Boston.  Wow.  Boston.  You are a hell of a city and you know how to have a great convention!  The title of thispost is just an amusing line I kept repeating while there, since my Boston accent is terrible and that’s all I can say.

This year was the first year for PAX East 2010.

WIL WHEATON
The man is a class act, and he gave one hell of an opening speech that I personally related to in a lot of ways.  Here is a video someone posted on Youtube of the keynote address he gave.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSLDfAgbOh4

His speech was centered around how gaming in all its forms has been helpful to so many people and that gamers are not the antisocial outcasts that people believe we are. He told us about the time he received Dungeons and Dragons for Christmas one year, and how reading the books helped him develop his imagination.  He spoke about how some of the closest friendships he’s had in his life were created through gaming with others, and how it’s possible for someone to have a successful career and still log 72 hours into Dragon Age: Origins.

At one point he even used the phrase while speaking to my friend Ana “I’m going to have the DM rule on this one, and in the meantime I shift one segment away.”  He is just that awesome, especially with all the geeky quotes he’d utter during his opening address.

I plan on going into this in more detail at some other point, but I want to make this abundantly clear:  As much as people might mock me for who I am and how I like to spend my free time, it’s no weirder than your hobbies.

He was nice, full of energy, and I never saw him be rude to a fan.  He would pose with people in their pictures and he signed a book I bought from him.  You rule, dude.  You’ll never see this but you rule.

SUBWAYS

This confused a lot of people, but I have never been on a subway in my life.  Yes, it is possible to go that long without stepping foot on a subway.  No, there aren’t subways in Indianapolis.  Yes, I was born to do the hand jive (but that’s another story.)

Subways were interesting!  I couldn’t help but stare at everything.  I was doing the logistics in my head on how they carved the tunnels underneath Boston and how many people the subways could hold.  I also liked the odd things about the subway, like how graffiti would make it to the ceilings of the terminals or how they posted posters and ads on the inside of the tunnels for you to look at as the cars ran along.

FOOD
So while in Boston you would have thought I had traditional Boston cuisine, right?  I mean, I stopped by one place on Thursday night with Ana and Ari and had some sandwiches there, but certainly I tried other food while in Boston, right?  WRONG!

There was just no time to leave the convention center for anything other than mall food.  I would have loved to have had seafood or visited one of the old style taverns that Dereke and Bethany visited, but in order to maximize my enjoyment of the con I had to stay close to the Providence Center.  :/

I did get free food however, at Panda Express.  When we arrived on Thursday the manager of Panda Express talked to me at length while I waited in line for food.  He asked me how many people were going to show up and when gamers liked to eat.  I mentioned how we liked to show up late and would probably be looking for food late at night.  When I was hunting for food Friday night around 10 I ended up at the food court where every place was closed…but Panda Express!  The manager apparently based his decision to stay open late on my response and gave me my drink and eggrolls for free! :D  Woo!  He was really cheery and the entire food court was gorging themselves on orange chicken.

Side note:  I have diverticulitis, and I ate a sesame seed bagel because it was the only thing I could find Saturday night to eat.  The Au Bon Pain was closing and it was the only thing left that didn’t look like it was made with eggs and had sat out for the day.  Unfortunately, the sesame seed bagel nearly killed me and I’m still in pain from it!

PANELS

I was not fond of the lines.  Have I said that enough?  I know, this is me bitching and complaining about something that was bound to happen.  I’m just not fond of waiting in line for three hours only to be turned away at the door because it got too full.  This happened to me once for a panel and I showed up late to David and Filamena’s “Design an RPG in an Hour” panel and it was already full.  Sadness. :/

Course, there were 50,000 attendess at the con so that was to be expected. :P  Like I said, I’m whiney.

