Celebrating a Birthday

Today I spent the majority of the day at Magic Mountain to celebrate my friend Courtney's birthday. Got there around 10am and my buddy Aaron was already there but the rest of our friends, including Courtney were not getting in until later so he and I started to ride some roller coasters. The rest of the gang arrived and hour later, Courtney, Jessica and three of their friends (Shannon, Joe and Cheyenne).

It sill took another two hours to hook up with them as Aaron and I would be on a ride and then they would go on a ride and we would eat and then they would eat.. we finally hooked up and started to ride roller coasters together. It was a fun day, at first I thought it was going to super busy as it was a Saturday on Memorial Day weekend and the crowds were there but come to find out that Hurricane Harbor was opening today which is right next to Six Flags and I'm happy to say that the majority of the crowds went there. I think the longest line we had was just under an hour.

Another fun day at Magic Mountain.. Happy Birthday Courtney!!

Star Wars, Geek & Towel Days Rolled Into One

Today is a very special day in the Geek/Nerd world. It's the 36th Anniversary of the release of Star Wars which in turn created Geek Pride Day and it is also International Towel Day, for all you fans of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy,

36 years ago today I went and saw a movie that would forever change my life. I credit Star Wars (and no I'm not calling it A New Hope, because when I saw it 36 years ago it was called just Star Wars) anyways I credit Star Wars for making me the Sci Fi / Fantasy lover I am today and that series will always hold a very special place in my heart. It will always be part of my life and I am forever thankful to George Lucas for the world that sprung from his imagination.

Geek Pride Day is an initiative to promote geek culture. The date was chosen as to commemorate the release of the first Star Wars film as mentioned above and I don't mind celebrating Geek Pride day but honestly I celebrate Geek Pride everyday of my life.

Towel Day is an annual celebration on the 25th of May, as a tribute to the late author Douglas Adams (1952-2001), who wrote the very famous series The Hitchhikers Guild to the Galaxy. On that day, fans around the universe proudly carry a towel in his honor.

And one more geek note.. the Glorious 25th of May is known to fans of Terry Pratchett's Discworld.

Lot's of awesome geeky things happen on May 25th.

Awards, Crazy Kids & Weeds

Did my morning routine.. woke up, jumped online and looked for work... nothing. Had some breakfast then back online for an hour or so.

I worked on my Geekie Awards entries for about an hour, I'm about 2/3d's of the way through them. I should be able to finish with a few more hours of work.. just not today.

Realized that I hadn't gone grocery shopping in over a month, so I headed into town. Before shopping I stopped by McDonald's for some lunch. I hardly ever eat McDonald's because the majority of the food doesn't agree with my stomach but I can eat their chicken nuggets & fries and they have some very tasty buffalo sauce that can dip them in. Anyways when I was there eating there were two women with about seven kids between them.. the oldest looked to be about 10.  Well these kids were running around, screaming, pulling out napkins and tossing them around, playing with the soda machine and just being crazy. The two moms were just sitting there chatting away not paying attention to their destructive kids. Well after fifteen minutes one of the employees finally asked one of the kids to stop throwing things. The look on one of the mothers face, you would have thought that this employee slapped her child. She said something in Spanish and the kid went over to her. A minute later they were running around screaming again.. it was one of the worst lunch experiences I have had in a long time. I couldn't wait to finish my food and leave. I tweeted this when it happened but I think people need to take a test before becoming parents. I know kids can be tough but parents need to take control and responsibility for their children's actions.. especially in public places.

After my crazy lunch I went shopping and picked up enough food to last me a few weeks.

Got home and decided to go out to the yard and pull some weeds. Yeah it's that time of year again with the rains/snow come the weeds. And with 2 1/2 arches there can be a ton of them if I don't keep up on them. Worked outside for a few hours before calling it an night and heading inside to spend the remaining hours relaxing and watching some TV.

Podcasts, Awards & Advanced Tickets.

Today I spent the majority of my day either editing my upcoming MASH 4077 Podcast or judging entries in the Geekie Awards.

