Happy Thanksgiving!
Merry Christmas!
Happy New Year 2013!
Happy Valentines Day!
Happy Saint Patricks Day!
Happy Everything-In-Between that I left out!
I'm late, I know. It's better late than never!

Let's get to it! Countrywide Comic Con 2013 costumes and cosplay are among us!

So far, I think it's safe to say I have 3 very simple costumes prepared for a few Comic Cons this year and a few surprises. ...I'll never tell...

1) Clockwork Orange! (never worn)
2) Doctor Who! 11th Doc! Yes, The Doctor, not a female character. (never worn)
3) 60s Minidress Redshirt from the one and only Star Trek! I've worn it on previous occasions, but never at a con!

I also have cosplays of the times past but I'm going for comfort this year! I'm also going for the more modest approach. For instance I was Alice from Resident Evil at San Diego Comiccon 2011 and I spent the day pulling down, pulling up, pinning myself together, adjusting everything and carrying a lot of weapons. People stopped for photos and I want this year to be chill and less attention grabbing. All of these things combined made for a pretty miserable day! My only tip: test out your cosplay folks!

All three will be very girlyfied because I pretty much own everything already. This fact made it fairly easy to decide on these costumes/cosplays. For those seeking easy, comfortable and cheap, cheap, cheap costumes, Clockwork Orange and Doctor Who can easily be bought at a thrift store!

Currently I am missing the 11th Doctor Sonic Screwdriver, but I'm sure it's in my future! Bonus: I have a few things I want to "screw" with alien technology. But hey, who doesn't? See what I did there?

I'll talk to you soon my friends! I've missed you! LL&P!

Dragon*Con 2011 in Atlanta, Georgia was amazing. I only got to attend a few hours due to circumstances after my arrival, but I will be returning next year. This convention really is run by fans and the variety with everything is proof. It was spread out over 5 large hotels and the floor space was very generous. I can easily claim that Dragon*Con 2011 was much bigger than San Diego Comic Con 2011, which I also attended for the full four days. Cosplay was in abundance as it seemed that most people were dressed in some kind of theme or full costume. I did take some costumes with me but never had the time to wear them. 

Below are a few of the very blurry iPhone photos I got to take while I was there. I never took out my DSLR due to time constraints. 

I'm still inching my way home from San Diego and I'm in Las Vegas now. I will add two blogs upon my arrival home: San Diego Comic Con and places I stopped along the way, (with tons of photos).

I was thrilled to meet so many of you in person! I look forward to seeing even more of you next month at Star Trek Las Vegas Convention followed by Blizzcon (gaming, yes!!!) and finishing up my year at Dragoncon.

LL&P

Apparently this blog doesn’t update by itself.

I have been preoccupied lately. Not to mention the stupendous restraint I have when it comes to holding onto my procrastination.

Work: What the hell is up with work? I put in a transfer many weeks ago. I requested the following locations: San Diego (general vicinity) or Seattle, WA (general vicinity). My current employer does have locations in both areas. Where do they decide to send me? San Francisco, CA. The one place on earth I never want to live again. I have been there, done that and I never wish to do anything but visit. I, of course, had to turn that location down and put in paperwork for yet another transfer to the same areas I requested previously. After I got the news for San Francisco, I was beyond pissed. I took the day off, drove four hours one way to the main offices and gave them the ultimatum, send me or I will go my own way without them. I am not sure where they will find someone that has no life and is willing to put in 16-20 hours a day in a moments notice. Good luck with that guys. End work rant.

Health: I had shoulder surgery not too long ago and I reinjured it in Joplin, MO during the initial search and rescue from the tornado (see previous blogs). Surgery is in my future again. One year, maybe sooner, I will realize I am not 20 years old anymore and give up the longboarding. But, it seems to be the only form of exorcise I actually like. Everything is telling me to stop, so you don’t need to tell me anymore. 

Personal life: Ziltch. Nodda. I would love to say I have this great personal life full of exciting updates. Yeah, no. However, I am currently working on that. <insert golf claps here> With the big ziltch of a personal life, I am free to do other things. Okay, not really. But I will update you on my “favorite things of the month” now.

Comics: I am still obsessed with Dark Horse and Top Cow. What I started reading that is *new* for me: Hellboy and Mr. Hyde (Dark Horse). Berserker (Top Cow), which is fucking brilliant.

Berserker!

TV: Since Netflix came out with Star Trek, I really haven’t watched anything new. Some of you know I watch one reality series, Big Brother, which started last night. There is nothing better than watching strangers bang or masturbate in a pool box on the live streams. Oh Howie, you Beefcake! Speaking of naked, the biggest, most bad ass show on TV is Game of Thrones! Joffrey, DIE. If you haven’t watched this series, you are missing out on excellent writing, brilliant film work and acting that will make you cry. Seriously, make it so. Oh, read the books first. As with anything, the books are always better!

