September 2008 Archives

No no not the economy, though that is a concern here. Hopefully, something will happen soon, and not for the worse. No what I am talking about is that last Thursday I came upstairs to use my PC and found it sitting at the dreaded "Blue Screen of Death" This has happened before and I just rebooted and it came right back. However, this time it did not. In fact every time I tried to boot it after that it either blue screened again or simply froze. So I unhooked that hard drive and got a new one and went through the entire process of setting up my pc all over again. Luckily, I did not lose anything major. I had a backup of all my important files from July and a lot of the more recent stuff was on my laptop. I think I should probably institute a better backup plan, than "whenever I think of it" though.

I meant to write this entry yesterday, in fact I've meant to write a few blog entries this week about cycling and hard drive crashes and such but I've been a little busy.

Yesterday was our 2nd Anniversary! We went out to a very nice restaurant called Boi Na Braza. It's a Brazilian Steakhouse like Texas De Brazil. I think we both agree that Texas De Brazil is a little better but Boi Na Braza has the advantage of being 3 minutes from our house. :)

Happy anniversary one more time sweetie!

I have had time to write a blog entry these day, I just haven't been inspired with anything to actually write. Work is slow right now, for some reason it always seems to be that way in the third quarter and for no rel reason. It's not like we suddenly get tons of work in January but somehow we just seem to finish up everything in the third quarter. Could also be that in the Tech industry no one really does anything in Nov or Dec.

The hurricane came and went here in North Texas without too much disruption. Nothing like what happened down south. Elanna and I a bike ride this past Saturday and it sprinkled on us most of the time and then really started pouring down on us the last few miles. The ride was to support disabled veterans and an Apache helicopter took off and flew over as we started the ride. That was very cool. I never realized how big those things were. Bane got some pictures of it, I'll have to try and get them up here in a few days. Other than the ride we didn't do too much else this past weekend. We did get the last 15 or so boxes unpacked, so I guess we are FINALLY moved in to the new house.

We are all battening down in expectation of Hurricane Ike, though I bet all we get here in Dallas is some rain.

The big news this week is that Elanna's six-month contract job that has lasted for over two years is ow coming to an end. The company she works for has to get rid of all their contractors so her contract is ending, eventhough they would really like her to stay. That means some belt tightening on our part. We ran up some credit card debt when we moved into the new house so we have to manage those payments a little more carefully now and stop using our other credit cards so we don't run up anymore debt. It would have been nice if they could have waited a few months to end her contract but of course we can't control that.

We are doing a 40 mile bike ride this weekend. It's right next door in Southlake, so we don't even have to get up a 5am this time. Hopefully the hurricane will wait till we are done to dump rain on us.

Whew! We are back from Dragoncon and I am tired. Still! I don't think I slept more than about 5 hours any one night. There's just too much to see and do. Thursday night we gathered with old friends and hung out. Number 2 had gotten the hotel to block out the ninth floor of the radius tower for us so we kinda used the main lobby area as out "living room." Friday I got up early to head down and get our badges and found the line was already halfway around the hotel at 7:45 am! Luckily, they hadn't actually let anyone in yet so the line moved pretty quickly once it got going. I ended up being in line only about 45 minutes.

After lunch, I headed to the store to buy stuff for the annual room party while Elanna went to see James Marsters. The panel sounded very cool fro what she said. I think we'll have to check out Torchwood now. Next we had a whirlwind of panels, going to the Firefly panel and then the BSG panel. The firefly crew is always a great panel. Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk were giving away prizes for people who asked questions. Nathan Fillion even gave away his custom license plate that said "My other car is Serenity."
The BSG panel was great as well. It was very cool to see Edward James Olmos, who had never been to a convention before.

After that we wisely decided to skip the SG-1 panel, as we were getting "panel-fatigue" and headed to the room to get set up for the Stonecutters induction party!

In case you haven't read my past Dragoncon entries, my friends and I dress up as the Stonecutters from the Simpsons. It's great fun and we are recognized by lots of people.

Saturday morning started off with the Dragoncon parade. Well for some of us, some of the group opted to "watch it from their room" and recover from the night before. The parade was great. After that we made the long trek over to hotel #4 (the convention is spread over 4 massive hotels) to take in the MST3K Panel. It was fun and apparently the MST3K guys are doing new movie riffs again under the name Cinematic Titanic. Which I need to check out.

Afterwards we spent some time in the dealers room and I bought some cool goggles for my next years steampunk costume. I am excited that more people are interested in steampunk! I was convinced I was the only one. There were tons of cool steampunk costumes and even a steampunk panel. I hope there are more next year. ( I heard the panel was standing room only.)

Then we headed over to the Star Trek Panel with Avery Brooks, Michael Dorn, and Cirroc Lofton. I never find the Star Trek panels to be as good as the others but it was great to see the actors in person.

Saturday night was the Stonecutters gathering! Fifteen of us this year! It was a blast. We even got a picture taken with Simpson's writer Don Payne.

Saturday night was even busier because after walking around as the stonecutters for roughly 4 hours we then changed clothes and headed out to the Cruxshadws concert. They were great as always. I might have enjoyed it more had I not had an aching back and feet from being a stonecutter but it was still great.

Needless to say by Sunday I was approaching "wiped out" but I was not to be deterred. We first headed over to see Anne McCaffery, Elanna's favorite author. All I have to say is that some people are WAY too into Dragonriders of Pern. Also Anne is 82 and really can't participate as well as she once could. Still they had some interesting stories. After that we did a "full run" through the dealers rooms and really wore ourselves down. We then retired to have dinner with local friends and hang out with the group Sunday evening. Everyone in our group had some really great costumes, but I'll save that for later post.

Monday we slept in, or at least tried to, hit the dealers room one more time and headed out. Nearly the entire Dallas crew was on the sme flight back so we got to hang out with everyone for a little longer.

Whew. Okay tomorrow or maybe Friday I'll try and post some costume pics.