I started my day with continuing the editing on my next MASH 4077 Podcast. I did some work yesterday but really wanted to finish it today. So for the next three to four hours I did nothing but edit the podcast.

When I was done I rewarded myself with a little LOTRO play. Since it's the Spring Festival in Middle Earth there are daily quests you can do... well everyday to get special "Spring Leaves" which you can turn in for some really cool items. Anyways I did my daily quests.. spent about two hours playing.

Once I was done I went onto The Geekie Awards judge section on their website and spent the next six hours going through entries and... well judging them. It was very entertaining... lots of great entries in the category that I'm judging. I got through about half of the entries.. plan to finish the rest by weeks end.

A few other things happen today.. The Geekie Awards announced the date of the Award show.. it's going to be August 18th, I'll blog and link when tickets go on sale.

I purchased my ticket for Man of Steel for opening night.. I'm going with my best bud Robert and I'm super excited as Superman is my favorite of the Super heroes.

I also purchased my ticket for Joss Whedon's "Much Ado About Nothing". They are having a special screening at the Hollywood Arclight and what makes this extra special is Joss is going to be there.

LOTRO, Podcasts and Buffy

I was determined to not let LOTRO take over to day today. Got up at 8am, looked for a job (no luck). I had scheduled an hour to go online, get breakfast and do whatever. So I ate, watched a half hour TV show and then jumped onto LOTRO to get my daily Hobbit gift but immediately got off as it was 9am and according to my schedule it was time to start editing my Knights of the Guild podcast.

I had already done some prep work a few days ago so all I had to do was polish the piece and make sure it sound good. So it only took me a little over an hour to finish the episode. After it's edited, I run it through an audio leveling program, then import it into Audacity, check it and then output an MP3. Once that it done I import it to itunes, attach the logo picture and then upload it to podbean. Once uploaded to podbean, I have to create the show notes, build the page, attached the podcast and submit it to itunes. The process can talk up to a few hours depending on my upload speeds.

So around 10:30am KOTG podcast was ready to go. As a reward I decided to jump onto LOTRO and play for an hour or so. And I'm happy to say I did exactly that. I played for about an hour and a half, which took me to about noon.. from noon to one I had lunch and watched some recorded TV before jumping back on the computer and starting to prep my next MASH 4077 Podcast. Spent a few hours doing that before calling it a day as I had to get ready to head over to my buddy Robert's place as it is Wednesday and if you are a regular reader of my blog you know Wednesday's are Buffy and Bros nights.

Got to his place just before seven.. we ordered some Italian for dinner and started our rewatch/1st time. We are in the middle of Season Six. Our first episode of the night was Ep 11 "Gone" A social services worker threatens to take Dawn from Buffy. The Trio accidentally make Buffy invisible.

I remember watching this episode for the first time and just hating Buffy. I thought it was so out of character for her to do what she does in this episode. But watching it ten years later I actually have a  better understanding as to why she is doing what she is doing. Still not a favorite episode of mine but enjoyable.. glad that Buffy and the gang finally know about the Trio.

Our second episode of the night is Ep 12 "Doublemeat Palace" To deal with her escalating financial problems, Buffy gets a job as a kitchen worker at the Doublemeat Palace, a California-based fast food restaurant chain, which she quickly finds to be degrading and dull. Furthermore, a series of strange events, combined with the disappearances of employees, leads Buffy to believe that it may not be cow's meat that they serve here...

I know alot of people say this is one of the worst episodes of Buffy, I don't know if I'd go that far.. I mean it's entertaining. Not an episode I'd want to watch over and over again.

Third episode of the night, Ep 13 "Dead Things" The Trio try to make Warren's ex-girlfriend Katrina their willing sexual slave by magical means. But when she fights back she is accidentally killed, they use magical and demonic forces to make Buffy think that she has killed Katrina. Between finding out the truth about her resurrection and believing she killed an innocent girl, Buffy's world begins to fall apart.