Games: I am only playing Call of Duty (xbox) and Minecraft (PC) currently. Do I have tons of other games? Yes. On iPad I am playing Order and Chaos. This game is amazing. It is very similar to World of Warcraft, only better because it travels with you. The graphics and gameplay are both amazing. My iPad fun game is Call of Mini: Zombies. It is a FPS (First Person Shooter) that is so smooth and bloody, I can’t seem to put it down. The consistent in-game upgrades make me want to play more.

That is all for now. I am taking photos of my cosplay for San Diego Comic Con, but full on photos will have to wait. I know I promised an update and you will get one. SDCC is so close I can taste the first edition comics now.

The freshest photos I have of myself (taken this past week).

I have completed my Resident Evil Extinction Alice cosplay and "Adult" Princess Leia cosplay for San Diego Comic Con. Hopefully, within the next few days, I will post a review of the tailoring, ordering process, "making of" and end results. I opted to have parts of the Alice cosplay custom tailored, and I am glad I did.

Super excited? Yes!

With the help of someone close to me, I was able to complete my list of Cosplay for San Diego Comic Con last night.

They are as follows: (see exact photos below for ordered products)

1) Padme Amidala Deluxe

2) Adult Princess Leia White Dress

3) Alice from Resident Evil: Extinction

4) Final Fantasy (surprise, under construction)

Both of the Star Wars costumes were ordered from http://www.buystarwarscostumes.com/

The Alice costume is from: http://www.mooncostumes.com/

As soon as I get them in, I will post photos and give a review. They were fairly cheap, leaving me more funding for the missing accessories and upgrading the cheap ones they come with. Cheap dress, great accessories!

As far as the Star Trek Las Vegas Convention is concerned, I think I will have a Uhura dress for a one time adventure. The remaining days I will be sporting Vegas style with a touch of Trek.

Start dusting off your capes! San Diego Comic Con is right around the corner. Tickets for San Diego Comic Con went on sale Saturday morning from their website for the event on July 21st-24th. But, if you were one of a million geeks trying to get one, it is too late. If you were hoping to get a ticket and now hold a grudge against the few 1,000 people that did, fear not, revenge is yours.

Last year, the fine people that work the site http://www.comic-con.org/cci/ found that the seemingly “small” convention was larger than expected when thousands of geeks rushed to multiple computers from around the world to get a ticket and swiftly crashed their ticket buying system, over and over again. In response to this ticketing issue, they gathered, brainstormed and came up with a new plan for ticket sales venue. This year, they used TicketLeap at http://www.ticketleap.com/ only to find, once again, the need for tickets is much greater than they anticipated. I won't even mention the previous two "test runs" on November 22nd and December 15th, 2010 for ticket sales, they failed even worse. The third time was a semi charm.

Food for thought: Ticket sales online should not be this hard or are they preparing us for the long, time consuming elbow-to-elbow lines for our favorite cartoonist autograph seen every year at Comic Con?

Within moments of opening the TicketLeap site for sales, it crashed, lagged and even triple charged some people who tried to refresh the screen. I was one of many who received the “over capacity” error that initially showed up. We were told not “to click the go back button” but to instead click the refresh or F5 button to get into the screens we needed to order.

It wasn’t long before the next error screen popped up and we all let out a large grumble that could be heard around the world. We knew at that moment that this was not going to be an easy task. I can say that this was one time my FPS gamer playing skills came in handy in the real world. We were some refresh clicking maniacs.

Ater seeing this messsage, the logical choice was to call them, right? Wrong. I attempted this method many times only to get a "all lines are busy, please try your call again later" automated message.

Hybrid: All this has happened before and will happen again. Again, again, again, again, again, again, again, again, again.~Battlestar Galactica

I spent three hours of my Saturday morning trying to get tickets. It was one of the most frustrating things I have ever tried to accomplish. For a geek like myself, it was like trying to kill a boss in a game but he never really dies. I got to the main screen numerous times to search tickets of my choosing. Mostly to find 9 out of 10 times they were sold out. If I did get a ticket drop down menu, I would click to pay and get one of the two error messages, literally over 100 times. Did I only click refresh 100 times this notorious Saturday morning? No. I guestimate I hit refresh, click click click, well over 1000 times. I eventually got help from Robert Odum (Twitter @Cldstrife).  He made it past all the screens for ordering and agreed to help me get my golden 4 day pass. Cheers buddy; I owe you a cold frosty six pack!

What is next? Planning costumes and a really cool road trip to San Diego! I will keep you updated and when it is finally time to put on my cape, I will post photo galleries.

Until then, ComicCon has another year to try and get the servers prepared for what has proven to be a onslaught of traffic and unhappy customers like me and one of my favorite people, @StarFleetMom (Twitter).

To read my LA Times quote, go to: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/02/comic-con-ticket-sales-cra...
To see a frustrated geeks Twitter go to:  http://twitter.com/TrekJen