Greatest prank ever

I appreciate a clever prank and this one gets top marks for creativity in my book.

The good news!

My Dad saw the doctor today and got the go ahead to start weaning himself off the neck brace! It appears that he's healing nicely and will likely be in good enough shape to take a planned trip to Germany this September. He sounded great on the phone, lots of energy and even talked about getting a replacement truck for his business.

Cool Beans.

Death Kittah

I have only three words for you: Grim Reaper Cat

This story is so strange it even weirds ME out a little.

Not bad...

Sometimes cruising YouTube yields interesting results. Here is a gentleman who seems to have built how own Bag End (complete with a *twitch* round door)

In hindsite...

I have read on the internets that Daniel Radcliffe (He who is Harry Potter) will turn 18 this month and when he does, he will obtain control of $40 million dollars.

Wow. I was, you know, going to get him a card...or something but uh...

Anyway. I can only hope that Mr. Radcliff will have wise and helpful hands to guide him away from the kinds of temptations $40 MILLION can buy. I am tempted to look back at my life and wonder what I might have done with $40 million when I was 18 and am forced to conclude that I would have no freakin clue. I would likely have saved some of it, but there would be some pretty large purchases that I would be regretting about now.

Like the full sized millenium falcon in my back yard, or the Hoth Base (complete with Imperial walkers) I built in Norway. Or perhaps the strip club with a Star Trek theme. The possibilities are endless.

What would you regret having bought or done with if you'd been given $40 million on your 18th birthday? And if you say "I would have invested it all in a broad range of well managed blah blah blah: you're LYING.

These are the times...

You may have heard me state at some point that I enjoy what I do. And most of the time that is true. I like what I do, I like to travel, I like Conventions and I like the people I meet at them.

Most of the time.

But the fact is, many of these events are run by volunteers or some other semi-organized entity. What I and my fellow merchants like to call Dumb Monkeys.

Dumb Monkeys are a threat to who I am and what I do. Why? Because they are DUMB. This is not to say that they are evil, they often have the best of intentions, but that doesn't help me when they fuck up a convention, and by extension, fuck over ME.

Let me explain. There are hundreds of cons, gatherings, tournaments and ren-faires held a year. We can't afford to attend them all. We can't risk spending a chunk of change to drive to Oregon only to find out that only 200 people are showing up and there are no guests and the hotel is a cesspool. So we screen every event we hear about. First, we visit the website. If the website sucks, we don't do the event. If it's an okay website that never gets updated? We don't do the event. Then we email them a question. Don't get a reply? We don't go. We talk to our fellow merchants and swap info. We search flickr for pictures of the event. Are there crowds in the picture? How does the site look? Is the vendor fee super low? That's a warning sign of a bad event. The process of finding good events is slow, tedious and very very time consuming.

I know it isn't easy setting up and running an event, but its a shitload easier than it used to be. But despite email and collaborative tools and years of experience and numerous resources some people still cock it up. There are a number of ways to kill and event. Poor planning, no advertising, spending too much or too little on guests, too narrow a focus, lack of staff, no financial backing etc etc.

And then there's the worst kind of fuck up. The management break up.

We did PyrateCon a while back and it was an okay event. It could be better but the guys running it had a lot of heart and put a lot of work into the event. Plus its PIRATES in NEW ORLEANS. I mean, they didn't have to twist my arm, I was keen to go again. Things seemed even better when we negotiated an exclusive deal to be the only vendor selling corsets at the event. I sent in my money and marked my calendar.

Then the shit hit the fan. Someone took over the PyrateCon Website. Accusations are made that the previous staff ran the event poorly. New Managament were now running things. Except they don't seem to know who I am. I hit google. Now there's another website claiming to be the REAL PyrateCOn, the others are thieves and frauds! Litigation is under way!

And just like that, this event is fucked. There is no way to fix it. Say one side does sue the other (not much chance because these people aren't running a for profit company or if they are they usually operate on very thin profit margins) most of their money will be eaten up by lawyers. Say they don't sue but fight it out online and in blogs and on myspace pages. Guess what, it hurts both events. Neither one flourishes. And again, I'm fucked.

I'm being told I have to contact the old management to resolve my "payment issues". Yes, I did make out the check to a specific person (i.e. Joe Blpw/PyrateCon) which in hindsight was a mistake. But these new guys are claiming they're pyratecon so I'm going to put their feet to the flame. I doubt the old management team has the money to refund to me (they're suing, remember?) The best I can hope for is a credit towards the new event and I'm not holding out too much hope of that.

Dumb Monkeys.

Geeky

I was poking around youtube when I came across this. If you understand this bit, congratulations, you are a full blooded geek.

Aaaaaand we're off!

The first weekend of the official summer season went off pretty well. It wasn't easy, but we managed to run two shows at once. Origins in Columbus and Great Lakes Medieval Fair in Geneva. Although it was four days straight I was glad to be at Origins. It was indoors and that has advantages. Sunday was brutally hot in Geneva.

I am amazed at how smoothly things actually went considering when we showed up to Origins they had NO IDEA who we were. Apparently there was a cock up. I'm not going to point any fingers or assign blame. Lets just say that some guy, who may or may not have a blog did not get the vendor fee and application to the right people. This guy is obviously an idiot but please cut him some slack, he fills in like 20 of these a year and each one is for an event 6-10 months away.

Anyhoo, things didn't look good because, well, these guys hadn't been paid and didn't know to expect us (or say, assign us a booth space). This is when a great guy named Matt Ragsdale stepped up and saved our asses. He got us in, got us a space and didn't ask for a damn red cent. He trusted us when we said we'd sent in the money. He took us at our word. That's a rarity for an event like this. This ain't no local Sci-Fi con. This is an gaming industry event second only to Gen-Con.

I met Matt at Marcon a few years ago and I have to say that the guy is tops in my book. Needless to say, I'm doing next years paperwork NOW and sending it registered mail this time.

Oh, and we saw Transformers on Thursday and it ROCKED!

Wow

Some people have waaaaay too much time on their hands. And for this I am very glad.