My favorite panel had to be the Friday night panel where I sat in line for an hour just to be told that the filmmakers didn’t bother to show up to the con and that the DVD they sent ahead of them wouldn’t play on the projector.  Sensing that there would be disappointed people, Gabe from Penny Arcade made a surprise appearance and talked about his campaign for over an hour.  It was awesome, since he’s new to running a campaign and yet he’s come up with several ingenius ways to keep his players involved, such as making laser puzzle traps in real life for them to figure out.

This comic actually is inspired by some things he said at the panel:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/3/29/

My second favorite panel was the PVP panel with Scott Kurtz.  He showed up drunk and was absolutely hilarious.  He went for an extra hour and had the audience rolling.  I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe!  I salute you Mr. Kurtz! *salutes*

PEOPLE

Besides traveling out there with my totally awesome roommates Dereke and Bethany, who were great and we had lots of fun traveling around the city and were amusing with our weird antics, I also got to meet up with David, Filamena, Ana, and Ari while out there.  It was great seeing all of you!  It was embarrassing spilling Indian food in my lap while with David and Filamena but we laughed it off. Seriously though, that food was brown when it hit my lap but dried bright yellow.

Ana and Ari showed us around parts of Boston and warned us about the Fairy store.  Thanks for the help!

MASCHINE ZEIT

Are you all familiar with David and Filamena Hill?  You should be!  It’s not just because I’m putting the finishing touches on something for them, but they came up with a pretty nifty RPG that you should all play.  Maschine Zeit, a game of scifi horror, was thrilling everyone who came by to play in the demos they ran.  I played in two games myself, and I think it’s simple yet pretty satisfying game system.  I don’t think there was a single person who walked away from the table going “Hmm, yeah, that sucked.”  Instead, I saw a couple of people who were getting excited about their character’s actions and really got into the spirit of the game!  I will let you know when it’s ready to be purchased!

David and Filamena also ended up on some blogs that you may read, so check them out!

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/99471-Scoop-An-Investigative-Reporter-RPG-With-Dinosaurs

http://kotaku.com/5503107/pax-east-creates-a-game-of-cold+blooded-journalism

PROS

1. Boston had so much history!  Bunker Hill and the USS Constitution were great!  I loved seeing the different architectural styles throughout the city, and everything was great to absorb. :)  I even got to ride on a Subway, which is a big deal for someone from the Midwest.
2. The every nice Enforcers who found my phone after I lost it and returned it to me.  I even wrote a nice email to the Penny Arcade guys talking about how great the Red Shirts were.  Seriously, they answered my questions and were never rude to me.
3. PAX was just without a doubt one of the funnest conventions I’ve been to in a while.  There was so much to do, and even though it didn’t seem like there were that many panels to attend there was something going at almost all hours.
4. Tycho and Gabe were class acts the entire way!  I saw them in the hall and they were pleasant to their fans.  You guys rule!
5. Jump In The Line Games were a great way to pass (and waste!) time while waiting in the God forsaken lines that made up the con.  I loved the Messy Board!

CONS (Not conventions this time)

1. BOSTON BEING NAMBY PAMBY AND GOING TO BED AT 10!!!  The entire city shuts down by 10 PM, so if you want to find food you are boned.  Dereke and I couldn’t find an all night diner to save our life and with the exception of a seedy bowling alley nearby, every place seemed to close early.  Not impressed, Boston.  Guess we party harder in the Midwest!
2. Drunk chick at bar who kept humping me and broke her martini glass on the table.  When she went to the bar to get more booze, the waiter came by with her credit card and gave it to me thinking I was her husband.  I then had to find her to give her back her card, which wasted more of my time. “Why didn’t you just tell the waiter to keep the card?”  Because he could not understand me and just nodded his head and walked off.
3. The heel of my shoe broke and cut up the back of my right ankle to a bloody pulp.  Owch.
4. Lines.  Lines.  LINES!!!  I am so not a fan of lines!  I understand they are necessary and the PA Enforcers did their best to make it pleasant as possible, but the lines sucked ass.
5. Taxi drivers act like they are reinacting the Pod Races while in Boston.  Holy crap I thought I was going to die as he barreled down a one-way street from the wrong direction.

