Back in Seattle

We made it back in two pieces (one for me and one for Laurel). Everything is fine. Zuzu was happy to see us and apparently was a "sweetheart" for the catsitter (a pleasant change). We spent this morning getting a few last dribbles out of Disney -- first, a "character breakfast" featuring Chip 'n' Dale (I couldn't tell which was which) at 8:30, followed by a run to Disneyland to get a fastpass for Space Mountain, then a ride on both the Matterhorn and Big Thunder Mountain. We went back to the hotel, checked out and stored our bags, then hit Space Mountain (I did the "dumb guy" look through the whole ride, not knowing when the photo would be taken). We rode Haunted Mansion and kept trying to go to Pirates, but it was closed and then it had a super-long line, so we skipped it and headed to the airport.

5.8 quake

We were just in an earthquake -- apparently it was 5.8, according to the USGS. We were in bed at the hotel being lazy (well, I was sleeping in; Laurel had already been out to the parks this morning and was just napping), and we didn't even bother to get up. I wasn't expecting to find out it was 5.8 ... there really is a giant difference between that and a 7.0!

Note: Now downgraded to 5.4

Dave and Laurel try swinging, on video

What did you think I meant?

ComicCon Day 4 -- it is over at last

Me and Brian
Originally uploaded by Seattle Dave.

I'm pictured here with Brian Posehn, one of my geek idols. Can you tell who is who?

At any rate, that was the very last hurrah at ComicCon 08 for us. In fact, I had even taken off my badge when I saw Brian and had to rush back in -- if my cup wasn't covering it, you'd be able to see that I'm actually wearing Laurel's badge, which she dug out of her bag for me and threw over my neck as I walked back into the conference center.

This morning started out with the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia panel, hosted by Damien Lindeloff from LOST, and featuring an entire new episode, called "Manhunter," that was perhaps the funniest Sunny episode I've seen. And I happened to be in the second row, right next to the actors, so I could see them enjoying the episode and loving the audience reaction. Afterward, they gave the first 1000 people (including me) a free DVD box set of the show and a T-shirt.

Laurel doesn't watch the show, so she skipped it and just shopped at the exhibition hall.

Now we're in Anaheim at Disneyland, and I'm already sick of it after having been in the park for only an hour. We're here till Wednesday.

ComicCon Days 2 and 3

I guess I didn't get a chance to blog yesterday, so I'll try to do days 2 and 3 together. It's kind of a blur.

Yesterday, we started out at the panel for Big Bang Theory. They were supposed to show a completely new episode, but instead they showed a clip reel, but it was very funny (even Laurel laughed). The whole cast was there, and they were very funny, especially the guy who plays Sheldon, who is nothing like him in real life. We did a ton of exhibition hall walking, and went to the Gaslamp district to have lunch (Indian buffet) and saw Carlton Cuse (producer of LOST) eating lunch across the street. Laurel got addicted to Pinkberry (a yogurt place). We saw a panel on "TV Showrunners" with Damon, Carlton and some other lessor-known TV producers. All the questions were about LOST.

We saw a panel on 24, with Kiefer actually there, and saw some clips of the 24 prequel TV movie.

I'm sure I've forgotten a lot. We went back to our hotel and had way-overpriced Italian food delivery.

Today was the big day -- the Heros panel and the LOST panel. I slept through both!!! Laurel went to both of them, though, and besides waiting in a (literally) mile-long line, she got in and had a great time.

She came back to the hotel and got me around 2 p.m., and we went back to see the Jay and Jack podcasting panel -- there was a line stretching down the hall just for that! But it was lots of fun with all our favorite Lost podcasters there -- Jay and Jack, Ryan and Jen (the Transmission), and Ben and Ralph (the Dharmalars). Jay videotaped me in line, as he recognized me as their very first shirt model, so I might make it into one of their future videocasts.

So, right before we saw that panel, we'd been in the exhibition hall where I finally broke down and bought a comic book ("Filth" by Grant Morrison), and I happened to spot William Katt and Robert Culp of Greatest American Hero, and snapped a pic on my iPhone and sent it to my brother, who is the biggest GAH fan in the world.

