The Life of the Traegorn

Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy

Traegorn — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:32:50 -0500

So, I've been busy as heck lately, and a lot has been going on. As I mentioned in my last entry, I recently started a new job (which is pretty much my old job, only I'm no longer a temp). It is, of course, sucking up my free time and has prevented me from getting website updates out the door as often as I like. Sorry, but most days the rest of my life takes priority.

And I know that twenty days is a long time to go between updates for me (well, it used to be at least), and I wish I could make promises about writing more... but every single time I do I always end up going back on them in the end. So, this time I'll just shrug and say, "You get what you get."

On the upside, I will have a new vlog up in the next couple of days (as I shot the footage for it on Saturday). What happened Saturday? Well, Vomit Hat Steve's current band "Zombie Dog" came through town and did a show at the Zombie House. I'll be tossing up a vlog about it, as previously mentioned, as well as tossing up some videos in the oft neglected "Music" section of the website. It was a decent show, and I think that the video I took turned out at least halfway decent.

Trust me, you'll enjoy it.

The art that accompanies this particular post is a random drawing of my character from Biedermann's Returner's FFRPG campaign. The campaign starts tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to gaming again, as I haven't done so for several months. I won't talk about the actual character so much as talk about the dang picture though. Can I mention how out of frickin' practice I am at producing art? I swear, my inking was just sub-par in this case... geh. I'm so not used to doing this anymore, that the whole thing fell far below my personal standards. I think I'm going to need to get back to drawing more to at least prevent myself from getting any worse.

Must. Draw. More.

I sometimes just wish I had about five more hours in the day. Imagine how much I could get done if the day was just slightly longer. I might have time to produce more episodes of 3DO To Go, shoot more Ask Executrons, or even work on that neglected novel of mine...

Who am I kidding, I'd just sit and watch more television. I'm not procrastinating because there isn't enough time... I'm procrastinating because I'm exhausted.

Such is life.

In unrelated news to anything I've talked about, Crysta and I went and saw "Up" last night with Pink Ranger, Belkie, and two of their friends. The movie was fantastic, although the damned 3D glasses gave me a headache that still hasn't gone away. While this particular method of 3D may produce the best looking image for the cost, it causes me a good amount of pain.

On the other hand, the movie looked awesome.

I will say that the movie will also bring tears to your eyes. It is not a film for those who are against films that evoke emotional reactions. Go see Transformers if you're afraid of those.

...although it would be awesome if THAT movie was in 3D. Oh well...

Days of Liesure, Begone!

Traegorn — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:29:23 -0500

So, on Monday I go back to work. I don't talk about job stuff all that much in my blog, and for good reason: many employers don't like being talked about on the internet. To protect myself against any inadvertent repercussions, I just make it a policy to never mention where I'm working on my website. Of course, what I also will neglect to mention is when I'm NOT working because of that.

Well, from November until the end of March I was temping at a company. Since March I've been out of work and searching the want ads regularly. About a month ago, I got a call from my old supervisor the company I had temped at... saying they had a permanent opening and that I should apply.

Needless to say, I did so.

As you've probably figured out already, I got hired and start work there again on Monday. I'll effectively be doing the exact same thing I did while temping there. It's nothing exciting, but I like the people and I don't hate the actual work... and all things considered, that's enough for me these days.

Of course, that means my two months of no-work are over now, and I have to get used to waking up early and not spending my afternoons watching bad movies on Netflix Instant Play. It was actually nice to have a small break in there, an accidental spring vacation as it were, but life goes on and I have to go back to being responsible.

In other completely unrelated news, I've been working on some expansions for the No Brand Con Site Online Role Playing Game. It's an installation of "Advanced Dungeons and Rabbits" that I've been slowly hacking over time. I've installed a quest, added a world map to the Zone Mod, and overall made the game much bigger. I have a second quest I've been working on, but don't know if I'll get it up on the site as early as I want to.

