Thursday, June 08, 2006

CokeRewards progress - 456/850 - The convenience store across the street has a 2 for $2 special on 20oz bottles. They tend to be sold out of everything but Diet Coke with Lime.

Yesterday I had actual work to do. At work. It was weird.
After that I dragged my family to the comic book store. Gwynyth needed a new issue of 'Spiderman Loves Mary Jane' and I needed the latest issue of '52'.
I also picked up the second issue of 'Civil War' from Marvel.

Spoilers follow:













Ok. First, Flash beats up Peter Parker. Mary Jane doesn't appreciate that, because Peter seems to care about her audition for the school play. She gets the lead.







'52' continues to depress. The series is set in the year the Superheroes stop heroing suddenly.
Buddy Baker, possibly better known as Animal Man (able to mimic the abilities of any animal and, in fact, draw power from the animal kingdom itself - tangent: The Animal Man comic is best known for the way his stories are told. The character frequently breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience. He even speaks specifically to the writer of his comic, whom he sees as a god. Also, the comic is frequently used as a place to encourage vegetarianism and animal rights. He was also one of the first characters to sport a jacket as part of his official costume, answering the question of where a superhero keeps the car keys.) is missing. His wife is seen taking down the "Welcome Home" banner from the front of their suburban home because one of the neighbors has accused her of being in denial. Buddy Baker has been missing for over a month.
Ellen Baker hasn't given up hope, she just plans to be less vocal about it.
The next scene is in an emergency trauma hospital set up specifically for super heroes. Due to a teleporter error (the same error that lost Animal Man) Hawk Girl is 25 feet tall and in a coma and several other characters are either missing vital parts or disturbingly merged with other heroes. Eight legs only works on mutant spider creatures and that is more of a Marvel comics thing.
There is discussion of treatment options.
Finally, we see Animal Man, Starfire and Adam Strange stranded on an alien planet. Animal Man announces that they need to find a way off soon because they are being stalked by a strange creature in the jungle.
I should have read that comic after 'Civil War'. That is pretty disturbing and depressing, but not like 'Civil War'.
'Civil War' features a lot more freedom vs. security arguments from both hero camps. Spider Man gives a heartfelt interview for a newspaper writer where he talks about the danger the legislation creates for his family. He leaves, advising her to attend the Iron Man press conference in the morning.
Too bad she works for The Daily Bugle, where J. Jonah Jameson has ordered that every story about the issue slant pro-registration. The quote, "We aren't expecting a Pulitzer but I know what sells papers," is used and there is discussion about how circulation is falling due to online news outlets. Weird.
Elsewhere, Speedball shows back up. He lands, flaming, in a corn field 500 miles from the site of the explosion that was thought to have killed him. He is unconscious, and doctors believe his weird kinetic powers burned themselves out protecting him. He is arrested when he wakes up and it seems like that is supposed to be a surprise.
The last scene has Iron Man at a press conference. He shows off his older remote controlled suits and says they were used to allow Iron Man to be in two places at once and further conceal his identity. He says anytime his mask was removed before it was always explained away somehow.
He then removes his helmet in front of snapping cameras and madly scribbling reporters and says, "Hello, my name is Tony Stark and I'm an alcoholic." He is. They did a major plotline about it. At one point he drank too much to hero.
Then he says, "I'm also Iron Man."
Originally created as an anti-communist superhero, Iron Man is now the main hero pushing for federalizing and identifying all super beings.
I also read a promotional Battlestar Gallactica comic, but I don't see the point. I guess seeing the TV show might help.
Plans for today include a company 401k meeting and updating my resume on Monster.

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

CokeRewards progress - 438/850 - The vending machine at jury duty was loaded with 20oz bottles and Michelle (who is @w3s0m3) donated 10 points so I'm over half way!
Also, I'm starting to fear that my sudden lower back pain is related to kidney damage and not extreme sports.
Jury duty was approximately 40% more awesome than I was lead to believe. First, I paid $11 for parking, then walked a block and a half to sit in a huge auditorium for about an hour. Eight tax-payer purchased televisions cycled through a PowerPoint presentation outlining the reasons why I might be able to skip out. Since I'm a resident of Harris county and between the ages of 18 and 70, I was told I could pretty much just get comfortable. I was told this in English, Spanish and Vietnamese. Over and over and over.
I filled out the bottom half of my invitation. I dutifully passed it to the right.
Candidates 1343-1554 were called to the left aisle for a line up. This was thirty people. They were pretty quickly marched off. I never saw them again.
Numbers 1556-1638 were identified next and told to sit in the center of the room in the first five rows. I was Juror #1637.
After the last two stragglers (two people who didn't know their numbers were between 1556 and 1638 - my PEERS!?!?!) were added to our clump, everyone else was dismissed.
A uniformed officer of the court (stun gun and everything) announced that the rest of us could watch Foxnews.
Someone in the back asked if we could watch anything else.
The reply? "No."
I read my book. I stretched my legs. I drank a lot of Diet Coke.
I watched Foxnews. Wooo.
The guy with the uniform was getting a Sprite when I got my last Diet Coke. I told him that I felt very qualified to be a juror.
As his hand drifted towards the Tazer I told him that I read a lot of comic books. If there is one thing I know, that thing is justice.
I think he was very impressed.
Either way, I was dismissed at 3pm.
The judicial system is a very ponderous thing.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