Mike texted me promising one year of being my manservant if I got him something from the GAH table, and so we went back down there -- at first, we thought we were out of luck because we couldn't find the table where we thought it was, but we finally tracked it down; the place is huge and easy to get lost in.

I told William Katt I wanted one of everything, signed, for my brother, and he set about doing it, while the person who was running the table sales was positively giddy at the prospect of such an easy sale. He insisted that I call Mike, and he grabbed my phone, said something to him that neither of us can remember, and then passed the phone to William Katt, who was very gracious in talking to Mike for a minute (Mike texted, "Was that REAL?" Yes, it was!)

Mr. Katt was super-nice and signed everything all while talking to me and keeping up with other fans at the table (a kid drew him a picture on the back of a gum package, and Mr. Katt was very nice in putting it in his pocket and saying he'd keep it forever).

All-in-all, a positive experience, except that Robert Culp signed the wrong thing, but oh well -- he barely seemed to know where he was. I then bought three more issues of the only comic-book series I'm keeping up with: Blood Summer.

We headed back to the hotel, and then walked around the corner to the trolley station, and caught a train to Tijuana ($10 round-trip ticket for two; it was never checked).

I was shocked that there was zero checking going on for entering Mexico; cars barely had to slow down, and we just walked across. Laurel was a little put off by the crowds and noise and people constantly begging us to come into their shops, but I renamed Tijuana "My Town" ... usually, I'm quite nervous in places like that, but I kind of liked it this time.

We ate at a little restaurant that Laurel picked based on my having seen the waitress actually ID someone when we walked past, so we figured it must be an OK place. Four tacos, chips and salsa, two Mexican Cokes (in glass bottles), quesadilla -- $8. I left a $5 tip, and it was still the cheapest meal we'll likely ever eat.

We walked back to the border, seeing four rats (one dead) and were back in America and on the trolley with about a two-minute wait at the crossing to get our passports scanned.

Tomorrow, I plan to see the panel on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Laurel might either go to that or one on Smallville. Then, after lunch, we're going to drive to Anaheim for vacation phase 2 in DisneyLand.

As always, plenty more pictures of flickr!

Just for Mike

That's video of William Katt signing one of the five things I got him to sign for my brother, Mike -- three comic books, a photo, and a poster. He also ended up talking to Mike on the phone!

Tijuana conversation

Laurel: I agree with your Mother, we should leave Mexico before dark.

Dave: Why? I'm here to protect you.

Laurel: Now I really agree with your Mother.

ComicCon Day 1

We're in San Diego for ComicCon 2008. This is day 1 of 4, and man, it is already packed with geeks, geeks, geeks. Our very first taste was when we walked to the shuttle bus stop from our hotel -- there were about 10 people at the bus stop, including one fully dressed Batman. The bus pulled up right as we arrived, and it was one of those huge charter buses. I just stopped where I was, ready to get on the bus, when a girl standing there said, "Back of the line's that way" -- I was at first aghast and was about to argue that no one lines up for a bus, and even if we did, I was pretty sure all 10 of us would get a decent seat, but then I remembered that you don't argue with geeks about pointless stuff, and just got behind the other people.

On the ride back from the convention center, another geek lecture broke out (fortunately not involving me) about how the Simpsons was to "thank" for all other animated prime-time shows now (as if they are so great). What I couldn't understand was who the geek lecturing about this was talking to, since I'm pretty sure if you're at ComicCon, you're fairly familiar with the Simpsons.

I got a lot of pictures, and of course will take many more, check here for the photoset.

The only real activity today besides picking up our badges was to see my old college friend Kevin Dilmore talk with other Star Trek authors including Wil Wheaton about, well, Star Trek books.

We did a quick sweep through the exhibition hall, where I met Ben and Ralph from the Dharmalars podcast.

At dinner, I wondered how many geek-on-geek love affairs start at ComicCon (I indicated this by putting my arms out as wide as possible and rocking back and forth ... Laurel said, "What's that?" and I said, "Fat people hugging."), where so many people finally feel like they can finally be themselves, probably leading some of the mostly-male attendees to come out of the closet. I started writing a musical about it -- one of the songs is called "You're the Only Man I'd Let Open the Mylar Bag Protecting My Heart."

