Wow, it's been years since I posted anything on here. Well sorry loyal fan. But here's a new one.
I’m going to preface this by saying that I greatly enjoy video games. Especially single player games. If the kids are in bed, and Addy is doing her homework, it's a great way to de-stress before going to bed. However, as much as I enjoy them, I've come to the realization that they are a COLOSSAL waste of time. I mean, think of how many hours we spend on silly things, like getting every Riddler trophy and solving every riddle in the Batman games (which I loved doing).
"But James," some of you are saying, "you only play your game at night when literally there is so little you could do, it's either play the game, watch TV, or go to sleep."
I hear you, imaginary people who may care what I think. Truth be told, you may be right. Although, I cannot tell you how many times I have gone to bed WAY after midnight, only to come crawling into work the next day, so tired that I fight sleep the whole time I'm working. I am no longer a teenager, and do not have the ability to go on little to no sleep like I did then. Besides, have you actually looked at the things they show on television lately? Space Jam was on VH1 last night, and I wanted to share that amazing movie with my kids, but every time there was a commercial I had to change it because of commercial for horror movies about killing babies, or reality shows about people dating while they are nude. NOT something I want my children to watch.
Video games have literally done nothing to help me better my life at all. All those hours that I have personally wasted playing beautifully made games like Skyrim, all of the Assassin’s Creeds, and Batman Arkham Asylum, City, and Origins.
An argument could be made that through Skyrim I learned a lot about anthropology and understanding the way people lived. It could be said that through Assassin’s Creed I learned a lot about history. Through Batman I learned something amazing as well… How to be the Batman Very important thing there.
I find this argument to be laughable. In Assassin’s Creed and Skyrim I ignored all those possible education elements in favor of straight up gratuitous violence. With Batman, I know that I will never have Batman’s super power (being ridiculously rich), and I have not once actually felt any of the punches that Batman has thrown or been hit with.
I say these things, not because I dislike video games. Again, I love video games, and if given the chance, would play them for a living. However, there are so many better things that we could be doing with those hours we spend veg’ing in front of a television set. When it comes down to it though, what exactly are we accomplishing? Hours upon hours of time wasted, when we could have been interacting with our fellow human beings, or working out (which this writer surely needs to do WAY more often), or God forbid, actually doing something to help our fellow man.

Gen Con day 3

Alright, so today started out early. Got up around 6:30 again. We expected the cab to be here by 7:10 but apparently they picked up someone other than us, so we had to call them again. Finally got to the convention center just after 8. Dustin had a game to go to at 8 so we parted ways there. I had completely forgotten that I had my own seminar to attend at 8 as well so I ended up missing on a seminar that talked about how to incorporate fighting in your story. I had believed that my first was at eleven so I sat around the convention checking out the exhibits and everything until around 10:30 when I checked my tickets to be sure I knew the right room to go to for the seminar. That was when I learned about the 8:00 seminar. Of course I completely did not see that I did indeed have one for 11:00 which was one that I had REALLY wanted to go to. Villains as Heroes. Well that blew my two seminars for the day so I ended up looking around the exhibition hall some more...
But!
Everything turned out to be 100 times better than I thought. Because I found Author's Alley! I ended up walking around Author's Alley and talking to all the authors, editors, and publishers. So much networking. Managed to talk to some editors about my own writing and had many of them ask to see it. So I also got many emails. So my failed attempt at the morning turned out to be AMAZING!
So anyway... PICTURES!

This poor girl ended up having to stand for like fifteen minutes while people took pictures. Amazing costume though.

Belly Dancers. Meh.

BARDS!

Amazing work on this costume. Have to say my favorite part is the axe though. 

Zelda at the Ocarina store. She was amazing at playing that thing.

This poor Sith Twi'lek was having problems breathing she was laughing so hard. Apparently she had just used force choke on someone when I walked up and someone made a comment about erotic asphyxiation. She definitely had the nerd laugh going on. Lol. But great outfit. The Lekku were especially convincing. Also lady to the right in a dice bikini.

Lego Minotaur

Spider-girl(woman?) facing off against a very convincing Wolverine

Better shot of the troll from yesterday, I'd say it's quite a lot more intimidating to be right in front of it like this, than it was looking down from above.

Lightning from FFXIII

All of those are Magic: The Gathering cards, that are being built up for charity, and then they are going to auction off the right to destroy them.

Tusken Raider! He was easily frightened away though so I had to get out of there before he returned in even greater numbers.

Stormtrooper who Caboose interrupted for a pic. The guy was in a rather involved conversation. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity for the pic anyway.

I think next year I am going to make sure to bring an actual camera rather than the one on my phone. So anyway I ended the day on a high note. I had one last workshop that I went to, which was about plotting out your stories. Lasted about an hour and then I took a cab back to the hotel while everyone else is staying behind to play a game until 4:00 A.M. this guy though has his itinerary SET for tomorrow. So, first seminar is at 8:00 and I am NOT missing that one. So until then...

