Alphas

So I finally sat down and actually took the day off of doing podcasts or anything and just watched TV. I have several series that airs last summer that are just sitting on my DVR waiting to be watched. I was going to start with The Walking Dead, but really wasn't in the mood for Zombies so instead I opted to watch Alphas. It's a new Syfy show that aired over the summer and I have all 12 episodes on my DVR just waiting.

Alphas it about five extraordinary humans with powers, I wouldn't call them super powers to me they seem more like they are humans higher up the evolution ladder.

Here's a description from Wiki "The series follows five people with superhuman abilities, known as "Alphas", led by noted neurologist and psychologist Dr. Lee Rosen as they investigate criminal cases involving other suspected Alphas. Rosen and his team of Alphas operate under the auspices of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the criminal investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Defense. While investigating these crimes it doesn't take the team too long to discover that a group known as "Red Flag", who were thought defeated and eliminated long ago, are using other Alphas to commit crimes."

From the very first episode I was in love with this series. And many folks have said that the first few episodes were weak and it just gets better. So I'm already loving it (only seen the first 3 episodes so far) so I'm bound to really enjoy this series. Looking forward to seeing where the story goes.

Blizzcon & The Guild

Today I helped out The Guild booth at Blizzcon. If you don't know what Blizzcon is, it's a "Gaming" convention ran by one of the largest MMO company Blizzard. The Guild has a booth and some of the cast were signing. So I offered to help the two days. I got to the con at 11:30am and found the booth around noon. My schedule times were 1pm - 3pm & 6pm - 8pm but as soon as I got to the booth I was put to work and it didn't end until 9pm. Of course the busiest times are when the cast are signing autographs 11am - 1pm & 3pm - 6pm. The other times I would manage the booth by myself and chat with passer bys about the Guild and what it is and when the cast would be back.

I did get to see some of my friends who would stop by the booth and say hi and visit for a while. I also got a lunch break and my buddy Gabe went to the food area and grabbed a bite to eat.

After the convention was over I headed over to the Hilton for the Curse party. I was added to the VIP list but when I got there my name wasn't on the list but they let me in (just not a VIP). I texted my buddies Scott and Chris and they said they were waiting in line for drinks by the dance floor. Well the room I was in had no dance floor and come to find out I was at the wrong party. So I left and went next door to the actual Curse party and my name was on the VIP list and I got my special bracelet.

The party was loud, Chris, Scott and I went up into the VIP area and about ten minutes later the cast and some crew showed up. It was really too loud to have conversations. I tried chatting for a bit and then a group of us went down to the dance floor and danced for about 15 minutes. It was now 11:30pm and I was tired. I didn't have to working tomorrow (they wanted to give my badge to someone else), so I had an hour and a half drive ahead of me so I said my good nights and headed home.

Luckily I left when I did as I barely made it home and towards the end of my drive I struggled to stay awake.

All in all it was a fun day, love working the booth and interacting with The Guild fans. Bummed I didn't get to work both days.. but I guess one day is better then none.

My New Niece

Today my sister-in-law sent me a picture of my new niece Molly Skye or Molly LeeAnn or Skye Walker, they haven't decided on a name yet. She is due on December 24th but if she's anything like my nephew will be seeing her really soon. She looks just like her brother and I can't wait to meet her in person. I'm gonna be an uncle for the second and probably last time.

Project: Clean Garage Day Two

So day I started bright and early. I also took precaution this time and geared up with a face mask and rubber gloves. I had nothing planned and really wanted to get a bulk of the work done and that's what I did. I would work for about a half hour to an hour and then take a break for a half hour and do that over and over and by 7pm I was exhausted and dirty but my garage was looking so much better. I still have at least a half day of cleaning and about a day of going through boxes to see if I still want to keep the stuff in them. I also want to re-box some of my toy boxes. Some of the plastic bins haven't held up to the weight of other bins on top of them and have started to crack. I have a about 10% of my toys in cardboard boxes and really want to get them into plastic bins as well. So it's far from over but man does it look a 1000 times better.

House Under Attack

I know I live in a rural area and there are critters all over the place but lately I feel like my house has been under attack more then usual. I have mice in my kitchen and garage damaging valuable stuff , woodpeckers damaging the side of my house and a murder of crows playing soccer on top of the roof. There are rabbits and prairie dogs digging up the grounds and when they decide to die they always seem to pick under the house so I get to deal with the smell of a decaying animal for a week.  This is part of living in the middle of no where and I've dealt with it for two years but the past few months it seems to be getting worse. I don't want to kill things but I have to protect the house and at this point I'll do anything.

Lunch with Jeff

Late last night I got an twitter direct message from my buddy Jeff asking if I wanted to have lunch tomorrow as he is flying in from Philly for this weekends Blizzcon. I of course said yes and we made plans for him to drive out to my place and we'd grab some lunch.

So I got up today  and started working on the next Knights of the Guild podcast. I was going to try and get back out to clean the garage but since I only had a few hours before Jeff was showing up I opted to do some podcasting work.  I really wanted to get a start on my KOTG podcast and get another Confessions of a Fanboy done but in the end I only did a bit of uploading of some interviews for my next KOTG.

Around 12:30 Jeff showed up and we headed out to Panda Express. It was a really nice visit and I think it's the first time when it was just Jeff and I. Normally we hang out at comic con with others or when he did visit my place we had company when we went out to lunch. This time it was just to two of us and we had some good conversations about life. I learned a little bit more Jeff, which is always nice. After lunch we headed back to my place and just hung out and chatted until 4:30 when he headed to Studio City to see some of his other friends. It was a nice visit and I hope to see him again this weekend at Blizzcon.