The WYRD
1.  Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub singing “Wild Wild West.”  They were singing Wild Wild West perfectly and in harmony.  Clearly, they’ve practiced it before.  They were also doing this at their booth when no one was around, but it was still amazing!
2.  The Spy from Team Fortress 2 was there and I think he was on a mission to kill Wil Wheaton!  He even assumed his face!
3.  Dereke was totally a fan girl for the Penny Arcade staff.  He knew who EVERYONE was!  He even knew their business manager’s name!
4.  Dereke totally looked cooler than me in his hat and got several compliments on it.  Even a homeless guy wanted to steal it! (There, don’t slit my throat when I sleep Dereke!)
5.  I was able to function after 38 hours with no sleep. o_o

SWAG
I couldn’t take that much with me this year since I flew to Boston but I had a respectable haul.  Spent about a hundred bucks or so and mainly at the indie RPG booth.

1. 3:16, a RPG about playing a group of Space Marines on a mission to kill everything in the universe.  It seems hilarious!
2. Shock: Human Contact, a game about traveling to alien planets and trying to influence societies and change them throughout the course of the campaign.  It’s interstellar colonialism and it appeals to the scifi nut inside of me.
3. PVP Vol. 7, signed by Scott Kurtz.  It has a picture of Scratch Fury drawn on the inside cover!
4. I got one of the PAX 2010 scarves and shrit before they sold out!  I also bought the “John Gabriel’s Internet Dickwad Theory” shirt!
5. Souvenirs for the family!  Jack got a lobster toy, Ben got a pen, Caroline got chocolates, Tina got a Harvard shirt, and Mom got a funny lobster shirt!

This next bit was taken from “WhyRPeopleSoStupid”, a member of Fark.com who created these.  I love Fark…it’s one of the best places to find out about the news.  People submit news headlines with funny titles and then let people chat about it in a reasonable and logical manner on their forums.

If you believed that last part, you’re probably going to believe these are true.  Behold….JESUS WITH DINOSAURS!

Don’t dinosaurs make everything better?

Take Transformers.  Transformers has giant robots that can turn into other machines.  If Optimus Prime has to race to the dam to fight Megatron, he turns into a kick ass semi truck and drives there.  If Starscream wants to unleash the fury on some unsuspecting oil refinery workers, he turns into an F-15 fighter.

Sadly, they missed a spot while assaulting the refinery and this monster would continue to derail Robot vs. Robot carnage with his “feelings” and “soul.”

As a kid I wanted to be Spike if only to rally the Autobots to my side to conquer the world.  True story.  But I’m moving off point here…

Dinosaurs make everything better!  Take the pope.  He’s pious, controls the world’s church, and has the obligation of being the Bishop of Rome in addition to wearing that big hat of his.  But if you combine him with reptillian DNA and you get…THE SPACE POPE!  He’s a pope who rules space.  Space!  That’s a whole lot of papal obligations to be responsible for!

If you didn’t get that last reference without a picture, you really need to watch more Futurama.  There’s no excuse for having not seen it, it’s been on TV for the last 10 years on 3 different networks and they show the same 75 episodes.

So with Transformers, the writers must have sat around their Tonka Tuff offices and thought how they could make a show here giant robots that turn into machines that sometimes combined to make other machines cooler!  (What a mouthful!)  I imagine the meeting went something like this…

Writer A:  Man, how are we going to top Giant Robot Car and Giant Robot Plane?
Writer B: Giant Robot Ape?
Writer A: *violently slaps B* That will never catch on…until the 90s…but regardless!
Writer C:  How about Giant Robot Insects?
Writer A: Did that, made them kinda weak with those voices of them.
Writer B:  how about Giant Robot Dinosaurs?
Writer A:  I know!  How about Giant Robot Dinosaurs?
Writer B: …you always steal my ideas!