Gen Con day 2

Wow, what an amazing day today. First thing was getting up at 6:30 A.M. on a vacation day! okay... best thing to do though considering everything started early at the Con. Got to the convention center and went to customer service to see about getting the ticket for one event that they hadn't given me yet. Sadly they told me I would have to get into the Will Call line again. Which stretched from one entrance all the way to the other... THEN BACK AROUND AGAIN! So, instead of wasting my morning waiting for something I spent the rest of my time before my first seminar just looking around.

BEHOLDER!

SO many costumes and people who were just generally interesting to look at. 

 Had so much fun just seeing everything when I happened upon this!

That's right. It's a troll. :)

So... Had my first writing seminar at 9:00. Best things I could have ever heard to start the con out. It was a writers panel and all they did was answer questions other people had. SOOO many things that I needed to hear about writing as a whole. Also a lot of things that were relevant to what I want to do with my life. I would share my notes from the panel but that would take several pages, so I'll make that another post on another day. 

Writers panel ended and I went to the exhibition hall which was packed beyond belief. Managed to get one of the biggest things I wanted which was a Mug O' Dice! or rather I took a mug, and dipped it into a big box of random dice and got to buy the dice that I pulled out. NICE dice too.

Bag O' Dice!

Had my first game session at 12:00 P.M. which lasted til nearly 8:00 P.M. Iron Player Championship 2011 Part 1: Invasion Cthulu and Part 2 Annihilate Cthulu. Had a blast with this tournament. Will probably write more about it later.But for now what you need to know is that Team Labyrinth won best team for the second act! (Team Labyrinth consisted of myself, Caboose, Lunchbox, and Doodad)

End of the night went to Doodad house for some pasta and talk before returning the hotel. (Of course we got turned around in the wrong direction and ended up turning a 20 minute drive into a 50, but hey, we got there fine. 

Alright so it's late. Gotta get up even earlier tomorrow so until then...

End of day 1 gencon

Alright, so after this mornings fun. We finally managed to get to the convention center to get our badges. Aaron, Caboose, and Dustin were all able to get to the front of the line quickly, but because my last name begins with a letter after N I ended up having to wait in this huge line for a little over thirty minutes. Truth be told it wasn't that bad of a wait considering what I learned about the lines at Comic Con in San Diego.
Got my badge and we decided to make a quick trip around the convention center. Best thing we got to see to start out with was a statue of Drizzt and Guenhwyvar. Completely made my day. Got a pic in front of it.

After we left the convention center we went for dinner. Went to this all you can eat sushi place called The Journey. When we got there at 4 though we ended up having to wait until 5 so they could get dinner set up. Was a great dinner though. 

After dinner we went back to Aarons house and began setting up some characters for a Pathfinder game. It was great getting the characters set up, but we didn't really get to play for very long before it was time to go back to the hotel. And now here I am. and to bed I go... until Tomorrow.

Gen Con day 1

Alright it's nearly 11:00 in the morning here. Been a lot of fun so far. We got here at 1:30 last night, and ended up just staying up until nearly 4 talking. Got up at 7 this morning and began the fun again. So far just a lot of reminiscing which has been fun. We'll be going to the convention center here shortly to get our badges, can't wait for that. Then we're gonna go to this restaurant called Journeys, which I have never heard of so, hopefully it's good. Sushi! Anyway, more later tonight.

gencon

So... faithful follower. For those of you who know me. You know that I am going to Gencon Tuesday!!! Absolutely cannot wait. So, new idea. This guy who was attempting to write this blog has ended up being rather pathetic at it. Anyway, what I plan on doing, is blogging while I am at Gencon. Wish me luck, might end up doing well. Hopefully I'll have a bunch of pics to go with everything I'll be doing. Until the fourth...

Gammaworld

Last Sunday I played my first ever Gamma World game.For those of you who may not know, Gamma World is the sci fi cousin of Dungeons and Dragons. The premise of the game (at least ours anyway) was that The Large Hadron Collidor messed up somehow and tore the fabric of the universe. The universe tried to right itself and managed to make up an amalgam of universes. The heroes in this universe are created by a type of mutation that turns out to be slightly useful. My character is an Electrokinetic Gravity Controller. 

Other than me there are three other players. Rae, who is a Felinoid Demon, Preston who is a Doppleganger Hawkoid, and Josh who is a Hawkoid Mind Coercer. 

My friend and the DM for the game is David Bennett. Who has turned out to be an amazingly descriptive and imaginative DM. I am looking forward to more games under his guidance, as well as maybe trying out my hand as a DM again sometime in the future? Never know do you. 

Today (friday) we played again only this time Preston had to be out of town so we found a new player (Josh) who joined in this time. Events transpired that Dave will probably put up on his own blog here, so I will not retell what he is already going to tell. Let's just say that my own character made some nice development, and I am looking forward to fleshing this character out a little more, he may be one of the most quietly manipulating characters I have ever created. While this is a slight change from what I normally do, it's going to be interesting to see what happens from here.