Around 10pm I checked my phone and for some reason it was on silent and I noticed that I had a message from my friend John and then it hit me.. I was suppose to have dinner with him and his partner and I totally forgot. If you read my blog previously I lost all my calendar info yesterday and I thought I remembered everything that was lost.. well I didn't. I felt like crap as I know they made a special dinner for me and really wanted to catch up. Wasn't the best way to end my night.

Lunch and a Movie

As expected I slept horribly last night worried that I contracted the Hantavirus (see last post). But you know what... I can't worry about it. The possibility is very slim and if I did I'll deal with it when and if the symptoms show themselves.

Anyways today I was meeting up with my buddies Scott and Andrew. We were going to grab some lunch and then do a movie.

We meet up at Fudruckers at 1:30pm, Well Andrew and I did. Scott was running a bit late. So Andrew and I went in and ordered some food. Andrew really enjoyed the fact that he could get a beer as part of his combo meal. Andrew and I had our food for about fifteen minutes when Scott showed up, ordered his food and about ten minutes later was eating with us.

These guys are AWESOME and all conversations are very geeky. We talk tech, movies, TV, entertainment industry and personal lives. I could spend all day just hanging and chatting. After lunch we headed over to Yogurtland. They didn't have any soy type dessert so I had to opt out but the guys both got some yummy yogurt as I watched and wished I wasn't lactose intolerant. While there we talked about the new OS5 for our iPhones. They were talking about the iCloud which I didn't activate when I upgraded but I really wanted to be able to share my calendar between my iPhone and iPad and Andrew mentioned that I could upload it to my iCloud and then both of my devices would pull it from there. So I activated my iCloud.

After yogurt we headed to the movie theater and picked up tickets for the 3:30 screening of Real Steel. While we waited for Scott (who had to move his car) I noticed that my calendar was blank.. all my notices were gone. Andrew tried to reset them but with no luck. Scott showed up and we went into the theater.


Real Steel was a pretty AWESOME movie. I'm a HUGE Hugh Jackman fan and I loved Evangeline Lilly from Lost so I was looking forward to seeing this movie. I'm not into boxing movies but this was more of a father/son story and it involved boxers who happen to be robots. The SFX were fantastic, the acting was great. Story was simple and cool, my friend Andrew said they could have gone into a little bit more background but I think they gave us enough to enjoy the movie. First half moves along a little slow but once you hit a certain point it's none stop awesome!! It's defiantly one of those feel good movies. And everyone did a great job on taking this main character (Hugh Jackman) who you hate at the beginning of the film and by the end totally fall in love with. The kid actor (who reminded Scott and I of Jake Lloyd (Annie from Star Wars Ep1) ) but his acting was better. This is a good family film for all. It was will a must buy on blu-ray when it comes out.

After the movie the three of us said our goodbyes and I headed home. On my way home I stopped by Lowes to pick up some rubber gloves and breathing masks for when I continue to clean the garage tomorrow. I also picked up a plastic owl and plan to place it on top of the roof so ward off crows and wookpeckers (at least I hope it does). I also tried to recover my missing calendar data but it's gone and there is no form of back up of it. Oh well guess I'll have to try and remember my plans/events for the next few months.

Anyways, a good lunch, great friends and fantastic movie makes a pretty AWESOME day.

Cleaning the Garage

Today I wanted to get started on cleaning up my garage. When we moved in we had everything really organized but now two years later it looks like a tornado hit the place. I have three car garage but one of them is sectioned off and I use that as my home Gym. That was fairly clean and only took me an hour or so to get everything looking good. Once that was over I went to lunch at El Pollo Loco and while I was eating I noticed a dollar bill under the tape but it turned out to be a ten dollar bill. I actually thought about taking it up to one of the employees but then realized that they would probably just keep it themselves so I pocketed it.

After lunch I headed back home and started on my other side and much large part of the garage. About and hour in I bent down and heard a loud rip and noticed that I tore the entire front of my shorts. As I was moving boxes I noticed a ton of mouse droppings and knew there must be a ton of mice hiding out in here.

About 90% of my things are in large plastic containers but there is still stuff in cardboard boxes. So as I was moving things around I would everything to see if anything was damaged and when I got to the box with my childhood stuff animals I found where the mice had nested. All of my stuff animals smelled or urine and had mouse droppings all over the place. I was so bummed as some of those were animals were very special to me so I threw away a third and opted to try and wash the other two-thirds.  I didn't find any mice in that box but when I went to move a few moving blankets one of them had two mice tucked in and the other had one. I managed to contain them and move them outside where I let them run away.

About five hours in I called it a night, it was super dark and I was getting tired. As I checked my emails and such I got a tweet from my buddy Chris saying "@Jedisaber: @Geekyfanboy don't try to save them. Hantavirus is no joke. Say goodbye and protect better next time." This stopped me in my track and I had to look up the Hantavirus as I had heard of it but really didn't know anything about it. Come to find out that it's this horrible virus that attacked your lungs and is carried in the urine and droppings of deer mice. They advise to not disturb nests or push the dust around. Well I just spent the last five hours digging through urine and dropping laced boxes and stuff animals. I also took a air blowers and blew all the dust (and other things into the air) so much so that I was sneezing because I was inhaling so much of it. I used no protecting not knowing that what I was doing could be fatal. This virus has no cure and if caught early had a 50/50 survival rate.

Now the odds of the mice that are in my garage having this virus and then passing it along in their urine/droppings and me inhaling the infected dust is slim to none but you never know. So I spent the rest of the night worried and trying to research as much as I can. I know I'm not going to sleep tonight!! And I'll be worried for the next six weeks as it can take up to six weeks to show any signs of the infection.