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.

Sunday

Jim Henson: Not Da Muppets
A discussion of Henson's other works for film & television. These aren't your cute & cuddly Muppets. From Dark Crystal to Farscape and beyond.

Artists Alley

Freemasonry and The Lost Symbol
Elonka Dunin, namesake for “Nola Kaye” in Dan Brown's “The Lost Symbol”, talks about mysteries behind the novel and the link to Freemasonry. E. Dunin

Borderlands 2: Return to Pandora

Those Weird Extra Solar Planets!
Kepler has found over 2300 exo-planets & doing so has completely changed theories regarding planet formation! There's some strange planets out there!

Curious About Curiosity & Opportunity at 3000 Sols

Masquerade

Parade Day

Man mornings come early....why why why why.....*sigh*

We're skipping the parade today. Since last year the parade was already too crowded and this year there were more 4 day tickets sold and Saturday is the biggest one day ticket sale and then add all the people who just come down for the parade...well you get the picture. Of course that doesn't mean we get to sleep in either. Because we're driving, you still have to be there bright eye-d and bushy tailed or you won't get into the parking garage. Oh yeah, and we thought it might be nice to actually bring some food this time.

Eureka: Global Dynamics Exit Interview
J. Paglia, C. Ferguson, F. Day, N. Matter, T. Locke, D. Farentino
Nice to see the the Global Dynamics crew had been partying and having a rough morning too.   :-)   (No GD hangover pills?)   Much discussion about the sadness of striking the sets,   future projects,  and some thanks to the major prankster (Colin) on the sets, for making shooting sometimes take days longer than originally scheduled.

Capt. William Shepherd: The 1st ISS Commander
Our first NASA Astronaut will talk about his time on board the nascent International Space Station & share his 'home' movies! 
Besides Barrowman (come ooon Barrowman), this turned out to be my favorite panel.
Very informative,  Capt Shepherd (No relation to Capt Shepherd of Mass Effect Series :-)  was one of the folks who set up the ISS, and was the first international commander of the Space Station.   His movies showed something that we all believed:  "Duct Tape can be used to fix almost everything".  (Every tool belt in sight had a roll firmly attached!)  We got to see some of the soviet training and launching facilities as well,   and saw the handing over of Command to the Russians when he returned to Earth.  

Star Wars: The Old Republic—Meet & Greet
*finger wiggle* This is the MMO you are looking for. We promise to keep the jokes about "Deep Sith" to a minimum
This was a Master Johnathan panel. The MMO had put a free version out for people to try and John was interested in hearing from some of the developers. Problem is PAX is at the same time as Dragon*Con so the developers were still in Seattle. The panel ended up devolving into a discussion among the crowd about how to play certain characters.
(Master Johnathan:   Sorry for dragging you to this panel... At least we snuck out early and got some lunch!)

Heaven, Hell and Purgatory— Supernatural & XFiles vs Literature
Thought this was going to be how Supernatural and XFiles compare with the actual religious documentation and history found there,  but one of the presenters, who was a pastor,  hadn't watched much of the show, and seemed irritated that the leads were two good looking guys. I tried getting him to stay on topic but to no avail....so out we went, along with half the room. Such a bummer, I think it could have been a good panel.

The Higgs Boson—So did we actually find it? If so, what's the big deal?
What is a Higgs boson? How does its discovery fit into our physics theories? And have we reached the end-of-physics upon finding this "God particle"?



I'm noticing about now that Dragon*Con fatigue is setting in...we're already looking at the schedule and nixing anything in the Westin and the Sheraton hotels because they are two blocks off the main three. Sorry, no more Trek or Whedon Universe track panels for us.

Dragon After Dark Contest
Our adult-oriented costume contest, providing an opportunity to showcase naughtier or grotesque costumes in a safe and controlled environment
Well the first issue with any evening Dragon*Con event is that you have 40k people downtown looking for stuff to do and limited events going on. Our second issue with this event is that the line didn't start at the door but somewhere else and by the time we realized that we ended up very far back in line. Add to that it started an hour late. I think in all we ended up waiting 2 1/2 hours for a 40 minute costume show. And most of the costumes we had seen already because the people were wandering around. I wouldn't recommend this event. Not enough bang for the buck so to speak.

Survival

As you know we skipped the parade to do a little shopping. I just had to share with you my new favorite T-shirt.

For those of you who know me.....you know I will.

Feeling the luv?