Again like with "Gone" wasn't a favorite of mine the first time around but watching it again gave me a better appreciation for it. Really dislike the Trio in this one. I mean it's pretty much just Warren, Andrew just kind of follows and poor Jonathan is just stuck in the middle. Interesting to see how Buffy reacts to "killing" an innocent compared to how Faith reacted... nice contrast.

Our final episode of the night is Ep 14 "Older and Far Away"  When Dawn feels that nobody wants to spend time with her, she makes a wish in front of a Vengeance demon (posing as school counselor) that everyone would stay with her. During Buffy's birthday party, Dawn's penchant for shoplifting is discovered while the gang tries to figure out why nobody is able to leave the house. Finally, Anya calls the vengeance demon and tricks her into undoing her curse.

Another good episode, nothing great but we do finally resolve the "Dawn" stealing things. It was great to see Tara back in the mix and Xander starting to get cold feet. Dawn is so annoying in this episode.. I don't remember her being such an emo teen.

So ends our Buffy and Bros night... I always say this but it's so true, spending time with Robert is the highlight of my week. Even thought it's only about 3 or so hours and a few hours of commute it's total worth it... Robert's the best.

Knights of the Guild Ep 50

Download from itunes: bit.ly/KotGCast, Listen on Stitcher Radio ow.ly/linep or Listen / Direct Download from the main website bit.ly/2CrYxk

Show Notes:

In this episode I sit down with Felicia Day and talk about the Season 6, Episodes 2 and 3.

• Knights of the Guild Feeds/Downloads http://knightsoftheguild.com

• Knights of the Guild on Stitcher Radio HERE

• Knights of the Guild Daily Blog http://knightsoftheguildpodcast.blogspot.com/

• Knights of the Guild Fan page on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/KnightsoftheGuild

• Follow us on twitter @knightsofguild

• Follow Host Kenny on twitter @Geekyfanboy

Best Laid Plans...

So I started my day on a schedule.. woke up around 7:30am. My schedule didn't start until 8am. So I jumped online and read twitter.. I noticed that LOTRO (Lord of the Rings Online) tweeted that they were starting their Spring Festival 2013 in game today. So I went to check it out. Figured it would be like their 6th Anniversary celebration last month but instead of a just a few new "special" quests, there were 30 to 40 new quests taking you all over Middle Earth.. it was pretty awesome but was not in my schedule for the day.

I debated on even starting the quests as I knew if I started I would have a tough time stopping. Also alot of the quests were timed so once you started you couldn't stop until they were complete. Well I started at 8am and didn't come up for air until around 2pm when my buddy Chris joined me.

I took a break as I needed to run a few errands, eat lunch and vote. Well the voting thing didn't turn out so well. My normal voting place was not doing it this time around and I never got anything in the mail saying where it was going to be. So I looked online and for my address the official site said it did not have a polling place for me so I wasn't able to vote :(

I did pick up what I needed and grabbed some lunch before heading home. I started LOTRO back up around 4pm and played until 8pm before calling it a night.

Of course I feel guilty not getting anything on my schedule done like I wanted to. But I haven't done a full day of gaming in quite a while and sometimes you just need it. The schedule I made for tomorrow is pretty much the same for today but I added "rewards" so when I finish a task like editing my next KOTG podcast I can take an hour to play some LOTRO.  So will see how this works out tomorrow. I can't keep delaying all this stuff I have to do.

I'm A Judge for The Geekie Awards

This actually happened a few days ago but I didn't want to announce it until it was official (on their website). I am a judge of the upcoming Geekie Awards. If you don't know what they are here is more info..

The Geekie Awards presents the best indie-created, high production value, awe-inspiring geek-genre content, art, products and experiences in the world.

We, as creators, have never found one show that covered all of our multi-faceted talents, and often, we’ve discovered that the rest of the world didn’t take our work seriously because it was “geeky.” So we created our own show to give indie “geekmakers” a place to shine and be seen by leaders and experts in their respective industries.

Our goal is to create an impact on mainstream media, putting the true geek culture in the spotlight as a collection of valid award-winning genres for storytelling and creation.