Honestly, I keep considering installing something similar on TRHOnline.com, but I don't know if anyone would actually bother PLAYING it... so I never bother.

I really do like working on that kind of thing, but it's not really the programming parts that are fun... it's the design of the game and the expansions themselves. I just really enjoy world building I think. World building is just... fun for some reason.

Yeah, I'm a geek.

You've got the Touch! You've got the Powaaaah!

Traegorn — Mon, 18 May 2009 10:31:41 -0500

I'm not usually one to post videos by other people in my blog, but when I ran across this I couldn't help but think that it was so awesome that I had to share it. What would inspire me to do something like that? Well, clearly it's because Stan Bush has re-recorded and updated "The Touch" in an attempt to get it added to the "Revenge of the Fallen" soundtrack. See what I mean:

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Now, that's the embeddable version. Prior to that edit, they had released this version of the music video, which (as David Willis is apt to point out) has an oddly cheerful guitarist compared to the rest of the ensemble.

"The Touch," for the five people who might read my blog that haven't seen the original 1980s "Transformers: The Movie" is a song Stan Bush had on the soundtrack (he also had a song called "Dare" on it). The Touch was an awesomely 80s song, and you can catch the original music video for it here if you aren't familiar with it. Stan Bush had a few other songs on a few other soundtracks (mostly Jean-Claude Van Damme films), but the world will remember him for his contributions to the Transformers franchise.

Because Stan won't let you forget about it.

Mind you, I have nothing but respect for the man, but he's made his entire career revolve around a soundtrack from an animated movie from the 1980s. I honestly don't blame him though, as Transfans seem more than willing to buy his stuff (or else I assume he'd look elsewhere). Botcon, the official Transformers Convention, went so far as to have him write the convention theme song "'Til All Are One."

I think Transfans have a weird thing with Stan Bush. In moves that would reek of desperation with most people, Transformers fans have for an odd reason embraced Stan Bush's blatant shilling. It's almost as if a "He's OUR aging rocker" attitude prevails. It's very, very odd. It doesn't matter if his songs are good or not even.

Although, I will admit, I actually like the updated version of "The Touch."

In more personal news, if anyone was wondering about whether or not I've been sleeping, the answer is yes. Said friend communicated with me, and while the situation may or may not actually be resolved, at least I understand what happened now. This is the advantage to having sane, rational friends: when they're mad and they explain it to you it makes perfect sense. And yes, I was totally in the wrong and missing something obvious in this one.

We Live and Learn.

Utter Confusion

Traegorn — Wed, 13 May 2009 12:53:37 -0500

So one of my stranger abnormalities is that I obsess about an idea until I can find some way to find resolution for it. Sometimes this is a blessing, as it's what lets me focus enough to write for extended periods of time, create my various projects, crank out research papers of a decent quality in an evening, or even run a convention you might have heard of. Needless to say, my brain's desire to lock onto something and not let it drop has been advantageous at many points in my life.

This point is not really one of them.

I'm not going to dig through details on this one, and I'm sure that if I look back at this entry in a few years I'll have no idea what this is even written about, but at the moment it's literally causing me to lose sleep.

Earlier this week one of my better friends got mad at me. Now, while uncommon, it's not unheard of for people who have been friends for a while to have occasional disagreements - and if that were the case here, I'm sure I'd be worried but able to put this out of my mind. Here's the thing though... I have no idea what's actually going on.

Either I did something that hasn't been explained to me or some action or words of mine have been misinterpreted. In either case, all I know is that my friend went from being friendly to fuck off in a moment... and I have no idea what happened.

Seriously, I just have absolutely no idea.

It was in a conversation online about a friend of his, and I'm pretty sure my intentions were just misunderstood. But as he won't actually talk to me at all (I've tried calling a couple of times and left two voicemails over the last few days), there is very little that I can do.

Geh.

