Tuesday’s Off: You Should Be Dancing, Yeah II

Posted on April 28, 2015 by geelw

Blech. Today’s off to a crappy start thanks to some idiot who needs to wake up and smell the coffee doing something he shouldn’t have that burned down all the bridges around him in one swell foop. Nope, it wasn’t me this time. It’s not fun at all watching someone lose his mind like that. But he’s old enough to know better yet still blames others for his misfortunes, vices and flaws. I don’t need that nonsense around me, so steps will be taken to remove said pox from the vicinity. Anyway, let’s all go dancing today just to keep things light. Whee! No more of this as it develops because it’s not important in the grand scheme of things. Some people just vote themselves off the island is all you really need to know.

(thanks, docludi2!)

“What Do People Do All Day?” DAF Edition!

Posted on April 24, 2015 by geelw

Ah, memories. Anyway, it’s been an intense and stupid week for me, but at least I got other stuff done besides grow a few new gray hairs from all that annoying tech nonsense.

In honor of one of my favorite books from my childhood (that you should buy whether or not you have kids of your own), here’s what I did of note on a few days this week:

I made a nice pizza on Monday. I also got a nicer new phone, but that’s an ongoing post in the making as far as getting some stuff sorted out before I can activate the damn thing.

I got some stuff to review including three more excellent Blu-Rays from Arrow Video (thanks, Clint!) and a nifty tablet stand that’s actually pretty cool.

Speaking of movies, the greatest book I’ve read (this month) also arrived for me to review. You should buy a copy just for the cover alone. Okay, the insides are great as well.

I found some cool original Kenner Star Wars stuff when I was looking for something else in a bin of lots of something else. Yeah, I’ve kept a few of the things I’ve bought from when I was younger. Not enough of them, sadly.

I played a bunch of new and old games I’d been needing to get to. That’s Elminage Original, a PSP and Vita RPG very much in the Wizardry vein that initially had a lousy English localization until a patch over half the size of the full game cleaned things up considerably.

Some other stuff is on the way or has arrived, but you don’t need to know about a box of packing tape, some razors and a few other mundane items. Okay, back to poring over my email and figuring out what sort of time machine I need to build in order to catch up to the workload backlog. Or I can avoid that rabbit hole fantasizing and just get back to the grind. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Off to get some sleep now. I’ll be back in a few hours after waking up and soaking my eyeballs in a cup of coffee. Or trying out the Uptime energy drinks I got in the post last week to write about. Hmmm… there’s an angle right there to work, right?

#TBT: The Perfect Storm Knocks Me For A Temporary Tech-less Loop

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Let’s see now:

My laptop’s power supply blew out very early Sunday morning while doing a backup to an external drive and some article writing (whee!), and in the mad scramble to recheck/restore stuff and order a new power supply I lost a ton of mostly old data (whee!), game saves and I think some pieces of digital art (whee!). Normally, I’d just shift my workload over to the desktop, but the other two PC’s here are dead. One has been for a while and the other was running when the power went out and now won’t boot up properly at all. (Whee!).

I’m also having some pesky issues with getting the new phone I got up and running, and one of the consoles I just had repaired a few weeks back un-repaired itself in a spectacular, noisy fashion. I think all of that counts as five impossible things happening before breakfast. Amusingly enough, thanks to all the password changes I’ve done so far this year, the only ones I recalled off the top of my frazzled head were my PayPal, bank and ebay accounts (all of which came in handy as some old books and games I’d posted sold and needed to be shipped out). Just so you know, Whenever I change my passwords I email a few of my email accounts with the updates just to have a few places to check should I need to. Of course, forgetting one’s email account passwords and/or log in info doesn’t help (*beet!*), but I just KNOW you’ve done this as well.

In the midst of all that nonsense… I got a LOAD of stuff to review from a few nice folks. Thank you, nice folks! In the meantime, I’ve been taking notes longhand while waiting for that replacement power supply to arrive and pretty much having as much fun as I can traveling back in time to 1995 as I could under such short notice. That power supply got here just fine about a half hour ago, so I’m now back in action. A little crazier and busier than usual and nope, not having enjoyed my unexpected “vacation” one bit. Granted, I did get kind of lazy at one point on Monday evening, crawling into bed to play catch up all that rest I missed over the long weekend of worrying about whether I was going to be needing a new laptop or not. Well, I do kind of need a new one, but I just can’t afford a replacement at the moment.

Anyway, how’s YOUR week going? Back in a bit. I just glanced at my inboxes and think I have something like 3000 emails to read and a lot less to respond to (thankfully). Eeek.

It’s Not A Slow Day, But It’s A Slow Day Upstairs

Posted on April 11, 2015 by geelw

(thnaks, pzmyers!)