True story, Writer B would grow up to be both weird and if reports are to be believed, he turned into Stewart Wilson.  He doesn’t read this blog, I’m in the clear!

So now we have Giant Robot Dinosaurs, or Dinobots since that’s cooler.  The Dinobots are huge, kick ass, and wield fire swords as they slaughter their enemies.  They are too cool for guns, instead shooting fire out of their mouths to wage war on the Decepticons.

If they had a flaw it would be that they aren’t the brightest bots in the box.  Grimlock is unable to use proper grammar when he speaks and is fond of petting Petro-Rabbits.  Swoop, for all his firepower as a JET POWERED PTERODACTYL, is repeatedly being bashed into the ground or knocked out by random punches.  Do they let this lack of intelligence hold them back?  Hell no!  Like America, they never admit that they’re wrong.  People who were sworded and set on fire probably deserved it in their opinion, and in Grimlock’s mind he is the real MFing Tyrannosaurus, sway backed and all!

He Grimlock, Bad Ass!

Things Improved By Dinosaurs:

Jurassic Park - Without dinosaurs, this movie is essentially “Samuel Jackson gets Eaten By a Shark” and we all know how that ended.
Conspiracy Theories - If a conspiracy theory doesn’t invoke either dinosaurs or the reptillians it’s probably boring to me.  I don’t want to hear how pharaohs were taught arcane pseudoscience by aliens unless those aliens were from the Draco constellation!
Godzilla - If Godzilla wasn’t a mutated dinosaur, he’d probably have to settle for being a giant bear and giant bears aren’t that funny.  Would a radioactive Teddy Ruckspin destroy Tokyo?  He would, but not in that slick of a style.
XKCD - If Randall from XKCD wasn’t afraid of velociraptors sneaking in and devouring his precious “math” and “brain”, would he be inspired to create his many funny strips?  www.xkcd.com

Street Sharks - They added dinosaurs who didn’t chew up the streets when they fought crime.  (God I’m old, when did this come out?)

In Other News,

The next post will be about Aliens in the Mass Effect Universe as well as a long overdue talk about people’s favorite aliens.  Stay tuned!  Or…clicked.  Stay clicked?

The next post is about what would be an appropriate response to staying on this blog!

Let me talk about something that all job seekers have had to go through.  Let me talk about the wonderful joy of receiving notices about work by email.

Email is great.  It’s awesome!  I can work with coworkers that are across the United States and I can talk to family members who I don’t see every day by typing up a short message and sending it off.  I can also send people pictures of cats doing cute things or share videos of Sarah Palin’s comedy routine failing pretty hard on Leno’s show.  (Sadly, she was the funniest part of that show.)

Now you can use email to receive updates on applications for jobs and for college.  I can apply to work at big business firms by emailing in my resume and portfolio or I can take a generic application test to work at Best Buy or Borders. Oh yes, with email I can get up to minute information on the status of my applications…such as when they reject me!

Now my inbox fill up with all sorts of “Thanks but No Thanks!”  emails which are completely automated in and of themselves.  Each one is the same format and changes very little.  I once received three emails from the Marion County Library system within five minutes of each other, and the only thing that changed was that the position I applied for had changed inside the body of the email.  All a prospective employer has to do these days is go into their mailing program, pull up the template they wish to use, and an automated mailer can do the rest.

Which makes me wonder one thing and one thing only!…

 Who fires the automated mailers?

Please note that most Human Resources personnel look like this. 

No one likes to fire people.  I never liked letting go volunteers at my last job and at ILL I always felt awkard having to give So as we rely more and more upon  automation to hire and fire people, how necessary will the human process be in future interviews?  Most online applications already give you a psych evaluation and ask you the standard questions they would ask you in an interview.

1.  You notice your drawer is short on money and you have run the receipts twice.  What do you do?
A.  Repeat the process of closing out the register, document your findings, and notify your supervisor
B.  Make up the difference in lost money so it doesn’t look like anything is missing
C.  Do nothing, cause Lost is on!
D.  Swap receipts with the register next to yours and hope that asshole of a coworker gets let go.