So because I lack any sort of real resolution on this issue, my brain has locked on it and won't let me stop thinking about it. This is preventing me from being able to focus, from being able to sleep, and pretty much from being able to relax at all. I know it sounds ridiculous - it's just an argument between friends - but this is how my brain works. Last night I woke up to my leg twitching from stress, and wasn't able to fall asleep until two hours later.

If this were a project, I'd just wake up, work on it for five to fifteen minutes, and be able to crawl back into bed and go to sleep. In this case though, there's not much that I can do in the middle of the night. If I knew exactly what was going on, I could at least determine whether I was right or wrong or whatever and maybe move on. If this person wasn't a good friend, I'd just write the whole thing off.

None of these are true though, so I'm stuck.

So, two nights with very little sleep will likely be followed by another tonight. I honestly wish I had the ability to turn this off. I wish I could just push it out of my mind or something, but that seems unlikely.

Man, I sound angsty...

No Brand Con 2009 Part 2 (Vlog 3.17)

Traegorn — Mon, 04 May 2009 09:50:53 -0500

The second half of my No Brand Con 2009 coverage shows a bit more of the stranger side of No Brand Con. Behold some odd moments from the No Brand Con Variety Show. Witness the Cosplayer who won't get off the stage (no matter how hard Duct Tape Boy and I try to usher her off). In the end, a 100% successful convention. Footage provided kindly by Cheesus. (You Can See Part 1 Here)

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Music in this entry is the OTHER 1337Band remix I did (and the first one I did). "Loud Guy on a Train" is always a 1337Band classic and I felt it was the best choice.

Right now I'm actually sitting in Milwaukee, as I'm down here to take care of issues with the Big Red Van of Doom (more recently named Space Ship 3). Right now it's at the mechanic, getting repaired, and hopefully it will pass its emissions test this time around.

I'm crossing my fingers at least.

It's bizarre, as these are my last days as Convention Director for No Brand Con. I'm leaving the position, and not running for re-election, because I don't think I'll have the time to do the job this year. Part of me is reluctant to let it go, which is hilarious once you consider that I had to be begged to TAKE the job in the first place. I feel confident that my likely successors will do a good job though, so there's no better time than now to move to a lower position.

It will be nice to sit back in the gallery and not have to run everything though. It will be interesting to see how the votes play out too. I'm sure that No Brand Con 2010 will be in safe hands no matter what happens, as we have qualified people running for everything, but the exact shape of the con will depend on what happens on Thursday.

It's mildly exciting.

We've announced our 2010 date as April 30-May 2, 2010. The funny thing is a few of my staff are all worried about it being on Beltane. There are several of us Wiccans on staff, and we aren't actually worried about it. It's all of the NON-Wiccans who are paranoid about it. Honestly, it's hilarious. They're all paranoid about Wiccans not coming to the con... as if we were a large group of our attendees, and as the Wiccans on staff are constantly telling them that no one will have a problem with it.

We had to take this date because Anime Detour decided to move to our weekend next year, and we either had to be a week after Detour or move to a different time of year. The latter is just not acceptable, so the former it was. I have no idea what inspired Detour to move from March to April, but its frustrating trying to make sure we're not putting the attendees in an awkward position.

Ah well, we'll deal with it.

No Brand Con 2009 Part 1 (Vlog 3.16)

Traegorn — Fri, 01 May 2009 08:26:45 -0500

I run No Brand Con in Eau Claire, WI. No Brand Con is Wisconsin's Premiere Anime Convention, and we hold it every spring. This year, as I was so busy running around working on stuff, I didn't get to film anything really. Fortunately, Cheesus and Harley were kind enough to send me footage to share with you. For the record, I'm the idiot in the ninja mask.
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Music in this entry, for the record, is the remix of 1337Band's Koshuudenwa. You can download the Lt. Snorkel remix version on MP3 here, and I hope you listen to it as often as you can... so you get sick of it and stop asking me for it.

But you'll already have it... so that makes no sense.

