What a weekend.

Friday I had planned to go north to Lunacon for the day. To force myself to actually go when the time came I had preregistered, and told my dad to pick me up for the 7AM train into NYC. The week before I had destroyed my sleep schedule with an all night LAN and a 7AM shift almost back to back, and did not get to sleep until 3 or 4 AM. That gave me three hours of sleep before my dad was at the front door. I had planned to bring a number of things with me on my trip. Camera, a few copies of my resume, a snack for lunch to save some money, and a birthday card for my friend, who I would be meeting the next day. I realized before we had even made it to the train station that I had forgotten all of these things, and on top of that I had forgotten my belt and my voucher indicating that I had pre-registered. I was confident that the voucher would not be a problem, but I did end up spending the whole day hiking up my pants like a high school nerd.

The trip from home to Port Chester took about 6 hours. I loitered in NYC for a bit to get an offpeak ticket, and decided on the 30 minute walk to the convention from the train station, since I was so early.

At that point I was under the impression that the convention would start some time around noon. When I arrived I immediately realized that something was off, because it was around 11:30 and there was no convention to speak of. Sure, there were enough people that looked like they belonged to the convention to assure me that at least I had gotten the date and the place right, but obviously I had gotten something horribly wrong with the time.

Turned out that the convention didn't actually start until 6PM. I was 6 hours early. So I spend most of my convention time helping people set up. Everyone there was nice, I picked up a number of books by independent presses (more on that later), talked to some people, hung up some art, played a game of Fluxx, and then left at around 7PM.

The question now was if I was going to make my way all the way home, or stay in NYC overnight so I didn't have to come back the next day for my friend's birthday. I ended up staying at a cousin's apartment in the Village. The noise from nearby bars is constant, and was like a lullaby to my ears. There is something about the dull murmur of a city seeping through the walls that puts me in a state of utter peace similar to the sort of feeling people attribute to the wilderness.

The next day was much more sensible than the 7 hour, 80 dollar trip to hang up art that I went through on Friday. I realized that morning that I had agreed to go to a barbecue restaurant during Lent, when I don't eat meat, but there was enough veggies and fish to sustain me. We did a good amount of walking, stepped into the library, Forbidden Planet, and the Strand, had a pizza supper at Joe's Pizza, which is run like the pizza version of the soup nazi's place, and then went home. I managed to get back just as my phone died, and passed out immediately once I got home.

Fun, but a rather expensive way to spend my weekend. Certainly not something I can afford doing often.

Cool link of the moment: The Owl Box. It's just a webcam in an owl box, but if, like me, you are a fan of birds, it's neat to see an owl up close as she chills out and fusses over her chicks.

I have mentioned before to my mother that the headlines on the BBC RSS are their own special sort of crazy, and today a perfect example came up. "Missing woman police target clubs." That is a noun pile, and has been covered by linguists who know much more about this sort of stuff than I do, but I wanted to point it out because I know you read this mom, and here is what I was talking about. Now here's the question: What would an article with that headline be about?

My second attempt at a permanent break from WoW has been successful so far, but I am still struggling in the resulting time vacuum. I installed Ubuntu on the laptop and have not been able to find anything scratch my gaming itch so far. Civ IV steam edition doesn't work. My Sims 2 ISOs (don't judge me) were lost, since apparently I did not back them up. While I have been reading more, I still lack the proper attention span to read at length. I've starting writing more, but again, I've noticed that my ability to concentrate is nothing like it used to be.

Here's an interesting book tidbit from another excellent Book Blog. The author of Bambi also wrote a well known German book of erotica. The world is wonderful and multifaceted.

This site is an oldie but goody, and with my ample free time I've been feeding in random lines and enjoying the results of the translation. Movie and book quotes are perfect fodder.

Dollars and Sense

The hardest thing about the book selling business appears to be in gathering the will to sell a book that I have not yet read. I pick up all this books and think to myself, "I'll put them up for sale... after I've gone through them." Never going to be a bookseller if I do that.

My old domain, the one that I had been using before I was a fool and let it expire, was scooped up by domain squatters some years ago. Occasionally I go back to see if they've given up on it, but there is still a large 'for sale' button where my site once was. Today I did a little snooping around to see how much they were 'selling' the domain for. The price I turned up? 4,000 dollars. Considering it costs about 10 bucks a year to register a domain, and I am one hundred percent certain that my domain gets 0 visitors besides myself when I check it once ever few months, that asking price is retarded. IMO, that sort of domain squatting is up there with telemarketing in terms of 'business ideas that will be sure to land -someone- in hell'. It's the fishing for easy profit without producing anything of value whatsoever that enrages me so much.

And at the same time the domain, who's name I liked quite a bit, has been locked out of any use and if I ever do decide to purchase server space again, I am going to have to come up with something else.

Bits and Pieces

Sometimes headlines are just too stupid not to enjoy:

"European Union foreign ministers condemn the use of forged passports in the assassination of a top Palestinian militant."

Hey guys, way not cool that you used our passports there, but good job on killing a guy, well done.

Fun fact, there are, according to the autobiographies in circulation, at least three 'last men who knew everything'. Athanasius Kircher, Thomas Young, and Joseph Leidy. There may be more, but I can cay with certainty that there hasn't been any men who know everything in quite some time, and until the internet explodes and we are thrust back into an informational dark age we won't be having one again.

This video of a 1940s printing press is sexy as hell.

When I grow up...

Something else I absolutely must have when I grow up.

There are people who actually have secret bookcases and book levers. Those people are my heroes.

Awesome Link

http://www.molleindustria.org/en/home

Some people are just too creative.

When I grow up...

Someday I will have the means to win an auction of something like this:



Heritage auctions apparently takes interns. I wonder what sort of qualifications they look for. Time to shoot out an e-mail.