Fun fact!  One of those options is correct, but one of them is more fun.

The internet also allows for employers to do more research on potential applicants.  Employers can Google an applicant’s name and if you have a decent enough web presence you may appear!  Personal blogs full of insane rants may show up along with your Youtube lists, your Twitter account, and even your Facebook account may show up.  If you’re really lucky, the Agricultural Industrial job you just applied for may be very impressed with how well your Farmville account is doing!

(Side note:  If you found this website by Googling my name, please know I’m not saying anything bad about a fine person like you.  I’m talking about your competitors, who we all know suck shit.)

I think eventually employers will job hunt solely with automated programs.  By using your Linked In and Monster accounts, a semi aware program can scour the internet for potential candidates and can assemble a list of hundreds of potential candidates in seconds.  These robots, and I call them robots because sentient AI programs make them sound homicidal, will become invaluable as they can cut through the riff raft of the internet and find that special person for the job in mind.  Will a robot take an interest in me? How can I prove my worth to these robot overlords?  I’m the sort of person that thinks chrome and bronze can go with ANYTHING, so please keep this in mind!

Can we reverse this process?  I want to know if in the future a little pop up will appear on a potential employer’s screen which will offer interesting tidbits about me.  Like that paperclip from Microsoft Word, it would be a cute and fun way to express yourself to employers.  You would just have to take care when selecting your pop up so that you don’t shoot yourself in the leg in this virtual interview.  If you are working for the Center for Disease Control, Nalpex the Nurgling would probably not go over well.

But he’s just darling!!!

As cool as this future sounds my heart is filled with sadness.  It’s not because I worry that my robot overlords will frown on my performance and not pick me.  I’m also not upset by the fear of being unnoticed in a crowd during this time of massive unemployment and a surplus of workers.  I’m instead filled with another fear, one that I just don’t think people will get. 

What do we do for robots who were rejected by other robots?  When the probability of you being selected for a job is configured in small bits of binary code, what do we do with these overqualified pieces of PERL?

At least they’ll always have a job screwing up my bank account!

Oh, and just one more random thought that occured while I was hanging out with Dereke today.  We pride ourselves on being a capitalist society, right?  We beat those filthy communists and America has come into ascension as the number one country on the planet.  China, for as much as everyone says they will be the next big super power, still lags behind us in so many ways and it will take them a while before they knock us out of the top spot.

So if we’re such immaculate capitalists and our philosophy is superior, why are we so angry with banks for receiving bail outs?  They negotiated a business loan with our government.  Investors stole our money, but isn’t that the risk of high enterprise?  You invested your money in the market and it was the will of the market that took it?  Bad business decisions take place in financing all the time. National Health insurance will hurt people by interfering with their personal health care plans, but doesn’t the US give out federal health insurance to it’s employees and what about Social Security, Medicare, and Tax Breaks?

This is a picture of the Socialized Sentinel that will be sent to homes to enforce the Death Panels.  I’m just kidding, one of these things doesn’t exist.  (It’s  not the robot!)

I know there is a lot I don’t get but when I hear people say “No government in our health care!” or “Filthy liberals just want to take our hard earned money” it hurts.  I don’t mean emotionally, I mean it hurts my head. I can’t seem to understand why if we’re so proud of being capitalist then why are we angry with the things that make us capitalist? 

I’m fortunate that I don’t drink to forget the worries of the world, but there are times when I wish I could disappear into my dreams where I don’t have to deal with confusing political rants and obnoxious hypocrites.

 IN OTHER NEWS

Chuck Wendig talks about trolls on the internet and how people should contribute more to conversations rather than just diss them. http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2010/03/04/this-is-the-conversation/

David Hill has announced a new project which has some familiar faces and he also talks about Mass Effect 2!
http://machineageproductions.com/?p=230
http://machineiv.livejournal.com/62672.html