This years No Brand Con went exceptionally well I think, and everything ran fairly smoothly all things considered. We had a great team of people to put it together so I attribute our success entirely to them. Honestly, No Brand Con is my favorite weekend of the year, and I can't imagine not having a blast there.

I want to again thank Cheesus and Harley for letting me use their footage for this. Last year I didn't REALLY get a report done (and just showed the Happy Wednesday concert) as I was busy as heck then too. I have a lot more to show you guys, which is why I'm doing this as a two part vlog. Expect part 2 in a few days.

For those who want to know, next year we're going to be crammed pretty close to a few other, larger conventions (mostly due to one of them actually moving itself to our normal weekend... geh) but we do have a date picked that we'll be announcing shortly. It's not a perfect situation, but it's the only one we can do... so I hope people understand this really isn't our fault.

Procrastinators (Vlog 3.15)

Traegorn — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:50:08 -0500

Every time that I feel like I'm procrastinating or not as on the ball as I'd like to be, the universe somehow finds a way to remind me that there are people doing even worse at this than I am. These last few days have been one of these times, and I felt the need to talk about it.
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Music in this entry is just some Lt. Snorkel stuff I pulled out. I've used it half a dozen times in the vlog before so I figure if you really want it, you'll find it.

I pulled the original video that was here because I ended up sounding waaaaay more angry and antagonizing than I ever meant to. Because of that, I yanked it and replaced it with the one you see here. I apologize for the buzz on the audio.

No Brand Con is coming along fine, and honestly I'm pumped about it beyond all belief. Things are on schedule (although I still need to write my "Letter from the Con Director" for the program guide), and I'm confident in saying this year's No Brand Con is going to be our best one yet.

Chris will be getting here later this week, which means I'll actually have to clean up the apartment this week so he has a place to sleep. That... would be a good thing. It shouldn't take too long, but I have to make sure I do it either way.

Yeah, that would be good...

Moving On.

Traegorn — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:10:04 -0500

There are times in life when you need to move on from some people. There are times you need to burn a bridge. In this case though, I only lit the match. The other person covered the bridge in gasoline.

You're probably a little confused.

So when I started typing an entry today I originally had planned something nice about the warmer weather and how things were going great. All in all, it was going to be a positive post. Sadly though, I had business to attend to today and I ended up having to make a certain phone call. This was a phone call I'd been dreading for the last several days... a phone call with someone who had been my friend for 15 years, and I had called brother at one point.

This is a sentiment neither one of us is sharing at the moment.

I could go into deeper details and talk about who did what to who, but that's unimportant. But as I still feel justified in what I said and did, I can't help but feel the loss of what I've just ended. It's for the best though. I'm done enabling. I'm done dealing with his sense of entitlement. I'm done being someone's occasional boogey-man. I'm honestly, more than anything else, done with dealing with that batshit insane family.

Pardon my language.

It's sad, but it had to be done. I was significantly ruder in my phone call than I had intended to be, but such is life. I also sort of hung up on him... but trust me when I say there was no way the call could have gotten worse anyways. I mean, I was shaking with adrenaline by the end of the call, and hanging up was the only intelligent course of action.

I called my good friend Chris afterward and talked about the whole thing for about an hour or two. While I feel bad, I also feel like a weight has been lifted from my life. I cut a cord that has needed cutting for quite a long, long time.

It's bizarre really though, I mean this is a man who called me a brother but I took one action (to his face no less) and he'll likely never talk to me again. Was it a nice thing to do? No. Was it needed? Yes. Was it justified? Yes. But he'll never understand that. Even now, I still have a feeling of loyalty to him to some degree, but I know for a fact that he doesn't feel the same way about me or anyone else he's cut out. He showed me over a month ago how little my friendship to him meant though, so that's how things go.

I apologize for the drama.

I'll be more happy-fun next time.