This award show was created by the lovely Kristen Nedopak

A friend contacted me on facebook and said that The Geekie Awards were looking for a judge for in a certain field and he thought of no one better then me. I was excited, I quickly emailed them and offered my services to judge and the next day I got a response welcoming me to the team.

So now I'm an official judge for The Geekie Awards.

You can check out my bio page HERE 

I Need A Kick In The Butt

Typical Monday... got up, looked for work... nothing :( Made some plans of what I needed to get done. Then I procrastinated, I mean I really should have worked on my podcasts but instead I cleaned up the house, did some yard work (It was way to hot outside), watched some TV, organized and cleaned up some stuff on my computer. I watched the latest episode of Defiance and I'm still really enjoying this series.. I'm not loving it but it's good enough to make me want to come back each week and see more.. As for my podcasts I did start to prep my MASH and Alien Nation podcasts for tomorrow. I wrote down an hour by hour schedule for tomorrow as well..

Being out of work really takes away the structure in life. I get up when I feel like it. I pretty much do anything I want all day long with no regards to what I actually need to get done. I tend to be very motivated in the morning thinking I'll get so much done today and then a few hours in I start to get lethargic and tired, then it's a struggle all day to keep myself motivated. So I'm hoping with a schedule I can organize my life a bit better, I do like goals. I hope this is the motivation I need to get things moving again.

Dungeons and Dragons and Friends... oh my!!

D&D today.. we normally play every other Sunday but since one member of our party is leaving this month we wanted to get one more game in with him so we pushed it up a week. Before D&D Anthony and I went over to Dallas and Jes' a few hours early. Jes and Anthony were going to work on making "the internet" (it's an IT Crowd thing). Anthony knows about electronics and Jes wanted to learn. So he actually showed her how to read specs and solder. At first it didn't work and then did and then broke but in the end they got it to work and now Jes has her very own Internet.

While they were doing this I chatted with Dallas for an hour or so before he had to get back to work on finishing up our D&D sheets. I knew these guys had HBO Go so I figured I'd watch an episode of Game of Thrones.

I read/listen to the first book but only got about 2/3d's of the way through it before not being able to continue. I was told that Game of Thrones was a fantasy so I was expecting swords and sorcery kind of thing.. it's not. It's all about political intrigue, incest and underage rape. I had a hard time with these topics. It wasn't a fun to read so I gave it up. Now that I know what kind of "fantasy" it is I do want to go back and read the books. And I've been wanting to see the series for a while now.  I did enjoyed the pilot a few months ago with Jes, Dallas and Chris. I was excited to see some more so I watched episode 2 and loved it.

It's slow, there isn't really any action. It's more of a story/character base series. Very dramatic, lots of harsh living, some sex and nudity. The drama kind of reminds me of  Downton Abbey. I mean it's not the same kind of drama but still very mellow-dramatic, very serious. But there is something about that kind of drama that I love.

Was going to try and watch episode 3 but Jes and Anthony were done with the Internet and Dallas was finished with his D&D stuff so we walked over to a shopping center to grab some snacks and lunch before we play.

3:30 came and now it was time for D&D. This round we still had a large group; Adam, Dallas, Jes, Josh, Kenny, Anthony, Will, Luis, Matt, Aaron and Rupert. Jen arrived during the last half hour or so of play. This game was completely different then the previous two. We had no battles other then a small skimish between our group and the blacksmith. I'm happy to say that Dash (my halfling Wizard) actually put a sleep spell on two of the three people. The story continued to progress as we walked around the town trying to get more information about the Dragon cult. I did a bit more interaction with the gang, but it went a bit to far when they wanted my character to decide what we were going to do next. Over all another fun evening of Dungeons and Dragons. (Pathfinder).

Afterwards I hung out with Jen and we talked for hour straight, catching up on each others lives. I miss her, we haven't really hung out in over a year. She's been extremely busy but recently moved in with my buddy Will. We talked about having a one on one day again soon. She and I are able to talk about anything, that's what I always loved about your relationship.

Anyways at 10:30 Anthony and I left Jes and Dallas' place and headed home. Can't wait for another D&D game in two weeks.