Doppel's Dementia

AAA + Carmax = WIN

Doppelbock — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 14:43:23 +0000

Yesterday was the best car experience I’ve ever had. I bought my Dad’s old truck so we went to AAA to do the title change. We waited maybe 10 minutes before being called to the window and $15 and ten minutes later we were out the door. We then took my old truck (1998 Ranger) to Carmax to see if they would even want to buy it. I had a big dent in the front left quarter panel but after about 50 minutes total time we were leaving and I had a check in my hand that was probably double what I had expected to get.

We subsequently heard from a friend that they bought their last car at Carmax a year ago and were only there for maybe 60 to 90 minutes which makes me want to never buy a new car again; I’ll just use Carmax.

Melodic Progressive Deathcore

Doppelbock — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 15:20:58 +0000

I was cruising Usenet this morning and saw a guy posting about a band called Amarna Reign and he calls it melodic progressive deathcore. Really? Does that even make any kind of sense at all? I then Googled the band and the first two hits are their MySpace and Facebook pages. Apparently they don’t even have their own web site. A search on Wikipedia shows that they must have taken their name from ancient Egyptian history so that’s one good point in their favor.

This picture really doesn’t look deathcore, does it?

Classic GenCon

Doppelbock — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 15:26:17 +0000

Thanks to Mangoat for posting this one, classic GenCon if I ever saw it.

I bet this happens every year

Keef’s Comic-Con Wrap-Up

Doppelbock — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 14:54:36 +0000

Check out Keith Knight’s write-up of his visit to Comic-Con this year. We ended up at his booth while he was eating that lobster roll.

SPELLING BEE FOR CHEATERS/INKPOT AWARD WIN/COMIC-CON WRAP-UP | The Official K Chronicles and Think Website

Here’s what he closed with, I love it!

Comic-Con 2010: Small Press

Doppelbock — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 19:42:59 +0000

Probably my favorite part of Comic-Con is meeting the writers and artists in person. The best place to do that is the Small Press area and one of my first stops every year is to see Keith Knight, creator of The K Chronicles, (Th)ink and The Knight Life. If you aren’t familiar with his work do yourself a huge favor and pick up one of his books, I don’t know how to describe his art style except to say that it’s entertaining. His writing is always funny and every once in a while he touches on current social issues and will really make you think. Check out his official site at http://www.kchronicles.com/ to see the daily (Th)ink single-panel comics as well as the weekly K Chronicles; if you enjoy it then go all out and get the The Complete K Chronicles.

I again saw Keith at a spotlight panel about him & his work but this year was special: he was awarded an Ink Pot award which was a complete surprise to him. It surprised me as well since I thought they only gave those out at a special banquet. Even though Keith will re-use certain strips in his panels I always enjoy attending since I am guaranteed to laugh the whole time.

This year I picked up the latest K Chronicles book, I Left My Arse in San Francisco as well as the first Knight Life book, “Chivalry Ain’t Dead“.

This year I also met Stan Yan, creator of The Wang. He was great fun to talk to so I bought his latest book, Erection Year and he did a neat drawing inside for me. My wife gets migraines from MSG which I mentioned to him since the front cover says “NOW WITH MSG!” so the character he drew inside (Wang’s mother) is saying “MSG is good for you!”

Comic-Con 2010 Recap

Doppelbock — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 19:01:46 +0000

I was only able to attend Comic-Con on Thursday this year, hopefully I’ll go back to all four days next year. There’s so much to see and one has to be selective and ignore some areas completely in order to see the really interesting stuff in one day. It seemed to me like there was even more space dedicated to video games and this year, I really wish they would cut back on that and use the space for more genre related stuff. The toys were just out of control this year, huge Hasbro area for Star Wars/G.I. Joe/Transformers and there was a constant line at the Mattel area the whole day (for what I have no idea).

The wait to pick up badges didn’t take too long (only 20 minutes or so) but the line stretched all the way north along the front of the convention center, then wrapped around to the back of the building to the south. We got there at about 9am and had badges in hand by about 9:25am. For some reason even though the show opened at 9:30am the security guys (I hesitate to call them guards) weren’t letting people down the main stairs & escalators where everybody was coming out from registration. Luckily I am familar enough with the venue that we backtracked and went around to the Bayside area and went down those stairs to get in.

Steampunk was out in force this year, lots of people dressed up and more vendors than in past years. One booth had a giant selection of goggles and other paraphenalia; another vendor had a really neat steampunk mechanical arm. Lots of zombie comics this year, more than I remember from the last time I went in 2008 (I am not too sad I missed 2009 since Twilight was really huge that year).

I only picked up two of the convention exclusives this year (it took forever to read through the entire list on the web site): Devil Bacon from Mr. Toast and Neonomicon #1 written by Alan Moore, art by Jacen Burrows (and I even got Jacen’s autograph on it); fun fact: this was a limited edition cover for Comic-Con with only 1500 printed.

Devil Bacon from Mr. Toast (limited to 1000 produced for SDCC)

Neonomicon #1 (special Comic-Con cover)

While we were at the Mr. Toast booth we also picked up a vampire candy corn for the dogs to play with.

Vampire Candy Corn from Mr. toast

Next update I’ll list out the books that I got and the people I met (in all honesty as much for myself as a journal to look back on as for my readers’ benefit).

I actually completed another video game

Doppelbock — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 13:34:13 +0000

I’m a little impressed, I actually completed playing Borderlands last night. I think that’s only about the second game that I’ve actually finished (the other being Half-Life 2). I did it on Normal difficulty and only had to Google a couple of times for hints. Usually I get stuck on a game either because I’m not a good enough shooter or I can’t figure out where to find something. I put down Bioshock a few months ago because I couldn’t get where I needed to go on a particular map (even with hints) but I’m going to give it another shot because I really enjoyed that game.

World’s Longest E-mail Sig

Doppelbock — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 04:32:31 +0000

I ran across this e-mail signature and it is definitely the longest one I’ve ever seen. Let’s step through it, shall we? (Apologies for the ugly pixelation but I had to blur out personal info and I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on it.)

We’ve first got her name and title (all well and good) but then a full list of everyone for whom she is the assistant. Street address of the company is next, is that really necessary for electronic mail? Next is her e-mail address (couldn’t you just get it from the e-mail itself?) followed by phone and fax numbers.

Next up is a pithy quotation (source not identified of course) and then the company name, slogan and web site. Whew!

Professor Badass

Doppelbock — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 04:09:45 +0000

Yep, he sure is.

Gray Eagles Film (great P-51 pilot story)

Doppelbock — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 03:56:32 +0000

This is a great video documentary of a WWII Mustang pilot getting to not only see his own plane but fly another one 60+ years later. I was very glad to see his grandchildren so interested in what he had experienced during the war.