Stressed (Vlog 3.14)

Traegorn — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:05:43 -0500

So it's only two weeks until No Brand Con 2009, and (as convention director) needless to say I'm stressed out. Everything's on schedule mind you, but it doesn't change the fact that things have still been incredibly tense. It's Crunch Time all over again.

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Music in this entry is "Priceless Too" off of the Lt. Snorkel album I put out online a little while back. You can download it if you like, listen to it, or do neither. It's up to you.

There's a slow, but steady stream of things I need to be doing constantly. On Tuesday night we printed out and sent all of the preregistration confirmation letters for No Brand Con over at Towers. The process took a while, but not as long as it has in the past. The nice thing about what happened is that I wrote an expansion in PHP to our online registration system that auto-generated the letters for this year. It took me an hour, mostly because I borked a line of code at one point and had to hunt down the error, but in the end it was worth it as we can now use this same system for next year.

I can't believe people were manually cutting and pasting each individual document in previous years. Dear lord that must have taken forever.

The system isn't perfect, but for the most part it worked great without a hitch. I need to make some modifications to it, as I hard coded a few things I normally wouldn't in an effort to write it quickly and get it running fast. I forgot how much fun it was to work on code like that though.

I need to write a new web app or something.

In any case, things need to get done, and they will get done because I will get them done. Life moves in a generally forward direction, and I have to keep up.

What other choice do I have?

The US Life on Mars Finale Was Dumb

Traegorn — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 16:19:26 -0500

So this last week the US version of Life on Mars had its series finale. I am a fan of the original British show, and had been watching the American series (which I firmly believe was canceled far too early). Before I go any further, I will mention that I will do my best to avoid spoilers regarding the plots and endings of both series. I might slip up though, so please forgive me.

First and foremost, I actually found myself enjoying the American series overall. While it's true I think Philip Glenister was a much better "Gene Hunt" than Harvey Keitel, Keitel's performance was very good (and frankly, they wrote him to be a slightly different character). John Simm though, although I love the actor, was always far too broody in the original Life on Mars, and I found Jason O'Mara's version of Sam Tyler much more entertaining to watch.

And I'm not just saying that as a Monarch of the Glen fan.

That said, when the original series completed its run, it ended with a very satisfying episode that while not spelling things out for the audience, wrapped up all of the series loose ends. The US series' producers decided to abandon that ending though, and planned something entirely different.

When I say entirely different you should also understand that I mean entirely stupid as well.

The ending we got last Wednesday was apparently one the American producers had planned from the start. They also expected to give it to us after dropping a lot more clues over several seasons... but no matter what, it would have likely given audiences the same reaction.

And that reaction is that I felt cheated.

It's been several days, and I'm honestly still angry about it. It says that everything you've become emotionally invested in is null -- none of it matters at all. It's a harsh moment, and frankly it's just Newhart all over again with a dash of titular literalism thrown in to boot.

io9.com did a scale comparison of Battlestar Galactica's ending against various Star Trek finale's to see how readers thought that series finale rated with fans. Star Trek finales are one of those rare things in fandom where fans roughly agree on their quality (Next Generation as the best series finale, Enterprise as having the worst series finale). Most fans rated that finale highly, placing it up against "All Good Things."

If a poll was performed with the US version of Life on Mars, I'm completely certain that the last ten minutes would rate it against Enterprise's atrocious final episode (and I say this as someone who loved Enterprise as a series). The writers borked the American Life on Mars.

If that ending had occurred after several seasons of clues and stronger references than the few we had gotten (along with a larger departure from the British series), maybe I would feel differently. It didn't though. It came after one season, and we ended up getting hit over the head with something that barely made sense retroactively.

The writers should have thought about this though. They should have said "we haven't built enough of this new series to make this ending satisfying." They should have changed their ending to match the emotional journey they'd brought the audience on.

The only thing that makes me still like the series is the final shot of the series though, which makes it possible for me to pretend that last scene didn't really happen.

I guess that's what I'll have to cling to.