Yeah, motivation flies right out the window when you have a combination of too much to do and not enough time in the day to do it all. Actually, the motivation is there and percolating. It’s just the getting all those little duckies in order and making sure none run away that’s the hard part. Anyway, I’m tinkering away on some previews, reviews and such, getting a few gray hairs fretting about stuff I shouldn’t have to and probably in need of more actual rest. Well, some of that will be taken care of shortly, some of it won’t and carry onward into next week’s workload. No pressure, right? Riiiiiiight.

TV or Not TV?

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SO. I got to see a fun TV taping today which took up the better part of an afternoon, thus the lack of updates on such a busy day. Eh, I’ll get back on the horse tomorrow. I needed a break, the folks doing the show needed the support and much fun was had. Although, I’d have loved to been able to let them know that I have a crazy amount of knowledge about some of the topis discussed. Oh well, perhaps they’ll ask for input next time. I don’t want to be on camera at all, mind you (my non-ego would faint dead away). But I do have the advantage of age and “wisdom” still working for me. Anyway, back in a bit – I need to dive into my email that’s overflowing onto the carpet here…

Random Art: Head Cold, Remedy Required

Posted on February 26, 2015 by geelw

I think this extra dopey and drawn out winter has frozen my brain or something. I have a huge list of stuff to do and it’s as if my head is filled with Cra-Z-Sand or something. Well, this too shall pass as it normally does, but it seems to be worse this year and more annoying because the ideas are piling up faster than I can get them out. Eh, I just need a vacation or some quiet time, is all. Or some helper monkeys to keep pouring coffee into me and poking me with fencing foils (with the rubber tips on, of course!). Hmmm. Well, let’s get the brain wagon back into gear and see if that hill can be surmounted. Giddyap!

Tuesday’s Off: I Can Dream, Can’t I?

Posted on February 24, 2015 by geelw

(thanks, zxr92)

Hmph, I guess I can’t, huh? Stupid Tall Man! Technically, I try to take Tuesdays off from posting, but that never seems to go the way I want it to. Actually, I’m in the process of working on some post-Toy Fair content that’s going to be a bit different than what I’ve done previously, so that’s taking up a bit of time and thought as I do things on whims and edit as I go. Also, I need to get a few movie reviews done, so those are coming this week. Hey, I keep trying hard to be lazier, but it’s all that “Well, you need to have enough work done so you can actually take time off!” stuff that gets in the way of me hibernating. Ah well, “The dream is always the same…” I guess.

A Friendly Reminder To Myself From Myself

Posted on February 20, 2015 by geelw

(thanks, Sleaze-O-Rama!)

Yeah, yeah… I know, I know. I tend to forget to do that “break” stuff sometimes, which is a bad idea at the end of the day because I just end up staying up too late and paying for it later. Well, I could use a helper monkey here, but we’ll see about that at some point down the road. Of course, if I had nothing to write about, all this would be SO much easier, I suppose. Ha and double ha. Okay, enough slacking off… *whipcrack!* back to work. I’ve some salt to mine and the clock is tick-tocking away. (Sings) “Cheap holidays in other people’s miseryyyyyyy!”

Never Type When You Should be Sleeping, Folks!

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Oops. I should be asleep, but I wasn’t and while working on a draft, hit “Publish” instead of “Save Draft” annnnnnnnd… oh well. You all got a preview of a longer article a wee bit too early. Feh. Well, at least you know I’m not slacking off, right? The stupid slow connection up here won’t let me properly edit the post, so you get a new short post to say yeah, yeah, I know that other post isn’t complete. Just hit the pause button between your eyeballs and come back to it in a day or two. It’s going to be a nice little piece once it’s complete…

Okay, I’m going to go to sleep now. I need to get up in about five hours or and roll out into the city for the last day of Toy Fair…

Toy Fair Ultra Mini Report, Day One

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Well, then. Toy Fair is pretty brilliant this year, although I barely made it through the first day’s zipping back and forth. Pictures to come from some of the booths I visited earlier today, but not until tomorrow at the earliest. Par for the course, some of the smaller booths had the more interesting new items, but you’ll have to hold out to see what they are. Let’s just say that if you have kids ages 4-10 who have always give you trouble around bedtime, there’s the most awesome solution that’s guaranteed to get them wanting to hit the hay every night. And it doesn’t involve any trickery or pharmaceuticals, either.

Also, R2-D2 makes a phenomenal bubble machine, courtesy of Imperial Toys. Seriously. You’ll see. Zombies are still “in” this year and in some mighty creative ways thanks to McFarlane Toys, Factory Entertainment and others. Collectible fans will see way too many things to fill their shelves from Funko, Entertainment Earth, Mezco Toyz, The Coop, and too many more to list here.

Anyway, I’m wiped out and need to sleep, as I have to pop up early in the morning to go see some dinosaurs and very funny little yellow guys before hitting the show floor again. Good night!