Warehouse 13
    Peter Lattimer, Helena G. Wells, Mrs. Irene Frederic, Leena

These aren't necessarily all panels I see and doesn't mean that's it for all the big shows or stars in attendance it's just the ones I decided to list. No Babylon 5 or Firefly for the first time in forever.

This is the 50th anniversary of Dr. Who so there will be a room dedicated throughout Con to playing episodes from every season. And as always, there are several Dr. Who's in attendance for panels.
50th Anniversary of Dr. Who Marathon

And how's this for esoteric? There is even a panel with Lee Majors and Lindsay Wagner. Yep you read that right, the Bionic Man and the Bionic Woman.

Welcome 2013

Dragon Con August 30 - September 2

So I'm realizing how I'm stuttering my start this year. I don't have any excuses...it's just hot and really humid and it's hard to get excited about traipsing about outside with 60k of my closest friends. Of course I'm not wearing a costume so I don't really have much to gripe about but gripe and complain I will.

Some of you might notice that the Dragon Con name has changed. The short of it is: they formed a new corporation to get rid of a stock holder. So I'm trying to get the name changed everywhere. If I've missed a spot don't panic I'll get to eventually. There are some people who are just so touchy about these things.

Twitter managed to obsolete my feeds so that was a fun day of figuring out what they did. I think it's all working again. They removed most of the configurable parameters...you know....they made it better (HA). Google+ finally rolled out their new changes. Well kinda. I almost scrapped the page since most of you don't see it anyway but I was able to at least block all the spammers again so I decided I'd keep it for the time being.

This year is also a little different in that it doesn't look like we'll be near missing another hurricane like the last two years. I was beginning to think the gods were angry at Dragon Con for a while.

That aside, as I mentioned before, we lost two guests this year (Darkchild and The Boy) but Kevin has assured me he can more than make up for it. Master James has opted to go cross country and teach banjo to a bunch of yahoos (is that politically correct?) but Mistress Niki will be joining us on Saturday.  As it currently stands here is the cast for this year:

Mistress Dawn
   The ever lovely, eloquent, and charming Lady of the House.
Master Johnathan
   Man of miscellaneous knowledge and Lord of the House.
Kevin 
   Still waiting for a cool tagline.

All Hail the Dragon Con Cast of 2013

Every Girls Dream

I think I speak for every Geek Girl out there when I say HELL YEAH!!!

Join the Zombie Craze - All the Cool Kids Are Doing It

So Master Johnathan asked me the other day: "What's up with the current Zombie mind meme?"

There's the J C Penny's complete website redo the other year for Xmas in Zombie theme complete with video. The CDC puts out papers explaining the processes that should be followed in case of a Zombie break out. Lately there were the Chinese who, angered at the removal of graveyards to put in farmland, protested by dressing up as zombies and shooting video of them coming up from the grave sites. And for mainstream pop culture there was an episode of Heart of Dixie where a woman got the town dressed up as Zombies so she could propose to her boyfriend.  And this is just a minor cross sectional sample of what's out there.

And now you're thinking..."Well how can I get my whole family on board this new craze?" Well I have it...a Zombie board game.

Zombicide Season 2

Each player takes up the role of 1 to 4 survivors, each with unique abilities, and play with his teammates against zombies controlled by simple rules and a deck of cards. The more zombies you kill, the more skilled you get and the more zombies will appear. The only way for your team to survive and achieve victory is... Zombicide!

And if you think that might be a little too complicated for the little ones how 'bout a Zombie chocolate bunny for Easter.

Little zombie foo foo shambling through the forest, scooping up the field mice & nomming on their brains

Think Geek Chocolate Zombie Bunny

 Mmmmmm Braaaaiiiins

BigDog

BigDog grabs, lifts, and throws cinder blocks with its new arm

For any of you familiar with Big Dog, it now has an arm. Of course it only has one arm and it's where either its head or its butt should be but it's still really cool. The article shows it throwing cinder blocks across the length of the warehouse.

If you haven't seen this robot perform you should. In the original footage they have it walking through a forest, up and down hill. It has a better ability to navigate terrain than most people. In one scene, to show stability, one of the engineers kicks it to knock it off balance. That created a flurry of emails  with people feeling sorry for the robot. Humans, they anthropomorphize everything.
DARPA LS3 quadruped plays follow the leader through mud puddles and more

I think I would luv to have one of these at Dragon*Con to pick up the really annoying patrons (like Firefly fans) and throw them out of my way. I can dream can't I?

So I'm Crying in My Beer

I guess I should back up a little.

Earlier today I received a call from Darkchild. Not unusual, whenever the weather turns squirrelly down here he always calls to see how it's going (seeing as it's 72 degrees in January right now). And true to character, the first words out of his mouth are "Hear you're getting some unusual weather". The other reason he calls is to inform me of updates to Dragon*Con. Last call was about the new updated web page. And again, true to form, "...so about Dragon*Con this year....."

Then the thunderbolt hits....."I'm going to have to cancel." I know he was still talking but all I hear is the reverberation of cancel cancel cancel

Not only do we lose Darkchild but his evil spawn, The Boy, who was to attend his very first Dragon*Con.  On the bright side, Kevin will still be attending so I will still have one cook left (because with me it's all about food).

And that, my friends, is why I'm crying in my beer.

Zombie Road Warrior

In case you were wondering...

"What IS the safest city to be in when the Zombie Apocalypse comes?" 

I think I have your answer.

This picture was taken outside an Atlanta area restaurant

We apparently have our own roaming response team. Who knew?

I know I feel safer, don't you?

Safe, Safer Safest

I decided that this year I might try and be an adult. Well I do go to bars, take vacations...all the fun adult things but this is a boring adult thing. I thought it was about time I pulled together all my important documents in one place and what better place than a safe.

I get this really heavy duty safe off Amazon ( and now my UPS guy hates me ) and go 'a hunting around the house to find any of the things I should put in there. After a quick perusal... no luck( and for those of you who have seen my house you know why ). But wait, low and behold what shows up in the mail...my Dragon*Con passes for 2013.

So for all my attempt at doing something adult I now have this really nice, fire proof, water proof safe containing only my Dragon*Con passes and lanyards. Let it never be said I don't know what's important.