CokeRewards progress - 407/850 - I'm on schedule for hitting the halfway point if it weren't for today's jury duty of the beast. Is this much Diet Coke harmful? How about if you mix them with Mentos? That can't be healthy.
Having never had jury duty, I'm pretty excited about it. I found out that I can spend up to 40 hours in jury duty without having to take vacation days, too, so I probably wouldn't instantly recommend the death penalty. Probably.
That, coupled with $15 per day, makes jury duty a place that might be pretty awesome compared to being at work. When I tell people that they shake their heads sadly and I feel the need to repeat, "$15 a day, people."
Yesterday I spent all day opening similar but not identical service tickets with HP which all need to by updated by someone at my office today. Just not by me, I've got jury duty. Plus $15.
This is going to be awesome!
Should I bring the laptop? Does the courthouse have free wireless internet? While I'm there, should I change my last name to McHotwings?
Nothing screams professionalism like "beerymchotwings@prettygeekything.com" scrawled proudly across the top of a resume.
The hold up is that Gwynyth is firmly against the change to McHotwings. I had no idea she had an issue with Scottish people.
"LeHotwings" is not up for discussion. That kind of defeats the purpose.

Monday, June 05, 2006

CokeRewards progress - 386/850 -
Eight years ago this morning I called the radio station where Shana was a morning show co-host and asked her to marry me. She agreed, so I went on to request 'Freebird'.
Later that morning, we were married on the air before an estimated audience of thousands - many of whom still owe us a gift.
Since then, Shana has put up with an amazing amount of seriously geeky crap. It has fallen to her to be the cool one, so that as a couple we balance out somewhere more awesome than geeky. As the years pass, this job is harder and harder.
Saturday she commented that with my new issue of The Amazing Spider-Man serving as a geeky 'last straw' she would actually have to be a Ninja Pirate Secret Agent working for the CIA and FBI just to swing us back around to being as cool as the neighbor who sells lawn equipment.
Ahoy, Shana-san of the Crescent Moon. You can tap my phone any day.
Speaking of horribly horribly geeky, I've enrolled in "Discover Dungeons & Dragons" through Barnes and Noble University Online! I'm hoping to maybe pick up something I missed or at least get the nerdiest certificate ever for my wall.
Continued education is important, after all.

Saturday, June 03, 2006

CokeRewards progress - 377/850 - I stole points from Darrell and was given points by Joe, but I still drank a lot of Diet Coke, some of it with lime.

Saturday night was game night, which featured the triumphant return of Joe who missed the whole rest of the Werewolf campaign due to work or having a life or some junk. Anyway, the game was one big showdown at the cathedral downtown.
My character's attempt to "take the fight to the bad guys" (by attempting to leap from the third floor of a parking garage to the roof of building across the street) ended in a three story fall into the midst of about 20 enemy werewolves and government agents.
At least they couldn't shoot with my character right in the middle.
What they could do was spend the next many, many rounds beating my character in to much deserved unconsciousness.
Since the game was essentially one big combat for multiple real-time hours (it is hard to accurately judge how much was game time and how much was hang out time), the challenge for the storyteller was keeping it interesting. While it sounds like something so action-packed would naturally be exciting, the dice-heavy nature of table top RPG combat can actually kill momentum faster than just about anything.
The problem gets worse as the characters grow in power, too, since more dice and more combat choices start to develop.
Last night great big handfuls of dice thundered across the wooden tabletop long into the night and I don't think anyone was ever bored. Even with my character unconscious I found it interesting.
At the end of the fight, our group was victorious but our goals were still incomplete.
Our next goals are to investigate the (possibly really evil) first born of Mother Luna and rescue a packmate from an evil modern mage.
I think the decision was made to start over the Eberron Dungeons and Dragons campaign when we switch game systems next.
Since everyone needs to start over at first level, there was some discussion (around the leaping flames of a quickly blackening fire pit in the back yard) about dual-weapon wielding character progression.
Here goes:
By starting with Ranger, you maximize first level skill points, so take that for two levels (to get the two-weapon fighting bonus feat and favored enemy).
A level of Swashbuckler at third level nets you decent skills and your Intelligence modifier to damage (with light weapons - it all hinges on light weapons).
Follow that with two levels of Fighter (never, ever take more than two fighter levels. Ok. Maybe four.) for bonus feats and good hit points.
After that, Dervish levels for all ten levels of the prestige class. That's almost cheesy enough by itself, but you still have room for five levels of Tempest somewhere in there before epic levels which totally eliminates dual weapon penalties and all but guarantees anime-level damage against everything.
For flavor purposes, in Eberron this character would be either a Valenar Elf or a Talenta Halfling, which opens your character for Dragonmark feats if you are into that, though the two-weapon fighting chain uses a lot feats.
Whoa. That last bit was geeky even for me.