(I'll just point out for the record that I'm here with my wife of 10 happily married straight-as-can-be years.)

Ayn, drop by for coffee anytime!

I took the Politopia Quiz and it generated the above map showing that I'm pretty close in philosophy to Ayn Rand. Duh.

My first iPhone app: Beacon

It's actually my third, but it is the first one I've finished ;-)

Beacon is an app that does one thing; puts your location on the web for others to view it. That's it. No muss, no fuss, no setup, and no buttons, even! You just start it, wait for the phone to get a location fix, and go do other stuff with your phone.

The neat thing about it isn't really the app that runs on the phone, but the "beacon" file that it creates for the web. It is in KML format, which means that sites like Virtual Earth (or even that other google maps thing) can read, for example, this link will show my very latest beacon on VE.

So you can click that link anytime to find out when the last time I updated my beacon was, and where I was when I did it. It isn't quite so good as constant tracking, but we're getting there.

My favorite commercial ever

You really can get anything on them internets, even this classic Target ad featuring the drummers of Cheap Trick and the Donnas.

Live and learn ...

The pen I bought at the Portland Pen Show was a total ripoff -- although I was happy with it until I found that out.

The guy had it tagged $50 and like a complete nimrod, I just handed him the cash and didn't barter, which I realized two seconds later I should have done (and which everyone else was doing).

Turns out, I still would have felt like a fool, unless I talked him down to $13, which is the price of the same pen, completely new, on eBay (and although this pen I bought was "never used" it shows some discoloration, most likely from being outside of its box).

Oh well, at least the ink I bought was a good deal, and I just had to buy something to justify the trip.

Still, this is all child's play compared with the $1000+ Dostoyevsky pen (or rather, full set, although I've seen that for sale exactly nowhere) and $400 pencil I want.

Pen show

Pen show
Originally uploaded by Seattle Dave.

I really did go to the Portland Pen Show.

I left Seattle at 9 a.m. and got to Portland at noon ... which I thought was plenty of time before the 1 p.m. seminar on "Journaling" that I wanted to go to. Unfortunately, it was shifted to 11 a.m., so I missed it. Oh well.

What you see pictured is the (single) room where all the "action" was happening, with about 20 vendors showing off their various pens. I ended up buying a Harley Davidson fountain pen for $50 and a $6 box of ink refills for it.

Then I left and went to both Powell's Books and Powell's Technical Books, buying nothing, to my friend Traci and Clinton's house (they weren't home) and finally to Rose's Deli on 23rd for a great rueben sammich.

Then back home, which took an extra hour because of bad traffic in Olympia.

Oh yeah, almost forgot, best overheard quote of the day, at Powell's Books: "Don't you think it smells like BO in here?" Yes, yes, it does.

PENI5

I found out really late (but fortunately not TOO late) about the Portland Pen Show. I considered heading down to Portland tonight and getting a room at the convention hotel, but they are fully booked, so tomorrow I'll just head down I-5 on my motorcycle to check it out, hence the title -- what did you think it meant?

Certifiable!

That's right, I can puts apps on the iPhone now!

New iPhone -- or close enough for me!

I just got the new iPhone 2.0 firmware. Within minutes of the flawless update, I was able to enter my Microsoft information and within seconds was sending and receiving my work email on the iPhone -- finally, after a year, I'm able to do the one thing that I missed from Windows Mobile! The new iTunes app store is pretty incredible, too -- I predicted spending a lot of money on apps, but so far all I have are the free iTunes remote, the free eBay app, and the $10 Super Monkey Ball game.

Laurel and I have just been sitting here in wonder at all the little new things we're discovering on the phone as we go ... I'm thinking that the 3G phone can wait, now, but eventually I'll want the faster speed, better GPS, and extra storage. But certainly don't need that right away!

You miserable hippies

You miserable hippies
Originally uploaded by Seattle Dave.

Here's what so dumb about "green" (my least favorite color) -- we get new coffee cups at Microsoft and they are so ineffective at blocking heat that you have to use a sleeve, wasting even more resources -- wake up, recycling is bull****. Not only that, but our new spoons will melt if used to eat soup (or stir coffee). Wow.