Friday, June 02, 2006

CokeRewards progress - 308/850 - Wow. Even considering I ripped the codes off 50 points worth of full 12-packs, I still drank a lot of 20oz Colas yesterday. I'm starting to feel like one of those apartame lab rats they killed with Tab a few decades back. What lesson did we take from that unpleasantness? If you only take in fluid in the form of Diet Cola, you will probably die.
The pressure is really on now. I have to get the PlayStation 2 before I die. Or just explode from carbonation overload. Hey, but check this out:


  • You have reached the maximum limit, you can not enter more than 10 valid codes in a day

Yesterday Netflix finally came through, allowing us to watch that cowboy movie people have been talking so much about. It had that guy from Donnie Darko and that guy from A Knight's Tale.
Anyway, there was less talking to imaginary guys in rabbit costumes AND less jousting than I'd hoped.
I liked it, mostly. Hollywood hasn't made a good buddy movie in a long time. The Lethal Weapon series kind of faded away. Turner and Hooch missed out on a much deserved sequel due to studio politics, in spite of the demands of the fan base. Top Gun in '86 was close, I guess.
Plans for today include creating processes, standards and procedures and documenting everything with PDFs full of screenshots. I've decided someone has to do it. Yesterday I did 12 pages on adding a new customer to the portal.
Today I'll do "Changing a Password" and "Adventures in Account Deletion."
After that, there is some patch or something to be applied and I may have a meeting this afternoon if I don't skip it.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

CokeRewards progress - 224/850 - "Ouch! My bladder!"

Wednesday I had a surprising revelation.
The meal replacement bar I had for lunch contained an ingredient called "fish gelatin". Now, I've seen some fish. I've seen live fish and dead fish. I've seen sick fish and healthy fish. Hell, I've seen red fish and I've seen blue fish.
I have never seen one single fish that made me think, "You know what that little guy would be good for? Gelatin!"
What kind of intellectual leap did these health food manufacturers make to decide that "fish gelatin" is the perfect ingredient to wedge between Artificial Color and Sucralose?
"Our test market indicated that people wish we'd put fish gelatin in these. Back to the lab!"
Nowhere on the package does it reference anything but "Vanilla Cream Flavor" and "23 Essential Vitamins". I guess it is too much for me to want to see, "Now with Fish Gelatin!" or "* - 'Other Natural and Artificial Flavors' May Consist of Fish Gelatin."
Either way, I've had stranger lunches, I guess.

The awesome thing that happened was when Shana decided the way to inspire our daughter Gwynyth to read more (and enthusiasticly) is to supply her with comic books!
Holy crap! Why didn't I think of that?
I read a lot. Two or three books at a time, mostly fiction but I tend to have a few technical PDFs I'm digging through at any given time. And lots of game books. The rules aren't going to break themselves, people.
Gwynyth loves the X-Men, the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man. They make comic books about those characters now!
We took her to a comic book store after I got off work and hunted through the stacks for kid appropriate material. That wasn't as easy as I'd hoped it would be, but we ended up with some Jubilee, Shadow Cat and Storm mini-series that were geared for a younger audience.
Already Gwynyth has picked up the word "assassin", so I would classify the experiment a success.
I was hoping to share some of the comics that I had considered most impactful when I was a younger comic book reader.
Most of those titles are gone or re-worked into thin plots stretched thinner over scantily clad female characters. Such is progress, I guess, but more likely just what adolescent boys will buy.
Of course, I took the opportunity to pick up the latest summer comics for myself . . . you know . . . while we were there . . .
I was hoping for more progress on the Marvel Civil War series, but this week was only an issue of The Amazing Spider-Man.
I also picked up the latest issue of '52' from DC.
Here is the run down on that series:
You know how Marvel had the big explosion and the Super Human Registration Act thing?
DC also had a massive event, but it was on a global scale. And Super Boy died.
After the dust settled, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman (the DC A-List) stop hero-ing.
And they don't come back for a year, in comic book time.
While this year passes, DC puts out a comic called '52' , released once per week. The series tagline is: a world without Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman—but not a world without heroes. What does the DC universe do without the super-powered safety net?
At the same time, the comics for all the major missing heroes are still being printed as part of the "One Year Later" series. Let me tell you, Aquaman is cooler than ever now.
Now that I've geeked all over the page, here is an explanation for anyone still reading:
I know almost no one reading has an active interest in the state of affairs in either the Marvel or DC universe. Very few people of legal age to drink do.
However, if you did manage to muscle your way this far, past all the geeky crap, I'd like to know why. Aside from the fact that I'm very pretty, do you kind of wonder about this stuff?
For me, comic book super heroes were a pretty major part of my childhood. And college-hood.
Lately my trips to the comic book store have been like getting in touch with old friends from way back and finding out how things are going - the good and the bad - and kind of by extension remembering the younger, less bitter geek that was me.
And sometimes, when work really, really sucks, I miss that little guy. And I wonder what he would have thought of me.
Aside from, "I'm intimidated by that guy's stunning good looks! Quick! I have to make a smart-assed comment to compensate!"